A new player feedback - ESO is both phenomenal and terrible

Lysette

KarlosCV wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

people always confuse scaling and difficulty - these are independent of one another

Everything always being around your level does not equal some mobs being way, way higher. Of course difficulty and scaling are related.

Btw reading this thread, I really don't understand this mentality "I want to go anywhere on level 1". I've been playing single-player RPGs since the 1990s and I have never heard this argument before.

The whole POINT of playing an RPG is to level up your character so you can progress in the game. That was always the core feature. We've never thought of the difficult areas as "gated" or "railroaded" or whatever the lingo is. They were simply areas you only get to when you get stronger. Everybody accepted the fact that no, you can't go straight to the final boss room from the starting point on level 1. That was normal. Not anymore, apparently.

this comes from the desire to see all of tamriel at some point in time - and ESO is delivering on this and people are not just here to do rpg in a zone by zone manner but to fulfill this dream we had for long - to go and see Tamriel wherever we please.

then there is as well a roleplay community in ESO, who don't care at all about leveling or getting more skills - they just play roles in their own way and they can do that due to that it is as well appropriate content for them.

Faulgor

People are not fine with it.

Or, they are mostly fine with scaling in principle because they like going wherever and whenever they please, the old level-gated system for exp and zones was a huge detriment on many fronts.

However, what people don't like is that the current implementation makes content too easy and nothing to strive for. Now, some will say that overland/quest content is just supposed to be easy and for a challenge you should do veteran group content. First, that doesn't solve the issue that there is no challenging solo content, and there is very little progression when leveling. Second, I have returning friends who haven't played in ~5 years remark that even veteran dungeons are much easier than normal dungeons used to be at launch, and they might be right. The game has gotten so easy over the years that it makes most of its RPG systems superfluous.

Lysette

I see the problem in mob density - once in a while to have some more difficult foe would be ok, but at every few steps, certainly not - that would just be totally annoying. I often see people not even fighting them, but just running past them until they are out of pursue range and good - i tend to do that now as well -just ignoring all the mob for good.

Lysette

and yes the game is a lot easier than it was - but there are as well millions more playing than ever before - and that has a reason.

rei91

Lysette wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

i am fine with that as long as they don't demand as well better rewards - i just don't believe them if they want better rewards as well.

Why can't the base reward be blue or purple, as opposed to green? *points at vet vs normal dungeons*

Getting a 'Perfected Mother's Sorrow Staff' vs a normal one is crazy though. There's already too many item sets.

because then it is about better and easier farming and not about fighting boredom.

Easier farming would be flipping it to normal rather than vet, would it not? Trials / Perfected gear excluded, there's a reason everyone farms the normal dungeons when after a certain set piece. Then you get harder vet content with better tier (decon) rewards. It'd be entirely 100% consistent with the rest of the game design. Besides - it's primarily for questing purposes that people want harder overworld - farming and questing don't really go together.

i would believe it if you would take the higher difficulty without any better rewards whatsoever - but you just don't want that, so i don't believe these people.

I would. Could care less about rewards. Just give me my enemies stronger than newborn puppies so I won't feel strange when all those NPCs call me "hero". And won't laugh at all those guards so pathetic they can't take those puppets out lol

Lysette

rei91 wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

i am fine with that as long as they don't demand as well better rewards - i just don't believe them if they want better rewards as well.

Why can't the base reward be blue or purple, as opposed to green? *points at vet vs normal dungeons*

Getting a 'Perfected Mother's Sorrow Staff' vs a normal one is crazy though. There's already too many item sets.

because then it is about better and easier farming and not about fighting boredom.

Easier farming would be flipping it to normal rather than vet, would it not? Trials / Perfected gear excluded, there's a reason everyone farms the normal dungeons when after a certain set piece. Then you get harder vet content with better tier (decon) rewards. It'd be entirely 100% consistent with the rest of the game design. Besides - it's primarily for questing purposes that people want harder overworld - farming and questing don't really go together.

i would believe it if you would take the higher difficulty without any better rewards whatsoever - but you just don't want that, so i don't believe these people.

I would. Could care less about rewards. Just give me my enemies stronger than newborn puppies so I won't feel strange when all those NPCs call me "hero". And won't laugh at all those guards so pathetic they can't take those puppets out lol

then I hope that you will get what you desire - this is a fair approach to it then.

Seri

Lysette wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

i am fine with that as long as they don't demand as well better rewards - i just don't believe them if they want better rewards as well.

Why can't the base reward be blue or purple, as opposed to green? *points at vet vs normal dungeons*

Getting a 'Perfected Mother's Sorrow Staff' vs a normal one is crazy though. There's already too many item sets.

because then it is about better and easier farming and not about fighting boredom.

Easier farming would be flipping it to normal rather than vet, would it not? Trials / Perfected gear excluded, there's a reason everyone farms the normal dungeons when after a certain set piece. Then you get harder vet content with better tier (decon) rewards. It'd be entirely 100% consistent with the rest of the game design. Besides - it's primarily for questing purposes that people want harder overworld - farming and questing don't really go together.

i would believe it if you would take the higher difficulty without any better rewards whatsoever - but you just don't want that, so i don't believe these people.

I'll give you a thousand embroidery and thousand elegant lining to make up the difference should ZOS ever implement it if you want.

Alamakot

KarlosCV wrote: »

How are people ok with this? I don't mean to bash or criticize anyone for liking a certain style of a game, I'm just curious - what is your drive to play this game? In all the dozens of RPGs I've ever played the point was to struggle and master all the skills and tools the game was offering in order to be able to take on harder and harder enemies. What's the main drive in ESO - just to travel around the world, sightseeing and absorb the lore? Don't get me wrong, the world is jaw droppingly phenomenal and the lore is absolutely amazing but is that really enough for you? You don't require any challenge in your RPG?

Sorry for the wall of text but this game gave me such mixed feelings I had to get it off my chest. It's also meant to be a feedback for the devs so they can see there's at least some proportion - admittedly a minority one - of TES fans who prefer challenge to "go anywhere on level 1".

I fully agree with you. When I started play ESO, 5 years ago, world was not scalled. Everyone had to browse starting locations (for DC players respectively Stros M'Kai, Betnikh and Glenumbra) following Storyline until lev 15, then went to Stormhaven scalled for levels 16-23 (afair). Higher zones were very challenging - I remember how hard was travel from Evermore WS to Shrine of Hircine where my guildmate was waiting to offer me a bite - I got killed 3 or 4 times by wolves (having rather weak stuff on my lvl 12-16 alt -do not remember correctly). Craglorn was really a Hellgate for VR 2-4 single player. You really had a respect to game content, where common Velves were stronger than nowadays Bosses in Public Dungeons. And they waited in packs of 8, not 3-4 like now.
Of course this had disadvantages - there were neither xp gain nor loot for higher lvl characters to step back to Glenumbra to help starting mates. And everything has changed, most players want to get their alt to lvl50 CP160+ as fast as possible, within few hours, to put endgame sets and start farming endgame content. Storyline? Who cares to solve Queen's problems within Tanzevil except few players? And for sure not for 3rd, 4th or more times again when leveling new toon
This situation has ofc own disadvantages - you may find several posts here at forums: "ESO is too easy".
I have no idea, if there's possible solution to scale MMO game to meet each player needs like at Witcher's world (easy/advanced/experienced/almost_impossible) with single click...

Lysette

Seri wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Seri wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

i am fine with that as long as they don't demand as well better rewards - i just don't believe them if they want better rewards as well.

Why can't the base reward be blue or purple, as opposed to green? *points at vet vs normal dungeons*

Getting a 'Perfected Mother's Sorrow Staff' vs a normal one is crazy though. There's already too many item sets.

because then it is about better and easier farming and not about fighting boredom.

Easier farming would be flipping it to normal rather than vet, would it not? Trials / Perfected gear excluded, there's a reason everyone farms the normal dungeons when after a certain set piece. Then you get harder vet content with better tier (decon) rewards. It'd be entirely 100% consistent with the rest of the game design. Besides - it's primarily for questing purposes that people want harder overworld - farming and questing don't really go together.

i would believe it if you would take the higher difficulty without any better rewards whatsoever - but you just don't want that, so i don't believe these people.

I'll give you a thousand embroidery and thousand elegant lining to make up the difference should ZOS ever implement it if you want.

i have enough resources thank you - i don't care much about rewards either. it is not about that i would get less, it is more about honesty to me - i think that the demand for better rewards just shows that people are not honest about it. And i stick with blue gear to not overpower myself -then the game is just fine as it is given my ping.

eKsDee

Lysette wrote: »

and yes the game is a lot easier than it was - but there are as well millions more playing than ever before - and that has a reason.

And that reason is not necessarily that the game is easier. There have been a plethora of changes since launch, even back during 1T, that could have been and likely were factors in ESO's rise in popularity, so you can't really just say "look, so many people are playing now compared to 4 years ago when the game was harder, it must be because of how easy the game is!"

1T's main goal wasn't to make overland easier, but to make overland more accessible for everybody, by removing leveled zones and alliance restrictions. That was probably the biggest contributing factor in the rise in popularity when 1T dropped, due to the inaccessibility being a problem for a lot of players, not the byproduct of having overland be easier.

Vvardenfell was and still is considered to be a bit harder on newer players than base game zones, and yet we still saw numbers rise during Morrowind's release, clearly not because of the ease of overland, but because Morrowind played on people's nostalgia to bring in old fans.

Summerset got a bit harder on newer players again, and yet we still saw numbers rise even further during Summerset's release, again not because of the ease of overland, but because of the fact that it's something that hasn't been touched on much, if at all, and it piqued people's curiosity.

Not sure how newer players feel about Elsweyr's overall difficulty, but Elsweyr saw the introduction of actually challenging group-oriented world events, and yet again we saw numbers rise well beyond what we saw during even Summerset, so much so that the servers started to choke. Again, not because of the ease of overland, but because of the fact that it's something that has long been requested by fans, and we finally got to see it.

And here we are with Greymoor, where populations spiked well beyond what even the servers could handle, causing the game to literally be unplayable for many people during the first week or two, not because of the ease of overland, but because of the Skyrim hype.

All the while, ESO has continued to ramp up its marketing, making it so more and more people are hearing about it and getting interested, despite having never played an MMO before. On top of Zenimax continuing to add more and more TES-esque features that the community continue to ask for.

You can't just say it's because of how easy the game is, when so much else was done to it since launch, even back during 1T.

Lysette

eKsDee wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

and yes the game is a lot easier than it was - but there are as well millions more playing than ever before - and that has a reason.

And that reason is not necessarily that the game is easier. There have been a plethora of changes since launch, even back during 1T, that could have been and likely were factors in ESO's rise in popularity, so you can't really just say "look, so many people are playing now compared to 4 years ago when the game was harder, it must be because of how easy the game is!"

1T's main goal wasn't to make overland easier, but to make overland more accessible for everybody, by removing leveled zones and alliance restrictions. That was probably the biggest contributing factor in the rise in popularity when 1T dropped, due to the inaccessibility being a problem for a lot of players, not the byproduct of having overland be easier.

Vvardenfell was and still is considered to be a bit harder on newer players than base game zones, and yet we still saw numbers rise during Morrowind's release, clearly not because of the ease of overland, but because Morrowind played on people's nostalgia to bring in old fans.

Summerset got a bit harder on newer players again, and yet we still saw numbers rise even further during Summerset's release, again not because of the ease of overland, but because of the fact that it's something that hasn't been touched on much, if at all, and it piqued people's curiosity.

Not sure how newer players feel about Elsweyr's overall difficulty, but Elsweyr saw the introduction of actually challenging group-oriented world events, and yet again we saw numbers rise well beyond what we saw during even Summerset, so much so that the servers started to choke. Again, not because of the ease of overland, but because of the fact that it's something that has long been requested by fans, and we finally got to see it.

And here we are with Greymoor, where populations spiked well beyond what even the servers could handle, causing the game to literally be unplayable for many people during the first week or two, not because of the ease of overland, but because of the Skyrim hype.

All the while, ESO has continued to ramp up its marketing, making it so more and more people are hearing about it and getting interested, despite having never played an MMO before. On top of Zenimax continuing to add more and more TES-esque features that the community continue to ask for.

You can't just say it's because of how easy the game is, when so much else was done to it since launch, even back during 1T.

some things are weird I give you that - like I go into a public dungeon in elsweyr with a lower level character and get the damage dealer achievement hardly having poked a few enemies with my staff - that felt weird. and just a few moment later i found myself outnumbered by about 10 enemies and died twice to them. so from my point of view it is not too easy.

eKsDee

Alamakot wrote: »

This situation has ofc own disadvantages - you may find several posts here at forums: "ESO is too easy".
I have no idea, if there's possible solution to scale MMO game to meet each player needs like at Witcher's world (easy/advanced/experienced/almost_impossible) with single click...

If you can deal with the fact that people with varying difficulties are playing in the same world, can interact with each other, and so can influence each other's fights (ie a player on a lower difficulty immediately kills a mob that a player on a higher difficulty has been fighting for a bit), the solution to this is to scale the player, not the mobs.

Zenimax could add a new debuff similar to PvP's Battle Spirit (they could even just copypaste Battle Spirit and change the name & ID), have it only apply in overland instances (including delves, public dungeons and quest instances) provided the player is not in a duel (already possibly, as Battle Spirit is applied in duels), and scale the player's damage done/received to effectively scale them up/down, based on a chosen difficulty setting.

Lowering the player's damage done is the same as raising mob health, and vice versa. Raising the player's damage received is the same as raising mob damage, vice versa. The math works out both ways, meaning fights end up lasting the same amount of time with the player receiving the same amount of damage, with both difficulty systems, provided the scaling is equal (reduction in damage done has to be the same %-wise as the increase in mob health, increase in damage received has to be the same %-wise as the increase in mob damage, I went over the math in this comment).

Best part, it's completely unique for each player, so each player can have their individual difficulty set their own way, and, beyond that playing-in-the-same-world, can-interact-with-each-other part I mentioned above, they won't influence each other. I can run around on a maxed out character with the difficulty jacked up, and fight the same mob that a new player is fighting, and I won't just immediately delete it.

Another maxed out character can still come by with the difficulty set to normal and delete the mob, but that's still better than it is now, where all maxed out characters, including your own, delete mobs. At least with this, you have the option to scale your own difficulty, rather than none at all.

eKsDee

Lysette wrote: »

like I go into a public dungeon in elsweyr with a lower level character and get the damage dealer achievement hardly having poked a few enemies with my staff - that felt weird

I think this is a leftover from when they changed stat ranges back during the initial introduction of the CP system (I think it was then?), where stats were literally 10x smaller than they are now. They probably forget to update it.

Lysette wrote: »

and just a few moment later i found myself outnumbered by about 10 enemies and died twice to them. so from my point of view it is not too easy.

See, IMO, that's still too easy. You shouldn't be fighting that heavily outnumbered unless the mobs are literally harmless, or you're playing a full turtle build that holds block and deals a tiny amount of damage to just whittle mobs down slowly. If you pull 10 mobs, you should die, way more than a few times.

This is more getting into how I feel that overland is too forgiving to newer players (which is an entirely different discussion), but yeah. A few mobs? Sure, if you know what you're doing and are actively dodging, blocking and healing, you should be able to deal with them. 10? Nope, you absolutely should be dying, over and over.

Lysette

eKsDee wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

like I go into a public dungeon in elsweyr with a lower level character and get the damage dealer achievement hardly having poked a few enemies with my staff - that felt weird

I think this is a leftover from when they changed stat ranges back during the initial introduction of the CP system (I think it was then?), where stats were literally 10x smaller than they are now. They probably forget to update it.

Lysette wrote: »

and just a few moment later i found myself outnumbered by about 10 enemies and died twice to them. so from my point of view it is not too easy.

See, IMO, that's still too easy. You shouldn't be fighting that heavily outnumbered unless the mobs are literally harmless, or you're playing a full turtle build that holds block and deals a tiny amount of damage to just whittle mobs down slowly. If you pull 10 mobs, you should die, way more than a few times.

This is more getting into how I feel that overland is too forgiving to newer players (which is an entirely different discussion), but yeah. A few mobs? Sure, if you know what you're doing and are actively dodging, blocking and healing, you should be able to deal with them. 10? Nope, you absolutely should be dying, over and over.

this was actually the first time i was alone in a public dungeon - i had no clue how many enemies there actually are if no one else is around - with lots of people in a public dungeon it appears absolutely doable - but alone, that was really tough.

Ghanima_Atreides

Lysette wrote: »

some things are weird I give you that - like I go into a public dungeon in elsweyr with a lower level character and get the damage dealer achievement hardly having poked a few enemies with my staff - that felt weird. and just a few moment later i found myself outnumbered by about 10 enemies and died twice to them. so from my point of view it is not too easy.

I had a similar experience with the group event in Nchuthnkarst (Blackreach public dungeon). My character was around level 20, and has died doing that twice now (with the help of another person, not solo). I also watched a CP810 die there. There's just so much AOE in an enclosed space, it's easy to become overwhelmed, especially as a squishy caster.

So yeah, there are unexpected difficulty spikes in regular content in the newer expansions. Just like the shock a new player will get when coming across an overland group boss for the first time, and going from no danger to potentially dying in a couple of hits. :')

Aelorin

ESO use to be harder for overland content. You would start as a newbie in your starter zone. When that entire zone (e.g. AD) was cleared you would become veteran player at lvl 50. You would go to the next zone to do veteran content (E;G. EP), if that zone was clear, you would move to the third zone (e.g. DC). This would be the hardest zone, and it was rather hard back in the days.

The problem with this was: you needed to follow a specific rotation of zones to level up.

At one point ZOS decided this was not the Elder Scrolls way, where you can go where you choose the minute you walk into the game. Also this made the game less interesting to play. You could not meet another EP character if you were AD, because of the levelling system.

Another part that made it harder was that there was no 'level up bonus' for low characters. Right now low characters have thier stats dramaticly increased. In fact your 'OP'-ness will drop significantly when you will enter the lvl 40-50 zone. Your character will feel weaker when you hit lvl 50, then at lvl 1. (edit: that will get better with more CP though).

So the bad came with the good. It is nice you can travel to anywhere and beat monsters from lvl 1. I accepted that overland content is not hard. You can do vet content dungeons, trials or PvP for a challenge.

Lysette

Ghanima_Atreides wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

some things are weird I give you that - like I go into a public dungeon in elsweyr with a lower level character and get the damage dealer achievement hardly having poked a few enemies with my staff - that felt weird. and just a few moment later i found myself outnumbered by about 10 enemies and died twice to them. so from my point of view it is not too easy.

I had a similar experience with the group event in Nchuthnkarst (Blackreach public dungeon). My character was around level 20, and has died doing that twice now (with the help of another person, not solo). I also watched a CP810 die there. There's just so much AOE in an enclosed space, it's easy to become overwhelmed, especially as a squishy caster.

So yeah, there are unexpected difficulty spikes in regular content in the newer expansions. Just like the shock a new player will get when coming across an overland group boss for the first time, and going from no danger to potentially dying in a couple of hits. :')

I made the mistake thinking i could sneak past one group and have passed them - not turning around to check if i succeeded, and attacked the next group of 5 - but the first group had discovered me and now i had them from front and back with no way to escape in a narrow side way of the dungeon.

heaven13

eKsDee wrote: »

Alamakot wrote: »

This situation has ofc own disadvantages - you may find several posts here at forums: "ESO is too easy".
I have no idea, if there's possible solution to scale MMO game to meet each player needs like at Witcher's world (easy/advanced/experienced/almost_impossible) with single click...

If you can deal with the fact that people with varying difficulties are playing in the same world, can interact with each other, and so can influence each other's fights (ie a player on a lower difficulty immediately kills a mob that a player on a higher difficulty has been fighting for a bit), the solution to this is to scale the player, not the mobs.

Zenimax could add a new debuff similar to PvP's Battle Spirit (they could even just copypaste Battle Spirit and change the name & ID), have it only apply in overland instances (including delves, public dungeons and quest instances) provided the player is not in a duel (already possibly, as Battle Spirit is applied in duels), and scale the player's damage done/received to effectively scale them up/down, based on a chosen difficulty setting.

Lowering the player's damage done is the same as raising mob health, and vice versa. Raising the player's damage received is the same as raising mob damage, vice versa. The math works out both ways, meaning fights end up lasting the same amount of time with the player receiving the same amount of damage, with both difficulty systems, provided the scaling is equal (reduction in damage done has to be the same %-wise as the increase in mob health, increase in damage received has to be the same %-wise as the increase in mob damage, I went over the math in this comment).

Best part, it's completely unique for each player, so each player can have their individual difficulty set their own way, and, beyond that playing-in-the-same-world, can-interact-with-each-other part I mentioned above, they won't influence each other. I can run around on a maxed out character with the difficulty jacked up, and fight the same mob that a new player is fighting, and I won't just immediately delete it.

Another maxed out character can still come by with the difficulty set to normal and delete the mob, but that's still better than it is now, where all maxed out characters, including your own, delete mobs. At least with this, you have the option to scale your own difficulty, rather than none at all.

Is this really difficulty though? Or is it just a time sink? Longer to kill =/= difficult.

Thoragaal

Lysette wrote: »

and yes the game is a lot easier than it was - but there are as well millions more playing than ever before - and that has a reason.

And millions that's tried it and never coming back; I'm in a guild with several houndreds of players, all whom haven't been online for 50+ months. I'm only there for the private guild bank.
I honestly believe most people that's bought and tried ESO, through the years, have left with no intentions of coming back ; roughly 50% of the people on my friends list are people that's not been there for over 2 years.
The avarage ESO player 5 years ago is completely different to the one today. The playerbase has shifted ; thousands of hardcore gamers left, thousands of a "more casual nature" came.
And I would bet ESO has had more players leaving than staying ; millions of created accounts means nothing.

eKsDee

Lysette wrote: »

eKsDee wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

like I go into a public dungeon in elsweyr with a lower level character and get the damage dealer achievement hardly having poked a few enemies with my staff - that felt weird

I think this is a leftover from when they changed stat ranges back during the initial introduction of the CP system (I think it was then?), where stats were literally 10x smaller than they are now. They probably forget to update it.

Lysette wrote: »

and just a few moment later i found myself outnumbered by about 10 enemies and died twice to them. so from my point of view it is not too easy.

See, IMO, that's still too easy. You shouldn't be fighting that heavily outnumbered unless the mobs are literally harmless, or you're playing a full turtle build that holds block and deals a tiny amount of damage to just whittle mobs down slowly. If you pull 10 mobs, you should die, way more than a few times.

This is more getting into how I feel that overland is too forgiving to newer players (which is an entirely different discussion), but yeah. A few mobs? Sure, if you know what you're doing and are actively dodging, blocking and healing, you should be able to deal with them. 10? Nope, you absolutely should be dying, over and over.

this was actually the first time i was alone in a public dungeon - i had no clue how many enemies there actually are if no one else is around - with lots of people in a public dungeon it appears absolutely doable - but alone, that was really tough.

I think I know the one you're talking about (Necropolis or whatever it's called, the group event in the middle of the pub dungeon), and I'll give you that, fighting that group event alone is hard because it just throws mobs at you, but IMO, you absolutely should be punished for trying to pull that many mobs at once, and you absolutely should die back-to-back.

The proper solution to that should be to try and kite the mobs, so that you're only directly fighting a few at a time, and deal with ranged ones first, all the while keeping a heal constantly going.

Tandor

idk wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

scaling is good because it allows you to do all the content with everyone all the time.

You can argue about difficulty in overland content as many here do (when the game originally launched it was much harder)... but thete are modes for challenges such as various veteran arenas, dungeons and trials that are MUCH harder...

True. I remember leveling a new character before everything was scaled. You quickly out leveled a zone making it not only super easy compared to today, but also it became pointless as rewards were scaled to low and XP was to small. To get any sort of challenge I would jump ahead so I was 10 levels below the zones level and just did the main stories so I would not catch up. However, I recall the main story of the game was level gated. I would run out of content and have to grind XP so I could finish the main story quest.

!T was a big improvement as you point out. Nothing becomes irrelevant like before.

Indeed. Also it was impossible to break off from progressing through the base game to do a DLC when it came out because as soon as you'd finished the DLC and gone back to the base game you'd out-leveled the content you were on before.

As for the OP, I'd always suggest playing a game for more than a single day before passing any sort of judgement on it, let alone a final judgement that leads either to you signing up for a year or just walking away. Do tell us which world bosses you soloed on your first day, I'd really like to know!

eKsDee

heaven13 wrote: »

eKsDee wrote: »

Alamakot wrote: »

This situation has ofc own disadvantages - you may find several posts here at forums: "ESO is too easy".
I have no idea, if there's possible solution to scale MMO game to meet each player needs like at Witcher's world (easy/advanced/experienced/almost_impossible) with single click...

If you can deal with the fact that people with varying difficulties are playing in the same world, can interact with each other, and so can influence each other's fights (ie a player on a lower difficulty immediately kills a mob that a player on a higher difficulty has been fighting for a bit), the solution to this is to scale the player, not the mobs.

Zenimax could add a new debuff similar to PvP's Battle Spirit (they could even just copypaste Battle Spirit and change the name & ID), have it only apply in overland instances (including delves, public dungeons and quest instances) provided the player is not in a duel (already possibly, as Battle Spirit is applied in duels), and scale the player's damage done/received to effectively scale them up/down, based on a chosen difficulty setting.

Lowering the player's damage done is the same as raising mob health, and vice versa. Raising the player's damage received is the same as raising mob damage, vice versa. The math works out both ways, meaning fights end up lasting the same amount of time with the player receiving the same amount of damage, with both difficulty systems, provided the scaling is equal (reduction in damage done has to be the same %-wise as the increase in mob health, increase in damage received has to be the same %-wise as the increase in mob damage, I went over the math in this comment).

Best part, it's completely unique for each player, so each player can have their individual difficulty set their own way, and, beyond that playing-in-the-same-world, can-interact-with-each-other part I mentioned above, they won't influence each other. I can run around on a maxed out character with the difficulty jacked up, and fight the same mob that a new player is fighting, and I won't just immediately delete it.

Another maxed out character can still come by with the difficulty set to normal and delete the mob, but that's still better than it is now, where all maxed out characters, including your own, delete mobs. At least with this, you have the option to scale your own difficulty, rather than none at all.

Is this really difficulty though? Or is it just a time sink? Longer to kill =/= difficult.

This is why, if overland difficulty is ever properly addressed, it should come with a mechanical overhaul of mobs, in addition to a difficulty setting like I suggested.

Still, what I'm suggesting is better than it currently is. A time sink is infinitely more engaging than almost one-shotting mobs in a single light attack + spammable cast, which is how it currently is.

Thoragaal wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

and yes the game is a lot easier than it was - but there are as well millions more playing than ever before - and that has a reason.

And millions that's tried it and never coming back; I'm in a guild with several houndreds of players, all whom haven't been online for 50+ months. I'm only there for the private guild bank.
I honestly believe most people that's bought and tried ESO, through the years, have left with no intentions of coming back ; roughly 50% of the people on my friends list are people that's not been there for over 2 years.
The avarage ESO player 5 years ago is completely different to the one today. The playerbase has shifted ; thousands of hardcore gamers left, thousands of a "more casual nature" came.
And I would bet ESO has had more players leaving than staying ; millions of created accounts means nothing.

This is honestly why I feel this problem won't be addressed. Too many players are attached to how easy the game has become, that addressing it in any way would practically be suicide for Zenimax, and they know it, so I don't think they'll even entertain the thought. Still, no harm in trying to bring it up.

Lysette

eKsDee wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

eKsDee wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

like I go into a public dungeon in elsweyr with a lower level character and get the damage dealer achievement hardly having poked a few enemies with my staff - that felt weird

I think this is a leftover from when they changed stat ranges back during the initial introduction of the CP system (I think it was then?), where stats were literally 10x smaller than they are now. They probably forget to update it.

Lysette wrote: »

and just a few moment later i found myself outnumbered by about 10 enemies and died twice to them. so from my point of view it is not too easy.

See, IMO, that's still too easy. You shouldn't be fighting that heavily outnumbered unless the mobs are literally harmless, or you're playing a full turtle build that holds block and deals a tiny amount of damage to just whittle mobs down slowly. If you pull 10 mobs, you should die, way more than a few times.

This is more getting into how I feel that overland is too forgiving to newer players (which is an entirely different discussion), but yeah. A few mobs? Sure, if you know what you're doing and are actively dodging, blocking and healing, you should be able to deal with them. 10? Nope, you absolutely should be dying, over and over.

this was actually the first time i was alone in a public dungeon - i had no clue how many enemies there actually are if no one else is around - with lots of people in a public dungeon it appears absolutely doable - but alone, that was really tough.

I think I know the one you're talking about (Necropolis or whatever it's called, the group event in the middle of the pub dungeon), and I'll give you that, fighting that group event alone is hard because it just throws mobs at you, but IMO, you absolutely should be punished for trying to pull that many mobs at once, and you absolutely should die back-to-back.

The proper solution to that should be to try and kite the mobs, so that you're only directly fighting a few at a time, and deal with ranged ones first, all the while keeping a heal constantly going.

It was mainly not knowing what was coming at me - i'll be back though and try my luck a second time - as well when most likely no one else is around - i still haven't found the skyshard there. It was the public dungeon east of the stitches.

eKsDee

Lysette wrote: »

eKsDee wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

eKsDee wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

like I go into a public dungeon in elsweyr with a lower level character and get the damage dealer achievement hardly having poked a few enemies with my staff - that felt weird

I think this is a leftover from when they changed stat ranges back during the initial introduction of the CP system (I think it was then?), where stats were literally 10x smaller than they are now. They probably forget to update it.

Lysette wrote: »

and just a few moment later i found myself outnumbered by about 10 enemies and died twice to them. so from my point of view it is not too easy.

See, IMO, that's still too easy. You shouldn't be fighting that heavily outnumbered unless the mobs are literally harmless, or you're playing a full turtle build that holds block and deals a tiny amount of damage to just whittle mobs down slowly. If you pull 10 mobs, you should die, way more than a few times.

This is more getting into how I feel that overland is too forgiving to newer players (which is an entirely different discussion), but yeah. A few mobs? Sure, if you know what you're doing and are actively dodging, blocking and healing, you should be able to deal with them. 10? Nope, you absolutely should be dying, over and over.

this was actually the first time i was alone in a public dungeon - i had no clue how many enemies there actually are if no one else is around - with lots of people in a public dungeon it appears absolutely doable - but alone, that was really tough.

I think I know the one you're talking about (Necropolis or whatever it's called, the group event in the middle of the pub dungeon), and I'll give you that, fighting that group event alone is hard because it just throws mobs at you, but IMO, you absolutely should be punished for trying to pull that many mobs at once, and you absolutely should die back-to-back.

The proper solution to that should be to try and kite the mobs, so that you're only directly fighting a few at a time, and deal with ranged ones first, all the while keeping a heal constantly going.

It was mainly not knowing what was coming at me - i'll be back though and try my luck a second time - as well when most likely no one else is around - i still haven't found the skyshard there.

Yeah, if it's the one I'm thinking of, I'd really recommend kiting the mobs to try and only directly fight a few at a time, and keep a heal going at all times. Worked for me. As Ghanima said, there are some difficulty spikes peppered in the overland content, and this is one of them.

IMO this sort of difficulty, the certainty of dying until you know what you're meant to do and then only possibly dying if you make a mistake, is what overland should be. Most mobs should sit at the "only die if you make a mistake" level, but harder ones (ie the ones with the notches on their health bar) should have mechanics that, if you don't know how to deal with them, you will die to them.

The difficulty setting would determine how easy it is to recover from a mistake, but you should always be punished for making a mistake in the first place.

Honestly, most content in the game boils down to that. If you don't know what you're meant to do, you will die. If you know what you're meant to do, you'll only die if you make a mistake. Perfect way of describing how overland should be, IMO, it just should be a bit more forgiving than other content.

Ghanima_Atreides

Aelorin wrote: »

ESO use to be harder for overland content. You would start as a newbie in your starter zone. When that entire zone (e.g. AD) was cleared you would become veteran player at lvl 50. You would go to the next zone to do veteran content (E;G. EP), if that zone was clear, you would move to the third zone (e.g. DC). This would be the hardest zone, and it was rather hard back in the days.

The problem with this was: you needed to follow a specific rotation of zones to level up.

At one point ZOS decided this was not the Elder Scrolls way, where you can go where you choose the minute you walk into the game. Also this made the game less interesting to play. You could not meet another EP character if you were AD, because of the levelling system.

Another part that made it harder was that there was no 'level up bonus' for low characters. Right now low characters have thier stats dramaticly increased. In fact your 'OP'-ness will drop significantly when you will enter the lvl 40-50 zone. Your character will feel weaker when you hit lvl 50, then at lvl 1. (edit: that will get better with more CP though).

So the bad came with the good. It is nice you can travel to anywhere and beat monsters from lvl 1. I accepted that overland content is not hard. You can do vet content dungeons, trials or PvP for a challenge.

Although to be fair, all mobs having the same level of difficulty isn't really the Elder Scrolls way either. Yes in the single-player games you could go anywhere at level 1, but you were encouraged to follow a certain pre-defined progression path that took you through content tiers as you levelled up. Otherwise, you might have ended up facing enemies that were too tough for you - say, for example, facing a Spriggan at level 1 in Skyrim would be pretty much a death sentence, or Ice Wraiths or Falmer or certain Necromancer forts placed far from the starting area...if you were really good and familiar with the game maybe you'd pull through, but especially on higher difficulties this would have been a real challenge. Later on these enemies become trivial.

In ESO, on the other hand, a Giant doesn't feel too different from a wolf, and defeating a Dragon Priest isn't remarkably harder than defeating a run-of-the-mill bandit. The differences between enemy tiers, too, seem trivial; where in Skyrim there was a pretty big difference in strength between regular Bandit and a Bandit Leader, in ESO the names seem mostly cosmetic.

Personally I do and don't like the difficulty levels in ESO. On the one hand it makes it accessible for everyone, on the other it often becomes trivial. I actually think that there should be more scaling done like it was in the single player games: types of enemies that feel significantly (though not unbeatably) stronger than the lower tiers, requiring not necessarily a group to beat (that's what group bosses and such are for) but at least some thought. Don't stand in red, block/interrupt at least.

Secondly, private instances for story encounters that take place indoors - with difficulty scaling options like dungeons. You can try it solo or bring a group, and this wouldn't interfere with anyone else's play. In fact, it would avoid the aggravation of having your epic boss fight spoiled by some random bursting into your encounter just when you were about to face the Big Bad at last.

eKsDee

Lysette wrote: »

It was the public dungeon east of the stitches.

Ah, not the one I'm thinking of, then. Still, my advice should help. Kite, keep a heal going, only fight a few at a time.

Lysette

eKsDee wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

It was the public dungeon east of the stitches.

Ah, not the one I'm thinking of, then. Still, my advice should help. Kite, keep a heal going, only fight a few at a time.

I eventually chose the harder way in - those narrow side ways to the right - and these are packed with groups of enemies and not much room to sneak past them - and not being a khajiit wasn't helping either - well I will try it again and again, i kinda like the confusing design of that dungeon.

heaven13

eKsDee wrote: »

heaven13 wrote: »

eKsDee wrote: »

Alamakot wrote: »

This situation has ofc own disadvantages - you may find several posts here at forums: "ESO is too easy".
I have no idea, if there's possible solution to scale MMO game to meet each player needs like at Witcher's world (easy/advanced/experienced/almost_impossible) with single click...

If you can deal with the fact that people with varying difficulties are playing in the same world, can interact with each other, and so can influence each other's fights (ie a player on a lower difficulty immediately kills a mob that a player on a higher difficulty has been fighting for a bit), the solution to this is to scale the player, not the mobs.

Zenimax could add a new debuff similar to PvP's Battle Spirit (they could even just copypaste Battle Spirit and change the name & ID), have it only apply in overland instances (including delves, public dungeons and quest instances) provided the player is not in a duel (already possibly, as Battle Spirit is applied in duels), and scale the player's damage done/received to effectively scale them up/down, based on a chosen difficulty setting.

Lowering the player's damage done is the same as raising mob health, and vice versa. Raising the player's damage received is the same as raising mob damage, vice versa. The math works out both ways, meaning fights end up lasting the same amount of time with the player receiving the same amount of damage, with both difficulty systems, provided the scaling is equal (reduction in damage done has to be the same %-wise as the increase in mob health, increase in damage received has to be the same %-wise as the increase in mob damage, I went over the math in this comment).

Best part, it's completely unique for each player, so each player can have their individual difficulty set their own way, and, beyond that playing-in-the-same-world, can-interact-with-each-other part I mentioned above, they won't influence each other. I can run around on a maxed out character with the difficulty jacked up, and fight the same mob that a new player is fighting, and I won't just immediately delete it.

Another maxed out character can still come by with the difficulty set to normal and delete the mob, but that's still better than it is now, where all maxed out characters, including your own, delete mobs. At least with this, you have the option to scale your own difficulty, rather than none at all.

Is this really difficulty though? Or is it just a time sink? Longer to kill =/= difficult.

This is why, if overland difficulty is ever properly addressed, it should come with a mechanical overhaul of mobs, in addition to a difficulty setting like I suggested.

Still, what I'm suggesting is better than it currently is. A time sink is infinitely more engaging than almost one-shotting mobs in a single light attack + spammable cast, which is how it currently is.

I've got nothing against an optional debuff. It's not too different than removing gear/cp (just costs less if it's something like a drink/memento, like Breda's ale). And if that would make people happy, to have this debuff they can toggle to do overland with solely for a perceived challenge, have at it!!!

What I personally would like to see is optional solo-instanced quest locations (the houses and caves, etc that you access while doing a quest) that have normal/vet versions. Let me face off against Magistrix Vox solo, in a harder fight where I need to pay attention to the mechanics. Let me defeat Falchou where I really need to position him correctly and make use of the allies I gathered. I don't need additional rewards for this; I just want the fight to be memorable and the baddie to feel like a baddie. Maybe they'll even have a chance to say their entire dialogue before I've killed them. (Right now the dialogue just skips from one to the other before anything is finished which is why I make sure to have NPC lines go in my chat box so I can read whatever evil monologue they were trying to convey). The rest of overland can stay as is.

Strider__Roshin

Yeah I have no idea how people enjoy how mindlessly easy the PvE is in this game. Hopefully they try harder in real life.

Tandor

Strider__Roshin wrote: »

Yeah I have no idea how people enjoy how mindlessly easy the PvE is in this game. Hopefully they try harder in real life.

You have to remember that what is mindlessly easy to one person may be quite challenging to another. That is especially so with overland content in ESO depending on your past gaming experience, whether you're playing a genuinely new character or an alt with a gazillion CPs and a wealth of knowledge from playing the game for several years, and whether you're someone who likes to stroll through the quests and lore or click straight through those things because the games just about the combat, right?

You can often spot those players who find things mindlessly easy, they're the ones who have leveled up at a single dolmen supplemented by skill points bought in the Crown Store, used loads of addons to located everything for them, and ported everywhere through guildmates, only then to complain that it's all too quick and easy !