This needs to be adressed

NoireJin the Witchking

So I'm a few hours into Blackwood, and i just fought my first story boss, the 4 armed dude. It lasted 10 seconds. Literally. He ran to my companion, i swung my sword and he was dead. I was level 6, with 3 pieces of gear on. Like seriously, it actually really put me off bc it feels like i have no stake in it. I didn't even see a quarter of the mechanics the boss had before he died. It was anticlimactic and despite the story actually being good, *** like this ruins the entire atmosphere. Man its sad and I'm actually disappointed.

ThoughtRaven

People always argue that overland can't be made harder because it needs to remain doable by n00bs. There is some truth to that, but ESO has taken that philosophy to extremes.

Ever turn on your incoming damage numbers and just let overland mobs smack you for a bit? I am in light armor. I've seen numbers like 328, 126, even 47. I have 27k hp.

There's keeping overland doable, and there's making it so that mobs might as well just not fight back.

Supertonicbaker

Isn’t this game supposed to be a visual novel? Have I been playing wrong this whole time?

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Overland and story content is a joke in terms of difficulty. Probably why my main quester is still somewhere in clockwork city. And they wonder why people get floored in veteran content. The game does nothing to prepare people. It really is a sad joke at this point.

Overland is story mode, if you want difficult encounters, you have 3 options. PVP, Vet HM PVE, virtually any other game.

jircris11

Funny story, overland had harder bosses, but they got nerfed. Can you guess why? Because Ppl who don't want to play half strategically complained. In the end you can't make everyone happy, and frankly gamers are becoming worse with the complaints. Now you actually NORMALLY do more dmg as a low lvl due to how scaling works.

DaiKahn

Supertonicbaker wrote: »

Isn’t this game supposed to be a visual novel? Have I been playing wrong this whole time?

I, uh... well you're not wrong

StevieKingslayer

Game needs to be harder. Thats why people leave, it's boring and buggy as it is.

InaMoonlight

Don't worry, they get harder as you level - scaling is in your realm right now (they dont want you to have a bad exp getting oneshot), now, imo. endgame high cp, they can actually be the edge one needs to solo something one couldnt otherwise, with a little effort on both player and zos side ofc

shkkf

That the new player complains on how the scaling system of ESO works is normal for those not used to it.

Where in other games, the enemies scale up (increased HP and what not), in ESO you do not have this. It is the player who starts with the pre-lvl 50 bonus boosts, that go down untill you are at lvl 50.

Only then do the monsters do the damage as intended. And they can hit pretty damned hard if not prepared for it. ... Now story monsters will only be ever at a high of 250 k. Dungeon, Public dungeon and raids will hold the tougher challanges then of course.

Delves are on par with storyline monsters, outside of bosses.


But to say "owh, I one shotted a monsters." due to a mechanic that gives players near 200% of their baseline damage and extra buffs ontop of new gear is a slightly unfair assessment.

StevieKingslayer

Yeah but this a problem tho. He was level 6 with 3 pieces of gear on, he should have at least had to hit it 5 times.
There is make it easier for the newer people coming in to get them accustomed, and then there is spoon feeding it to the point you can take your hands off the keyboard and your pets can do all the work. Its ridiculous.

Im all for newer players having it easier than veterans, because of course you dont want to scare them off. But you can't just let them one hit and quit and thats a problem. People are coming over from other games, feeling like god's at lower levels, they get into one veteran and get absolute smacked and either quit or reroll low level characters forever. It's sad.

There is NO in between. I don't understand how people don't see others leaving because of this fact. I know 21 people personally who have left for other games since Blackwood launched simply because of how boring the game is for them because nothing is a middle ground challenge. It's all or nothing.

GreenHere

PurpleScroll wrote: »

StevieKingslayer wrote: »

PurpleScroll wrote: »

StevieKingslayer wrote: »

Game needs to be harder. Thats why people leave

[Quoted post was removed]

[Quoted post was removed]

[Quoted post was removed]

That doesn't mean much...

Players DO leave due to questionable decisions and efforts by ZOS. Any player that's stuck around long enough to lose heaps of friends over time (usually around the time Updates / Balance Changes come out ) knows this from firsthand experience. People leave the game. And often it's because of bugs, generally too-easy difficulty not being to their liking, and other related things (like swinging balance change fatigue, or dissatisfaction with the player base generally wanting the whole game to be easy mode, etc).

Just because ZOS (or whoever) can pour out enough marketing money to vacuum in more players than they're losing doesn't mean that players don't get exasperated and leave. @StevieKingslayer isn't saying that the business model isn't working (which is what that article you linked is mainly focused on), they're saying that dissatisfying experiences generally cause players to lose interest in games -- which is a totally fair assertion.

Furthermore, it's super likely that the very article you linked is just another branch of ESO advertising. Kind of ironic that you would cite it as proof against players already in the game are unhappy/leaving, considering the whole idea of marketing is to lure in new people...

StevieKingslayer

@GreenHere 100% what I am getting at yes.

ESO can attract in as many people as it wants (ironically the linked article was written at the height of the pandemic when people couldn't leave their homes all around the world and had nothing else to do). However the issue is not attraction to the game, the issue is retention of the player base - Something that has simply always been a on going issue for the company and devs unfortunately. I love this game. But it needs more, otherwise more people start leaving again, and then we have to wait for another pandemic to force them all back in for the nostalgia of 'when the game first launched'. That or we have to wait for our children to start playing it.

Hallothiel

This has been discussed repeatedly over the years with many many threads about the ‘difficulty’ of overland/stories.

Is overland too easy? For my CP1600 that I’ve played for over 5 years and has excellent gear, yes, yes it is. But it doesn’t bother me, as I enjoy the story & questing & prefer not to have easy travel across the open world not constantly disrupted by having to fight hard mobs.

But I do think that they could find a way to put the boss of the questline into a separate instance and give a normal or vet mode choice. Might help ameliorate some of the complaints.

rpa

Preteen lowbies have a very significant training wheels boost which gets weaker as one levels. Overland at CP0 lv ~40ish is not trivial for unexperienced player in whatever dropped gear. And overland questing content needs to be accessible for everyone, including and in particular to the rank casual majority.

Sotha_Sil

*Staying on topic* I do agree that mini-boss in the Leyawiin castle needs a buff.

StevieKingslayer

Hallothiel wrote: »

This has been discussed repeatedly over the years with many many threads about the ‘difficulty’ of overland/stories.

Is overland too easy? For my CP1600 that I’ve played for over 5 years and has excellent gear, yes, yes it is. But it doesn’t bother me, as I enjoy the story & questing & prefer not to have easy travel across the open world not constantly disrupted by having to fight hard mobs.

But I do think that they could find a way to put the boss of the questline into a separate instance and give a normal or vet mode choice. Might help ameliorate some of the complaints.

The vet mode/Normal Mode was brought up as a solution for story bosses and honestly I would be content if they even just did that. They put all this time and effort into making the fights and the mechanics etc, and then it's dead in two seconds and no one saw it - Seems like a waste of their programming budget really. I accidently overburned the Lady Belain fight and missed half the cool mechanics I wasnt even trying to burn her down I was just doing my basic rotation and my damage numbers are laughable at best for my cp level. There are bosses in this game in vet HM's I didnt even KNOW had proper mechanics until I was solo carrying really low people through the dungeon. It shouldnt take that just to see a mechanic. What ZOS designs is art, and its beautiful and I wish we got to see it fully. That's all I want. A challenge, and a chance to see their art. So does OP.

Alurria

Why do you care about quest story bosses? They are one and done. You can't go back and farm them and I call BS on the original OP as you never fight the giant guy just his minion. This has been discussed to death, if Zos had any data on people leaving in droves because overland is to easy it would be changed and in the last 5 years it hasn't. So go do some vet content for a challenge these threads are old and tiresome.

Naftal

Still waiting for that veteran overland mode with seperate progression.

StevieKingslayer

Alurria wrote: »

Why do you care about quest story bosses? They are one and done. You can't go back and farm them and I call BS on the original OP as you never fight the giant guy just his minion. This has been discussed to death, if Zos had any data on people leaving in droves because overland is to easy it would be changed and in the last 5 years it hasn't. So go do some vet content for a challenge these threads are old and tiresome.

Alucardo

Remember old Craglorn and IC? The days where you'd try to quietly loot a chest, only to turn around and find 3 mobs staring at you, and at the point, you knew you were screwed. Good times.

ZOS_ConnorG

Greetings all,

After review we have had to edit or remove several posts for rule violations, mostly Baiting. Ensure when engaging in a discussion that you keep said discussion civil, constructive, and within the rules. If you see a post that is baiting in nature do not engage it with further hostility and instead report it for the moderators to review.

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zelaminator

6Kyojin6 wrote: »

story boss. He ran to my companion, i swung my sword and he was dead.

Someone has to say it.. I call BS.. You did not 1hit a story boss, even though they are easy

GreenHere

Alurria wrote: »

Why do you care about quest story bosses? They are one and done. You can't go back and farm them and I call BS on the original OP as you never fight the giant guy just his minion. This has been discussed to death, if Zos had any data on people leaving in droves because overland is to easy it would be changed and in the last 5 years it hasn't. So go do some vet content for a challenge these threads are old and tiresome.

[snip]

Putting aside any specifics about individual bosses or storylines, I feel like it's a very valid piece of feedback for players to continually bring up how anticlimactically wimpy enemies who are framed as formidable big bads end up actually being. It's a pretty big letdown for a lot of us that so many otherwise cool encounters are trivialized just because the devs can't/won't think up more creative solutions to make climax fights more interesting. Further made more frustrating by the fact that helpful suggestions and constructive criticisms almost always go utterly ignored by the studio.

The "best" we get to extend boss fights is usually just periodic Immunity phases, which are about as pleasant as hemorrhoids, IMO.

It's not like we're asking for quest bosses to be turned into vetHM Trial bosses that require weeks of planning and at least 9 allies to take down here, ya know. We just want something that feels more appropriate to how the story we just spent our time enjoying ought to be leading up to, know what I mean? Most of the time you get to the end of a quest line and it feels like you obliterated the stand-in decoy / body double for the entity that's supposedly been terrorizing the town or whatever. It doesn't feel good for most even mildly competent players -- let alone stronger players who simply evaporate such bosses almost by accident.

And before anyone swoops in with "BUT THE NEW/CASUAL PLAYERS!!" there are solutions that could accommodate everyone better, if only a little creativity and effort were applied. Off the top of my head: scaling damage reduction based on the player attacking a boss (like their damage output or something), scaling health pool based on the number of players fighting a boss (this one should be obvious, but isn't in the game afaik), damage-intake-limiting boss abilities (NOT IMMUNITY PHASES) similar to the Dragonknight Ultimate or something...

Maybe none of those are prefect, but for taking 24 seconds to think them up I think they're a decent start. Any one of those implementations would likely be an improvement over what we have now for the vast majority of underwhelming boss encounters.

Point is, these aren't unsolvable problems. They don't even seem particularly difficult, really. If ZOS would either just do better, or come out every now and then and have a frank discussion about how things can/can't be done with the player base now and then, a lot of these concerns wouldn't even be a big deal. But it is what it is, and we as players have feelings and feedback about it. Which is sort of why most of us are even here on the forums in the first place...

[Edited to remove Baiting]

stybbe17b16_ESO

What grinds my gear are the cube puzzles in the story quest that are nothing more than a time sink. You cant do anything wrong and can't fail them, just turn the cubes one way until the npc shout "Wow you made it!". I feel like I'm playing some toddler game when mechanics like this are introduced.

xSurge

Hallothiel wrote: »

This has been discussed repeatedly over the years with many many threads about the ‘difficulty’ of overland/stories.

Is overland too easy? For my CP1600 that I’ve played for over 5 years and has excellent gear, yes, yes it is. But it doesn’t bother me, as I enjoy the story & questing & prefer not to have easy travel across the open world not constantly disrupted by having to fight hard mobs.

But I do think that they could find a way to put the boss of the questline into a separate instance and give a normal or vet mode choice. Might help ameliorate some of the complaints.

I think instancing bosses would be a good idea. Mostly because there's nothing worse than when you're trying to take your time to enjoy the opening fight dialouge and a CP 1000 player comes through and annihilates em mid sentence.

Lucozade85

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

People always argue that overland can't be made harder because it needs to remain doable by n00bs. There is some truth to that, but ESO has taken that philosophy to extremes.

Ever turn on your incoming damage numbers and just let overland mobs smack you for a bit? I am in light armor. I've seen numbers like 328, 126, even 47. I have 27k hp.

There's keeping overland doable, and there's making it so that mobs might as well just not fight back.

IMO overland should get more difficult in certain areas. That way if you're just starting out and you run into a more difficult area, you turn around and come back to fight another day when you're strong enough.

The most difficult area(s) should be like every enemy is similar to a world boss. You'll need a team to get through!

StevieKingslayer

xSurge wrote: »

Hallothiel wrote: »

This has been discussed repeatedly over the years with many many threads about the ‘difficulty’ of overland/stories.

Is overland too easy? For my CP1600 that I’ve played for over 5 years and has excellent gear, yes, yes it is. But it doesn’t bother me, as I enjoy the story & questing & prefer not to have easy travel across the open world not constantly disrupted by having to fight hard mobs.

But I do think that they could find a way to put the boss of the questline into a separate instance and give a normal or vet mode choice. Might help ameliorate some of the complaints.

I think instancing bosses would be a good idea. Mostly because there's nothing worse than when you're trying to take your time to enjoy the opening fight dialouge and a CP 1000 player comes through and annihilates em mid sentence.

100% agree. I dont often do dailies and such, but i take account of whos around and attempt to limit my damage output so it feels like an actual fight. I have been known to just heavy attack the more difficult bosses when lower players show up so they actually feel like they had some part in it and got to see it, because I feel like a bit of an ass if i just nuke something. I know it bothers me when I've just run all this way to a harrowstorm and I cant even enjoy the beauty of it because there 50+ people there murdering the heck out of it (and thats not even dmg numbers, thats just the sheer amount of people all doing 5k dmg or the likes) Alot of the bosses have really cool dialogue you never hear. Some of my favourite in game quotes are from random overland bosses, or story bosses and you -never- get to experience that again unless you reroll a toon.

zelaminator

Lucozade85 wrote: »

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

People always argue that overland can't be made harder because it needs to remain doable by n00bs. There is some truth to that, but ESO has taken that philosophy to extremes.

Ever turn on your incoming damage numbers and just let overland mobs smack you for a bit? I am in light armor. I've seen numbers like 328, 126, even 47. I have 27k hp.

There's keeping overland doable, and there's making it so that mobs might as well just not fight back.

IMO overland should get more difficult in certain areas. That way if you're just starting out and you run into a more difficult area, you turn around and come back to fight another day when you're strong enough.

The most difficult area(s) should be like every enemy is similar to a world boss. You'll need a team to get through!

That's how it was once, and people hated it.. So it got changed

StevieKingslayer

zelaminator wrote: »

Lucozade85 wrote: »

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

People always argue that overland can't be made harder because it needs to remain doable by n00bs. There is some truth to that, but ESO has taken that philosophy to extremes.

Ever turn on your incoming damage numbers and just let overland mobs smack you for a bit? I am in light armor. I've seen numbers like 328, 126, even 47. I have 27k hp.

There's keeping overland doable, and there's making it so that mobs might as well just not fight back.

IMO overland should get more difficult in certain areas. That way if you're just starting out and you run into a more difficult area, you turn around and come back to fight another day when you're strong enough.

The most difficult area(s) should be like every enemy is similar to a world boss. You'll need a team to get through!

That's how it was once, and people hated it.. So it got changed

Correct. However I think it went toooooo far (and again, just me personally, free to disagree). Then again, it is a balancing act. The idea of it was great. I remember struggling through and beating an overland boss was an absolute nightmare but you eventually did it. Originally, it was too hard for the majority of the playerbase, now the shift has gone the other way. Thats why the vet/normal option would work better imo. Like in the dungeons, a flag to raise, a branch to burn - to make it harder.

wnights

I wish they've implemented some sort of world difficulty switch system similar to Division 2 or Genshin impact (basically, as you level you can increase the overland content difficulty with an increased chance of getting higher rewards).

It might be difficult to implement with Tamriel Unlimited though, where the idea is that everyone can play together regardless of their level

NoireJin the Witchking

Al

Alurria wrote: »

Why do you care about quest story bosses? They are one and done. You can't go back and farm them and I call BS on the original OP as you never fight the giant guy just his minion. This has been discussed to death, if Zos had any data on people leaving in droves because overland is to easy it would be changed and in the last 5 years it hasn't. So go do some vet content for a challenge these threads are old and tiresome.

[snip] What are you even talking about you don't fight the big guy? I'm not talking about Dagon, [snip] i've only been a few hours into blackwood. And because a boss is one and done it's meant to be dog [snip]? I guess Dark souls must've been [snip] then and i guess thats why ffxiv is popping off and despite the devs animating multiple moves i only got to see one? [snip] People have been wanting a better overland for years, so clearly it should be in their interest.

[Edited to remove Baiting]