Why is this game so easy?

Nomadic_Atmoran · May 2020

Isarii wrote: »

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Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

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.

Ugh. I'm getting Third Dynasty of the Borg vibes here.

Zardayne · May 2020

I thought I'd add something to this post. I've definitely been on the side of increasing the difficulty in this game for a long time and I've made many a post supporting. I also know there's a lot of love it berry picking easy except in vet dungeons and trails.With that said I pretty much left this topic alone until now.

I just happened to be talking to a new mechanicI had hired awhile back and I don't know how we got on the topic of games. Of course that lead to asking what we were playing currently. Believe it or not, he also has been playing ESO for years on PC. He said he had significantly lowered the amount of time he (and his best friend) had been playing and trying new stuff even though he had purchased the new expansion. I told him I too had cut my playing time. We began comparing notes on why that was. He, like myself are old school MMO players in our 40s. Both played since the Ultima and EQ days and almost all MMOs until ESO. We both had about the same answers. One that I thought was relevant to this post was we both agreed the difficulty is just weak. There's no feeling of accomplishment. Every time an expansion is released, the majority of the new content in overland and their delves are just the same O same O with regards to difficulty. Sure the stories are good but..With this low difficulty it makes a huge part of ESO just a single player experience. We know there's vet dungeons and Trials and PVP for group content but there's a huge portion of content that is so easy you can't even take a friend along to quest together because you'll both die of boredom. Not to keep going but we both agreed that if they would just add some way to choose the difficulty when entering delves and public dungeons, it would keep a lot of us vet players engaged and new players would also keep the easier difficulty they have now. ESO has to do something IMO. They cannot keep expecting veteran players to keep dishing out cash for expansions that offer a new dungeon and a trial, some story quests and some minor new things, and expect us to keep running those same things over and over for months. Give us a reason to duo with friends. Give veterans a reason to enjoy making a new alt without having to strip down naked, remove all CP points and fight with a green training sword. It would be nice to be able to set the excitement and danger to the level you wanted it. They were scaling instances in older MMOs. They can do it here.

I would add he began playing some new MMO (which I'm not going to name here) that is still in testing and he told me even there when you go into their world dungeons you get to pick the difficulty. Why can some relatively unknown game offer player choice but this AAA doesn't. I don't understand..

StormeReigns · May 2020

Zardayne wrote: »

I thought I'd add something to this post. I've definitely been on the side of increasing the difficulty in this game for a long time and I've made many a post supporting. I also know there's a lot of love it berry picking easy except in vet dungeons and trails.With that said I pretty much left this topic alone until now.

I just happened to be talking to a new mechanicI had hired awhile back and I don't know how we got on the topic of games. Of course that lead to asking what we were playing currently. Believe it or not, he also has been playing ESO for years on PC. He said he had significantly lowered the amount of time he (and his best friend) had been playing and trying new stuff even though he had purchased the new expansion. I told him I too had cut my playing time. We began comparing notes on why that was. He, like myself are old school MMO players in our 40s. Both played since the Ultima and EQ days and almost all MMOs until ESO. We both had about the same answers. One that I thought was relevant to this post was we both agreed the difficulty is just weak. There's no feeling of accomplishment. Every time an expansion is released, the majority of the new content in overland and their delves are just the same O same O with regards to difficulty. Sure the stories are good but..With this low difficulty it makes a huge part of ESO just a single player experience. We know there's vet dungeons and Trials and PVP for group content but there's a huge portion of content that is so easy you can't even take a friend along to quest together because you'll both die of boredom. Not to keep going but we both agreed that if they would just add some way to choose the difficulty when entering delves and public dungeons, it would keep a lot of us vet players engaged and new players would also keep the easier difficulty they have now. ESO has to do something IMO. They cannot keep expecting veteran players to keep dishing out cash for expansions that offer a new dungeon and a trial, some story quests and some minor new things, and expect us to keep running those same things over and over for months. Give us a reason to duo with friends. Give veterans a reason to enjoy making a new alt without having to strip down naked, remove all CP points and fight with a green training sword. It would be nice to be able to set the excitement and danger to the level you wanted it. They were scaling instances in older MMOs. They can do it here.

I would add he began playing some new MMO (which I'm not going to name here) that is still in testing and he told me even there when you go into their world dungeons you get to pick the difficulty. Why can some relatively unknown game offer player choice but this AAA doesn't. I don't understand..

Hmm. Interesting. Complaining and comparing a Game designed to accommodate said feature by how it was designed and programmed versus a game that would require said feature to be built from the ground up and placed in with risk of issues causing more problems on top of what is already happening.

Dahveed · May 2020

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

My biggest beef with overland isn't the difficulty per se, it's the condensed nature of the enemies. If they made overland more difficult, I hope they would thin the herd out. As easy as it is, it still gets tedious asf having to kill enemies every two steps. Especially in delves. If it was more difficult, that would become amplified even more.

Oblivion suffered with this too. As soon as you stepped off the beaten track there was hostile animals or npcs galore. Again, it wasn't difficult, but it became tedious to the point I stopped venturing off the beaten path. This improved immensely with Skyrim. You could actually explore without having to be in combat every few steps.

This.

The OP is correct, I have been saying this for YEARS. ESO suffers greatly as a solo experience because the actual combat is too frequent, too repetitive, and too easy.

It seems bizarre to complain about the fact that there is simply too much "stuff" in the zones - too many NPCs, too many events, delves, dungeons, towns, points of interest etc etc etc.... but it actually takes away from the exploration experience if you are just constantly bombarded with tedious, repetitive crap.

I just recently rerolled a few characters in classic WoW, and boy did they get it right! Every attack matters, every point of armor counts, literally every copper you loot is valuable. I can barely come back to ESO anymore, it seems like a child's game, just like the OP said.

Zardayne · May 2020

StormeReigns wrote: »

show previous quotes

Zardayne wrote: »

I thought I'd add something to this post. I've definitely been on the side of increasing the difficulty in this game for a long time and I've made many a post supporting. I also know there's a lot of love it berry picking easy except in vet dungeons and trails.With that said I pretty much left this topic alone until now.

I just happened to be talking to a new mechanicI had hired awhile back and I don't know how we got on the topic of games. Of course that lead to asking what we were playing currently. Believe it or not, he also has been playing ESO for years on PC. He said he had significantly lowered the amount of time he (and his best friend) had been playing and trying new stuff even though he had purchased the new expansion. I told him I too had cut my playing time. We began comparing notes on why that was. He, like myself are old school MMO players in our 40s. Both played since the Ultima and EQ days and almost all MMOs until ESO. We both had about the same answers. One that I thought was relevant to this post was we both agreed the difficulty is just weak. There's no feeling of accomplishment. Every time an expansion is released, the majority of the new content in overland and their delves are just the same O same O with regards to difficulty. Sure the stories are good but..With this low difficulty it makes a huge part of ESO just a single player experience. We know there's vet dungeons and Trials and PVP for group content but there's a huge portion of content that is so easy you can't even take a friend along to quest together because you'll both die of boredom. Not to keep going but we both agreed that if they would just add some way to choose the difficulty when entering delves and public dungeons, it would keep a lot of us vet players engaged and new players would also keep the easier difficulty they have now. ESO has to do something IMO. They cannot keep expecting veteran players to keep dishing out cash for expansions that offer a new dungeon and a trial, some story quests and some minor new things, and expect us to keep running those same things over and over for months. Give us a reason to duo with friends. Give veterans a reason to enjoy making a new alt without having to strip down naked, remove all CP points and fight with a green training sword. It would be nice to be able to set the excitement and danger to the level you wanted it. They were scaling instances in older MMOs. They can do it here.

I would add he began playing some new MMO (which I'm not going to name here) that is still in testing and he told me even there when you go into their world dungeons you get to pick the difficulty. Why can some relatively unknown game offer player choice but this AAA doesn't. I don't understand..

Hmm. Interesting. Complaining and comparing a Game designed to accommodate said feature by how it was designed and programmed versus a game that would require said feature to be built from the ground up and placed in with risk of issues causing more problems on top of what is already happening.

Hey I'm not going to assume and say I know what it would take to add said feature to the game. My guess is you don't either. I'm just reporting what two old gamers were just recently brainstorming about and their idea of what might be a "fix". Numerous games in the past (and now one presently) had or has that option to scale difficulty and options are generally a good thing.I will agree with you that there is a possible risk when adding such a feature, or anything new they add, causing issues.

EDIT: I thought I'd add, perhaps they already have the feature. I mean we're able to select either normal or vet versions of dungeons. How much really goes into that to make it happen on ZOS' end, I don't know. Seems we are able to at least select some difficulty though. I'm curious how hard it would be on delves and public dungeons

As far as complaining, man I've been paying and supporting this game for 6 years. I feel I have the right to voice my opinions a bit. If I didn't give a damn about this game, I wouldn't be here.

robertthebard · May 2020

Zardayne wrote: »

show previous quotes

StormeReigns wrote: »

Zardayne wrote: »

I thought I'd add something to this post. I've definitely been on the side of increasing the difficulty in this game for a long time and I've made many a post supporting. I also know there's a lot of love it berry picking easy except in vet dungeons and trails.With that said I pretty much left this topic alone until now.

I just happened to be talking to a new mechanicI had hired awhile back and I don't know how we got on the topic of games. Of course that lead to asking what we were playing currently. Believe it or not, he also has been playing ESO for years on PC. He said he had significantly lowered the amount of time he (and his best friend) had been playing and trying new stuff even though he had purchased the new expansion. I told him I too had cut my playing time. We began comparing notes on why that was. He, like myself are old school MMO players in our 40s. Both played since the Ultima and EQ days and almost all MMOs until ESO. We both had about the same answers. One that I thought was relevant to this post was we both agreed the difficulty is just weak. There's no feeling of accomplishment. Every time an expansion is released, the majority of the new content in overland and their delves are just the same O same O with regards to difficulty. Sure the stories are good but..With this low difficulty it makes a huge part of ESO just a single player experience. We know there's vet dungeons and Trials and PVP for group content but there's a huge portion of content that is so easy you can't even take a friend along to quest together because you'll both die of boredom. Not to keep going but we both agreed that if they would just add some way to choose the difficulty when entering delves and public dungeons, it would keep a lot of us vet players engaged and new players would also keep the easier difficulty they have now. ESO has to do something IMO. They cannot keep expecting veteran players to keep dishing out cash for expansions that offer a new dungeon and a trial, some story quests and some minor new things, and expect us to keep running those same things over and over for months. Give us a reason to duo with friends. Give veterans a reason to enjoy making a new alt without having to strip down naked, remove all CP points and fight with a green training sword. It would be nice to be able to set the excitement and danger to the level you wanted it. They were scaling instances in older MMOs. They can do it here.

I would add he began playing some new MMO (which I'm not going to name here) that is still in testing and he told me even there when you go into their world dungeons you get to pick the difficulty. Why can some relatively unknown game offer player choice but this AAA doesn't. I don't understand..

Hmm. Interesting. Complaining and comparing a Game designed to accommodate said feature by how it was designed and programmed versus a game that would require said feature to be built from the ground up and placed in with risk of issues causing more problems on top of what is already happening.

Hey I'm not going to assume and say I know what it would take to add said feature to the game. My guess is you don't either. I'm just reporting what two old gamers were just recently brainstorming about and their idea of what might be a "fix". Numerous games in the past (and now one presently) had or has that option to scale difficulty and options are generally a good thing.I will agree with you that there is a possible risk when adding such a feature, or anything new they add, causing issues.

EDIT: I thought I'd add, perhaps they already have the feature. I mean we're able to select either normal or vet versions of dungeons. How much really goes into that to make it happen on ZOS' end, I don't know. Seems we are able to at least select some difficulty though. I'm curious how hard it would be on delves and public dungeons

As far as complaining, man I've been paying and supporting this game for 6 years. I feel I have the right to voice my opinions a bit. If I didn't give a damn about this game, I wouldn't be here.

They, like Normal and Vet dungeons, would have to be instanced. DDO is a great example of this, all of the leveling content is instanced, except crafting. All wilderness areas, all quests, all raids are instances. It was built that way from the ground up. Here's the problem, which seems appropriate, given the age differences: DDO went through this "too easy" phase about 5 years ago, give or take. Once it was firmly on the table to be done, it had to be given special rewards, or it wouldn't be worth it to run it. Then, within a couple of weeks of getting what they insisted they needed, it had to be nerfed, according to the forums. The standard battle cry of these elite players was always "Play a lower difficulty", when someone thought they should be able to solo Elite level quests, and couldn't. I got permanently banned from their forum when I suggested that very solution to the "we needed it harder, but this is 'stupid hard'" crowd.

How'd they make it harder, you may ask? By doing the exact things that have been asked for in the dizzying array of threads about it here; nerfing players, buffing the mobs, adding special mobs with buffs for enemies and debuffs on players, etc. I wonder, how unique this community really is? There are similar threads on the GW 2 forums as well. The cynic in me says "it wouldn't take too long to get threads about how they made it hard the wrong way" here, even if they followed most of the "advice" given in these threads.

Zardayne · May 2020

robertthebard wrote: »

show previous quotes

Zardayne wrote: »

StormeReigns wrote: »

Zardayne wrote: »

I thought I'd add something to this post. I've definitely been on the side of increasing the difficulty in this game for a long time and I've made many a post supporting. I also know there's a lot of love it berry picking easy except in vet dungeons and trails.With that said I pretty much left this topic alone until now.

I just happened to be talking to a new mechanicI had hired awhile back and I don't know how we got on the topic of games. Of course that lead to asking what we were playing currently. Believe it or not, he also has been playing ESO for years on PC. He said he had significantly lowered the amount of time he (and his best friend) had been playing and trying new stuff even though he had purchased the new expansion. I told him I too had cut my playing time. We began comparing notes on why that was. He, like myself are old school MMO players in our 40s. Both played since the Ultima and EQ days and almost all MMOs until ESO. We both had about the same answers. One that I thought was relevant to this post was we both agreed the difficulty is just weak. There's no feeling of accomplishment. Every time an expansion is released, the majority of the new content in overland and their delves are just the same O same O with regards to difficulty. Sure the stories are good but..With this low difficulty it makes a huge part of ESO just a single player experience. We know there's vet dungeons and Trials and PVP for group content but there's a huge portion of content that is so easy you can't even take a friend along to quest together because you'll both die of boredom. Not to keep going but we both agreed that if they would just add some way to choose the difficulty when entering delves and public dungeons, it would keep a lot of us vet players engaged and new players would also keep the easier difficulty they have now. ESO has to do something IMO. They cannot keep expecting veteran players to keep dishing out cash for expansions that offer a new dungeon and a trial, some story quests and some minor new things, and expect us to keep running those same things over and over for months. Give us a reason to duo with friends. Give veterans a reason to enjoy making a new alt without having to strip down naked, remove all CP points and fight with a green training sword. It would be nice to be able to set the excitement and danger to the level you wanted it. They were scaling instances in older MMOs. They can do it here.

I would add he began playing some new MMO (which I'm not going to name here) that is still in testing and he told me even there when you go into their world dungeons you get to pick the difficulty. Why can some relatively unknown game offer player choice but this AAA doesn't. I don't understand..

Hmm. Interesting. Complaining and comparing a Game designed to accommodate said feature by how it was designed and programmed versus a game that would require said feature to be built from the ground up and placed in with risk of issues causing more problems on top of what is already happening.

Hey I'm not going to assume and say I know what it would take to add said feature to the game. My guess is you don't either. I'm just reporting what two old gamers were just recently brainstorming about and their idea of what might be a "fix". Numerous games in the past (and now one presently) had or has that option to scale difficulty and options are generally a good thing.I will agree with you that there is a possible risk when adding such a feature, or anything new they add, causing issues.

EDIT: I thought I'd add, perhaps they already have the feature. I mean we're able to select either normal or vet versions of dungeons. How much really goes into that to make it happen on ZOS' end, I don't know. Seems we are able to at least select some difficulty though. I'm curious how hard it would be on delves and public dungeons

As far as complaining, man I've been paying and supporting this game for 6 years. I feel I have the right to voice my opinions a bit. If I didn't give a damn about this game, I wouldn't be here.

They, like Normal and Vet dungeons, would have to be instanced. DDO is a great example of this, all of the leveling content is instanced, except crafting. All wilderness areas, all quests, all raids are instances. It was built that way from the ground up. Here's the problem, which seems appropriate, given the age differences: DDO went through this "too easy" phase about 5 years ago, give or take. Once it was firmly on the table to be done, it had to be given special rewards, or it wouldn't be worth it to run it. Then, within a couple of weeks of getting what they insisted they needed, it had to be nerfed, according to the forums. The standard battle cry of these elite players was always "Play a lower difficulty", when someone thought they should be able to solo Elite level quests, and couldn't. I got permanently banned from their forum when I suggested that very solution to the "we needed it harder, but this is 'stupid hard'" crowd.

How'd they make it harder, you may ask? By doing the exact things that have been asked for in the dizzying array of threads about it here; nerfing players, buffing the mobs, adding special mobs with buffs for enemies and debuffs on players, etc. I wonder, how unique this community really is? There are similar threads on the GW 2 forums as well. The cynic in me says "it wouldn't take too long to get threads about how they made it hard the wrong way" here, even if they followed most of the "advice" given in these threads.

Good read Robert. Definitely insightful. I played DDO back when it was released a bit. Now that you mention it I do remember going up to a "door" for the instance. I couldn't remember though what options were available back then. You're right though it would definitely have to be instanced. I wouldn't think it would have to be instanced for that certain individual, just a normal and vet version IMO. What you mentioned about the rewards needing to be worth it to run it is correct as well. Matter of fact, that was exactly what my coworker said. Higher Risk, Higher Reward. I agree with that somewhat and but it would have to be kept in check. Higher chance of getting a blue or purple set from that region or crafting/motifs, sure. I'd really just like to be able to play with a friend or two in overland and delves without us both going to sleep at the wheel.

Right now the way it is, I run into a delve like I was doing the other night in Elsewyr, and I'm just melting mobs all the way to the big baddie at the end. Keep in mind I'm not even in yellow gear, etc. I felt bad as there were lower level players who had just came through the tutorial and were questing in there, and they basically missed most of the delve running behind me. I stopped at the main boss and let some of them catch up and get some hits in before I hit 3 abilities and grabbed my green loot. It wasn't fair to to me and it damn sure wasn't fair to them IMO.

Isarii · May 2020

Zardayne wrote: »

Right now the way it is, I run into a delve like I was doing the other night in Elsewyr, and I'm just melting mobs all the way to the big baddie at the end. Keep in mind I'm not even in yellow gear, etc. I felt bad as there were lower level players who had just came through the tutorial and were questing in there, and they basically missed most of the delve running behind me. I stopped at the main boss and let some of them catch up and get some hits in before I hit 3 abilities and grabbed my green loot. It wasn't fair to to me and it damn sure wasn't fair to them IMO.

I honestly feel a little bit bad when I'm in a delve or a quest area and I see someone slowly fighting a mob and doing mechanics and I'm just rolling through killing everything with no more than LA/Surprise Attack > LA/Executioner.

It's not fun for me and it must be even less fun for them to feel so useless attempting to get damage in with me.

StormeReigns · May 2020

Isarii wrote: »

It's not fun for me and it must be even less fun for them to feel so useless attempting to get damage in with me.

Ah, yes. Love these "observations" able to know a person just like that.

Can you do me next?

To help you out, I am deaf, suffer from RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis), essential tremors and lupus. can you tell me why I might be a bit slower then the average player?

max_only · May 2020

There are people who struggle with overland quest bosses.
Your experiences are not universal.

Isarii · May 2020

StormeReigns wrote: »

show previous quotes

Isarii wrote: »

It's not fun for me and it must be even less fun for them to feel so useless attempting to get damage in with me.

Ah, yes. Love these "observations" able to know a person just like that.

Can you do me next?

To help you out, I am deaf, suffer from RA (Rheumatoid Arthritis), essential tremors and lupus. can you tell me why I might be a bit slower then the average player?

Weird interpretation of my post, but situations like yours are exactly why I made my specific proposal - a world tier system would leave the current difficulty available for undergeared or differently abled players while filtering out those near the peak of the game's power curve who at this moment intrude on the experience of lower performance players by trivializing their content.

worrallj · May 2020

It's not that easy.

YOU'RE JUST THAT GOOD.

robertthebard · May 2020

Zardayne wrote: »

show previous quotes

robertthebard wrote: »

Zardayne wrote: »

StormeReigns wrote: »

Zardayne wrote: »

I thought I'd add something to this post. I've definitely been on the side of increasing the difficulty in this game for a long time and I've made many a post supporting. I also know there's a lot of love it berry picking easy except in vet dungeons and trails.With that said I pretty much left this topic alone until now.

I just happened to be talking to a new mechanicI had hired awhile back and I don't know how we got on the topic of games. Of course that lead to asking what we were playing currently. Believe it or not, he also has been playing ESO for years on PC. He said he had significantly lowered the amount of time he (and his best friend) had been playing and trying new stuff even though he had purchased the new expansion. I told him I too had cut my playing time. We began comparing notes on why that was. He, like myself are old school MMO players in our 40s. Both played since the Ultima and EQ days and almost all MMOs until ESO. We both had about the same answers. One that I thought was relevant to this post was we both agreed the difficulty is just weak. There's no feeling of accomplishment. Every time an expansion is released, the majority of the new content in overland and their delves are just the same O same O with regards to difficulty. Sure the stories are good but..With this low difficulty it makes a huge part of ESO just a single player experience. We know there's vet dungeons and Trials and PVP for group content but there's a huge portion of content that is so easy you can't even take a friend along to quest together because you'll both die of boredom. Not to keep going but we both agreed that if they would just add some way to choose the difficulty when entering delves and public dungeons, it would keep a lot of us vet players engaged and new players would also keep the easier difficulty they have now. ESO has to do something IMO. They cannot keep expecting veteran players to keep dishing out cash for expansions that offer a new dungeon and a trial, some story quests and some minor new things, and expect us to keep running those same things over and over for months. Give us a reason to duo with friends. Give veterans a reason to enjoy making a new alt without having to strip down naked, remove all CP points and fight with a green training sword. It would be nice to be able to set the excitement and danger to the level you wanted it. They were scaling instances in older MMOs. They can do it here.

I would add he began playing some new MMO (which I'm not going to name here) that is still in testing and he told me even there when you go into their world dungeons you get to pick the difficulty. Why can some relatively unknown game offer player choice but this AAA doesn't. I don't understand..

Hmm. Interesting. Complaining and comparing a Game designed to accommodate said feature by how it was designed and programmed versus a game that would require said feature to be built from the ground up and placed in with risk of issues causing more problems on top of what is already happening.

Hey I'm not going to assume and say I know what it would take to add said feature to the game. My guess is you don't either. I'm just reporting what two old gamers were just recently brainstorming about and their idea of what might be a "fix". Numerous games in the past (and now one presently) had or has that option to scale difficulty and options are generally a good thing.I will agree with you that there is a possible risk when adding such a feature, or anything new they add, causing issues.

EDIT: I thought I'd add, perhaps they already have the feature. I mean we're able to select either normal or vet versions of dungeons. How much really goes into that to make it happen on ZOS' end, I don't know. Seems we are able to at least select some difficulty though. I'm curious how hard it would be on delves and public dungeons

As far as complaining, man I've been paying and supporting this game for 6 years. I feel I have the right to voice my opinions a bit. If I didn't give a damn about this game, I wouldn't be here.

They, like Normal and Vet dungeons, would have to be instanced. DDO is a great example of this, all of the leveling content is instanced, except crafting. All wilderness areas, all quests, all raids are instances. It was built that way from the ground up. Here's the problem, which seems appropriate, given the age differences: DDO went through this "too easy" phase about 5 years ago, give or take. Once it was firmly on the table to be done, it had to be given special rewards, or it wouldn't be worth it to run it. Then, within a couple of weeks of getting what they insisted they needed, it had to be nerfed, according to the forums. The standard battle cry of these elite players was always "Play a lower difficulty", when someone thought they should be able to solo Elite level quests, and couldn't. I got permanently banned from their forum when I suggested that very solution to the "we needed it harder, but this is 'stupid hard'" crowd.

How'd they make it harder, you may ask? By doing the exact things that have been asked for in the dizzying array of threads about it here; nerfing players, buffing the mobs, adding special mobs with buffs for enemies and debuffs on players, etc. I wonder, how unique this community really is? There are similar threads on the GW 2 forums as well. The cynic in me says "it wouldn't take too long to get threads about how they made it hard the wrong way" here, even if they followed most of the "advice" given in these threads.

Good read Robert. Definitely insightful. I played DDO back when it was released a bit. Now that you mention it I do remember going up to a "door" for the instance. I couldn't remember though what options were available back then. You're right though it would definitely have to be instanced. I wouldn't think it would have to be instanced for that certain individual, just a normal and vet version IMO. What you mentioned about the rewards needing to be worth it to run it is correct as well. Matter of fact, that was exactly what my coworker said. Higher Risk, Higher Reward. I agree with that somewhat and but it would have to be kept in check. Higher chance of getting a blue or purple set from that region or crafting/motifs, sure. I'd really just like to be able to play with a friend or two in overland and delves without us both going to sleep at the wheel.

Right now the way it is, I run into a delve like I was doing the other night in Elsewyr, and I'm just melting mobs all the way to the big baddie at the end. Keep in mind I'm not even in yellow gear, etc. I felt bad as there were lower level players who had just came through the tutorial and were questing in there, and they basically missed most of the delve running behind me. I stopped at the main boss and let some of them catch up and get some hits in before I hit 3 abilities and grabbed my green loot. It wasn't fair to to me and it damn sure wasn't fair to them IMO.

The thing is, it's supposed to be because the game's too easy. The "reward" should be the satisfaction of knowing you can clear the difficult content that you wanted, empirical you, not trying to pin anyone in particular. In DDO, it used to be Casual, Normal, Hard and Elite. I'm not sure how most of the reward structure worked, I never paid it much mind, and after I could open a quest on Elite, I never bothered with anything else. I do know the Favor rewards were higher, but that was a minor consideration, if I thought about it at all. I just did it because I could. My guild there had plenty of players that couldn't, for the longest time. But it was still fun to take 'em in there and try, and even fun to just run with them on whatever difficulty they were comfortable with, normally Hard.

Eventually, it's not the game itself that keeps some players playing, it's the people they meet along the way. The only people on my face book feed that aren't immediate family are friends that I've made over the last 20 years playing MMOs, or other online games such as Neverwinter Nights. Most of us have long since given up on the games we met in, but we stay in touch anyway. For me, most of these games get to being "too easy" after a few weeks, but it's not because the games are too easy, per se, but because of the way I've played games over the years. I was a progression raider, with all the "Learn to play" that that entails. It doesn't take me long to figure out mechanics, unless I'm playing several games at the same time, and get my control schemes mixed up. But from DDO's episode, to here, I'd rather the devs spent their time on other things. It is, at the end of the day, a finite resource, and frankly, I don't know how many people would use a "make it harder for me" system.

asuzab16_ESO · May 2020

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Eh, "sprint to the cap because The Game Only Starts At Endgame™" is the battle cry of the uber-pro leaderboard raider. The "filthy casual" is actually there for the journey, but not necessarily to fight their way through a wall of l33tness to travel it. And if that "rush to endgame" thing has spread too much to "teh bads", it's the uber-pros' fault for repeating that stupid catchphrase so much.

So, yeah. Damn straight they're making their games - at least the first layers, overworld/questing & maybe basic dungeons - as "accessible" as possible. For all that they fill the forums with their awesomeness, there's not enough h4rdc0r3 d00ds to make up the population numbers all these MMOs need/want.

And this is exactly what I criticize. We reached a point where even the casuals are saying that there is an issue with MMOs becoming too easy, but this is faced only with the battle cry you're mentioning (instanced endgame is the only real content), the one I criticize in my post, the one that you can see all over these forums as soon as someone dares saying "Guys, can I please get a chance to play my class outside of veteran content?".

I personally tried to bring some friends to ESO, and while most of them were casuals, they all had the same reaction: they loved the lore/questing/skills/craft, they were amazed during the first days but then they all left because of the combat. "Too easy", "No need to play my class", "Just brainless key smashing", etc... And who can blame them? Should they have invested hundreds of hours to finally reach the 1 or 2 only % of the content that actually require players to play their classes?

There are probably more variables to look at to get the full picture, but I seriously doubt that sacrifying absolutely everything in the name of accessibility is what makes a game more popular. ESO is following the same road as WoW, and we can see that while WoW has never been more accessible and its content (especially endgame) that rich, it's also never been less popular than now.

Now, as for what to do to fix that? Well, unfortunately, I don't have the magic answer but breaking the current MMO rule that casuals = need accessibility = mass extrinsic rewards = brainless content rush with lots of loot = happy = sub, could be a good start. ESO has a wonderful world and amazing quests, so instead of having the players cruise through them just to get loot or rush to finally get to the endgame, why not focusing on giving the casual players intrinsic rewards during the small amount of time they can play?

In the end, as I get older and transition to a more casual playstyle, this is my main beef with the current MMOs: the fact that the accessibility focus of the developers has completely removed the intrinsic values of gameplay to focus entirely on flooding the players with extrinsic rewards to keep them happy and hope they'll stay.

Everest_Lionheart · May 2020

Zardayne wrote: »

show previous quotes

robertthebard wrote: »

Zardayne wrote: »

StormeReigns wrote: »

Zardayne wrote: »

I thought I'd add something to this post. I've definitely been on the side of increasing the difficulty in this game for a long time and I've made many a post supporting. I also know there's a lot of love it berry picking easy except in vet dungeons and trails.With that said I pretty much left this topic alone until now.

I just happened to be talking to a new mechanicI had hired awhile back and I don't know how we got on the topic of games. Of course that lead to asking what we were playing currently. Believe it or not, he also has been playing ESO for years on PC. He said he had significantly lowered the amount of time he (and his best friend) had been playing and trying new stuff even though he had purchased the new expansion. I told him I too had cut my playing time. We began comparing notes on why that was. He, like myself are old school MMO players in our 40s. Both played since the Ultima and EQ days and almost all MMOs until ESO. We both had about the same answers. One that I thought was relevant to this post was we both agreed the difficulty is just weak. There's no feeling of accomplishment. Every time an expansion is released, the majority of the new content in overland and their delves are just the same O same O with regards to difficulty. Sure the stories are good but..With this low difficulty it makes a huge part of ESO just a single player experience. We know there's vet dungeons and Trials and PVP for group content but there's a huge portion of content that is so easy you can't even take a friend along to quest together because you'll both die of boredom. Not to keep going but we both agreed that if they would just add some way to choose the difficulty when entering delves and public dungeons, it would keep a lot of us vet players engaged and new players would also keep the easier difficulty they have now. ESO has to do something IMO. They cannot keep expecting veteran players to keep dishing out cash for expansions that offer a new dungeon and a trial, some story quests and some minor new things, and expect us to keep running those same things over and over for months. Give us a reason to duo with friends. Give veterans a reason to enjoy making a new alt without having to strip down naked, remove all CP points and fight with a green training sword. It would be nice to be able to set the excitement and danger to the level you wanted it. They were scaling instances in older MMOs. They can do it here.

I would add he began playing some new MMO (which I'm not going to name here) that is still in testing and he told me even there when you go into their world dungeons you get to pick the difficulty. Why can some relatively unknown game offer player choice but this AAA doesn't. I don't understand..

Hmm. Interesting. Complaining and comparing a Game designed to accommodate said feature by how it was designed and programmed versus a game that would require said feature to be built from the ground up and placed in with risk of issues causing more problems on top of what is already happening.

Hey I'm not going to assume and say I know what it would take to add said feature to the game. My guess is you don't either. I'm just reporting what two old gamers were just recently brainstorming about and their idea of what might be a "fix". Numerous games in the past (and now one presently) had or has that option to scale difficulty and options are generally a good thing.I will agree with you that there is a possible risk when adding such a feature, or anything new they add, causing issues.

EDIT: I thought I'd add, perhaps they already have the feature. I mean we're able to select either normal or vet versions of dungeons. How much really goes into that to make it happen on ZOS' end, I don't know. Seems we are able to at least select some difficulty though. I'm curious how hard it would be on delves and public dungeons

As far as complaining, man I've been paying and supporting this game for 6 years. I feel I have the right to voice my opinions a bit. If I didn't give a damn about this game, I wouldn't be here.

They, like Normal and Vet dungeons, would have to be instanced. DDO is a great example of this, all of the leveling content is instanced, except crafting. All wilderness areas, all quests, all raids are instances. It was built that way from the ground up. Here's the problem, which seems appropriate, given the age differences: DDO went through this "too easy" phase about 5 years ago, give or take. Once it was firmly on the table to be done, it had to be given special rewards, or it wouldn't be worth it to run it. Then, within a couple of weeks of getting what they insisted they needed, it had to be nerfed, according to the forums. The standard battle cry of these elite players was always "Play a lower difficulty", when someone thought they should be able to solo Elite level quests, and couldn't. I got permanently banned from their forum when I suggested that very solution to the "we needed it harder, but this is 'stupid hard'" crowd.

How'd they make it harder, you may ask? By doing the exact things that have been asked for in the dizzying array of threads about it here; nerfing players, buffing the mobs, adding special mobs with buffs for enemies and debuffs on players, etc. I wonder, how unique this community really is? There are similar threads on the GW 2 forums as well. The cynic in me says "it wouldn't take too long to get threads about how they made it hard the wrong way" here, even if they followed most of the "advice" given in these threads.

Good read Robert. Definitely insightful. I played DDO back when it was released a bit. Now that you mention it I do remember going up to a "door" for the instance. I couldn't remember though what options were available back then. You're right though it would definitely have to be instanced. I wouldn't think it would have to be instanced for that certain individual, just a normal and vet version IMO. What you mentioned about the rewards needing to be worth it to run it is correct as well. Matter of fact, that was exactly what my coworker said. Higher Risk, Higher Reward. I agree with that somewhat and but it would have to be kept in check. Higher chance of getting a blue or purple set from that region or crafting/motifs, sure. I'd really just like to be able to play with a friend or two in overland and delves without us both going to sleep at the wheel.

Right now the way it is, I run into a delve like I was doing the other night in Elsewyr, and I'm just melting mobs all the way to the big baddie at the end. Keep in mind I'm not even in yellow gear, etc. I felt bad as there were lower level players who had just came through the tutorial and were questing in there, and they basically missed most of the delve running behind me. I stopped at the main boss and let some of them catch up and get some hits in before I hit 3 abilities and grabbed my green loot. It wasn't fair to to me and it damn sure wasn't fair to them IMO.

These days when I run delves and I try to let the little guys get a few hits in on the trash enemies so they get their exp and rewards. When we get to bosses I throw down a single DOT and let them go to town an swoop in to heal them when they get low on health.

I wonder what the players think when they see my level and I don’t really do any damage, but I could nuke those delve bosses before they could get a single hit in if I wanted to. Sure it slows me down a little waiting but I find most of the new players speed run delves anyway and I can get left behind looting all the bags and crates. I try to explain that’s where they will find important stuff like recipes but few have ESO+ or enough bag space to carry much beyond a few drops.

Helping the little guys is becoming my new play style especially now that I’m doing Cadwell’s gold. Nothing in any of these vanilla zones outside of a few world bosses presents any challenge. I’m OK with that though. Playing for the stories mainly these are some good quests and side quests for that if you look in every town and behind every tree. A lot of repetition sure but most of the time the voice acting is on point enough to make it believable.

newtinmpls · May 2020

Tying to reconstruct this conversation. Fingers crossed that I get it close to correct.

Apparently we come from very different views, because we don't seem to "get" each other's viewpoints.

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

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

newtinmpls wrote: »

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".

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

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

Writs - never did them at all until about ... oh 4-6 months ago, and not regularly even now. Went through a semi-spastic compulsive burst of them during the last anniversary event, which got me kind of .... less enthused (it was just overkill).

I did win a guild lotto a while back of 500k, and now my gold in bank hovers around 1.2 million, but prior to that I'd never actually made it to a million. I would say I've averaged about 40-90k in my bank for the last 3 years, less prior to that.

As for gear, I would say every 10 levels or so; although lately I can see where my skill as a player has improved a LOT from when I started.

As an example of that - just recently my bestie and I were spending some time with a newbie. I mean really really new. CP over 160, but had not successfully navigated "signing up" for the undaunted pledges (man that was a snarl and a half to figure out). But ... mechanics that now I realize I'm thinking of as "basic"; the roles of tank, and DPS and so forth; standing in red, and so forth. I was watching this new person (like ... months in to ESO) really struggle and it made me really think about how much of a better player I am - and I am NOT a BIS/min-maxer by any means.

So to the original question - why is it easy? Because "easy" for most of us, is still pretty hard for the new player.

And ...speaking for myself, the various "sub" games, such as crafting, housing, furnishings, and money are things I'm starting to explore.

I tried BG; but now with no groups, not gonna go back much, as I hate PvP and will only "put up with it" to hang with friends.

I also like just exploring (it's too laid back to call it "farming") because the world is so lovely. And I'm a total sucker to occasionally hop over to Vvardenfall and listen to the "Morrowind" music. Still love it/miss that game/world.

Orjix · May 2020

Look, i have had several friends who have wanted to get into the game, but have left after only a few hours stating that they just wern't having fun because the game was too difficult and they died all the time. I'll offer to help, and they respond back with something along the lines of "naw, i don't wanna spend a bunch of time just to be ok at combat, i want to have fun now". these people are not "bad" at games either, and can destroy in other games, csgo, F1 (or any racing sim), arma. one of them has hours upon hours into baulders gate, icewind dale, POE and other such games and they still claim it is too hard. maybe something should be done to a few zones so vet players can still have a good time, but sometimes you gotta remember not everyone is just as good as you, and a lot are a whole lot worse

idk · May 2020

Isarii wrote: »

show previous quotes

Zardayne wrote: »

Right now the way it is, I run into a delve like I was doing the other night in Elsewyr, and I'm just melting mobs all the way to the big baddie at the end. Keep in mind I'm not even in yellow gear, etc. I felt bad as there were lower level players who had just came through the tutorial and were questing in there, and they basically missed most of the delve running behind me. I stopped at the main boss and let some of them catch up and get some hits in before I hit 3 abilities and grabbed my green loot. It wasn't fair to to me and it damn sure wasn't fair to them IMO.

I honestly feel a little bit bad when I'm in a delve or a quest area and I see someone slowly fighting a mob and doing mechanics and I'm just rolling through killing everything with no more than LA/Surprise Attack > LA/Executioner.

It's not fun for me and it must be even less fun for them to feel so useless attempting to get damage in with me.

Off topic, but did you return to the game again? Figured no one was left from ER.

Linaleah · May 2020

sigh. and round and round and round it goes.

casual older gamer here. the problem is NOT the game difficulty. the problem is power creep coupled with skill gap. and this power creep exists in every. single. MMO. EVER. in ESO this gap just happens to be wider then in most games, but the problem is NOT at the bottom, the problem is at the top. and short of adding veteran instances when possible? its too late to solve in in a way that's going to please both people on the bottom AND people on the top. ZoS tried to curb damage output. granted they tried it in some very... strange way, but in the end, losing dps at the top was met with very VERY strong resistance. people at the top want to keep performing at the same level as they do right now, they just want the game to scale to THEIR level of skill, not realizing, or outright ignoring what it will to to the rest of the playerbase. people at the bottom have no interest in gitting gud. they are here to have relaxing fun. anything that makes the game harder for them? will push them away.

so. vet zones/instances are the only solution. we used to have those. people keep saying - noooo it will split playerbase too much, but maybe not as much as it did back when those zones were not only tied to specific alliances, but also to specific vet levels. not that its just 2 types on zones for entirety of population instead of gosh, how many of those were there even pre one tamriel? at least 5, I think.

P.S. I've been playing WoW on a side on and off for years now (actualy i played WoW before ESO even existed) 1. vanilla is a lot easier then people claim. to the point where people are complaining that groups just rush everything, no crowd control, nothing. 2. on power creep, there is this really weird thing that happens in Battle for Azeroth that is not at all dissimilar to my experiences leveling in ESO. at first you start out super powerful, but as the scaling kicks in, it gets harder and harder until its almost painful when you are almost but not quiet at max level. and then you hit max level, and you get some gear, and not only everything out in a world becomes easy? you don't even need groups anymore for quests that are specifically marked as group quests. get enough gear and you can solo group dungeons for current content (doesn't even have to be top level gear, and unlike ESO - you HAVE to raid in WoW to get top level gear). the only difference is that in ESO this experience exists for your first character in its purest form. where you are still farming up that CP. alts, who get to use CP you earned on main - have easier time during those later levels. in WoW every character has the same sort of experience unless you spend obscene amounts of gold to get them overworld BoE gear that is good enough to work as started max level gear.

but anyways, the point is. power creep. I can think of ONE mmo that more or less solved power creep. at the cost of what people like to call progression. GW2. but even they eventually added masteries (sort of CP light, because people wanted power progression....)

when any one of you comes up with a genuine solution of how to balance power creep while keeping sense of character progression in tact, all the while still keeping your game accessible to newer/more casual player? you might even get hired by a video game company.

volkeswagon · May 2020

because if pve was hard then people wouldn't play it. That's why so many people stopped playing Division 2. The trials and dungeons are for you. Pve is for people like me. Not everyone likes tough combat. That's why I play all my games on easy mode. Its the story and environment that draws me to games. Everyone is different and they want to appeal to a large audience

Dahveed · May 2020

I'll repeat this idea until I'm blue in the face.

The answer is simple. Just add a 100% optional player self-debuff. Any player who likes things the way they are, just keep going about your merry way slaughtering everything in your path as you casually explore the rich story and lore of the overworld.

People who want a challenge can just open their UI, tick a little box, and *poof* you get a debuff placed on you, and your damage, health, magicka stamina and armor are all reduced by 50% (or 75%, or 25%, based on your own personal choice).

You could even make it a cool lore thing that you can do in the game. Just like vampire or werewolf quest lines, now there is a new Peryite quest which "rewards" you with a "curse of Peryite" which weakens your character, and gives you permanent hard mode debuff. Talk to peryite again and pay him tribute (crowns? gold? something else?) to get rid of the curse and go back to normal difficulty.

Leave the entire game as it is. Leave noobies alone. Leave the npcs alone. Leave all the gear, talents, cps, potions, crown store, EVERYTHING, don't touch any of it.

Just give my player a debuff so that enemies can actually hurt me and don't explode when I sneeze in their general direction.

I'd roll a new toon and stay glued to my chair playing this game 60 hours a week.

Linaleah · May 2020

and I will continue to repeat until blue in a face, why non instance debuff WILL NOT WORK.

does that debuff come with extra loot? cause it can be cheesed then by grouping debuffed player with undebuffed one where you still get those extra fast kills AND extra loot. but you say - if the mob is hit by non debuffed player, then there is no extra loot - well have fun with trolls making your fights harder for no extra rewards, just because they can tag things. and even if people are not trolling or cheesing - random non debuffed person comes along, sees you fighting a mob they also need for a quest - and bam, good bye challenge. or maybe they even think they are being helpful

any sort of increase in challenge HAS to be instanced.

sorcmag01 · May 2020

I do like the idea allowing levels of difficulty in delves and public dungeons, if the player wants to make a run harder or easier for item drops.

I don't think making the game harder for those that may not do well would fly anyways. For example, I don't do well in Trials, so I leave it to those who are a much better player than myself in completing the challenge. I don't think Trials should change at all, because they are designed to be hard in my opinion, not like delves and public dungeons, which I can solo and enjoy when I am in the mood to be left alone while experimenting with gear and rotations.

I would rather see the devs keep working on performance issues which many of us have begged for and I am seeing performance and fps improving over the past month. I just completed Greymoor on PTS and performance did improve for me. Making the whole game harder would take too much time away from the devs anyways while they are working on performance.

I do think ESO is an awesome game to be honest with everyone.

Loves_guars · May 2020

I wouldn't want to make it harder on new players, but I'd love to see a "veteran" difficulty for experienced players in overland quests with better rewards. I'm not sure if this is feasible though, at the same time I like to see new players around and help them if I can, so different instances would be a downside.

Dahveed · May 2020

Linaleah wrote: »

and I will continue to repeat until blue in a face, why non instance debuff WILL NOT WORK.

does that debuff come with extra loot? cause it can be cheesed then by grouping debuffed player with undebuffed one where you still get those extra fast kills AND extra loot. but you say - if the mob is hit by non debuffed player, then there is no extra loot - well have fun with trolls making your fights harder for no extra rewards, just because they can tag things. and even if people are not trolling or cheesing - random non debuffed person comes along, sees you fighting a mob they also need for a quest - and bam, good bye challenge. or maybe they even think they are being helpful

any sort of increase in challenge HAS to be instanced.

You have sorely misunderstood what I said.

I didn't say anything (AT ALL) about getting extra loot or rewards. No, really. Read my paragraph again, carefully. I didn't say anything (AT ALL) about getting any extra loot or rewards.

That is to say, in this mode, if you choose to play it, you will get no extra loot or rewards.

Oh, did I mention? There would be no extra loot or rewards.

There, that should be clear enough now.

As to your second point, "have fun with trolls making your fights harder for no extra rewards", this sentence shows you didn't understand (AT ALL) what I said.

Here is what I said, word for word:

Leave the entire game as it is. Leave noobies alone. Leave the npcs alone. Leave all the gear, talents, cps, potions, crown store, EVERYTHING, don't touch any of it.

So if a "troll" comes along and starts attacking my tagged NPCs, the following things will change for me:

NOTHING.

Absolutely nothing. Except that instead of completely decimating the NPC I was attacking in 2.4 seconds as I normally would if that debuffed player were there, I will now decimate that npc in 2.2 seconds because a nerfed guy "helped" me.

My xp doesn't change, my loot doesn't change, nothing changes. Just some random dude came along and whacked the guy I was fighting ineffectually a couple of times.

So what? Where is the problem?

Again, I repeat:

Any player who likes things the way they are, just keep going about your merry way slaughtering everything in your path as you casually explore the rich story and lore of the overworld.

NOTHING. CHANGES.

Loot doesn't change. XP doesn't change. Gold doesn't change. Rewards don't change. The NPC health pool doesn't change. The NPC attack damage doesn't change.

NOTHING CHANGES.

The only thing that changes is the debuff that I apply to myself, because I'm a masochist who hates free stuff.

It doesn't affect you or anyone else in any way whatsoever.

If you STILL don't understand my concept after reading this post, I don't know what to say anymore.

eKsDee · May 2020

There's really no reason why a debuff shouldn't be implemented at this point, because it's the cleanest solution to the problem that solves it on a per-player basis, that won't result in new instances being spun up for every difficulty setting.

The only reason why you'd say no to a debuff is either you fundamentally misunderstand it, you don't see it as being worth the time and effort to implement it, or, for some reason, you're taking this entire problem personally, and simply don't want the other side to enjoy the content that you claim is for everyone.

Dahveed · May 2020

eKsDee wrote: »

There's really no reason why a debuff shouldn't be implemented at this point, because it's the cleanest solution to the problem that solves it on a per-player basis, that won't result in new instances being spun up for every difficulty setting.

The only reason why you'd say no to a debuff is either you fundamentally misunderstand it, you don't see it as being worth the time and effort to implement it, or, for some reason, you're taking this entire problem personally, and simply don't want the other side to enjoy the content that you claim is for everyone.

Amen.

MartiniDaniels · May 2020

Nomadic_Atmoran wrote: »

show previous quotes

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

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.

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.

BackStabeth wrote: »

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

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?

I'm starting to think that people are missing the point on purpose. Because there's no way that there are this many people on here who don't understand the concept of, "optional".

But just in case...here you go -> https://www.dictionary.com/browse/optional

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.

/thread
What you described is exactly the reason why many players are against optional veteran overland, and why ZOS maybe against it too, given the experience of other MMOs. But you can't tell if this is good or bad for game health and longevity, because ESO was never most popular MMO.

newtinmpls wrote: »

Tying to reconstruct this conversation. Fingers crossed that I get it close to correct.

Apparently we come from very different views, because we don't seem to "get" each other's viewpoints.
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MartiniDaniels wrote: »

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

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newtinmpls wrote: »

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".

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MartiniDaniels wrote: »

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

Writs - never did them at all until about ... oh 4-6 months ago, and not regularly even now. Went through a semi-spastic compulsive burst of them during the last anniversary event, which got me kind of .... less enthused (it was just overkill).

I did win a guild lotto a while back of 500k, and now my gold in bank hovers around 1.2 million, but prior to that I'd never actually made it to a million. I would say I've averaged about 40-90k in my bank for the last 3 years, less prior to that.

As for gear, I would say every 10 levels or so; although lately I can see where my skill as a player has improved a LOT from when I started.

As an example of that - just recently my bestie and I were spending some time with a newbie. I mean really really new. CP over 160, but had not successfully navigated "signing up" for the undaunted pledges (man that was a snarl and a half to figure out). But ... mechanics that now I realize I'm thinking of as "basic"; the roles of tank, and DPS and so forth; standing in red, and so forth. I was watching this new person (like ... months in to ESO) really struggle and it made me really think about how much of a better player I am - and I am NOT a BIS/min-maxer by any means.

So to the original question - why is it easy? Because "easy" for most of us, is still pretty hard for the new player.

And ...speaking for myself, the various "sub" games, such as crafting, housing, furnishings, and money are things I'm starting to explore.

I tried BG; but now with no groups, not gonna go back much, as I hate PvP and will only "put up with it" to hang with friends.

I also like just exploring (it's too laid back to call it "farming") because the world is so lovely. And I'm a total sucker to occasionally hop over to Vvardenfall and listen to the "Morrowind" music. Still love it/miss that game/world.

All of it makes sense and I understand your position. That's why I always talk only about optional mode/instance. And yes, there are a lot of activities in the game, but believe me majority of long-time players already participated in them and completed many times. So at some point only overland is left uncompleted and untouched.
If you think that "questing is just not for me"... I completed game series like baldur's gate, mass effect, witcher and of course Morrowind/Skyrim many times and I was never bored, because of depth of this games and... difficulty slider. Difficulty slider is capable of miracles, and though there are always some ways to find workarounds.. I doubt there we'll be many of such ways in ESO, because everything with decisive efficiency was nerfed (with exception of recent things put on sale ofc)

Michae · May 2020

I don't really get the notion for this harder overland content. I could agree in regards to quest and delve bosses, since really often I get into the room just to catch a glimpse of someone killing them and then my quest updates and I miss out on them. That would make sense, since they're supposed to be tougher. But normal mobs? It would get tedious pretty fast, since the combat in ESO is rather boring. Just keep your pants on, stay out of red zones and press 1-2-3-4-5-~, rinse and repeat. It can be fun in smal doses, when running a dungeon, trial or fighting some boss, but when just trying to get places, gathering mats, doing small quests etc. if I had to stop for an epic duel every two metres it would be just tedious. If the mobs were to get harder the zones would have to be redesigned, since there's just too much mob concentration in them, but then you'd probably be rarely fighting at all since mmo's are also about exp farming and fewer mobs would mean fewer places to do so. All in all, ESO's mechanics aren't engaging enough to warrant higher difficulty, it's no Dark Souls or some spectacle fighter to warrant interesting diffficult gameplay. MMORPG's were always more about gear setups and buffs than about reflexes and fight mechanics.

Linaleah · May 2020

Dahveed wrote: »

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Linaleah wrote: »

and I will continue to repeat until blue in a face, why non instance debuff WILL NOT WORK.

does that debuff come with extra loot? cause it can be cheesed then by grouping debuffed player with undebuffed one where you still get those extra fast kills AND extra loot. but you say - if the mob is hit by non debuffed player, then there is no extra loot - well have fun with trolls making your fights harder for no extra rewards, just because they can tag things. and even if people are not trolling or cheesing - random non debuffed person comes along, sees you fighting a mob they also need for a quest - and bam, good bye challenge. or maybe they even think they are being helpful

any sort of increase in challenge HAS to be instanced.

You have sorely misunderstood what I said.

I didn't say anything (AT ALL) about getting extra loot or rewards. No, really. Read my paragraph again, carefully. I didn't say anything (AT ALL) about getting any extra loot or rewards.

That is to say, in this mode, if you choose to play it, you will get no extra loot or rewards.

Oh, did I mention? There would be no extra loot or rewards.

There, that should be clear enough now.

As to your second point, "have fun with trolls making your fights harder for no extra rewards", this sentence shows you didn't understand (AT ALL) what I said.

Here is what I said, word for word:

Leave the entire game as it is. Leave noobies alone. Leave the npcs alone. Leave all the gear, talents, cps, potions, crown store, EVERYTHING, don't touch any of it.

So if a "troll" comes along and starts attacking my tagged NPCs, the following things will change for me:

NOTHING.

Absolutely nothing. Except that instead of completely decimating the NPC I was attacking in 2.4 seconds as I normally would if that debuffed player were there, I will now decimate that npc in 2.2 seconds because a nerfed guy "helped" me.

My xp doesn't change, my loot doesn't change, nothing changes. Just some random dude came along and whacked the guy I was fighting ineffectually a couple of times.

So what? Where is the problem?

Again, I repeat:

Any player who likes things the way they are, just keep going about your merry way slaughtering everything in your path as you casually explore the rich story and lore of the overworld.

NOTHING. CHANGES.

Loot doesn't change. XP doesn't change. Gold doesn't change. Rewards don't change. The NPC health pool doesn't change. The NPC attack damage doesn't change.

NOTHING CHANGES.

The only thing that changes is the debuff that I apply to myself, because I'm a masochist who hates free stuff.

It doesn't affect you or anyone else in any way whatsoever.

If you STILL don't understand my concept after reading this post, I don't know what to say anymore.

you missed the part where some kind random person comes along and decides to "help. and what changes for you is that your challenge is gone. or did you just decide that you are the only one that can kill things quickly that plays in overland? and that it will not make a difference when undebuffed person comes along and wacks the same mob you are wacking? or maybe several people if its some sort of a boss type mob in a delve or something?

and why are you not disabling your cp already? that optional debuff wouldn't be free most likely, so might as well pay 3k to reset your cp - there's a bit of debuff on you right there and its already in game!

but with your proposal, nothing would change, for ANYONE. including you. well maybe with exclusion of instanced quest areas and we come back to what i said. this can only work with INSTANCING.