Overland Content Feedback Thread

ZOS_Kevin

Hi All. We have seen the multitude of threads related to Overland Content. The increase in weekly threads around this issue has caused some users to have a negative experience on the forum overall, leading to the threads being closed. However, we also recognize there are players who would like to discuss this topic. So, we have made a thread for players who would like to discuss the topic of Overland Content.

With the creation of this thread, please note that future threads created to address overland content will be closed and redirected to this one.

Some ground rules:

• If you do not want to engage in this conversation, please ignore this thread.
• For those engaging in this thread, please keep the conversation civil. Keep the forum rules top of mind here.
• Keep the feedback constructive. The feedback here could help us in the future as we continue conversations around this topic.

Thanks for the continued feedback here.

Bodycounter

Quintessence: the overland content is generally too easy and not challenging enough. Enemies should not be pure damage sponges and need some interesting mechanics to play around. So just doubling their health and/or damage would be very boring and not satisfying.

I personally love questing in this game especially with a friend of mine. The main problem is that every enemy instantly dies when im touching it and even enemies that are meant to be a real threat in the story will die within seconds. I just want the option to play the content in „veteran difficulty“ to be much more immersed in the story. I don’t need any extra loot or something.

The current state completely sucks away the joy of questing especially for my friend (she’s still new) who just sees everything die or me completely being afk.

Jim_Pipp

I'd like a personal difficulty slider.

Sometimes it's nice to duo a zone with less experienced players, but combat becomes so incredibly easy it stops being fun for us both. Let me turn up my difficulty so I take more damage and do less damage, but so I can still group with people who don't change their difficulty.

Khenarthi

My 2 cents, from another thread:

I'm not opposed to OPTIONAL harder overland as long as there are NO extra rewards. Then the people who want a challenge can have it, and people like me who enjoy the current easygoing difficulty won't feel pressured to join the hard mode for extra goodies. Win-Win.

casparian

Thanks for the dedicated thread, Kevin!

Let me go ahead and get a few things out of the way that tend to derail conversations about this topic.

No, unequipping our gear/CP isn't a solution.
If it were, we would simply do that and have fun. Lots of us have tried that, and it doesn't actually make delves and overland content any more challenging or engaging.

No, no one wants to force you to play a more challenging overland if you don't want to.

No, no one wants to lock the best rewards behind challenging overland content.
There are plenty of good ways to get gear/mats/etc. in this game, we don't need challenging overland for that. We want challenging overland because we want to play overland without getting bored. Personally I could care less if there are any extra rewards, I just want to be able to experience immersive (for me) combat in delves/overland.

Yes, for some players this is actually an important issue.
I get that some people are perfectly happy with overland as it is. That's great! No one wants to change that experience for you. But for some of us, it's really immersion-breaking to have such a large mismatch between quest content/dialogue ("This evil necromancer is a massive threat to continued life as we know it!! No one can stop him!!") and gameplay experience (dies in 4 seconds, did I even get to hear all his voice lines?). Other people would love to revisit quests or delves we last played four years ago one our mains, but there's no fun (for us) way to engage in that content since it's so undertuned.

_Zathras_

The relative ease of content in Elsweyr and Elder Scrolls Online as a whole has been a common complaint as the game's playerbase ages. Players have asked for alternate difficulty options for the open-world questing experience, to have a challenge outside of dungeons and trials. Lambert says that this probably won't be coming because Zenimax Online wants the entire storyline to be accessible.

"Balance is obviously a tricky thing. What is too easy for one player is impossible for another," he tells us. "We try to balance so that the average player can have a good experience, especially with the main story content. That's our critical path. If they want to challenge themselves, they can go and do Public Dungeons, or Trials with 12 of their friends. We do make that conscious choice with the crit path to make it playable for as many people as possible."

"As for the extra difficulty, that's something our playerbase has talked about for a long time. A lot of our original players forget that we had that with [Cadwell's Gold and Silver] way back when. The feedback that we got about that was they didn't like it. It wasn't fun. The extra difficulty wasn't what they wanted. They wanted to enjoy the story. It's a catch-22."

Source

Toxic_Hemlock

From the now locked thread, edited a bit for clarity.

To those wanting harder overland ask yourself this. Can you do overland even if it is to easy for you?

If your answer is yes, then good for you as you can complete the content albeit easily.

Remember though that some of us older and less fully abled cannot competently do trials, most (all?) DLC dungeons, arenas etc, even at the current difficulty.

So basically what you are saying to players like myself that you want to remove all the fun I have in game so as to make it more of a challenge for you to do. As I have said in the past I quit games I can no longer play.

Tell me why I would pay for ESO+ or even bother playing ESO anymore if this were to happen?

Aliniel

I've been thinking about this issue for a bit and the idea I posted in another thread seems like a really simple and viable option to me.
(Posting it here since it's the official feedback thread.)

Why do I think we need difficulty setting?

• The game feels too easy.
• You can simply pull a large number of mobs and nuke them down.
• Boss fights should be memorable. It's OK to die once or twice before you get it right. It should rewards a sense of accomplishment. Currently, most bosses die within few seconds. Did I save Glenumbra from a feared necromancer or a regular bandit?
• As the CPs keep getting higher, the scaling stops at 160 (?). This means we keep getting stronger, but the world stagnates. New content is released, but the enemies are as weak as they are in starting zones.

First, what does difficulty setting normally do in games?

• Increase/decrease damage taken.
• Increase/decrease damage done.
• Increase/decrease healing done.
• Increase/decrease resources.
• Increase/decrease cast speed.
• ...

(I'll refer to the highlighted items as properties.)

Some solutions
We're in an online game though and this cannot be easily applied without it affecting everyone. Some solutions on difficulty can be applied:

• Different shards/zones. Every shard/zone has different difficulty. All players inside the shard/zone share the same difficulty.
• Veteran mode. I noticed people usually demand higher rewards from this. I disagree. We should not create any pressure or fear of missing out on people who opt to play it on lower difficulty (or normal to be precise).
• Using an optional debuff controlled by each player individually.

Let's take a look at debuff
My proposition is using a debuff to control the difficulty of a single player.

• Every player can adjust his desired properties based on his wishes.
• As a result, he gets this debuff which modifies his damage taken/done, etc.
• It doesn't affect anyone who doesn't want it.
• It allows for people to co-exist in the same world and even play together.
• It allows people to progress (in RPG terms) while at the same time having higher difficulty. Meaning, you do get stronger by getting new gear, more CPs, etc. When you reach a point when the game feels too easy again, you increase the power of the debuff a bit more. A lot of people propose simply dropping your CPs, lowering gear, etc. But this would mean you ignore a portion of the game that makes a lot of sense.
• It can be automatically turned off in group instances so others don't suffer because you want something harder.
• It can be allowed in premade group instances so people can enjoy higher difficulty dungeons even in the older dungeons.
• No extra rewards, no higher drop chances. No one will feel he's missing out or feel pressure to increase the difficulty.

Solution Issues

• Players not using the debuff can just swing by and kill your mobs/boss instanly. But this can happen even when a debuffed player comes "to help". Solo instances are safe from this though.
• Performance impact? Seems to be minimal and easy to implement as "it's just another debuff".
• Doesn't address the "stupid AI" issue (mobs are just standing doing almost nothing, casting too slow, etc.). But those would require much more work.

[edit1]: Added cast speed property to the list.

Ratzkifal

The core of the problem, as I see it, is two-fold:

• the game's overworld does a poor job of preparing you for later challenges. At lvl50 160CP, most players still have no idea what they are doing
• once you have mastered the later challenges, going back to the overworld becomes mind-numbingly boring, yet new overworld content is released with every second update

I think there should be a mix of different difficulties to be found in every zone.
Back before One Tamriel quests were colour coded so you would know how hard they were (depending on your level).
Grey was trivial, white was easy, green was level appropriate, yellow was a bit more challenging than average, orange was dangerous and red was "impossible" (not actually impossible, players who knew what they were doing could still beat them).
I think these difficulties and their colour coding were very intuitive and I think there is no harm in bringing these back if difficulty across a zone becomes varied and it's not all the same difficulty level. If players without tons of CP and game knowledge want to take on the tougher quests then they can group up for them or get good (which helps them later on when they go into vet arenas and DLC dungeons for the first time).

That being said, aside from final bosses, I don't think story quests should be that hard. In terms of the old system, zone story quests should be green or yellow and the final boss of the story line should be orange max. Red quests should be entirely optional to the zone story.

I also want to add that the new patrolling bosses in the Deadlands are already a great step in the right direction. By making the overworld less predictable the game teaches new players to respect certain threats and gives veterans a reason to stay awake while questing. I think there is a lot of potential here.

jaws343

Any effort spent on difficulty for content that most players play once and then do no revisit is wasted effort. Time should be spent improving repeatable content, like the myriad PVP issues, or end game dungeons/trials. Not for content that players are just going to burn through anyways, at whatever difficulty is picked.

Overland content, for the most part, is meant to be story driven, not combat driven.

To add as well, there are no meaningful changes they could make that would satisfy the tiny group of players who even want a change. That tiny group is broken into smaller subsets who can't even agree on what it is they want:

Difficulty slider? Well what should that slider do, scale mob health, damage, resistances? Or should they have more mechanics?

Scaling Health and such? Well, how is beating on a damage sponge any more difficult? Oh, that mob lives for 2 extra seconds against your vet trial ready DPS. Good job, I guess.

Changing enemy mechanics? So you basically want them to remake the entire game, redoing all enemy mechanics to suit some intangible level of difficulty, for a tiny subset of players? Why would any company ever make a decision to do something like this? The cost alone would be insane, and for what, players to burn through the quests anyways and never return, or never even engage with it in the first place.

What about a debuff food? Well, you can already choose not to equip your best gear, or eat food, or whatever you want to depower your character. But no one wants to do that because it breaks their progression or something. Why would a debuff food be any different.

How about a separate instance for solo quests? Again, a tiny subset of players. For content that is done once and then never returned to. It works for dungeons and trials and arenas because those are repeatable areas.

And I'll repeat, dev time is better spent on fixing PVP issues and making better dungeons and trials. Time should be spent on content that actually offers repeatable engagement.

I'll also add, there is a reason that new dungeons get nerfs after a few patches. The level of player engagement in the vet versions gets low enough that Zos has to make it easier in order to encourage participation. That alone is telling enough.

McTaterskins

Sort of unrelated but - I'd like to see a story mode in Dungeons.

I'm not even a huge PvE'er, but some of the stories, especially DLC ones, are pretty decent and I wouldn't mind having a sort of MA/VH experience in dungeons as well. Perhaps then gives a reason to have the companions?

casparian

Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »

So basically what you are saying to players like myself that you want to remove all the fun I have in game so as to make it more of a challenge for you to do.

No? By far the most common proposal for challenging overland is for a challenging overland option. No one wants to take away the existing easy mode.

Ratzkifal

jaws343 wrote: »

Any effort spent on difficulty for content that most players play once and then do no revisit is wasted effort. Time should be spent improving repeatable content, like the myriad PVP issues, or end game dungeons/trials. Not for content that players are just going to burn through anyways, at whatever difficulty is picked.

Overland content, for the most part, is meant to be story driven, not combat driven.

To add as well, there are no meaningful changes they could make that would satisfy the tiny group of players who even want a change. That tiny group is broken into smaller subsets who can't even agree on what it is they want:

Difficulty slider? Well what should that slider do, scale mob health, damage, resistances? Or should they have more mechanics?

Scaling Health and such? Well, how is beating on a damage sponge any more difficult? Oh, that mob lives for 2 extra seconds against your vet trial ready DPS. Good job, I guess.

Changing enemy mechanics? So you basically want them to remake the entire game, redoing all enemy mechanics to suit some intangible level of difficulty, for a tiny subset of players? Why would any company ever make a decision to do something like this? The cost alone would be insane, and for what, players to burn through the quests anyways and never return, or never even engage with it in the first place.

What about a debuff food? Well, you can already choose not to equip your best gear, or eat food, or whatever you want to depower your character. But no one wants to do that because it breaks their progression or something. Why would a debuff food be any different.

How about a separate instance for solo quests? Again, a tiny subset of players. For content that is done once and then never returned to. It works for dungeons and trials and arenas because those are repeatable areas.

And I'll repeat, dev time is better spent on fixing PVP issues and making better dungeons and trials. Time should be spent on content that actually offers repeatable engagement.

I'll also add, there is a reason that new dungeons get nerfs after a few patches. The level of player engagement in the vet versions gets low enough that Zos has to make it easier in order to encourage participation. That alone is telling enough.

I disagree.
You may call it a "tiny group", but that does not make it one. This group may indeed be fractured but some of these ideas are clearly more feasible than others and it's not like the different subgroups would not all enjoy it if any of their suggestions was made into reality as they all agree on overworld being mind-numbingly easy.
As for development resources, well...
Using your own arguments, why is ZOS releasing new overland content at all if it can only be done once? Clearly because that content is valid too. And since that content is valid, it's understandable that veteran players want to play that new overland content as well. They might only play through a zone once, but there will be new zones coming out and I for one still haven't played through all the zones yet after 7 years of playing the game.
Also regarding the PvP issues and repeatable dungeons, those are different teams than the overland team. Resources are not being moved from one team to the other, meaning that while the PvP and performance team work on PvP and performance and while the dungeon team is making a new dungeon, the overland team can figure out how to improve overland difficulty to be inclusive for veterans and new players alike.

Toxic_Hemlock

casparian wrote: »

Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »

So basically what you are saying to players like myself that you want to remove all the fun I have in game so as to make it more of a challenge for you to do.

No? By far the most common proposal for challenging overland is for a challenging overland option. No one wants to take away the existing easy mode.

Well options are always good, but you have to balance the amount of dev time needed for such an endeavor with the amount gained. In this instance I believe their time would be much better spent creating more map content than to cater to the more accomplished players. Even if the new content is easy out of the gate for them at least the overall player base will have more to do.

Edited for clarity.

jaws343

McTaterskins wrote: »

Sort of unrelated but - I'd like to see a story mode in Dungeons.

I'm not even a huge PvE'er, but some of the stories, especially DLC ones, are pretty decent and I wouldn't mind having a sort of MA/VH experience in dungeons as well. Perhaps then gives a reason to have the companions?

See, I actually agree here. With the stories each year tied into the dungeons, they should have a story mode for them.

But, a few caveats:

No lootable containers or chests.
No skill point for completing the story quest. (You would need to complete the quest again on at least normal for that)
No Rewards for completing the quest, outside of maybe a small amount of gold and some exp for fighting the depowered enemies.

Basically, a mode to experience the story the first time but you would still need to complete all of the content on at least normal to get any real rewards. And it wouldn't be farmable in story mode, just once.

jaws343

Ratzkifal wrote: »

jaws343 wrote: »

Any effort spent on difficulty for content that most players play once and then do no revisit is wasted effort. Time should be spent improving repeatable content, like the myriad PVP issues, or end game dungeons/trials. Not for content that players are just going to burn through anyways, at whatever difficulty is picked.

Overland content, for the most part, is meant to be story driven, not combat driven.

To add as well, there are no meaningful changes they could make that would satisfy the tiny group of players who even want a change. That tiny group is broken into smaller subsets who can't even agree on what it is they want:

Difficulty slider? Well what should that slider do, scale mob health, damage, resistances? Or should they have more mechanics?

Scaling Health and such? Well, how is beating on a damage sponge any more difficult? Oh, that mob lives for 2 extra seconds against your vet trial ready DPS. Good job, I guess.

Changing enemy mechanics? So you basically want them to remake the entire game, redoing all enemy mechanics to suit some intangible level of difficulty, for a tiny subset of players? Why would any company ever make a decision to do something like this? The cost alone would be insane, and for what, players to burn through the quests anyways and never return, or never even engage with it in the first place.

What about a debuff food? Well, you can already choose not to equip your best gear, or eat food, or whatever you want to depower your character. But no one wants to do that because it breaks their progression or something. Why would a debuff food be any different.

How about a separate instance for solo quests? Again, a tiny subset of players. For content that is done once and then never returned to. It works for dungeons and trials and arenas because those are repeatable areas.

And I'll repeat, dev time is better spent on fixing PVP issues and making better dungeons and trials. Time should be spent on content that actually offers repeatable engagement.

I'll also add, there is a reason that new dungeons get nerfs after a few patches. The level of player engagement in the vet versions gets low enough that Zos has to make it easier in order to encourage participation. That alone is telling enough.

I disagree.
You may call it a "tiny group", but that does not make it one. This group may indeed be fractured but some of these ideas are clearly more feasible than others and it's not like the different subgroups would not all enjoy it if any of their suggestions was made into reality as they all agree on overworld being mind-numbingly easy.
As for development resources, well...
Using your own arguments, why is ZOS releasing new overland content at all if it can only be done once? Clearly because that content is valid too. And since that content is valid, it's understandable that veteran players want to play that new overland content as well. They might only play through a zone once, but there will be new zones coming out and I for one still haven't played through all the zones yet after 7 years of playing the game.
Also regarding the PvP issues and repeatable dungeons, those are different teams than the overland team. Resources are not being moved from one team to the other, meaning that while the PvP and performance team work on PvP and performance and while the dungeon team is making a new dungeon, the overland team can figure out how to improve overland difficulty to be inclusive for veterans and new players alike.

But it isn't just me calling it a tiny group. Zos has done so in their explanation on why this isn't something they are pursuing. Not enough players would engage in this, not enough players have engaged in similar content in the past to make it worth it at all.

As to why they continue to make new zones and story content, well I would imagine the majority of players don't ignore that content and actually play it. I've completed all zone content in the game, and will continue to complete future content. And again, it comes down to numbers. If a small portion of the playerbase wants harder overland content, it isn't really a priority to implement when the larger portion of the playerbase is enjoying the content as it is and continues to play it every patch. Why cater to players who gave up on it at some point in 7 years.

Lady_Galadhiel

I think that you guys and girls who want hard overland have better chances asking for the future new content to have a veteran option rather then asking for a total rework of the current overland and its mobs,bosses,etc.I mean we have so much overland out there,the amount of time it would take to rework/redo mechanics of everything would be insane.
Adding a difficulty option for upcoming chapters/dlcs I could imagine would be managable as it would not involve so much extra work as it would be added slowely one zone at the time.
And if bugs/errors would occur it would only affect the one zone instead of the whole Tamriel.

Elo106

Overland is waay too easy, either make it harder or add a veteran toggle

Blackbird_V

Honestly the challenge aspect I really would enjoy. I like a good challenge.. Not a 5 second boss fight at the end of a quest, or bursting a boss in 2 seconds to a phase. I want to actually use some skill.


People point out that increased rewards is "unfair" because people would be leaned to being forced into doing it - and not really? And if that is the case - good. A lot of newbie players are bad at the game and giving them a challenge to conquer would increase their skill and understanding, and they soon may enjoy the challenge that end-game presents. You want increased rewards? Work for it. It's the reason we have perfected trial gear more or less, and nobody complains to ZoS about that.

All in all, I think a veteran overland would be amazing content, breath fresh air into something that's a boring cakewalk, and the rewards be worth the time. Hell, that feeling beating something really hard first time like vMA back in the day was amazing, or a boss first time in trying for hours in the dankest of souls games.

It's an option - not something forced.

NerfSeige

Thanks for the thread!

Overland is fine as it is, no need to change, no need for new rewards, no need for difficulty slider.

Artim_X

Any change to overland that results in a greater challenge needs to be optional. I have way too many stories of helping people in zone clear content that while being easy for me was too difficult for them, despite their decently high CP. In relation to difficulty, the game as it is now has enough content to cater to all types of players. However, there are things that I would like to see.

1) Optional Hardmode for end of story bosses: ex: player does something, allies get knocked out (no longer able to assist), boss becomes tougher (new mechanics, less predictable, inherently tougher). Does not change the story, but player gets the chance to have a more memorable experience.

2) Reuse old locations to introduce secret instanced bosses: Lots of RPGs add secret bosses for players who choose to revisit old areas. Sometimes these bosses are harder version of previous bosses. In this way cool areas from the past are no longer permanently closed off to the player and will now offer players a new challenge. They could even make a new kind of daily for these (similar to the Craglorn dailies). The areas could be filled with a variety of enemies, mini bosses, and a final boss. (ex of areas that could be used: Norg-Tzel, Artaeum Beach, Grayhome, Xith-Izkul, Firemoth Island, etc.).


3) Reintroduce adventure zones: I played the game before One Tamriel and I was not a fan. In old areas I can one shot every enemy with a single mages' wrath, while new areas had enemies that took longer to die, but weren't any different from the old area enemies. One Tamriel resolved this and made it so that we could go wherever we wanted with enemies feeling consistent across the board. Of course, once someone becomes a more seasoned adventurer even these areas start feeling relatively easy to conquer. So when a new zone comes out, we get to experience a new area, but the only thing that's really challenging are the new world bosses. Of course, ZOS started adding a bit more challenge back into overland. I love dragons, harrowstorms, wandering world bosses in the deadlands. These are quite nice, but are few and far between in comparison to the entire adventure one has in a zone.

What if ZOS brought back adventure zones? Ex: Argonia gets released as an adventure zone akin to current day Craglorn. We get a variety of instance group areas with a daily quest attached to them, a regular overland story that anyone can complete, an arena, world bosses, and 3 trials for the trial peeps. Maybe even throw in wandering world bosses in the form of swamp leviathans. I know it's a very big ask, but it doesn't have to have all the bells and whistles just offer content that requires a bit more game sense than the typical stuff we've been getting. Also ZOS can still release zones that feel more like a tutorial zone the next time around.

spartaxoxo

Overland is largely fine as it is, and I certainly would resent having new content being put on hold to overhaul the entire game with a veteran overland experience. I also share the concern with the developers that it would split the playerbase.

However, I do think there are some much lower impact things that could be done to prove the experience for myself personally.

I'd like to see some debuff food or gear (maybe even CP now that we have the armory) that is tailored towards giving negative stat modifiers that makes existing content harder. I know from fighting the crow boss this year on a low level vs the character I'm doing Overland stuff with the difference in power was significant just from using a weaker character, and that resulted in significantly higher difficulty.

I'd like to see challenge banners for the story bosses moving forward (and maybe old ones too, since that's more limited in scope than overhauling everything) that could upgrade the difficulty for veteran level players. I think something along the easier vet arena bosses would be appropriate in difficulty.

Malthorne

Overland, as it is now, is just too easy. I’m ok with the trash mob difficulty, but I think “quest boss” NPCs should definitely be retuned to offer a bigger challenge. This would help with the overall immersion for those who enjoy gameplay and story. Take a look at how Guild Wars 2 and FFXIV fully utilize their various boss and combat mechanics to create memorable fights in the open world and solo instances.

Of course, any increased difficulty should be optional so that I he players who are happy with the current story mode/visual novel do not have their gameplay altered.

Hallothiel

The main point for me, if this was ever done, was it that it should be totally optional.

I have no desire to battle malicious mudcrabs or beserker bears when trolling through Tamriel mat farming or survey collecting. Or just riding from a to b.

There should be no extra rewards for this content. After all, this is meant to be about wanting more challenges, not better stuff, yes?

If it is ever done, it should be done in a way that does not mean huge amounts of time & resources are taken away from the main game.

For example, a good idea is to have the quest bosses instanced, and a choice available between normal & vet.

But I fear that however it was done (if done) there would still be complaints that its not hard enough…

martinhpb16_ESO

I gave up playing overland and buying expacs a long while back

This is because, for me, overland is too easy. I even tried it on an alt with sub-par gear, no cp slotted and with hardly any clue how to play that class. Even then it was too easy and therefore held little interest for me.

Overland questing is about the only activity I would do solo in this game. I need a sense of danger for gaming to feel immersive and adventurous. I like a challenge that means that I have to try new things and learn.

I understand that difficulty is different for different people. Therefore I would like to see some sort of option to make content more difficult for those that want it. I would really appreciate this and it would make me want to play ESO more.

The same for Delves please

I really liked the Boss instance fight for the recent event. I did it solo, it took me three times to get it right and I enjoyed that. That was reward enough for me. The option was still there for people to team if they wanted to.

Thanks for listening

Sarannah

No changes are needed to overland.... but if ZOS does ever optionally increase overland difficulty somehow, it should not come with extra rewards/bonusses.

ZOS should also take into account that we already had difficult overland before OneTamriel, and we also have craglorn, both of which are practically used by noone. Same goes for difficult overland group events, like harrowstorms, practically noone ever does them. While the solo geysers, dolmens, and other overland stuff is still being done by players.

Players who want a challenge, should move on to those tougher challenges. Be it group content, trials, arena's, or the veteran versions of those. Challenges are already available. The game flows from easy to hard content like it should, and in my opinion there is no reason to change that flow.

martinhpb16_ESO

Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »

Well options are always good, but you have to balance the amount of dev time needed for such an endeavor with the amount gained. In this instance I believe their time would be much better spent creating more map content than to cater to the more accomplished players. Even if the new content is easy out of the gate for them at least the overall player base will have more to do.

Edited for clarity.

Zos are more than capable of deciding how to allocate resources and anything that players think is speculation. Something for everyone is a good thing

martinhpb16_ESO

Toxic_Hemlock wrote: »

From the now locked thread, edited a bit for clarity.

To those wanting harder overland ask yourself this. Can you do overland even if it is to easy for you?

If your answer is yes, then good for you as you can complete the content albeit easily.

Remember though that some of us older and less fully abled cannot competently do trials, most (all?) DLC dungeons, arenas etc, even at the current difficulty.

So basically what you are saying to players like myself that you want to remove all the fun I have in game so as to make it more of a challenge for you to do. As I have said in the past I quit games I can no longer play.

Tell me why I would pay for ESO+ or even bother playing ESO anymore if this were to happen?

In one word "Optional"

To mirror your phrasing - Basically what you are saying to players like myself is that you want to stop us having fun so as to keep it at the same level for you to do. You see it works both ways right?

So "Optional" is the buzz word then we can all be happy. And at the end of the day thats what we all want, you, me, everyone, happy game, happy campers.

spartaxoxo

Also here are some responses from Rich Lambert and Mike Finnagin that I had compiled in another thread that I think are pertinent here.

On Vet Overland: [Source for both following responses]
[source 2 just forumers discussing this video in case the link is broken]
"So, we had that, Jeulen, at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out and we put the challenge into world bosses and into solo arenas and into dungeons and trials."

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”

...

“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”

“And yes, go look at Craglorn. There’s not a lot of people in Craglorn and that’s not super difficult but it’s more hard than the regular overland.”

On a Toggle:

"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.”

On Splitting the playerbase using different difficulty sliders/settings[Source]

'We get this question or request a lot too. We built overland content to be inclusive because as an MMO we want to unify as much of the player base as possible in a given zone. Difficulty sliders and settings are a detriment to that."

On what content players want to do these days (this was NOT said about Vet Overland, but instead was in an different interview where they asked him this question. While this response was never meant by him to address Vet Overland, I do think it's pertinent to know what is the vast majority of content that players engage in)[Source]

The vast majority of our player base loves the exploration, loves the lore, loves the story side of things. So we focus a lot of our time and effort on that. Two of our four major updates every year are focused on story and exploration. The other two are focused on quality of life, are focused on group-oriented activities with the dungeons or adding new systems.

In a nutshell, players want to see that you are going to put the effort into improving the game over time. And if you continue to do that, they’re going to stay and play and have a good time.

vingarmo

First of all I would like to point out why this topic is even a thing. Over the last years the development of ESO resolved around two types of players:
Casuals who spend most of their time doing quests and exploration without any concerns about builds, class balancing, set optimization and have little regard to combat system in general. Zones and chapters provide most of the content solely for that group.
Competitive/progression oriented players who spend fair amount of time researching builds, practicing rotation trying out different classes and set combinations. Dungeons, trials and arenas is the main content that was released for that group.

Power creep, which is result of combat systems rebalancing and introductions of sets with progressively larger impact on overall performance, resulted in already massive gap between two groups become even bigger. That was addressed in all recently released instanced content, which became more and more demanding in term of group performance (especially HMs) while overland remain same starter island it was years ago.
So one group is unhappy because 2 DLCs per year are impossible for them to complete while the other group is unhappy because 2 DLCs per year so easy that the core feature (combat) ZOS trying to sell them nonexistent. And as long as philosophy of throwing end-gamers in one corner and casuals in another will continue, the discussions/complains about difficulty will never come to consensus.

My personal experience: as of now zone DLCs offer no memorable enemies, bosses, mechanics; combat awareness, build, skills don’t matter. From gameplay perspective, quality of combat is ridiculously low, the story is the only thing that could keep you engaged, however it was not the case in recent DLCs with very predictable plot and no meaningful dialog decisions. Not once during my walkthrough I needed to think about consequences of my actions in both combat and story. As a veteran player, I feel like I’m playing tutorial for a game which I played for a few thousand hours. Personally, I’m sick and tired of zone DLCs devoid of any meaningful gameplay which lure vet players only with broken overpowered sets and nothing else. As an elder scroll fan I like lore, exploration and interacting with the world just as much as any other player but disappointment with quality of combat in questing was always a big turn off for me and made me bored out of this sort of content which I prefer to avoid in current state. I do hope however, it will become better for everyone in the future.

As a side note, gimping your stats in current state of overland balancing will never work simply because enemies and bosses do no damage and a lot of their attack is fancy show off with insane delay and without any danger. That advice would work in game like Dark Souls because there single attack on deprived lvl 1 character punish single mistake with one-shot while in ESO it would be slightly longer fight where all damage can be outhealed, you just had to throw heavy attack once in a while for sustain.

Suggestion for future DLCs: the best compromise to make most of the zone dlc appealing to anyone in regard of the difficulty is to instance content which are already instanced (quest locations, delves, public dungeons) to normal and veteran versions so players can chose and tune later which one they want. Open world itself would remain the way it is now so population split would be minimal with no harm to world bosses/events participation, grouping, trading, etc. To clarify, in case of quests most main and side quest locations are already instanced in separate locations with some of them being private while others public. For example, Moon Gate of Anequina in Northern Elsweyr is private instance where you can’t see other players who are at the same stage as you are while Valthume in the Reach is public instance where you can encounter others and then there is instances like Lost Valley Barrow which public at the beginning but private at the end (Boss). Beside difficulty it would be great QoL improvement so you won’t walk into cleaned instance with both mobs and bosses dead and on timer.
As for the balance of combat encounters, I think latest solo arena being a fine example of balancing between hp and damage output of enemies and bosses you would expect to fight in veteran instance in accordance with recent form of power creep. With some stages having tougher enemies of stage 3 and the other slightly weaker ones like at stage 2 or even 1 with emphasis on elite enemies to matter something and provide some form of resistance and danger to die.
In ideal scenario I wish some bosses, especially end of the chapter/dlc ones had additional hard mode scroll for those players who wants to experience true challenge of fighting demigod/powerful ancient creature.
In addition, to enchant experience even further allow us to replay main quest at least.
Rewards
Rewards in general are larger subject, which affects most in-game activities. The way I see it there is 3 types of end game: theory crafting (for high end pve and pvp), fashion (collection of motifs, outfit styles, dyes, mounts, pets, personalities, etc.) and housing. Only few activities provide rewards substantial enough to keep up with these goals.
I would say that rewards in general are lacking, unbalanced and worth revisiting. Incorrect rewards balancing already killed and continue to invalidate a lot of released content and new implemented ideas would simply die if not incentivized correctly. I would like to point out what different content can provide:

Questing: minimal to small amount of gold, useless parts of not bound overland sets, achievements.
Fishing: Perfect roe, sacks with minimal rewards and achievements.
Daily WB and delve quests: small amount of gold, useless parts of not bound overland sets, motifs and furnishing plans which devalued by events, style materials, mostly pointless achievements without additional meaning.
Arenas: small amount of gold, transmutes (vet only), bound sets that are main reason to run them.
Battlegrounds: small amount of gold and moderate amount of ap, bound style pages, useless sets, a few achievements and 1 transmutation crystal per day per character + reward of the worthy (true for all pvp activities).
Cyrodiil: small amount of gold and varying amount of ap, achievements. I won’t go deep in all the details how to convert ap to gold but there are different options which could provide decent ratio if you know how to farm ap.
Dungeons and normal trials: small amount of gold, motifs that mostly devalued by events, transmutes, keys, achievements and bound sets that are main reason to run them.
Veteran trials: all of the above + chance for golden jewelry and additional treasure drops to sell to merchant (the only pve activity, which can be somewhat rewarding, however time, efforts and expenses deserved to be taken in consideration).
Imperial city: small amount of gold, varying amount of tel var, key fragments and ap. Same as Cyrodiil but could be much more profitable.
Daily crafting writs: large amount of gold, expensive materials, master writs, writ vouchers.

I ordered them subjectively from lowest possible reward on top to highest at the bottom where first 5 activities are barely worth participating unless you enjoy them. Most of them deserve additional tuning:
Battlegrounds could be more attractive with BOUND sets useful for pvp, unique non-craftable foods and potions which, again, powerful for pvp.
Arenas at least on veteran mode need trophies same as trials so they at least compensate for the time spend, maybe container of purple quality with randomized loot, as I suggested below for quests.
Dungeon quests should be able to be repeated for common sense at least (or else why are you even here if everything supposed to be cleared and dead) with same container as at the end of the trial, but with 1 transmute crystal, 1 style material (not motif), harmony trait stone or jewelry and 1 random piece of dungeon set.
Suggestions for quest rewards:
Replace vendor trash gear from quest rewards with container which contain randomized loot of different quality (crafting materials such as tempers, alchemy ingredients, style materials from the dlc zone, treasure maps from said zone, furniture plans, materials, etc.). Long main quest purple ones with higher quality loot others blue and green depending on duration and/or difficulty.
Double xp, gold, containers for completing quests on veteran difficulty (delve dailies included).
Add dailes for public dungeons or combine them with delve quests, so they would have reasons to exist beside initial clear.
Unique achievements and collectibles (dyes, furniture, personalities, costumes, etc.) for completing activities on vet difficulty (for example, clearing all delves on vet, doing main quest on vet, engaging end boss on hm, etc.)
Ideally, it would provide incentive to clear quests multiple times and be a perfect option to farm treasure maps for zone leads and housing components would be more accessible.

At the end, I would like to add that this game needs a new activity that provide rewards comparable to the ones you get from writs. Long ago ZOS created a precedent where simple, 2-minute task provide better rewards than all other in-game activities. If you are chasing any end-game (theory crafting, fashion, housing) you are bound to do them with pretty much no other alternatives because they are simply most convenient gold per effort method of obtaining just about anything you need.
My idea for alternative: small solo mini-trial consisting of challenging boss and maybe small group of adds to summon it. Quick but effective method to obtain rewards comparable to writs through engaging combat gameplay. One per day per character. So for example, when you have only 30 min at the morning and your choice is to do writs or to do boss dailies you can pick second and don’t feel like you miss on your daily portion of rewards. More importantly, you wouldn’t be forced in doing same boring crafting routine to achieve goals you set for yourself. Why wouldn’t you do both? Well, you can, but you also can create second account on live and do even more writs if that is your preference.

vingarmo

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Also here are some responses from Rich Lambert that I had compiled in another thread that I think are pertinent here.


On Vet Overland: [Source for both following responses]

"So, we had that, Jeulen, at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out and we put the challenge into world bosses and into solo arenas and into dungeons and trials."

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”

“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”

“And yes, go look at Craglorn. There’s not a lot of people in Craglorn and that’s not super difficult but it’s more hard than the regular overland.”

On a Toggle:

"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.”

On Splitting the playerbase using different difficulty [Source]

'We get this question or request a lot too. We built overland content to be inclusive because as an MMO we want to unify as much of the player base as possible in a given zone. Difficulty sliders and settings are a detriment to that."

On what content players want to do (this was NOT said about Vet Overland, but instead was in an different interview where they asked him this question. While this response was never meant by him to address Vet Overland, I do think it's pertinent to know what is the vast majority of content that players engage in)[Source]

The vast majority of our player base loves the exploration, loves the lore, loves the story side of things. So we focus a lot of our time and effort on that. Two of our four major updates every year are focused on story and exploration. The other two are focused on quality of life, are focused on group-oriented activities with the dungeons or adding new systems.

Personally, I found his response flawed and the arguments he made contradict one another.

On Vet Overland:

"So, we had that, Jeulen, at launch. It was called Cadwell's Silver and Cadwell's Gold. Nobody did it and everybody hated it, so we took it out and we put the challenge into world bosses and into solo arenas and into dungeons and trials."

“People just did not like the extra difficulty in the story stuff. I get that there’s a lot of people that do like the harder difficulty, but a HUGE portion of our player base just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things.”
So let me get that straight: if HUGE part of player base “just wants to do story, and they don’t want to have to struggle with difficult things” then, following that logic, why put challenge in game at all, let alone release dlcs dedicated to combat challenges if majority of your player base don’t want it? Why do major combat and balancing reworks every patch if it is barely relevant to those players? Wouldn’t focusing on releasing 3 or maybe even 4 zone dlcs with nothing but quests per year instead of 2 be more beneficial and profitable for the game? Because if it’s true game already following wrong direction.
Furthermore, I completely don’t understand how idea of vet overland even related to Cadwell silver and gold. If anything it’s a clear example how streamlining difficulty for everyone made game unfun in a long run. If you chose to follow only main quest line, ignoring most of the side quests you ended up constantly underleveled and facing enemies of higher levels even in you alliance zone. And if you decided to return to finish those side quests you ended up facerolling enemies as you do now if not worse and get close to no xp or useful loot for that. In the end you had to follow strict path to progress through questing in this game, but was it really challenging if you was appropriate or higher level and had proper sets on? No, not really. So, again, how flawed progression system from release comparable to what we have now and does it really justify avoiding any sort of complains or suggestion to improve it?
“I totally hear you on the difficulty thing. I like things to be more difficult. But the data doesn’t lie. And we have never been more successful than where we are today. And a lot of that has to do with just how much freedom players have to go an experience story.”
Hard to argue against data, especially if you can’t review it personally so I suppose I’ll take it as a fact (not that any developer would ever say that population is stale or declining even if it’s true).
The second part though sounds a bit weird in context of this question. If eso players’ value freedom wouldn’t difficulty options to experience story enchant that freedom and attract even more potential customers? (That, of course, assuming that we don’t divide player base by segments and throw away the ones that not quite fit in the picture)
“And yes, go look at Craglorn. There’s not a lot of people in Craglorn and that’s not super difficult but it’s more hard than the regular overland.”
I was frequent Craglorn for years and I never consider it dead. In fact even now it’s one of the most populated zones and top trader location especially in comparison to recent chapters. Or does he wonder why people not eager to do 20-30 minutes long dailies to get trash overland sets and a CHANCE to get one of the cheapest and unwanted motifs? Or slay world bosses for literally nothing? On top of that, outside of trials, zone itself has no titles or meaningful achievements associated with it and probably the most uninspiring questline. So why bother? If anything, idea of adventure zone was interesting but unrefined and they never revisited it to make it more appealing or tried anything similar but with learned mistakes. The only change that was added there is parts of antiquities and pretty sure those who wanted them farmed them despite “difficulty” of the zone and moved on. So, again, what was initial expectations?
And most importantly both Crgalorn and Cadwell zones didn’t have optional difficulty, forcing anyone into one so they are not much better than what we currently have where everyone forced into casual paradise without any alternatives to experience story.

On a Toggle:

"Uh, it is not as simple as just flip a switch and make things more difficult. There is a ton of work, and then as lucky mentioned earlier you have to also incentivize that. Like just making something more difficult for no reason, if you're not going to get anything out of it why do it, you know? The satisfaction is there sure, but players are always going to do the thing that is the most efficient and is the least difficult thing for their time.
I can agree here. Like I mentioned in in my post rewards are unbalanced as it is in existing content so adding something new without reviewing discrepancies of the present might be a bit shortsighted and will lead to failure.
So like I said, we went down that route. We built the game with difficulty in mind and 2/3 of the game was never played by players, so we changed it.”
I kind of get issue with that statement because a lot of the downsides was unrelated to difficulty itself but rather a consequence of bad design decisions (like tedious leveling, faction locking, lack of pve endgame and build diversity at the time of release) which was fixed and unrelated to the game in its current state. Wouldn’t it be more logical to make a comparison to recently released Vateshran Hollows if he had that data?
Solo arena with both normal and veteran mode, which can clearly relate to the request of harder solo content. It was released a year ago, 5 years after first solo arena (Maelstrom) so it was 2 precedents but not kind of feature we see regularly, not at this year anyway. But why?
What comparable numbers are for clearing arena on normal vs completing main dlc quest?
How many total clears of arena vs quest completes/hours spent?
Was that content not popular enough comparing to dungeons and trials of the same year?
What was the development cost for arena in comparison to zone dlc itself/2 dungeon dlc?
Why is it not economically feasible to introduce such arenas as individual dlcs every year?
And if it was not popular what was the reasons for that? Was it difficulty alone or something else?
Any of my answers to these questions would be pure speculation because I don’t have the data and analysis of said data to back my claims but answering them would provide much better insights on the matter rather than arguments about why zone with completely different idea flopped 7 years ago.
I mean I don’t live in magic bubble and can assume some answers to those questions. That population of new/casual players obviously higher but the way Rich describe it other spectrum is totally nonexistent. Obviously, it is not the case and game has healthy end game community. In that case, wouldn’t working on a way to make their dlcs enjoyable for everyone be a better solution than just stuff one part of the player base in overland with premise to “get gut” and other part in dungeons and trials with premise to “get bad” to experience other parts of the game?