Why is this game so easy?

Casterial

terrordactyl1971 wrote: »

Have you played the arenas, vet dungeons or trials yet?

Felt easy

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

Because you only need an AOE monster set and siege to win in PVP lag?

Isarii

I'm sure it's been suggested a million times, but if concerns about splitting up the population aren't too great, a system of world tiers (ala Diablo 3, The Division 2, etc...) using increasing difficulty paired with increased experience, gold rewards, and a chance for higher quality drops would definitely be one way to add an optional but incentivized way to experience the game on a harder difficulty that shouldn't take an enormous amount of resources to implement.

I don't begrudge anyone who enjoys the current difficulty, but the brief flashes of actual challenge on certain encounters can't help but make me wish the entire game played that way, instead of just effortlessly two or three shotting every mob and killing bosses before they have a chance to fire off their mechanics as is all too commonplace in the current game. I'm not saying I want Dark Souls here - just the option to have to use my brain and engage with mechanics a little bit while I'm going about my every day play.

It might even motivate solo players who don't currently have much of a reason to engage with buildcraft a reason to go after the better sets, plus help to bridge the difficulty between the current overworld and veteran content more smoothly - both of which could only be a good thing for the game's player retention.

StormeReigns

Personal Experiences of a one, or a select few, especially that of a vocal minority do not dictate the experiences of others, no matter how similar or different they may seem. Want change? Work as a community to bring change together as a whole versus individual selfish desires hidden as underline blanket complaints that offer no real feedback or criticism.

Sorbin

You gotta love the contrast between what the story tries to establish and how the quests actually play out lol.

"Your enemy is a demigod who is older than time itself! He can create raw energy with his mind and bend the will of any living being! He eats pretzels for hours on end without ever needing a drink!"

*ONE BURST*

Q_Q

Mortac wrote: »

It annoys me to no end. I want to play content that isn't tuned for a 5-year old. But it seems 90% of the PVE content is tuned for just that.

I'm not talking about raids or dungeons (public dungeons excluded). Those seem alright.

But when it comes to general questing, delves and the world in general, you can literally run around in crappy green gear 10 levels below your level and still demolish everything like nothing. How is that in any way fun?

I'm currently leveling with a friend and we're closing in on level 40. The game is a huge yawn-fest and we're craving for something to challenge us. He's playing a healer, but almost never have anything to heal. Questing and killing mobs is just a tedious running from A to B, only stopping to kill monsters in 2-8 seconds and it doesn't really matter how many monsters we pull either. We're basically playing an MMO that is tuned for under-geared 5-year olds. I'm saying that because my son can play this game without being able to read or have any understanding of what the skills on his hotbar do. He just mashes them randomly and kills things.

Doing delves feels so pointless. Usually you run into other players as well and everyone's just aching to kill stuff, but everything is mowed down in 2 seconds, and delves really become nothing but something you just run through, trying to get a hit or two in on things to gain exp. So incredibly boring, and such incredibly bad design.

Delves shouldn't even be public when the game is tuned in this way. I say this because they're literally tuned for a badly geared, completely unskilled SOLO player. So the moment you add more people in there, the already trivial content becomes fully and completely pointless from a gameplay perspective.

What's been by far the most fun so far has been killing world bosses (those skulls on the map) and running (non-public) dungeons as a duo. But as soon as you add a couple more players, even that content becomes quite easy. The only annoying thing is that dungeons are in general quite easy, too, but they add certain one-shot or nearly one-shot mechanics into the game to make it harder. That's a lousy way of adding challenge, because it means you can run through everything you're thrown against, but then a sudden and sometimes unavoidable mechanic prevents you from advancing further. Those are some of the most frowned-upon things from a player perspective because they're just not fun.

I'm not level 50 yet so some things might change, but overall this game needs a huge re-tuning. Doubling mob health and damage would be a start, but much more would certainly be required. Delve bosses are more like what normal mobs should be like, but even those are ridiculously easy. Would much prefer longer, harder fights with higher experience rewards per kill than the current trivial content of killing things in a few seconds without barely taking any damage.

Does nobody want even a tiny bit of challenge these days?

PS: Fix the damn bug that sometimes prevents you from attacking or using abilities!!

I’ve been here since beta and I’ve mastered trading, pvp, and pve. Pve has its moments but it is very easy. There is absolutely nothing difficult in end game pve here. Healers aren’t even needed for prob 99% of the content. I found however, it’s a lot more fun running around solo in pvp. 1vxing is the only semi challenging thing and it allows you to know how to utilize your character in ways a pve dummy and screenshot parse numbers won’t teach you. Not sure what else to say that could help, aside from things that would get me banned. Take it easy.

TropicsDelight

I am fairly new to ESO having started back in March. I am also not terribly good at ESO, not really clicking nice smooth rotations, not tight keeping dots and shields up, fairly horrible at blocking, never roll dodge, occasionally hitting the wrong button and spam buffing myself for the W. It is truly pitiful at times.

That said, in normal content none of that matters. I can pull 6 mobs, derp my way through, and have no real risk of dying. Delves are no different, inluding the bosses. I can stand in fire, sit slack jawed while a boss winds up a heavy attack and get blasted across the room, retaliate with a vicious volley of 4 consequtive boneyards, and manage to somehow still get through. It is kinda gross.

The only content I enjoy atm with some challenge is getting into an empty public dungeon alone and working through it. In these I am forced to be less of a numbnut and find myself paying some attention to key bindings, buffing myself properly, actually avoiding standing in fire and blocking or dodging attacks. These are not super tough, but if I really derp it up I can actually die. Soloing these is similar to soloing a dolomen roughly imo. It is a nice balance and content this tough forces me to actually try to get better rather then reward me for playing like a turnip.

BackStabeth

Mortac wrote: »

It annoys me to no end. I want to play content that isn't tuned for a 5-year old. But it seems 90% of the PVE content is tuned for just that.

I'm not talking about raids or dungeons (public dungeons excluded). Those seem alright.

But when it comes to general questing, delves and the world in general, you can literally run around in crappy green gear 10 levels below your level and still demolish everything like nothing. How is that in any way fun?

Sooooo I'm not understanding the issue you have with how difficult the content you are doing is. You are not even 50 yet, that means you haven't hit 160, it also means you haven't even attempted to do any of the difficult content.

Are you saying that everything should be hard, right from the start? Are you saying that it should always be really hard, specially when leveling your characters?

When you get to 50, you will then need to grind out 160. When you get to 160 you will then need to grind out to 300 at least before you even start to attempt anything really challenging. You have barely even scratched the surface yet. How can you complain when you don't even have access to anything challenging? The first challenge is to grind out enough skill that you can then attempt something more challenging and difficult.

Am I missing something here?

TropicsDelight

BackStabeth wrote: »

Sooooo I'm not understanding the issue you have with how difficult the content you are doing is. You are not even 50 yet, that means you haven't hit 160, it also means you haven't even attempted to do any of the difficult content.

Are you saying that everything should be hard, right from the start?

Well that said should everything solo content from level 1 through to 160 CP be easy?

There seems to be a quantum leap in content difficulty from level 1-160CP normal mode stuff to suddenly stepping into a VET dungeon or trial?

Does it not make more sense for their to be a ongoing scale of progression from easy, to manageable, to fairly difficult, to really difficult?

Instead of easy, easy, easy, to holy cripe WTF this is hard!

While not everything in the game should be super hard by that same token even in the pre-160 levels not everything should be super easy either.

ESO is missing the happy medium, they are missing challenging content for non-end game raiders. They are missing hard solo content.

In most MMORPG's players who are not getting a challenge from current content can normally move into the next stage/zone of content early and take on that level 22 mob when their character is still level 20. Unfortunately with the way ESO did things if the mobs scale as easy the whole game scales as easy, no matter where you go you cannot find harder solo tuned content because everything is locked in to your level at the same difficulty setting. ESO is fairly special in that way and it makes content difficulty scaling that much more important.

A game should not be responding "yeah, if you are level 35 there is nothing challenging. Get level 50 and 160CP and then you can do the tough stuff in groups". There should be SOME hard solo content for people who decide they want to do it. Why not having some solo instance zones scaled to around the public dungeon level for players that want to do tougher solo stuff?

Why ESO tried to do with Tamriel 1 was tricky, and I think they did a fairly good job, but they can certainly continue to tweak things to find a balance that gives players of all levels challenging content. I do not see how anyone is asking too much when asking for that. It is a completely reasonable ask.

BackStabeth

TropicsDelight wrote: »

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BackStabeth wrote: »

Sooooo I'm not understanding the issue you have with how difficult the content you are doing is. You are not even 50 yet, that means you haven't hit 160, it also means you haven't even attempted to do any of the difficult content.

Are you saying that everything should be hard, right from the start?

Well that said should everything solo content from level 1 through to 160 CP be easy?

There seems to be a quantum leap in content difficulty from level 1-160CP normal mode stuff to suddenly stepping into a VET dungeon or trial?

Does it not make more sense for their to be a ongoing scale of progression from easy, to manageable, to fairly difficult, to really difficult?

Instead of easy, easy, easy, to holy cripe WTF this is hard!

While not everything in the game should be super hard by that same token even in the pre-160 levels not everything should be super easy either.

ESO is missing the happy medium, they are missing challenging content for non-end game raiders. They are missing hard solo content.

In most MMORPG's players who are not getting a challenge from current content can normally move into the next stage/zone of content early and take on that level 22 mob when their character is still level 20. Unfortunately with the way ESO did things if the mobs scale as easy the whole game scales as easy, no matter where you go you cannot find harder solo tuned content because everything is locked in to your level at the same difficulty setting. ESO is fairly special in that way and it makes content difficulty scaling that much more important.

A game should not be responding "yeah, if you are level 35 there is nothing challenging. Get level 50 and 160CP and then you can do the tough stuff in groups". There should be SOME hard solo content for people who decide they want to do it. Why not having some solo instance zones scaled to around the public dungeon level for players that want to do tougher solo stuff?

Why ESO tried to do with Tamriel 1 was tricky, and I think they did a fairly good job, but they can certainly continue to tweak things to find a balance that gives players of all levels challenging content. I do not see how anyone is asking too much when asking for that. It is a completely reasonable ask.

The system works perfectly fine the way it is. There is absolutely no need to make anything more easy or more difficult. If you want more difficult then use junk gear, it's that easy. Or zero your points and don't use any, don't put any points into anything and you can make things as difficult on yourself as you want.

But if you make things too difficult for new players, there is no relief they will just leave.

There is a progression, some areas are much harder than others even long before you hit 160. I still do not understand nor get why anyone would want to make things more difficult for everyone else when they can easily make it as difficult for themselves as they want.

[snip]

[edited for bashing/rude comment]

Oreyn_Bearclaw

mocap wrote: »

no one knows, actually. There are many opinions why overland so easy, but no official statement. Some players told like "ZOS want this, ZOS want that" but no web link to proof it.

No one knows? Two words: Forum Outrage. Haha

Overland content used to be difficult. The crying was loud; the response was certainly disappointing.

newtinmpls

IronWooshu wrote: »

if you already know the fights its still relatively very easy.

A while ago.... okay probably a few years ago...probably at least three years ago there was a discussion on the forums about not just improvements, but innovative ideas about how the game could be improved.

One of the suggestions was that some of the dungeons - possibly the undaunted - could be modular. So that you would not have the same layout each time; there would be a semi-randomly generated set of rooms and corridors. The bosses would not be in any particular order, and perhaps out of a possible total of say, 7, only 4-5 would be in each "episode" (instance) of the dungeon. Same with mechanics; there would be 5-6 "types" of mechanics and say 3-4 of them would manifest "per fight".

A lot of the ease of doing some of the content that really was hard, is knowing, really really well, almost exactly what will happen, and being able to counter it almost before it gets started.

newtinmpls

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

There is plenty of gold simply from questing and selling all those trash drops to NPC traders.

I've never done that; in fact I only rarely sell the "ornate" items; I am totally a crafter at heart and always always deconstruct things; that's from day one.

It would never have occurred to me to just "sell stuff" and even if it did, I would think "why waste all those materials".

robertthebard

newtinmpls wrote: »

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MartiniDaniels wrote: »

There is plenty of gold simply from questing and selling all those trash drops to NPC traders.

I've never done that; in fact I only rarely sell the "ornate" items; I am totally a crafter at heart and always always deconstruct things; that's from day one.

It would never have occurred to me to just "sell stuff" and even if it did, I would think "why waste all those materials".

I feel your pain, as I do this a lot. With that, however, my biggest roadblock to getting rich is simply that I am trying to buy at least one house in every zone I can. I want that free teleport, from where ever I am to one of those, especially for characters that haven't been to a zone yet, and need to get there for the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood stuff, or even for dolmens from the Fighter's Guild line.

This can be supplemented with things like stealing everything that's not nailed down, and some stuff that is, and selling everything to a fence. As a happy coincidence, this will also level up Legerdemain, which will enable you to sell even more stuff to the fences. I don't pay bounties, I simply do overland stuff until it goes away, including, but not limited to sky shards/lore books. I don't fast travel from just anywhere, as it has a cost associated with it, and instead either go to a house that's close to where I need to go, with close being relative here, in that if it's 3/4 of the way across a map, and there's no way shrine close to where I am, it's better to do that, and get sky shards/lore books along the way. This has the added benefit of giving more way shrines to choose from later.

None of this to say that doing these things, and not buying every house you can will give you all the gold you need to max out your gear early and often. While I can craft sets to blue easily, going to purple and beyond is out of the question for any one of my characters that's not at 50, since my CP is already past the 160 gear cap, and even there, I don't have all gold sets yet. Play time will add that, and is what's required to get to that point, financially, and materials wise. It's a detail that gets overlooked in these conversations primarily because the players that have been playing for a long time take it completely for granted that what their doing is what everyone is doing, which is, of course, reinforced by the "everyone I know" fallacy.

Robo_Hobo

Those Thrassian stranglers (now with even more debuffs in the latest PTS patch) are looking more and more like what I would want for a debuff toggle to spice things up in questing.

Just take that code and slap it on a useable collectible like how xp bonus collectibles work during events. Remove the spell damage bonus, and leave it at the static maximum, and we'd be good, or at least, I'd be good. Maybe just tweak the numbers a bit and add a % debuff to damage dealt to match the other debuffs. It would be a good step. Heck, even throw it in the "pay to lose" section of the crown store and I'd pay for it.

Parasaurolophus

Just increasing strength and hp mobs is a bad idea. Nobody wants to beat the wolves for 10-15 seconds. It will be just as boring and more annoying. Mobs themselves should be more interesting with a lot of mechanics. And it will turn out like with the former normal dungeons, when they became veteran. Have they become more fun after that? No, everyone is just as light. I'm afraid the vanilla content can't be fixed. I just hope that in the future we will have really interesting locations and interesting quests by their mechanics.

idk

Mortac wrote: »

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HouLiGaN wrote: »

Your only level 40.... the game isn’t suppose to be hard for you just yet. Get to 810 Cp. And go do trials in vHM... and post again. The hard part comes with finding another 11 focused players to clear them.

I'm not even asking for the game to be hard.

This comment, just as the title, is extremely misleading and creating a false impression.

The fact is OP is not talking about the game itself and is purposely ignoring most of the game for this discussion. OP has even accused players of not reading when they mention end game content like dungeons, trials, and arenas.

OP can ignore it all they want but the fact is that ESO has a tiered difficulty is clearly a successful model for an MMORPG like ESO as it is pretty much the same other very lucrative major MMORPG titles of today's time.

OP's "argument" very much and purposely neglects this reality.

ZOS_RogerJ

As we've removed some posts from this thread, we ask that you remember that it’s okay and very normal to disagree with others, and even to debate, but provoking conflict, baiting, inciting, mocking, etc. is never acceptable in the official The Elder Scrolls Online community.

idk

Casterial wrote: »

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terrordactyl1971 wrote: »

Have you played the arenas, vet dungeons or trials yet?

Felt easy

@Casterial

TBF, someone like yourself that finds the vet HM trials added in more recent years to easy is very much the minority of any MMORPG. Probably less than 1% of the active players have cleared all trials on vet HM difficulty and I am not talking about no death speed runs, just clears.

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Heck, there's even more mobile game parallels: Fighting games? Those are pvp games that encourage you to throw more money at it in order to beat that guy who just stomped you. Sounds like all those mobile pvp games, don't it?

Uh...no?

Was this supposed to be sarcasm that just went over my head?

robertthebard

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

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Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Heck, there's even more mobile game parallels: Fighting games? Those are pvp games that encourage you to throw more money at it in order to beat that guy who just stomped you. Sounds like all those mobile pvp games, don't it?

Uh...no?

Was this supposed to be sarcasm that just went over my head?

Context is key, and you removed the context. Fighting games in arcades were two player games, PvP, and required you to spend money to play.

MartiniDaniels

newtinmpls wrote: »

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MartiniDaniels wrote: »

There is plenty of gold simply from questing and selling all those trash drops to NPC traders.

I've never done that; in fact I only rarely sell the "ornate" items; I am totally a crafter at heart and always always deconstruct things; that's from day one.

It would never have occurred to me to just "sell stuff" and even if it did, I would think "why waste all those materials".

If you are crafting then:
a) you have ton of gold from doing daily writs
b) "gear for overland" question is just out of discussion, because you may just craft new gear each 6 levels and your character will always be top notch while leveling

Kesstryl

I'm going to chime in as a player since Beta, there was a time when overland was extremely difficult, and as a result, I would take breaks from the game. I only started playing consistently after One Tamriel because I could actually start enjoying the content and stories without worrying that I could not complete them and move on. The fact that all the zones in all alliances opened up and became non-linear also helped with gaining experience so that I was no longer stuck behind content I could not finish (scowling at early first year Mages Guild and Fighter's Guild bosses). It got even worse when they introduced level scaling and you could not out-level content and go back to it later to finish. It wasn't until One Tamriel in addition to accumulating CP that I began to actually enjoy the game. Not all of us are into the constant adrenaline rush and fear of not being able to complete something because many of us have already been there and done that, and it was horrible. I do like challenges, and I participate in them with my guild when we do Trials and Vet Dungeons. That's where I get my neckbeard on if I feel like it. I like being more relaxed when I'm questing and exploring. I couldn't imaging farming nodes if I nearly die every time I encounter a group of mobs like in the old days.

MEBengalsFan2001

Every MMO I have played when there was difficultly to overland/leveling zones saw adjustments to those zone to ensure that new players could navigate through zones with ease. This ensured that more players reach the leve capl and start to experience end game content. A few games I have played have used scaling systems and ESO is no different, saw some players leave because content was to hard. I prefer ESO model as it ensure that new players to ESO have an easier time leveling and hopefully over time reach end game and get into end game content which are dungeons, trials and arenas.

IMO, ESO has plenty to offer given what is available in the game to all types of players.

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun

robertthebard wrote: »

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Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Heck, there's even more mobile game parallels: Fighting games? Those are pvp games that encourage you to throw more money at it in order to beat that guy who just stomped you. Sounds like all those mobile pvp games, don't it?

Uh...no?

Was this supposed to be sarcasm that just went over my head?

Context is key, and you removed the context. Fighting games in arcades were two player games, PvP, and required you to spend money to play.

Spending money to play and P2W aren't remotely the same, though. That's stretching the definition to absurd levels. You aren't buying power. You can't improve your character's stats or get extra stuff by dumping more quarters into the machine than the other guy.

newtinmpls wrote: »

One of the suggestions was that some of the dungeons - possibly the undaunted - could be modular. So that you would not have the same layout each time; there would be a semi-randomly generated set of rooms and corridors. The bosses would not be in any particular order, and perhaps out of a possible total of say, 7, only 4-5 would be in each "episode" (instance) of the dungeon. Same with mechanics; there would be 5-6 "types" of mechanics and say 3-4 of them would manifest "per fight".

Man, I wish MMOs would start doing this. They want you to repeat dungeons 1000's of times but do nothing to keep the experience fresh. FFXIV dipped their toe in the idea with Deep Dungeons and it was actually pretty cool. I was really hoping they'd start incorporating some of that into their dungeon design going forward.

[Edit to remove bait]

MartiniDaniels

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

Every MMO I have played when there was difficultly to overland/leveling zones saw adjustments to those zone to ensure that new players could navigate through zones with ease. This ensured that more players reach the leve capl and start to experience end game content. A few games I have played have used scaling systems and ESO is no different, saw some players leave because content was to hard. I prefer ESO model as it ensure that new players to ESO have an easier time leveling and hopefully over time reach end game and get into end game content which are dungeons, trials and arenas.

IMO, ESO has plenty to offer given what is available in the game to all types of players.

Overland does NOTHING to prepare player for end game.
Best thing player may do if he wants to reach endgame, it is a) start running group dungeons as soon as this option opens b) max out undaunted c) get all meta gear from VMA/VDSA d) join PVE progression guild(s).

Kiralyn2000

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

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robertthebard wrote: »

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Heck, there's even more mobile game parallels: Fighting games? Those are pvp games that encourage you to throw more money at it in order to beat that guy who just stomped you. Sounds like all those mobile pvp games, don't it?

Uh...no?

Was this supposed to be sarcasm that just went over my head?

Context is key, and you removed the context. Fighting games in arcades were two player games, PvP, and required you to spend money to play.

Spending money to play and P2W aren't remotely the same, though. That's stretching the definition to absurd levels. You aren't buying power. You can't improve your character's stats or get extra stuff by dumping more quarters into the machine than the other guy.

"p2w" was in reference to other arcade games, the type with a limited number of levels that you "won" when you got to the end. If you were super-duper awesome, you could get there on one quarter. Or you could just keep throwing quarters in for Continue after Continue, until you'd paid your way to the end of the game.


Meanwhile, Fighting Games just had the pvp "omg, that dude beat me! I Must Get Revenge!" Continue "crap, he beat me again" Continue " dammit!" Continue "aaaaarrrrrrgggg! Cheater, exploiter, OP character, cheap tactics, etc!" Continue; etc, etc, etc.

Similar to how many f2p games now use pvp as an encouragement to spend $. "That guy just beat you and took your resources! Use gems/crowns/etc to recover your forces & base better, and attack him back!"

Malthorne

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

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newtinmpls wrote: »

One of the suggestions was that some of the dungeons - possibly the undaunted - could be modular. So that you would not have the same layout each time; there would be a semi-randomly generated set of rooms and corridors. The bosses would not be in any particular order, and perhaps out of a possible total of say, 7, only 4-5 would be in each "episode" (instance) of the dungeon. Same with mechanics; there would be 5-6 "types" of mechanics and say 3-4 of them would manifest "per fight".

Man, I wish MMOs would start doing this. They want you to repeat dungeons 1000's of times but do nothing to keep the experience fresh. FFXIV dipped their toe in the idea with Deep Dungeons and it was actually pretty cool. I was really hoping they'd start incorporating some of that into their dungeon design going forward.

Yes, Palace of the Dead was one of my favorite experiences in FFXIV. WoW is adding something similar in Shadowlands with Torghast, Tower of the Damned. I’m very much looking forward to giving that a try in the future.

I would like to see ESO create its own version of a randomized, rougelike, dungeon. Lots of potential for solo and group play.

Nomadic_Atmoran

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

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robertthebard wrote: »

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Heck, there's even more mobile game parallels: Fighting games? Those are pvp games that encourage you to throw more money at it in order to beat that guy who just stomped you. Sounds like all those mobile pvp games, don't it?

Uh...no?

Was this supposed to be sarcasm that just went over my head?

Context is key, and you removed the context. Fighting games in arcades were two player games, PvP, and required you to spend money to play.

Spending money to play and P2W aren't remotely the same, though. That's stretching the definition to absurd levels. You aren't buying power. You can't improve your character's stats or get extra stuff by dumping more quarters into the machine than the other guy.

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newtinmpls wrote: »

One of the suggestions was that some of the dungeons - possibly the undaunted - could be modular. So that you would not have the same layout each time; there would be a semi-randomly generated set of rooms and corridors. The bosses would not be in any particular order, and perhaps out of a possible total of say, 7, only 4-5 would be in each "episode" (instance) of the dungeon. Same with mechanics; there would be 5-6 "types" of mechanics and say 3-4 of them would manifest "per fight".

Man, I wish MMOs would start doing this. They want you to repeat dungeons 1000's of times but do nothing to keep the experience fresh. FFXIV dipped their toe in the idea with Deep Dungeons and it was actually pretty cool. I was really hoping they'd start incorporating some of that into their dungeon design going forward.

The problem with "optional" is that it becomes "mandatory" once you change the loot tables to reflect the hard-mode. If players don't see a benefit to playing a harder setting they will opt to not participate and any player that doesnt seek a harder mode will feel pressured to play the hard-mode if there are better rewards.

You may see the latter as a good thing because it will "make players better" but this same discussion has been had in other games and been thoroughly tested in other MMOs that eventually added hard-modes to their content. What those MMOs initially saw was a influx of players trying the harder content. Which they interpreted as confirming their actions to be the right thing to do and players must love it.

But eventually the truth came out. Plenty of low skilled players that were NEVER going to GIT GUD were flooding into these hard modes for the increased benefits and allowing better players to carry them to the rewards. But more often than not those attempts to complete the content were riddled with failures. Because of this the content was abandoned by all players and the only content that seemed to get any attention were the ones that were deemed by the community to be "easier" to cut through and still come out on the other side with a higher chance of success. ie the hardmode content that was considered to be easy amongst the rest. Anything that required more time, more skill and more effort was abandoned.

Hard mode content in overworld will not provide the challenge you think you seek. Because human behavior of finding the easiest and most effortless means of doing anything will always win out. Your content will not make players better, your content will not provide a challenge for long and it will eventually be easy as you see the current content. The only frustrating thing you will find will be how often you can find other similarly skilled players like yourself in overworld that wont absolutely fail and lose you the chance at your reward.

Isarii

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

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newtinmpls wrote: »

One of the suggestions was that some of the dungeons - possibly the undaunted - could be modular. So that you would not have the same layout each time; there would be a semi-randomly generated set of rooms and corridors. The bosses would not be in any particular order, and perhaps out of a possible total of say, 7, only 4-5 would be in each "episode" (instance) of the dungeon. Same with mechanics; there would be 5-6 "types" of mechanics and say 3-4 of them would manifest "per fight".

Man, I wish MMOs would start doing this. They want you to repeat dungeons 1000's of times but do nothing to keep the experience fresh. FFXIV dipped their toe in the idea with Deep Dungeons and it was actually pretty cool. I was really hoping they'd start incorporating some of that into their dungeon design going forward.

Honestly with ESO if they really wanted to do it quick and dirty, they could absolutely just chain randomly selected delves together with increasing levels of difficulty, then retool a selection of open world / story / dungeon bosses in generic encounter rooms.

Tack some lore on about an unstable portal generator or something and call it a day.