Veteran Mode for questing

Flaaklypa

I know (insert here) amount of threads has been created with this topic, so my question is: Has zos made any comment on this?

Because it sure as hell isnt fun to "save the world" when the final boss do 1 dps and has 100k health.... literally worse than a single add in a vet dungeon.

Hämähäkki

True, but there has been a Veteran Mode some years back and guess what? They took it out because they wanted it to be more casual. So I think there is not gonna be a Veteran mode again.

Don't get me wrong, I would also love to have back the way it was. It's way to easy now.

Naftal

Hämähäkki wrote: »

True, but there has been a Veteran Mode some years back and guess what? They took it out because they wanted it to be more casual. So I think there is not gonna be a Veteran mode again.

Don't get me wrong, I would also love to have back the way it was. It's way to easy now.

There has never been a seperate veteran mode. Before one tamriel the game just had enemies with increasing levels throughout the game zones.

Veteran overland should have its own progression, seperate from normal version. Veteran overland should also remove the freedom to do the content in whatever order you please and make the zones seriously more dangerous as you progress starting from the faction starter zones.

Hämähäkki

Naftal wrote: »

Hämähäkki wrote: »

True, but there has been a Veteran Mode some years back and guess what? They took it out because they wanted it to be more casual. So I think there is not gonna be a Veteran mode again.

Don't get me wrong, I would also love to have back the way it was. It's way to easy now.

There has never been a seperate veteran mode. Before one tamriel the game just had enemies with increasing levels throughout the game zones.

Veteran overland should have its own progression, seperate from normal version. Veteran overland should also remove the freedom to do the content in whatever order you please and make the zones seriously more dangerous as you progress starting from the faction starter zones.

You are right, there was never a seperate mode, but the veteran system back then was very similar to what op wants. No way you could kill a boss in vet area when you where only lvl 20 for instance.

Olauron

There already were veteran overland zones. These zones were almost empty. You could see about 50+ players at the same time in the Daggerfall or Vulken Guard, there were at most 2 players in the same Silver zones and about 0 players in the same Gold zones.

Galwylin

I'm opposed to this idea of veteran overland. Mostly because its too undefined in what it is and how it would work. Especially considering this would be something that would have to take developer time that every single one of us would leave behind. But I do like the idea of zone levels. Starter zones, mid-range zones and veteran zones. Zones that you PROGRESS through and leave behind instead of pick a zone to play in then never return until they buff the gear found there. That's unlikely though since every release is a starter zone. That being the single reason why it will never happen. BUT neither like that waste of space that Craglorn is today. It might as well not be on the map with the traffic it sees. I got a house there and I might as well own the whole zone. Why not. I don't think I've ever seen more than a dozen people there ever.

Nairinhe

Dying in MA or a dungeon, or even to a world boss is fun. To a quest boss? Not so much. Take your gear off or something if you want challenge there.

Also there was a ton of complaining on Elsweyr story dragons, which seem to be an example of "harder quest bosses".

Grandchamp1989

I'm with OP here. a single trash mob in vet dungeons are more dangerous than most quest bosses lol.

I sometimes put worse gear on my guys for quest to make the fight last longer lol... Not really ideal.

If they don't wanna make quest stronger atleast give craglorn a notch up in difficulty, make it the vet "zone".

Everything is already there just add more hp and dmg.

PizzaCat82

There's plenty of ways you can play the game on a harder difficulty than normal.

Theres just no reason to.

Scion_of_Yggdrasil

Overland is a snore-fest... there should definitely be areas within zones that are more difficult. Perhaps the surrounding areas of world bosses should be littered by more difficult enemies? AS a start. And the quests.... should definitely have a hardmode.

Flaaklypa

PizzaCat82 wrote: »

There's plenty of ways you can play the game on a harder difficulty than normal.

Theres just no reason to.

true, i created a new character, disabled cp points and wear a full set of crafted training gear (no bonuses on them) and yet the quests are super easy... I guess i can stop LA weaving and literally just wait to use skills from the gcd

but that isnt fun.

richo262

While overland is a joke, I think the dev team has more pressing concerns.

Besides, since the free week, I have seen quite a few people in chat asking for help against their quest bosses (not even WB's). So perhaps we take our CP and our knowledge of the game for granted, and there is actually a sizeable pool of people that if difficulty was increased, would be very hard.

Overland - Noobies
Dungeons (Base normal) - Advanced noobies
Vet Dungeons (base) / Normal DLC - Casuals
Normal trials - Casuals
Vet DLC Dungeons - Advanced
Vet DLC Dungeons HM - Expert
Vet Trials - Expert
Vet Trials HM - Elite

The structure is there for a reason. Nerf of buff either end of that spectrum and you'll probably annoy more people than you satisfy.

As for creating an entirely new instance just to make things harder, ehhh, it won't get any use. Esp if the drops are the same, if they are not, it will probably require a lot of balance and work.

What ZOS could do is this. Simple, no need to mess with the game or create new instances.

Create a food, similar to how Ambrosia works, in the way that it does not replace existing food.

What this food does, is it nerfs the player by 25% but increases the gold income by 25% in overland questing content only. That way the player gets nerfed, overland is harder, and there is some sort of benefit for it. Does not effect dailies.

amm7sb14_ESO

yes, I would love something like this. As is, I basically avoid any and all overland content because the lack of any hint of challenge makes it unfun to play

tomofhyrule

This is another one of those threads that pops up every other week. All of these have the same arguments.

Yes, "nerf yourself lol" is a simplistic answer. But it's about the only logical way to get this done.

People say "I just want the option," but then that option always includes 'give better rewards.' If you're getting better gear from farming, then people are going to be forced into doing the harder content when they aren't ready for it since they want to get the better rewards, and then there will be calls to nerf overland. You know, exactly like what happened to Craglorn.

People who say "I want it just for the challenge!" are also overlooking the fact that that's obviously a minority opinion in game. Sure, it's popular on the forums, but how many people in game would rather do content like vet Moon Hunter Keep than something like nFGI to get the dungeon daily XP? How easy is it to get groups to do world bosses in DLC zones without an event going on? Vivec and Rimmen crafting sites are packed, but nobody moves when someone gives a "/z help needed at dragon/WB." Why do no vet players want to do the harder content already there, or to help newer players with it? Seems like 'the challenge' or 'here's some loot' aren't good motivators when the loot isn't BiS.

And of course, if it was an individual option, you'd have the issue of someone who has it on fighting a WB, then someone who has it off coming by and deciding to be helpful and destroy the boss for them. How is that supposed to be calculated? Is the boss hardier, or the player weaker, or what? Or even better, a group who will then have higher damage than the vet player, and as such the vet player didn't do enough to get drops from the WB.

The only thing they could possibly do is make a new 'harder' instance, which will either be full of people who can't handle the content and cry for nerfs, or it will be completely empty save for one or two masochists. It's not sustainable. There's a reason that they went from the fully-instanced alliance zones to One Tamriel.

Besides, doing anything other than turning the enemies into bullet sponges is not feasible. Simply nerfing damage I do and buffing damage I take makes for boring content, as other threads have complained about. Most people look at the DLC WBs or delve bosses and want mechanics in overland. They can't remake 6-year-old content that easily to just add mechanics. At that point, you're asking for a whole new game.

I'll also ask, for anyone who's vet-level and finds overland completely boring, how are you currently built? I know my CP 410 toon takes a while to go through overland stuff...because I'm a tank with 2k DPS. As such, I don't need for enemies to have more health than they already do - I already have to change my build if I want to do something like take on a WB or dolmen solo in a reasonable amount of time. I'm sure that if I made a 30k DPS character, I'd be able to kill things with 30k health so fast that it started to get boring...but right now I'm still fighting with overland trash mobs for a few seconds because light attacks and pierce armor don't do much.

I like that I can farm mats without having to feel like I'm going through a vet trial - it's hard enough to find people to group for pledges (at least people who respect support roles and help others learn rather than blame the tank/healer for them dying when they pull all the mobs or stand in stupid), so if I was forced into that for overland, I know I'd quit.

The one thing I would have liked them to do though would be to make the 'end boss' rooms for most zone quests instanced. It's annoying to be told that I'm the only one who can do xyz, then to see some other person rush in and faceroll the boss I was 'destined' to fight.

Dusk_Coven

Look for Rich Lambert interview transcripts. There were one or two where he was asked and he gave basically a non-answer.

They had a harder world boss in Elsweyr (fire monk) where people couldn't solo it... and the amount of whining and crying on the forums was unbelievable. I think that was ZOS's attempt at it, so no matter what people say, they don't want it. They want to increase the dfficulty a bit enough to justify rewards but still succeed. They don't actually want to fail.

Plus tons of other reasons. Read the other threads that you claim to already know about.

Best solution for questing is solo instances with optional difficulty slider. Solves a lot of other problems too.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/532115/more-instanced-quest-areas-please

amm7sb14_ESO

tomofhyrule wrote: »

This is another one of those threads that pops up every other week. All of these have the same arguments.

Yes, "nerf yourself lol" is a simplistic answer. But it's about the only logical way to get this done.

People say "I just want the option," but then that option always includes 'give better rewards.' If you're getting better gear from farming, then people are going to be forced into doing the harder content when they aren't ready for it since they want to get the better rewards, and then there will be calls to nerf overland. You know, exactly like what happened to Craglorn.

People who say "I want it just for the challenge!" are also overlooking the fact that that's obviously a minority opinion in game. Sure, it's popular on the forums, but how many people in game would rather do content like vet Moon Hunter Keep than something like nFGI to get the dungeon daily XP? How easy is it to get groups to do world bosses in DLC zones without an event going on? Vivec and Rimmen crafting sites are packed, but nobody moves when someone gives a "/z help needed at dragon/WB." Why do no vet players want to do the harder content already there, or to help newer players with it? Seems like 'the challenge' or 'here's some loot' aren't good motivators when the loot isn't BiS.

And of course, if it was an individual option, you'd have the issue of someone who has it on fighting a WB, then someone who has it off coming by and deciding to be helpful and destroy the boss for them. How is that supposed to be calculated? Is the boss hardier, or the player weaker, or what? Or even better, a group who will then have higher damage than the vet player, and as such the vet player didn't do enough to get drops from the WB.

The only thing they could possibly do is make a new 'harder' instance, which will either be full of people who can't handle the content and cry for nerfs, or it will be completely empty save for one or two masochists. It's not sustainable. There's a reason that they went from the fully-instanced alliance zones to One Tamriel.

Besides, doing anything other than turning the enemies into bullet sponges is not feasible. Simply nerfing damage I do and buffing damage I take makes for boring content, as other threads have complained about. Most people look at the DLC WBs or delve bosses and want mechanics in overland. They can't remake 6-year-old content that easily to just add mechanics. At that point, you're asking for a whole new game.

I'll also ask, for anyone who's vet-level and finds overland completely boring, how are you currently built? I know my CP 410 toon takes a while to go through overland stuff...because I'm a tank with 2k DPS. As such, I don't need for enemies to have more health than they already do - I already have to change my build if I want to do something like take on a WB or dolmen solo in a reasonable amount of time. I'm sure that if I made a 30k DPS character, I'd be able to kill things with 30k health so fast that it started to get boring...but right now I'm still fighting with overland trash mobs for a few seconds because light attacks and pierce armor don't do much.

I like that I can farm mats without having to feel like I'm going through a vet trial - it's hard enough to find people to group for pledges (at least people who respect support roles and help others learn rather than blame the tank/healer for them dying when they pull all the mobs or stand in stupid), so if I was forced into that for overland, I know I'd quit.

The one thing I would have liked them to do though would be to make the 'end boss' rooms for most zone quests instanced. It's annoying to be told that I'm the only one who can do xyz, then to see some other person rush in and faceroll the boss I was 'destined' to fight.

I get what you're saying, and you make valid points, but I guess my perspective is this - I have both tanks and dps (and healers too!) so I can definitely have the "slow" overland fights if I want them, but it's not about how long the fights take it's about how challenging they are. The only overland PVE content that I find any sort of challenge from is in Imperial City, and that's mostly due to the Tel Var stone loss and the possibility of PVP gankers, not from the actual PVE itself. The fights might be slower on my tank, but I am at 0 risk of actually dying. Being on a tank just means that the non-challenging fight is going to take 10 - 15 seconds instead of 3, or a world boss will take 10 minutes instead of 3 - 5.

It's made the game experience for me at least one that unless it's trial day in my guild, there is nothing for me to do when I log into the game. There's no solo stuff to do outside of crafting dailies / writs and mat farming. I don't even want to do skyshard hunting or zone questing because it's so bland and anti-climactic. So while I hear your points about it being non-sustainable, at least on a personal level, having nothing to do except my once a week trials is pretty unsustainable as well.

True, maybe I need to take myself into Craglorn and give that zone a try, but otherwise overland has been a snoozer.

Recapitated

tomofhyrule wrote: »

People say "I just want the option," but then that option always includes 'give better rewards.' If you're getting better gear from farming, then people are going to be forced into doing the harder content when they aren't ready for it since they want to get the better rewards, and then there will be calls to nerf overland. You know, exactly like what happened to Craglorn.

Isn't that a problem with all the hard content we already have — vMA, trials, even some normal DLC dungeons?

Maybe if you can't beat the content you just shouldn't get the gear. Either you're being held back by what you're wearing in which case you should farm easier content, or you need to level up, or just get better at combat — BIS gear isn't going to carry you if you can't play.

Personally I'm fine with the vast majority of quests and solo/public content remaining the way they are, but I'm not touching them, I just have no reason to. Even on characters below level 50 and without allocating my CP it's just the same fight over and over with a different voice yelling "circle around!". It's not just that there's no challenge, there's no progression.

I would like to see solo or duo instanced questlines with guaranteed drops (BIS overland set items, ranks for new skill lines) with difficulty levels ranging from vanilla vet dungeon to vMA. That would be challenging and rewarding, and quest progression would eliminate the fatigue from farming vMA for the 100th time.

Milli_Rabbit

I think they should progressively make main quest and alliance quest bosses harder and update their mechanics to be interesting. Dropping endless hail/wall of elements > aoe dot > bear trap > spammable right as boss spawns makes every fight a joke. Literally the boss often doesn't even get a hit off or they start to wind up before its over.

josiahva

Galwylin wrote: »

I'm opposed to this idea of veteran overland. Mostly because its too undefined in what it is and how it would work. Especially considering this would be something that would have to take developer time that every single one of us would leave behind. But I do like the idea of zone levels. Starter zones, mid-range zones and veteran zones. Zones that you PROGRESS through and leave behind instead of pick a zone to play in then never return until they buff the gear found there. That's unlikely though since every release is a starter zone. That being the single reason why it will never happen. BUT neither like that waste of space that Craglorn is today. It might as well not be on the map with the traffic it sees. I got a house there and I might as well own the whole zone. Why not. I don't think I've ever seen more than a dozen people there ever.

It seems to me, out of all the zones, Craglorn is the LEAST dead. Between the nirn farmers, the trials always being zone-chat pugged, and just a generally healthy population there are few zones more active aside from certain Cyrodiil campaigns.

exeeter702

I have spoken on thus subject more times then I care to admit, and I'm exhausted in repeating myself but all I'm going to say is that using pre 1T craglorn as ANY kind of rebuttal to whether this game could use a harder overland tier for max level characters, is an absolute poor point that carries no weight whatsoever. Eso today is absolutely not the game it was then and there are numerous reasons for why craglorn "failed" outside the scope of overland pve difficulty for max level players.

Or should max level players only ever have a single trial and some new sets/skill lines to look forward to with a new chapter?.

Every chapter release for me in terms of the zone itself and the quest lines have been an ever increasingly flaccid experience. But I've been here since day 1 and maybe I have simply exhausted my ability to enjoy the casual content.

I'll say it again, I TRULY envy the brand new players that are still in the discovery period of their eso experience.

volkeswagon

i will say this. There are plenty of people who want more challenge from open world monsters, WB, delves, etc and those such as myself that don't. So I say have two servers: Normal and Hard. Everyone happy. Only extra rewards should be maybe more gold in drops and more chance for purple gear.

Sylvermynx

exeeter702 wrote: »

<snip>

I'll say it again, I TRULY envy the brand new players that are still in the discovery period of their eso experience.

Um.... I was a brand new player a bit over 2 years ago. The "discovery" period for me was.... well, it sucked. My connection wasn't anywhere close to halfway optimal, NOTHING was explained as far as how to play (even though I read HUNDREDS of posts on this forum before starting to play, and the "tutorial" SUCKED) - AND this was not my first rodeo, since I had spent years playing both WoW and RIFT so MMOs weren't something new to me.

So.... now I do get things. But NO ONE helped me get there. I plowed my own way through. It was absolutely painful - one of the most painful experiences I've ever had in any game. But I am nothing if not persistent. So I'm still here. Yes.

volkeswagon wrote: »

i will say this. There are plenty of people who want more challenge from open world monsters, WB, delves, etc and those such as myself that don't. So I say have two servers: Normal and Hard. Everyone happy. Only extra rewards should be maybe more gold in drops and more chance for purple gear.

That's a really good idea. I'm all for it. I don't give a rat's patoot about "better rewards". But giving all the people who are bored to bits with overland their own self-flagellative instances would work fine for me.

volkeswagon

yeah we don't want to enhance rewards too much on a hard server as it should be more about challenge. But giving more purple gear and 30 gold instead of 25 for killing a monster I could live with.

idk

Naftal wrote: »

Hämähäkki wrote: »

True, but there has been a Veteran Mode some years back and guess what? They took it out because they wanted it to be more casual. So I think there is not gonna be a Veteran mode again.

Don't get me wrong, I would also love to have back the way it was. It's way to easy now.

There has never been a seperate veteran mode. Before one tamriel the game just had enemies with increasing levels throughout the game zones.

Veteran overland should have its own progression, seperate from normal version. Veteran overland should also remove the freedom to do the content in whatever order you please and make the zones seriously more dangerous as you progress starting from the faction starter zones.

They did make an entire zone a veteran zone as the person you quoted made very clear. It would seem if a zone failed as Hamahakki explained that it would not make any sense to create a more complex version as is being suggested.

Considering the small percentage of players that actually seek out and clear the more challenging content in this game I do not think it is monetarily sound to create the more complex system being suggested. This was certainly one of the reasons the veteran zone failed which supports my suggestion.

Olauron

exeeter702 wrote: »

Or should max level players only ever have a single trial and some new sets/skill lines to look forward to with a new chapter?

I am a max level player and I have no problem with having fun while experiencing new quests and stories of the chapter or story DLC (if those quests and stories are well written and don't try to promote some ugly idea).
So if some max level players have problems with experiencing this content, this is the problem of those some players. There are too few of them to waste server resources on additional veteran mirrors (instances), as well as developer time and resources.

Grianasteri

I really wish Zos would make this a priority.

Even if it was just for DLC zones, to reduce the time/work involved. We really really really need a far far far higher degree of difficulty for overland and questing.

The OP hit the nail on the head. Fighting "Molag Bal" was one of the biggest anti climaxes in gaming history. He was dead in the blink of an eye. A situation repeated across the entire game for every quest/story and overland content. That cannot be right.

And I have pointed out myself that all this content is NOT so ridiculously easy, for non CP players and those inexperienced. I remember well enjoying my story/questing days pre level 50/CP. But it cannot be right that the vast majority of content is rendered completely and utterly unchallenging once you reach a certain level of CP/experience.

We need a toggle option. Normal, Vet and Hard mode. Because frankly I can solo many veteran dungeons, so just a vet option isn't going to solve the issue for a LOT of players.

Incoherent rant over.

Olauron

The most simple, most cheap and most universal (and thus the best) thing ZOS can do to solve a problem of overlevelling is removal of the power creep. For overland it can be achieved as simple as introducing a DPS cap of 15 000 or less.

exeeter702

Olauron wrote: »

exeeter702 wrote: »

Or should max level players only ever have a single trial and some new sets/skill lines to look forward to with a new chapter?

I am a max level player and I have no problem with having fun while experiencing new quests and stories of the chapter or story DLC (if those quests and stories are well written and don't try to promote some ugly idea).
So if some max level players have problems with experiencing this content, this is the problem of those some players. There are too few of them to waste server resources on additional veteran mirrors (instances), as well as developer time and resources.

Hey, if you feel steamrolling through overland obstacles and killing main antagonists at the end of a lengthy quest lines in 4 seconds is a compelling experience more power to you. But video games are in the unique postion over any other story telling medium wherein you can actually engage the audience in the story through gameplay challenge, and nothing and I mean nothing, takes the wind of the sails of a well written video game narrative delivery (greymoor is not that mind you) then having the final encounter to said narrative be an absolutely wash.

Zardayne

We can't go back to full blown vet zones. As much as I'd like to see some harder content in overland, especially a delve difficulty toggle, splitting us players up will make it seem empty again. As most of you know who played through some vet levels back in the day, the vet zones seemed like ghost towns. I even took my time to enjoy the game when it came out so I know for a fact I wasn't in the 1st wave of power levelers.

As much time as we spend in delves, the loss of a player temporarily from the overland map shouldn't make it feel less populated by much. If they gave us the option of delve difficulty though, this could help a lot such as:

1. Added difficulty so vets can enjoy the old content as well as all future expansions with their main or a new character with a friend. Being able to enjoy all of a game instead of 2 or 3 dungeons/trials feels like a better deal for $50. More $ for ZOS.
2. Allows newer players or unskilled players the ability to enjoy the normal delves without high lvl players racing through and destroying everything (unless the high lvl/cp chose to run a normal delve). It keeps them immersed in the story, not waiting for mobs to re-spawn.
3. Harder content in delves keeps Vets immersed and alert. If they added some roaming bosses like Imperial City in some harder delves...now you've got the vets attention. Now you've potentially made the vet want to sneak around a bit instead of guns blazing.
4. Allows for higher risk vs higher reward game play. Long time players and more experienced ones need a bigger carrot to lead them to a bigger dopamine hit which keeps them playing
5. A chance of higher rewards gives lesser skilled players incentive to learn to play better. Eventually they too will want harder content, especially with alts or friends. The higher difficulties of the delves will be there for them.

abzdeman

So we just want to keep driving away new players?

Luke_Flamesword

ZOS just don't know how approach difficulties - they like to jump from "easy as cake" to "hard as hell" with no middle ground. You can see it in Arenas or some DLC Dungeons.

Explanations like this "you all wanted harder content, so we gave one-shot wipeouting boss and you are not satisfacted" are lame. All idea is not about making frustrating content, but fair challenge. Eh, gives as at least veteran delves and public dungeons - it will give veterans a lot of more challenging content and there is not much work, because it will be just matter of adjustment of things that are already ingame (I think that the best option will be just difficulty option to switch any time in game) .

I really like Craglorn group delves and places like Skyreach, because there was some challenge for me - not too big to being frustrated, but enough to feel some adrenaline in certain moments.

Let the game stays easy as it is, because a lot of people wanted it, by why don't throw players some veteran version of some content just to give more options and freedom of choice?