LOTRO Legendarium The MMO Added a Difficulty Slider, Maybe one day we can also have that.

Ergele

Sarannah wrote: »

Because the current way, the difficulty is the same for everyone, noone is at an advantage. When there is a difficulty slider, players will put it the easiest for some activities(like farming resources) and the hardest for any possible rewards(questing). And any higher difficulty should not have higher rewards as well!

It also ruins the path of progression, as now we are feeling our characters become stronger. A difficultyslider would remove this. Making mudcrabs tougher than molag bal is not a good thing.

dude progression is already in ruins

NWah

Difficulty slider is necessary. ESO is laughably easy nowadays.

Sarannah

NWah wrote: »

Difficulty slider is necessary. ESO is laughably easy nowadays.

This only seems so, because we know how the game works. Doing the companion quests, I have seen many many players struggle with the mobs. Have even seen players waiting at the boss monsters, so they can get help.

NWah

Sarannah wrote: »

NWah wrote: »

Difficulty slider is necessary. ESO is laughably easy nowadays.

This only seems so, because we know how the game works. Doing the companion quests, I have seen many many players struggle with the mobs. Have even seen players waiting at the boss monsters, so they can get help.

Sounds like an excellent reason for an optional difficulty increase.

MirandaSharp

Sarannah wrote: »

Because the current way, the difficulty is the same for everyone, noone is at an advantage. When there is a difficulty slider, players will put it the easiest for some activities(like farming resources) and the hardest for any possible rewards(questing). And any higher difficulty should not have higher rewards as well!

It also ruins the path of progression, as now we are feeling our characters become stronger. A difficultyslider would remove this. Making mudcrabs tougher than molag bal is not a good thing.

People were suggesting nerfing their character to make fights harder, not easier. What do you care if someone lowers their stats before they go into a fight so they can enjoy it instead of one-shotting everything? There are no rewards other than actually being able to enjoy questing again.

BlueRaven

Ok, this thread is all over the place:

Proposal: A slider that changes difficulty.

Response: White non- set gear exists.

Proposal: Better loot drops under a harder difficulty slider.

Response: And here is the addon that changes the difficulty to hard whenever the player loots or turns in a quest.

-or-

And here is the friend or bot that follows the player around set to hard, as the player does everything on easy.

Proposal: Dedicated vet difficulty server.

Response: And the sweet spot for difficulty is set to how high a dd? 50k dps? 90? 110? Because that is a broad range.

Also before you respond, please understand what a budget is.

https://www.wordnik.com/words/budget

And please explain how your proposal is budget neutral or what other features can be cut or reduced.

Elsonso

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

Proposal: A slider that changes difficulty.

This may be relatively easy to implement, as they already have a mechanism that scales the player to the environment. They would need to do additional work to have that tuned per character, rather than for everyone, allow for a negative adjustment to the character, and of course, test it and maintain it for life.

While people would call this a "difficulty slider" it would simply be a "nerf slider" because it would work by making the character weaker, not the environment stronger. Unless ZOS does extra credit, the rewards will be the same no matter where the nerf slider is set.

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

Proposal: Dedicated vet difficulty server.

Why would ZOS do this? Fun to talk about, but it seems pointless. Ain't gonna happen.

Hymzir

Difficulty slider is a unicorn of game design. Before you have one, you are certain it's gonna be the bestest thing, but once you do get one, you realize it's just a horse with horn glued on it's forehead. It's an illusion and doesn't actually change anything. Not in a meaningful manner anyway.

All it would do, is nerf the damage you deal, and increase the damage you receive. The nerfed damage would do nothing but make fights drag out longer, and most people hate bullet sponge style of game design. Increasing damage you take would make you pay a bit more attention to what was happening, and maybe force you to use more potions, but it wouldn't fundamentally change the way the fight was going. If you knew how to dodge or block enemy attacks, you'd still know how to dodge and block enemy attacks, you'd just be doing it more often and thus dragging the fight out even longer.

They couldn't add different mechanics or make the mobs behave differently, since you would be sharing the game space with players who have are not playing on hard mode. There is nothing quite as depressing, as challenging yourself with a handicap to see if you can kill some boss under sub-optimal conditions, slowly chipping at the boss for several minutes with nail biting combat, just to then have some rando show up and nuke the boss dead in 5 secs flat, collect the same loot as you and then be on their merry way, leaving you standing there in the muck looking like a schmuck.

Adding some sort of increased reward for increased risk mechanics,would lead to even more difficulties with adjudicating shared game space with characters set to different difficulty levels. I have no doubt that people would find out ways to cheese and exploit it. It would also just make the hard difficulty the new normal and lead to a lot of people quitting the game, when the tediousness versus the rewards became too crappy to bother with. At the same time, not adding increased reward for the extra risk and work involved, would lead to people complaining about it on the forum, It really is a damned if you do, damned if you don't kinda proposition.

Regardless of all that, I have nothing, in principle, against ESO having one. I'm sure it would make some amount of players happy, but would still prefer that devs use their time on more pressing issues. Like increasing stability, performance and balance of already existing mechanics. Besides, adding it would just complicate the hell out things and add even more things to juggle when balancing the game.

At the end of the day, self nerfing does the same thing and doesn't require additional features to be coded. A difficulty slider would make things easier for those who wanted to use it - i.e. you could use the same gear and ability set up and could alter it on the fly, but I doubt enough people would bother with it, unless it also increased the rewards, for adding such feature to make financial sense. Adding one to a multiplayer environment with already several fiddly mechanics, is a can of worms I see ZOS to be in no hurry to open.

DukeCybran

Those who crave more difficulty without scaling rewards are free to strip their gear off.

Why bother to ruin every casual player's experience?

AlexanderDeLarge

Wait wait wait I'm confused... Is overworld totally fine or is it so bad that everyone will use the toggle and leave the normal overland dead? Because it can't be both.

MirandaSharp

DukeCybran wrote: »

Those who crave more difficulty without scaling rewards are free to strip their gear off.

Why bother to ruin every casual player's experience?

How does that help? I'm still the same level, have the same skills etc...
I'll nuke them all with an ultimate, including the boss.

Even if I unslot all skills it will just take me 2-3 hits(bare knuckle) to kill the big bad boss in any over land quest..
Once you know the game it's just not fun to do overland questing anymore. The Quests are great! Very well written and very enjoyable at low levels. Why not let higher level players and characters enjoy the new content?

AlexanderDeLarge

You know I actually took that awful advice, unequipped all my gear and did an entire quest chain which included a delve without any of my gear on... And it didn't make a damn bit of difference. I still burst DPSed the boss that was built up to be super intimidating before I could even notice a difference in difficulty. Not only would you have to unequip all your gear, you'd have to unlearn your weaving and slow down your rotation by 90% and basically pretend you're a new player that hasn't ever touched a video game before.

Might as well suggest telling people to go to the bathroom and gamble on whether or not they come back in time for their HP to hit single digits to kill the boss in a second or two.

XomRhoK

ZOS need just make 2 or 4 sliders (only for Overland content):
- normal -> +50% -> +100% -> +200% -> +400% damage done by monsters to player
- normal -> -50% -> -100% -> -200% -> -400% damage done by player to monsters
And, maybe, additionally (if it doesn't take long for the developers to mark all quest bosses as a separate subclass):
- normal -> +50% -> +100% -> +200% -> +400% damage done by quest bosses to player
- normal -> -100% -> -200% -> -400% -> -800% damage done by player to quest bosses
Because quest bosses have too low HP and need separate slider, it will also helps those players who don't want regular monsters to be stronger, but only Quest bosses.

No additional rewards or exp, because it will lead to exploits, feeling forced to do smth and frustration.
New players or those who enjoy game as it is now don't lose anything, they will just keep playing as it is. But players who want more challenge in questing will be able to adjust difficulty according to their skill and role (Tank/Healer/DD).

In terms of application it will be just 2-4 constant debuffs on character. Buff/Debuff system is already in game and will cost nothing to implement.

martinhpb16_ESO

Nestor wrote: »

LOL

Everytime I suggest that players self nerf with gear or rotation choices the masses rise up against me. The hew and cry of how they made their character super strong, so ZOS needs to make their game strong is deafening.

Now, another game is providing a slider to just what i have been suggesting for 20 years, in all kinds of RPGs, choosing to Nerf your own character to give you the game experience you want. And people are happy.

You can nerf your own character already.

And every time someone asks for this someone has to come in and derail.

Nerfing toons is not the same as having a difficulty slider.

martinhpb16_ESO

Sarannah wrote: »

NWah wrote: »

Difficulty slider is necessary. ESO is laughably easy nowadays.

This only seems so, because we know how the game works. Doing the companion quests, I have seen many many players struggle with the mobs. Have even seen players waiting at the boss monsters, so they can get help.

Many many players dont struggle.

Many many players want a difficulty slider

Difficulty slider means many many many players set the game at a level that is fun for them

martinhpb16_ESO

DukeCybran wrote: »

Those who crave more difficulty without scaling rewards are free to strip their gear off.

Why bother to ruin every casual player's experience?

Difficulty slider = keep it the same or change it to suit the player

No change to the casual players experience

Why bother to ruin every player who wants it harder experience?

MirandaSharp

martinhpb16_ESO wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

NWah wrote: »

Difficulty slider is necessary. ESO is laughably easy nowadays.

This only seems so, because we know how the game works. Doing the companion quests, I have seen many many players struggle with the mobs. Have even seen players waiting at the boss monsters, so they can get help.

Many many players dont struggle.

Many many players want a difficulty slider

Difficulty slider means many many many players set the game at a level that is fun for them

If It can only be more difficult and there are no rewards for it being so. Why do you care?

alanmatillab16_ESO

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

LOL

Everytime I suggest that players self nerf with gear or rotation choices the masses rise up against me. The hew and cry of how they made their character super strong, so ZOS needs to make their game strong is deafening.

Now, another game is providing a slider to just what i have been suggesting for 20 years, in all kinds of RPGs, choosing to Nerf your own character to give you the game experience you want. And people are happy.

You can nerf your own character already.

Yeah, I remember those arguments on the old Skyrim forums.
"It's too easy, everything is so weak against my Perfectly Leveraged Crafting Exploits!"
"Maybe don't do the crafting cycle to make yourself uber strong?"
"HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST I SELF NERF!!1!1!1one!"



..and honestly, I don't see a difficulty slider like that making much difference for the endgame pros. They're used to all sorts of mechanics & things from hardmode dungeons and trials. The overland mobs don't do all those mechanics, nerfing your damage & buffing the monsters will just make the fights longer, not harder. They'll still be the same small groups doing the same overland attacks, it'll just take more hits to put them down.

(Just like all the other games that have done similar things. If you find it easy to dodge the enemy's attacks now, you'll still find it easy afterwards. You'll just have to dodge them a few more times, while you beat on the damage sponge.)

Except deliberately using white gear, for example, is counter to the whole point. The idea is to advance your character by skills and gear to overcome the challenges. That said i've already tried the "white item only" levelling and there wasn't much difference with the exception of one fight: The Werewolf in the Daggerfall questline.

Cadbury

Maybe something like a world tier system, like the one used in The Division 1&2 could work. Your CP level relegates what "tier" you're in.

alberichtano

Elsonso wrote: »

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

I really think there are only 2 ways to do this:

1). Veteran overland instances. Splits player base, but guarantees that everyone involved is truly taking on difficult content. Runs the risk of difficult areas being dead, like old "Veteran Rank" overland zones were empty or old Craglorn overland was always empty.
2). Difficulty slider, but no change at all in XP, gold, or loot. No incentive to cheese it or exploit it. It would simply be about increased challenge. But not sure how much people want increased challenge. Seems like they mostly want gold, XP, and phat loot.

I would never expect ZOS to do the first one. They spent a lot of time merging the player base, and they brag about it, so I don't expect they will ever reverse that.

The problem with "same loot, same XP" is that it removes game play incentive to move that slider to "HARD". Who wants to spend 2x the time, and die while doing it, for the same reward? I guarantee you people would be lined up in here complaining about how ZOS "missed the mark" over something like that.

The core issue I see with a "difficulty slider" in this game is that the bulk of the players that know about it will put it on EASY, which is how the game is now, and never touch it again. My impression is that the players who need this are far too invested in "DPS numbers" to watch their character outgoing damage be nerfed by this slider. Of course, that changes as soon as some "hard mode exploit" is found, but that is a different issue.

"Who wants to spend 2x the time, and die while doing it, for the same reward?"

Well, apparently a lot of people. I am knew to the forums and I have already read quite a few threads about this. Mind you, I am not one of them, just saying that there are a lot of people who say that they don't care about the rewards, they just want it to be harder.

Personally I doubt they would chose the harder version for the same rewards, but then again I may be wrong.

alberichtano

Sarannah wrote: »

Because the current way, the difficulty is the same for everyone, noone is at an advantage. When there is a difficulty slider, players will put it the easiest for some activities(like farming resources) and the hardest for any possible rewards(questing). And any higher difficulty should not have higher rewards as well!

It also ruins the path of progression, as now we are feeling our characters become stronger. A difficultyslider would remove this. Making mudcrabs tougher than molag bal is not a good thing.

Indeed. That was one of the things that murdered my immersion in LOTRO, actually. When I got to Rohan and realised that I was fighing crows, you know, the birds, that were more powerful than trolls back in the shire - by far.

Not only did it make overland a drag (an extended fight for every bird I met), it was also just plain silly. :-/

drunkendx

And another "overland to easy me bored" thread...

I've seen what happens when devs cater to "t3h l33t" playerbase, it's reason I don't play PoE anymore.

There are enough MMO's which cater to players who "want challenge", go play them and leave ESO to us casuals who like fooling around with builds.

coop500

I'd be fine with this IF the rewards are the same.

If rewards, even XP or gold, is buffed, then nope, would cause too many exploits and issues and will most definitely hurt the casual playerbase as ZOS tries to 'fix' it.

Elsonso

alberichtano wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

The problem with "same loot, same XP" is that it removes game play incentive to move that slider to "HARD". Who wants to spend 2x the time, and die while doing it, for the same reward? I guarantee you people would be lined up in here complaining about how ZOS "missed the mark" over something like that.

"Who wants to spend 2x the time, and die while doing it, for the same reward?"

Well, apparently a lot of people. I am knew to the forums and I have already read quite a few threads about this. Mind you, I am not one of them, just saying that there are a lot of people who say that they don't care about the rewards, they just want it to be harder.

Of course, I speak in general terms, not absolutes. In my experience, someone is always crazy enough to try something that "no one would ever do".

The point is that despite the fact that some people here in the forum would be fine with 2x the time but the same reward, I expect that the prevailing wind would end up being hate, bad reviews, and social media jokes, all centered around another blunder by ZOS. The people screaming "but, this is what I wanted" would be inaudible against that.

Ergele

every elder scrolls game had companions so we received companions.

every elder scroll game has difficulty slider, now give us the slider.

BlueRaven

I would just do the quests on easy and just change it to the harder difficulty before turning them in. Free upgrade!

alanmatillab16_ESO

BlueRaven wrote: »

I would just do the quests on easy and just change it to the harder difficulty before turning them in. Free upgrade!

who said you would get extra xp or rewards? it would not be difficult to have the system lock the difficulty of the quest when you take the quest either.

coop500

BlueRaven wrote: »

I would just do the quests on easy and just change it to the harder difficulty before turning them in. Free upgrade!

I rest my case.

People are already wanting to exploit a feature that doesn't even exist yet.

Soulshine

sidebyside wrote: »

I am a LOTRO founder and remember how the game evolved until I left it in 2014 for this one.

It used to be a really difficult game until they repeatedly raised the level to a point that it was useless to play early content.
I won't even mention WB various offences against their most loyal players who started to abandon game en masse.

So I suspect that whatever they do to make the basic content a bit more of a challenge will be greeted with positive reviews from those who still play it.

I am as well and still play there, since sadly there are no Loremasters, Wardens, or Cappys here

The issue with the mobs in overland going gray on you once you outlevel them was always annoying, even before they introduced class changes. Mounted combat was fantastically fun for soloing warbands in Rohan for about 5 min until people griped about difficulty and they got nerfed. They introduced the ridiculously massive grind for empowerment scrolls on legendaries yet have not given us a truly decent raid since level 105.

Most of us with chars on legendary server knew they would introduce this slider feature since they have been saying for 2yrs they would give different types of server environments a try "to see how the players like it." Have been on Bullroarer and don't find it all that impressive. It will probably be just another niche for like the 50 of us or so who choose to check it out once it's live, but I doubt it will be anything to write home about.

The days of incredible our raids (which by the way ESO never came even remotely close to producing here) have indeed gone down in the West. Making a few mobs wack you harder around the landscape won't change that hurt for most of us.

BlueRaven

coop500 wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

I would just do the quests on easy and just change it to the harder difficulty before turning them in. Free upgrade!

I rest my case.

People are already wanting to exploit a feature that doesn't even exist yet.

I should have added a sarcasm tag at the end of my comment.

No one will want to do the harder version except as a maybe one off “just wanted to see” experiment. It’s a large investment (on ZOS’s part) for a small payoff.

For the the time and investment in implementing this, it would probably be wiser to add another solo arena experience. (And to be honest, I wonder how many people actually do those arenas anyway.)