PVE Difficulty and the CP system

Linaleah

Woodenplank wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

1. GW2 world bosses vary in difficulty depending on whether you have an organized group or just a bunch of leveling characters in an impromtu pug. kinda like dragons in ESO.

I agree, and I'm glad you brought up Dragons, because I feel they're a very good mechanic. Sure; taking down an overland dragon isn't as difficult as, say, taking down the dragon bosses in Sunspire, but that's OK.
Overland dragons provide fun, intermediately challenging fights where players across the zone congregate to take them down; and unlike Dark Anchors (which also have a tendency to attract players across great distances) the dragons don't die before completing their landing animations.

Since One Tamriel, we (supposedly) had everyone scaled to the same power level. Of course gear and CP shift the power level higher for veteran players. That's all okay.
But there's no reason why Dark Anchors couldn't become more challenging; more like the dragon encounters from Elsweyr? Why let Molag Bal's invasion be a 1 minute, solo'able venture where the majority of the time is spent waiting for the mobs to spawn. Dial up the Dark Anchors to make them real challenges - not as tough as dragons necessarily; but something that requires at least a handful of people.

(And this should go without saying, but I'll say it any way: of course the rewards for taking down Dark Anchors should be scaled up to account for the increased effort. Great rewards for great effort is, I think, more satisfying than mediocre awards for mediocre effort)

Linaleah wrote: »

the truth is. players complain when they get too powerful. but players ALSO complain when they don't visibly grow in power. there is no winning here.

I agree. But there's a CP cap as well, even if it is hard to reach. Sure ZOS can keep raising it, but that's the whole issue here - raising CP just outdates more and more (old) content.
I think this problem also stems somewhat from how easy it is (/can be) to gear up your character in ESO. As I mentioned originally, you can buy/craft Trial-tier sets as soon as you hit CP 160. And I personally got a full set of False God's Devotion after just 3 runs of Sunspire. And after that there's nothing but farming CP up to 810 cap.

Introducing terribly hard/time-consuming, "legendary items" (like we saw in WoW, for instance, which were insanely popular, and actually getting them made you achieve a sort of "legendary" status as a player as well) could fix this, I think. Or at least alleviate the issue.

in GW2 - there are mini events that happen in every zone. sometimes centaurs invade the village, sometimes you have to take that village FROM the centaurs etc etc. these mini events, just like anchors? are soloable. they scale when people join up (just like anchors) and when too many people join up, you are lucky if you manage to get a single hit in, to get that minimum of bronze completion medal. it didn't used to be so bad, back when daily meta tasks were not tied to specific zones, but rather set of general tasks, so you had your population spread across the world a little bit more. but at the same time... these tasks are soloable for a REASON. and that reason is, sometimes you play in off time or in a quieter zone and it sucks when you need a group anyways.

they tried scaling rewards with geysers.

as for gear... its not exactly super difficult to gear yourself in GW2. its certainly not super difficult to gear yourself in WoW, unless you are minmaxing (and.. when you are minamxing in ESO - rng hits you just as hard)

as for legendaries, i'm guessing that's what antiquities is supposed to accomplish.

Everest_Lionheart

Woodenplank wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

1. GW2 world bosses vary in difficulty depending on whether you have an organized group or just a bunch of leveling characters in an impromtu pug. kinda like dragons in ESO.

I agree, and I'm glad you brought up Dragons, because I feel they're a very good mechanic. Sure; taking down an overland dragon isn't as difficult as, say, taking down the dragon bosses in Sunspire, but that's OK.
Overland dragons provide fun, intermediately challenging fights where players across the zone congregate to take them down; and unlike Dark Anchors (which also have a tendency to attract players across great distances) the dragons don't die before completing their landing animations.

Since One Tamriel, we (supposedly) had everyone scaled to the same power level. Of course gear and CP shift the power level higher for veteran players. That's all okay.
But there's no reason why Dark Anchors couldn't become more challenging; more like the dragon encounters from Elsweyr? Why let Molag Bal's invasion be a 1 minute, solo'able venture where the majority of the time is spent waiting for the mobs to spawn. Dial up the Dark Anchors to make them real challenges - not as tough as dragons necessarily; but something that requires at least a handful of people.

(And this should go without saying, but I'll say it any way: of course the rewards for taking down Dark Anchors should be scaled up to account for the increased effort. Great rewards for great effort is, I think, more satisfying than mediocre awards for mediocre effort)

Linaleah wrote: »

the truth is. players complain when they get too powerful. but players ALSO complain when they don't visibly grow in power. there is no winning here.

I agree. But there's a CP cap as well, even if it is hard to reach. Sure ZOS can keep raising it, but that's the whole issue here - raising CP just outdates more and more (old) content.
I think this problem also stems somewhat from how easy it is (/can be) to gear up your character in ESO. As I mentioned originally, you can buy/craft Trial-tier sets as soon as you hit CP 160. And I personally got a full set of False God's Devotion after just 3 runs of Sunspire. And after that there's nothing but farming CP up to 810 cap.

Introducing terribly hard/time-consuming, "legendary items" (like we saw in WoW, for instance, which were insanely popular, and actually getting them made you achieve a sort of "legendary" status as a player as well) could fix this, I think. Or at least alleviate the issue.

Some of those dark anchors and even world bosses in the base game zones are not located where players will probably ever go near them. It’s content that sadly needs to be dumbed down to complete solo. It would be nice if the power and rewards scaled up if more players showed up. The opposite issue is true on world bosses. Many are too strong for no CP or even low CP to solo. I struggle to solo some at CP300 but can 2man nearly every WB is the game. Those should scale down for solo and up for group instances. Keep the HP the same but maybe scale the dmg/adds/mechanics accordingly. The older DLC bosses need this adjustment for sure. Trying to solo 2.3 mil with half a dozen adds at a time is super difficult. Or the 3 boss variants with 900K+ HP each. Boss duo’s however can be fun depending on mechanics. Kiting one while fighting the other is actually fun and one hell of a challenge even if the boss fight takes several minutes.

Sarousse

CP or not CP, all the solo overland content is insanely easy, even naked using bare hands.

I miss so bad in 2014 when we were walking in tamriel, frightened to meet more than 2 mobs simultaneously.

Woodenplank

Rave the Histborn wrote: »

As usual the people that ask for "higher difficulty" only want higher rewards. No, you should in no way get greater rewards aside from an achievement or a title. The greater difficulty is the reward and giving increased rewards would only increase the power creep you claim makes the game boring.

I'm implying that taking down a Dark Anchor - were they made more difficult, such as the Dread -whatever- final boss being an actual fight rather that going down in 30 seconds - should now reward much more EXP.

Rave the Histborn wrote: »

Were they [WoW legendaries] ever popular items? I started up after Burning Crusade dropped and by the time I hit level 60-70 and was in level range to start getting them and they were already massively outclassed by raid/dungeon gear of that level, especially in comparison for the effort.

Of course they were. Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker is an almost ubiquitous meme among WoW players (those who played during vanilla, any way).
As you say, you only started playing after Burning Crusade's release - an expansion infamous for it's insane powercreep (like green quest rewards from the first expansion zone were twice as good as epics from vanilla trials). So of course the legendaries wouldn't be worth much at that point.

And of course if ZOS added "legendary" items to ESO, and then immediately released a DLC were you could get something twice as good for a quarter the effort, it would defeat the purpose, of course.
I'm suggesting putting in legendaries that are... you know... worth the effort; and don't get outclassed by the next DLC.

(This shouldn't be a problem with ESO, as the "item-level"-cap hasn't changed for years now (everything is Cp160)).

Linaleah wrote: »

in GW2 - there are mini events that happen in every zone. sometimes centaurs invade the village, sometimes you have to take that village FROM the centaurs etc etc. these mini events, just like anchors? are soloable. they scale when people join up (just like anchors) and when too many people join up, you are lucky if you manage to get a single hit in, to get that minimum of bronze completion medal. it didn't used to be so bad, back when daily meta tasks were not tied to specific zones, but rather set of general tasks, so you had your population spread across the world a little bit more. but at the same time... these tasks are soloable for a REASON. and that reason is, sometimes you play in off time or in a quieter zone and it sucks when you need a group anyways.

I was specifically refering to the non-soloable "boss" events.
And I'm not suggesting that everything in ESO should require a trial's worth of people, or be Dark Souls level difficulty. People soloing delves is no different from being able to clear bandits forts or caves in Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim; of course I don't have a problem with that.

But as a CP810 templar, I can beat practically any Public Dungeon "Group"-event by just spamming jabs. Litterally just spamming one skill in the general direction of the boss(es). Don't tell me that takes skill; it's just the CP power creep making content - that was designed for group play! hence the name - easily solo'able.

oregonrob

For those that want a challenge in PVE here is what you can do:

1. Use no CP
2. Do everything in first person rather than third person
3. Do not use any sets. Use only white weapons and armor.
4. Only do things solo and not in groups.

In return for doing this, there could be recognition for the redoing the faction quests like either a memento, or title. What is good about this is no sets need to be nerfed, and would only require a toggle button that would impose the limits above. For the best challenge, you could start a brand new character with these limitations.

Universe

The overland & group dungeons content used to be harder.
Now a lot of it is like one shot and done
The 2 DDs bursted the bosses so fast in the pledges yesterday so I quite literally laughed.
Universe: "Nice dps "
Random DD that I will not name: "yeah, eat 50K dps on your face"

MEBengalsFan2001

A simple ways to resolve the original posters thoughts on this issue is create Master/Elite vet content.

1) Player damage is reduced by 50% for damage dealers and 90% for support roles.
2) Enemies have 30% more health, resistance and increase in damage
3) Gear acquired is always gold
4) You get the title "Elite of Trial Name"

No need to break the game because you are asking for things to change. I'm sure the devs saw this post and are like ok...another thing to consider for future fixes. And when I say for future fixes and I'm talking about the devs rewriting the base game code and releasing a full game revamp that will probably drive out many end game players. I have already seen this more than once in other games.

I personally like how this game is setup. And yes at times vet content can be easy but given that some of that content is designed around specific level of CP it should be expected that some content be easier than others.

idk

Woodenplank wrote: »

Since One Tamriel and the introduction of the Champion Point system much of the game has been steadily getting easier.

Not the case at all. Open world questing was even easier before 1T. It did not take all the quests in the zone to out-level it which trivialized it and made it significantly easier than now.

The only way a zone offered any challenge is if one was well below the level of the zone and even then we quickly reached the level cap leaving no zones available were we were under level so this is a myth that the game was easier before 1T.

MEBengalsFan2001

idk wrote: »

Woodenplank wrote: »

Since One Tamriel and the introduction of the Champion Point system much of the game has been steadily getting easier.

Not the case at all. Open world questing was even easier before 1T. It did not take all the quests in the zone to out-level it which trivialized it and made it significantly easier than now.

The only way a zone offered any challenge is if one was well below the level of the zone and even then we quickly reached the level cap leaving no zones available were we were under level so this is a myth that the game was easier before 1T.

I remember leveling my first character back in 2015 going from StormHaven to Rivenspire. When I went into Rivenspire I was 10 levels higher than any enemy in that zone and was killing overland bosses with ease. 1T actually made overland bosses a challenge. Also dungeons were even leveled and that was annoying as you could only get gear from specific zones or make it yourself.

If the old system would be brought back damage dealers DPS would seriously suffer as you would have to use a very specific set of gear given your CP level. Not good IMO. I like 1T and what it did to the game and how many sets it opened up within the game for players.

The current system isn't perfect but it is one of the better systems I have used in an MMO.

majulook

If you truly want more difficulty, you can do several things:

1. Remove your Champion Points
2. Use Blue or Green gear.
3. Use gear a level below your current level.
4. Do not use food or drinks to buff your stats.
5. Use Potions that are below your level, or just what you find in loot drops.
6. Do not use Potions at all.
7. Do not put skill points into Racial passives, Gear, or Weapons.
8. Play with out some equipment. (as in no jewelry, or shoulder, or head, or what ever pieces)