Overland Content Feedback Thread

colossalvoids

Avoranti wrote: »

PS NA

I believe the overland content to be way too easy at CP levels. My understanding is the enemy difficulty level is supposed to scale with the players level. But this seems to stop once you reach CP. If it does scale then the gap between enemy difficulty and player level needs to be shortened. It’s not really fun to go into a new area and hit an enemy 1 time and it’s dead. Takes away the challenge.

It's not content that scales, you have artificial boosts before lvl50 and kind of growing in power with getting bigger numbers on your armour and weapons to match this boost. At level 50 you're stripped out of it and the game starts in a sense that you should actually use foods to have adequate amount of stats for the job, pots for regeneration etc. and kind of leaving the cradle into the actual world naked.

But as we can tell from this thread a lot of us agrees that there should be something to adjust our mechanical experience to match expectations to at least loosely imitate what's the narrative told us already. Now there's a narrative and emotional side and a gameplay mechanical side of it and they're not often collide for some of us.

WiseSky

This is quite a heated subject, I am sad to see a lots of people on the forums who were very vocal about this subject, on both sides, usually all get banned, as the discussion takes the better of them.

I wonder if their is a way for the community to talk about this subject and not lose our cool.

SerasWhip

Lysette wrote: »

And so the circle is closing again - if the average mob is that strong, then this is not about questing at all, but about killing more stuff in an overland environment and getting more loot and rewards for it - and then my definitive answer to this is "no". Either it is for you about questing, then those in a quest area might be stronger, but not the normal trash mob - or you secretly want something else and use "boring quests" as an excuse to get a "killing more stuff" overland.

You are overcomplicating it. I want both better questing experience with stronger enemies and better loot that naturally comes with killing stronger enemies, there is nothing secretive about it. These two features complement each other.

AlexanderDeLarge

Just popping in to remind everyone that using Cadwell Silver/Gold as evidence that "people don't want difficult overland content" is incredibly silly and I can't believe anyone is buying into that line of thinking. That was eight years ago prior to One Tamriel overhauling the game's progression system from a vertical one into a horizontal one and about a decade of power creep which contradicts the goals of One Tamriel in the first place, resulting in the veteran overland subject coming up more and more often as the game's power creep has become increasingly apparent. More than enough context to justify revisiting the subject with an open mind rather than immediately going "WE/THEY ALREADY DID THAT AND PEOPLE DIDN'T LIKE IT" ad-nauseam.

Either way, without it, as I said 6 to 8 months ago I have no reason to continue spending my money on a game where only a small sliver of the content being sold to me on a yearly basis is relevant to my skill level and a 30 hour main story quest actually means 15 hours of riding a horse between destinations and one-shotting everything in sight once I arrive. I'm not spending $40 on an expansion where the only thing that's enjoyable at my skill level is an instanced raid. No thanks.

This is an extremely popular discussion outside these forums by the way.

Fata1moose

I’ve talked about the necessity to improve combat in here through better animations, sound design and veteran overland difficulty but I want to touch on the vanilla zones which I’d love to see overhauled.

Going from new areas back to vanilla is getting more and more jarring. With additional systems, prologue quests, dailies, etc sending us through these zones frequently I think there’s definitely value in re-doing these. It’s not just about updating textures but detail density, there’s a lot more going on in chapter and DLC zones in terms of detail and visual variety. I appreciate that this task would be daunting but I really hope it can be done. Maybe re-do zones in conjunction with the year’s theme. Doing Skingrad? Re-do Cyrodiil using assets from Gold Coast, Blackwood, Skingrad and other bordering regions. For Cyrodiil in particular, this would be a great opportunity to give PvPers something new, use Blackwood fort tile sets have some more variety in fort layouts (while remaining symmetric faction to faction). Make towns like Bruma more accurate to the TES IV counterpart with its own architecture and make these towns more intriguing. The chapter is Whiterun, the Pale or Falkreath? Go back and update Eastmarch and the Rift, make their layouts more accurate to TES V including the delves. When TES VI is out re-do the Alik’r to accurately match the mainlime game. Make cities feel unique from one another, Daggerfall and Wayrest should not look exactly the same.

Jpk0012

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

colossalvoids

Those casual group activities have nothing to do with veteran overland though. Never heard people going to do world bosses, vents/storms or whatsnot to get it. It's just absent from the game, meaning vet overland, those small reservations aren't meant for veterans and have nothing to draw them in - it's just another group activity to maintain "the formula" of each and every boring new release. Lots of people who willing to partake in vet overland just didn't bought HI, BW etc. because it's nothing different to vanilla zones in that regard.

Can say for myself that pay that much for one trial and probably still poorly written questing out of the question, not even remotely interested in other "features" to include and happy for people liking it. For some of us it's just a bone without a meat on it and remains so.

spartaxoxo

Bosses, Events, etc. are literally vet overland content and explicitly stated by the devs to be the challenging content in Overland.

Malthorne

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

I solo’d a few of the world bosses on the PTS. They are not difficult at all. So I imagine most people are just blasting through them and moving on.

I think bringing challenge to the open world will bring the population back up. Open world players want a system that caters to their play style. At the moment it is not fun or engaging. Meaningless difficulty is one reason I’m skipping the chapter for now. And I’m not the only one.

GW2 new zones are infinitely more challenging than anything eso presents in the open world and the GW2 open world is absolutely popping. There are so many bosses, events and groups forming it’s fun to see. Bozja in FF14 was also great and very very popular. The mobs were tough, the group bosses had actual raid mechanics, and if you played perfectly against a group boss you got a chance to face a solo boss with the entire zone cheering you on. An incredible experience.

If you love the story mode difficulty, then great, I’m happy for you. Truly, I am. We just want an “option” for increased difficulty.

As a side note: I was wrong before. I thought ZOS was at least listening. Other posts with dev commentary has proven otherwise. It’s unfortunate. Enjoy your dead zone ZOS.

spartaxoxo

The new world bosses are absolutely difficult to most people. I see a lot of requests for help.

LashanW

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

I want optional difficulty settings for story content in overland, which is quests. I don't care one bit about the story-less content in overland you describe.

You mention low population in High Isle in xbox? And you think that is because world bosses and vents are too difficult? Not sure about that logic. Aren't there plenty of people happily questing and exploring High Isle? Maybe they are the ones who solely exist on this forum. But what do I know, I don't even buy the chapters anymore.

tonyblack

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

As vet player why would I bother with world bosses or harrowstorms (group activities btw) for a chance to get cheap motif and useless piece of gear that not even worth selling? I mean i did farm them on first days for achievements and before prices dropped but now It’s far more efficient to do vCT for mask farm. Dolmens popular because they provide a lot of xp so good for leveling companions or new characters. It’s not enjoyable or rewarding to do those group overland activities because they designed to be zerged by large group of players and provide poor rewards as the result. And quests can be done in a single day with no reasons whatsoever to repeat them on other characters.

Good balance between difficulty, rewards and quality of content itself is what desired in this thread but currently it’s not the case.

spartaxoxo

tonyblack wrote: »

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

As vet player why would I bother with world bosses or harrowstorms (group activities btw) for a chance to get cheap motif and useless piece of gear that not even worth selling? I mean i did farm them on first days for achievements and before prices dropped but now It’s far more efficient to do vCT for mask farm. Dolmens popular because they provide a lot of xp so good for leveling companions or new characters. It’s not enjoyable or rewarding to do those group overland activities because they designed to be zerged by large group of players and provide poor rewards as the result. And quests can be done in a single day with no reasons whatsoever to repeat them on other characters.

Good balance between difficulty, rewards and quality of content itself is what desired in this thread but currently it’s not the case.

Quest rewards would have even less rewards than stuff like Harrowstorms and world bosses, because they aren't repeatable. The reason to do them is because we enjoy a challenge. I don't need or expect a lot of rewards. I just want the gameplay to be more interesting in story quests. I already enjoy killing world bosses, and I'm one of those people who do Dragons and Harrowstorms. I wish they were slightly less group oriented because sometimes I'm the only one there and they become a massive pain alone. But I still try and do them. Because trying to solo a Harrowstorm is fun.

Destai

Some additional discussion was posted here.

@ZOS_Psiion @ZOS_Kevin Can you please link these discussions when duplicate discussions have been identified? This help us prevent feedback from getting lost. Thanks for understanding!

CP5

WiseSky wrote: »

This is quite a heated subject, I am sad to see a lots of people on the forums who were very vocal about this subject, on both sides, usually all get banned, as the discussion takes the better of them.

I wonder if their is a way for the community to talk about this subject and not lose our cool.

The biggest issue here is ZOS, and their insistence on remaining silent as much as possible. From my last post on this topic until now, I stopped following the discussion entirely, and during that time 5 or so post from ZOS were made, and each were moderation. This goes back to that interview Rich had that was shared on this thread, not by a member of ZOS but by a user, and one of those questions was about overland content, and in it Rich gave an identical answer as he had done on stream back in December.

There was no indication that anything in this thread was noticed, that players concerns couldn't be worth the time for them to even read, and as users like myself voiced our concerns and possible solutions, those who feel things are fine thought of ways that these solutions could backfire; and without ZOS coming in to quell those concerns early on, now when those users talk on this subject they only see the worst possible outcome, and those continuing the conversation as people intentionally pushing for it. So we're now stuck in a situation where ZOS won't do anything, while players continue to voice their concerns, and some in fear of having what they currently enjoy being broken come in to try to avoid that from happening.

If ZOS actually did come in to help clear things up, let people know this ins't a "winner take all" or "one war or another" kind of situation, that both sides could get what they want, then the conversation could simmer down. But they don't, and despite Rich's response to that interview, about concerns where the card game would take too many people out of the world, that 'it is a good thing for players to have more ways of enjoying the world,' extending that freedom of choice to the world of tamriel doesn't seem to be a part of their plans, and without a thoughtful dialogue here to clear things up, this thread won't change.

tonyblack

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

As vet player why would I bother with world bosses or harrowstorms (group activities btw) for a chance to get cheap motif and useless piece of gear that not even worth selling? I mean i did farm them on first days for achievements and before prices dropped but now It’s far more efficient to do vCT for mask farm. Dolmens popular because they provide a lot of xp so good for leveling companions or new characters. It’s not enjoyable or rewarding to do those group overland activities because they designed to be zerged by large group of players and provide poor rewards as the result. And quests can be done in a single day with no reasons whatsoever to repeat them on other characters.

Good balance between difficulty, rewards and quality of content itself is what desired in this thread but currently it’s not the case.

Quest rewards would have even less rewards than stuff like Harrowstorms and world bosses, because they aren't repeatable. The reason to do them is because we enjoy a challenge. I don't need or expect a lot of rewards. I just want the gameplay to be more interesting in story quests. I already enjoy killing world bosses, and I'm one of those people who do Dragons and Harrowstorms. I wish they were slightly less group oriented because sometimes I'm the only one there and they become a massive pain alone. But I still try and do them. Because trying to solo a Harrowstorm is fun.

It all depends on what expectations players and developers have from any of the rework. Whether content enjoyable or not to repeat it on constant basis you need some kind of motivation. Like, adding difficulty options would be certainly a great QoL addition for me but I don’t expect to shift all my focus to solely on this part of the game, especially if there is nothing worth grinding for. Doing it once isn’t perfect but okay for me, the most important part is if I enjoy doing it. But some players come with expectations that if anything like that added to the game it’s better be very popular otherwise it’s a waste of resources. And in this case to make it truly attractive for different kinds of players and make it constantly populated you need some kind of incentives. Just as an example, the end of the quest line on veteran could award coffer with purple companion gear. It isn’t something game breaking but with some pieces going for 5-10 milions gold on pc na and eu it might be worth it to repeat such questline more than just for fun.

Ermiq

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

There's really a big misunderstanding about what we want and what we ask for.
We want to do quests, experience the story, in such environment where we would feel some engagement in the process.
If it was just about challenge for the sake of challenge, I would just stick to soloing vet dungeons, newer chapter WBs and public dungeons, and so on, and wouldn't even post here, because yes, there're places where the challenge exists.
But the problem is that I'm actually interested in quests. Really. I love doing quests just as I love doing vet dungeons or trying to solo WBs. But one thing makes my questing experience lackluster - zero difficulty. And it kinda prevents me from getting immersed enough.

colossalvoids

Would agree with poster above, even main quest difficulty setting change would be enough to consider it a win, yeah the one with instanced encounters that would just have a difficulty toggle for a veteran solo arena level we already have. Can also add sigils etc. for people Inbetween who's working on their progress still and want to be changed appropriately. There are instanced encounters in every chapter and dlc's so it's well appropriate to use those as a a starting point before deciding on some actual overland toggle.

Also after Mora's I'd pretty sure we might see some difficulty affecting mythic sometime soon, testing waters of sorts for a bit different approach to sets.

eKsDee

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

They're dead not because of how difficult they are, but because of how unrewarding they are. They're pieces of side content that exist in maps where the quests and stories are the main content, so for players to go out of their way to do them, they need to be rewarding enough to be worth the time spent doing them. I'm currently playing Guild Wars 2, and you see this perfectly in its endgame zones.

GW2's overland is almost entirely gameplay-driven, with stories being told through dynamic local events and map-wide meta events, where the main content is whatever the reason the player has to be in that zone, whether it be trying to get an item for a collection, doing zone completion, or trying to do an achievement. The interesting thing with GW2's overland compared to ESO's, though, is that when players are presented with side content (typically something unrelated to the reason they have to be in that zone, like a new dynamic event or meta event), they'll generally pause their main content and start participating in that side content, and I believe it's for two reasons.

Firstly, the moment-to-moment gameplay of GW2's overland experience is highly engaging, with stuff constantly going on around you that you can just jump into and start participating in, which really drives home the fact that this is an MMO, but secondly and more importantly for my point, it's generally rewarding to do this side content. Meta events can be quite lucrative, depending on the exact event, with some endgame zones being the best gold farms in the game, rivaling instanced content; not to mention the fact that many meta events are tied to achievements and collections, which means that by doing this side content, you're constantly progressing forward on a variety of goals, including acquiring legendary gear.

On the other hand, ESO's overland experience tends to be quite unrewarding, often giving a little bit of gold, some experience (which is useless once you've hit level 50 and have earned enough CP that earning more isn't all that meaningful to you; conversely, once you hit max level in GW2 and have maxed out your masteries (GW2's post-level-cap, account-wide leveling system), earning enough XP to "level up" will give you a special currency which is quite valuable due to its use in endgame crafting, so even just the act of earning XP is rewarding in GW2), maybe an item from some set that may or may not be useful for you, and that's about it.

This lack of rewards will naturally cause players to avoid side content due to it feeling like a waste of time, unless they're bored and have nothing else to do, or need something that's locked behind that side content (though I'd argue that this is less them wanting to do the content, more them feeling like they need to do the content). You can see this whenever a new chapter or zone DLC is released: upon release, the group content in that zone is ran more or less off cooldown as players want/need something that's locked behind it (a mythic lead, a particular set piece, etc), and then once the player base has gotten what they want/need, they stop running that content and it dies.

Again, this doesn't happen in GW2, because there's always a reason to run that content. I can guarantee you that if ZOS were to improve the rewards of all group content in overland to the point where they're a serious source of gold that's worth the time spent doing them, you'd see players flocking to do that content whenever available, because there'd be an actual, tangible reason for them to do that content, beyond doing it out of boredom or necessity.

spartaxoxo

tonyblack wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

As vet player why would I bother with world bosses or harrowstorms (group activities btw) for a chance to get cheap motif and useless piece of gear that not even worth selling? I mean i did farm them on first days for achievements and before prices dropped but now It’s far more efficient to do vCT for mask farm. Dolmens popular because they provide a lot of xp so good for leveling companions or new characters. It’s not enjoyable or rewarding to do those group overland activities because they designed to be zerged by large group of players and provide poor rewards as the result. And quests can be done in a single day with no reasons whatsoever to repeat them on other characters.

Good balance between difficulty, rewards and quality of content itself is what desired in this thread but currently it’s not the case.

Quest rewards would have even less rewards than stuff like Harrowstorms and world bosses, because they aren't repeatable. The reason to do them is because we enjoy a challenge. I don't need or expect a lot of rewards. I just want the gameplay to be more interesting in story quests. I already enjoy killing world bosses, and I'm one of those people who do Dragons and Harrowstorms. I wish they were slightly less group oriented because sometimes I'm the only one there and they become a massive pain alone. But I still try and do them. Because trying to solo a Harrowstorm is fun.

It all depends on what expectations players and developers have from any of the rework. .

Most players I think would agree with me that they can give us the difficulty options alone without a reward. Rich has said one reason they haven't done it is because they don't know how they'd incentivize it. They obviously wouldn't use the systems they already have (which makes sense because those things can be repeated) or they'd know how to do it. Doing what you always do is not a hard thing to know how to do.

So personally I think if it's such a big issue to them, they should just drop the concept. They don't need additional incentives. I just want questing to be more fun, it doesn't need to be that complicated. The entire point is the immersion of the quests. It's lame to need immunity phases to not one shot a guy who dueled Leki to a standstill.

CP5

It was funny when they first mentioned that as a reason, as if actually doing the content wouldn't be incentive enough. Since they haven't spoken on it for so long, I wonder if that point has changed, but given their other points remain unchanged during the months that these threads have gone on I wouldn't expect it to have.

spartaxoxo

CP5 wrote: »

It was funny when they first mentioned that as a reason, as if actually doing the content wouldn't be incentive enough. Since they haven't spoken on it for so long, I wonder if that point has changed, but given their other points remain unchanged during the months that these threads have gone on I wouldn't expect it to have.

We have millions of players that play The Elder Scrolls Online, and a large portion of them find the game hard and the Overland content challenging, especially as a new player when you don't have gold, all the gear, and Champion Points. Ultimately it comes down to, if we make the game harder, what are the incentives for players to play it at the harder level? That opens up a whole huge can of worms.

This was actually brought back up again as a reason why they aren't doing it. In case you didn't catch that part, on Rich's last interview.

The reasons why are

1) They tried with silver and gold and it failed
2) large portion don't like difficulty (because they already find the overland challenging)
3) They would want to give it incentives but they don't know how they'd do and think giving incentives would open a can of worms.

Edit
But personally, I don't understand why point 3 is even a problem. They say they were looking at options, dropped the too much work point, and said there was nothing major coming. I hope that means we can at least hope for a minor change. But, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

CP5

Kind of zoned out of the interview after it became apparent that the entirety of this bout of feedback had essentially been ignored, but thank you for bringing it back up. It still fails entirely in the way that 'old silver and gold isn't what's being asked for,' 'there was more than just higher level mobs making the thrice divided and sparsely populated overland that was time-consuming to reach that made those zones unpopular,' and of course the 'but what incentive' argument.

It still goes to show that they have invested nothing in keeping tabs on these discussions, closed down any thread even slightly related to the topic to redirect here, all in an effort to keep the subject ignored. The "it will be used later in the event that they want to do this" won't matter when the state of the game will change, making the feedback less relevant, and the players who gave the feedback will have given up long before. It's just a really poorly done bit of pr to add to the pile of times they've ignored players for the worse.

spartaxoxo

CP5 wrote: »

Kind of zoned out of the interview after it became apparent that the entirety of this bout of feedback had essentially been ignored, but thank you for bringing it back up. It still fails entirely in the way that 'old silver and gold isn't what's being asked for,' 'there was more than just higher level mobs making the thrice divided and sparsely populated overland that was time-consuming to reach that made those zones unpopular,' and of course the 'but what incentive' argument.

It still goes to show that they have invested nothing in keeping tabs on these discussions, closed down any thread even slightly related to the topic to redirect here, all in an effort to keep the subject ignored. The "it will be used later in the event that they want to do this" won't matter when the state of the game will change, making the feedback less relevant, and the players who gave the feedback will have given up long before. It's just a really poorly done bit of pr to add to the pile of times they've ignored players for the worse.

I don't want to get into yet another discussion on silver and gold, so I'll just slide right past that for now. I think it's pretty established we disagree on it.

But, I'm right there with you on the incentives. They actually said "ultimately what it comes down too" which tells me they not only consider this a hurdle, but one of the largest hurdles. And it's like a massive slap in the face because there's over a hundred pages of posts in here, and almost none of them mention giving a single fig leaf about rewards. It tells me they probably really did not read this thread. Hardly anyone cares about rewards. We just want to have fun during quests. Geeze Louise.

tonyblack

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

As vet player why would I bother with world bosses or harrowstorms (group activities btw) for a chance to get cheap motif and useless piece of gear that not even worth selling? I mean i did farm them on first days for achievements and before prices dropped but now It’s far more efficient to do vCT for mask farm. Dolmens popular because they provide a lot of xp so good for leveling companions or new characters. It’s not enjoyable or rewarding to do those group overland activities because they designed to be zerged by large group of players and provide poor rewards as the result. And quests can be done in a single day with no reasons whatsoever to repeat them on other characters.

Good balance between difficulty, rewards and quality of content itself is what desired in this thread but currently it’s not the case.

Quest rewards would have even less rewards than stuff like Harrowstorms and world bosses, because they aren't repeatable. The reason to do them is because we enjoy a challenge. I don't need or expect a lot of rewards. I just want the gameplay to be more interesting in story quests. I already enjoy killing world bosses, and I'm one of those people who do Dragons and Harrowstorms. I wish they were slightly less group oriented because sometimes I'm the only one there and they become a massive pain alone. But I still try and do them. Because trying to solo a Harrowstorm is fun.

It all depends on what expectations players and developers have from any of the rework. .

Most players I think would agree with me that they can give us the difficulty options alone without a reward. Rich has said one reason they haven't done it is because they don't know how they'd incentivize it. They obviously wouldn't use the systems they already have (which makes sense because those things can be repeated) or they'd know how to do it. Doing what you always do is not a hard thing to know how to do.

So personally I think if it's such a big issue to them, they should just drop the concept. They don't need additional incentives. I just want questing to be more fun, it doesn't need to be that complicated. The entire point is the immersion of the quests. It's lame to need immunity phases to not one shot a guy who dueled Leki to a standstill.

I understand that rewards is touchy subject, but neglecting it entirely is just setting the whole endeavor to potential flop, opening all sorts of complaints in the future like “what is the point of that”, “why should i bother”, etc. from players who would like to give it a go, but wouldn’t because of the lack of incentives. Even the debuff system from lotro you brought to this discussion uses bonus xp and titles to incentivize the use of it.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Kind of zoned out of the interview after it became apparent that the entirety of this bout of feedback had essentially been ignored, but thank you for bringing it back up. It still fails entirely in the way that 'old silver and gold isn't what's being asked for,' 'there was more than just higher level mobs making the thrice divided and sparsely populated overland that was time-consuming to reach that made those zones unpopular,' and of course the 'but what incentive' argument.

It still goes to show that they have invested nothing in keeping tabs on these discussions, closed down any thread even slightly related to the topic to redirect here, all in an effort to keep the subject ignored. The "it will be used later in the event that they want to do this" won't matter when the state of the game will change, making the feedback less relevant, and the players who gave the feedback will have given up long before. It's just a really poorly done bit of pr to add to the pile of times they've ignored players for the worse.

I don't want to get into yet another discussion on silver and gold, so I'll just slide right past that for now. I think it's pretty established we disagree on it.

But, I'm right there with you on the incentives. They actually said "ultimately what it comes down too" which tells me they not only consider this a hurdle, but one of the largest hurdles. And it's like a massive slap in the face because there's over a hundred pages of posts in here, and almost none of them mention giving a single fig leaf about rewards. It tells me they probably really did not read this thread. Hardly anyone cares about rewards. We just want to have fun during quests. Geeze Louise.

And tbh the was quite a lot of posters who did mention rewards in their suggestions but it was immediately derailed by certain individual with the argument “that this mode only wanted by minority and most players fine with current overland as it is” and so if this complaint would ever be addressed it should be done with minimum investment possible. Personally, I don’t think that it’s so big of a hurdle for the devs rather they weren’t as interested in the feedback (as there were a lot of different suggestions on possible ways to address it) and Rich just repeated same line from his stream.

In the end it all comes down to what sort of rework we are talking about and what are expectations about it from both players and devs. Though in the very least it should compensate for extra time spent if not to add additional reasons to engage it.

spartaxoxo

I mean Rich explicitly stated one reason he doesn't want to do it is because he feels like he'd have to give it incentives but doesn't know how, and would rather not open that can of worms.

So this perception of it needing rewards is absolutely holding the feature back from even being worked on. I've been one of this threads most active participants, very few people gave a toss about rewards. It wasn't a non-zero number, you're not alone or anything. But it was not a lot of posts.

Agenericname

tonyblack wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

As vet player why would I bother with world bosses or harrowstorms (group activities btw) for a chance to get cheap motif and useless piece of gear that not even worth selling? I mean i did farm them on first days for achievements and before prices dropped but now It’s far more efficient to do vCT for mask farm. Dolmens popular because they provide a lot of xp so good for leveling companions or new characters. It’s not enjoyable or rewarding to do those group overland activities because they designed to be zerged by large group of players and provide poor rewards as the result. And quests can be done in a single day with no reasons whatsoever to repeat them on other characters.

Good balance between difficulty, rewards and quality of content itself is what desired in this thread but currently it’s not the case.

Quest rewards would have even less rewards than stuff like Harrowstorms and world bosses, because they aren't repeatable. The reason to do them is because we enjoy a challenge. I don't need or expect a lot of rewards. I just want the gameplay to be more interesting in story quests. I already enjoy killing world bosses, and I'm one of those people who do Dragons and Harrowstorms. I wish they were slightly less group oriented because sometimes I'm the only one there and they become a massive pain alone. But I still try and do them. Because trying to solo a Harrowstorm is fun.

It all depends on what expectations players and developers have from any of the rework. .

Most players I think would agree with me that they can give us the difficulty options alone without a reward. Rich has said one reason they haven't done it is because they don't know how they'd incentivize it. They obviously wouldn't use the systems they already have (which makes sense because those things can be repeated) or they'd know how to do it. Doing what you always do is not a hard thing to know how to do.

So personally I think if it's such a big issue to them, they should just drop the concept. They don't need additional incentives. I just want questing to be more fun, it doesn't need to be that complicated. The entire point is the immersion of the quests. It's lame to need immunity phases to not one shot a guy who dueled Leki to a standstill.

I understand that rewards is touchy subject, but neglecting it entirely is just setting the whole endeavor to potential flop, opening all sorts of complaints in the future like “what is the point of that”, “why should i bother”, etc. from players who would like to give it a go, but wouldn’t because of the lack of incentives. Even the debuff system from lotro you brought to this discussion uses bonus xp and titles to incentivize the use of it.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Kind of zoned out of the interview after it became apparent that the entirety of this bout of feedback had essentially been ignored, but thank you for bringing it back up. It still fails entirely in the way that 'old silver and gold isn't what's being asked for,' 'there was more than just higher level mobs making the thrice divided and sparsely populated overland that was time-consuming to reach that made those zones unpopular,' and of course the 'but what incentive' argument.

It still goes to show that they have invested nothing in keeping tabs on these discussions, closed down any thread even slightly related to the topic to redirect here, all in an effort to keep the subject ignored. The "it will be used later in the event that they want to do this" won't matter when the state of the game will change, making the feedback less relevant, and the players who gave the feedback will have given up long before. It's just a really poorly done bit of pr to add to the pile of times they've ignored players for the worse.

I don't want to get into yet another discussion on silver and gold, so I'll just slide right past that for now. I think it's pretty established we disagree on it.

But, I'm right there with you on the incentives. They actually said "ultimately what it comes down too" which tells me they not only consider this a hurdle, but one of the largest hurdles. And it's like a massive slap in the face because there's over a hundred pages of posts in here, and almost none of them mention giving a single fig leaf about rewards. It tells me they probably really did not read this thread. Hardly anyone cares about rewards. We just want to have fun during quests. Geeze Louise.

And tbh the was quite a lot of posters who did mention rewards in their suggestions but it was immediately derailed by certain individual with the argument “that this mode only wanted by minority and most players fine with current overland as it is” and so if this complaint would ever be addressed it should be done with minimum investment possible. Personally, I don’t think that it’s so big of a hurdle for the devs rather they weren’t as interested in the feedback (as there were a lot of different suggestions on possible ways to address it) and Rich just repeated same line from his stream.

In the end it all comes down to what sort of rework we are talking about and what are expectations about it from both players and devs. Though in the very least it should compensate for extra time spent if not to add additional reasons to engage it.

Here's a hypothetical question; if one of the options was a straight increase in overland difficulty across the board, would the rewards still need to be adjusted? I mean, if they were to overhaul all of it, would the players asking for a separate overland still ask for increased rewards in this iteration?

Id guess that answer would be "no." This only really comes up with the mention of sliders or separate levels of difficulty. Many of the people asking for a game thats immersive are doing so for our own benefit. So the game feels better. If they offered a version where it was all increased, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. The reason why most specify an optional level is because we know that it would bother others. The optional part isnt for me. So, why would rewards matter in one of these cases and not in the other?

The precedence was set with dungeons already anyway.

tonyblack

Agenericname wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

Jpk0012 wrote: »

When overland content reach vet status bosses, you get what we have the newer zones. Dead zones after release. On Friday night, most of the bosses were empty in High Isle - this is a clear indication the people who want vet bosses in overland content exist solely on this forum and doesn't represent what is actually happening in the game. ZOS needs to stop listening to this advice. No one wants empty zones. The proof is in the Dolmens. There are more people playing in Dolmens than High Isle. That is shameful for a new expansion to be this dead(xbox).

Harrowstroms have been empty for years and will be forever. Vents will quickly follow, because they are boring with goofy twitch mechanics. The bosses are balanced for the rare people that do 100K+ dps. The rewards are not worth the effort of doing them over older, better balanced and more fun content.

As vet player why would I bother with world bosses or harrowstorms (group activities btw) for a chance to get cheap motif and useless piece of gear that not even worth selling? I mean i did farm them on first days for achievements and before prices dropped but now It’s far more efficient to do vCT for mask farm. Dolmens popular because they provide a lot of xp so good for leveling companions or new characters. It’s not enjoyable or rewarding to do those group overland activities because they designed to be zerged by large group of players and provide poor rewards as the result. And quests can be done in a single day with no reasons whatsoever to repeat them on other characters.

Good balance between difficulty, rewards and quality of content itself is what desired in this thread but currently it’s not the case.

Quest rewards would have even less rewards than stuff like Harrowstorms and world bosses, because they aren't repeatable. The reason to do them is because we enjoy a challenge. I don't need or expect a lot of rewards. I just want the gameplay to be more interesting in story quests. I already enjoy killing world bosses, and I'm one of those people who do Dragons and Harrowstorms. I wish they were slightly less group oriented because sometimes I'm the only one there and they become a massive pain alone. But I still try and do them. Because trying to solo a Harrowstorm is fun.

It all depends on what expectations players and developers have from any of the rework. .

Most players I think would agree with me that they can give us the difficulty options alone without a reward. Rich has said one reason they haven't done it is because they don't know how they'd incentivize it. They obviously wouldn't use the systems they already have (which makes sense because those things can be repeated) or they'd know how to do it. Doing what you always do is not a hard thing to know how to do.

So personally I think if it's such a big issue to them, they should just drop the concept. They don't need additional incentives. I just want questing to be more fun, it doesn't need to be that complicated. The entire point is the immersion of the quests. It's lame to need immunity phases to not one shot a guy who dueled Leki to a standstill.

I understand that rewards is touchy subject, but neglecting it entirely is just setting the whole endeavor to potential flop, opening all sorts of complaints in the future like “what is the point of that”, “why should i bother”, etc. from players who would like to give it a go, but wouldn’t because of the lack of incentives. Even the debuff system from lotro you brought to this discussion uses bonus xp and titles to incentivize the use of it.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

Kind of zoned out of the interview after it became apparent that the entirety of this bout of feedback had essentially been ignored, but thank you for bringing it back up. It still fails entirely in the way that 'old silver and gold isn't what's being asked for,' 'there was more than just higher level mobs making the thrice divided and sparsely populated overland that was time-consuming to reach that made those zones unpopular,' and of course the 'but what incentive' argument.

It still goes to show that they have invested nothing in keeping tabs on these discussions, closed down any thread even slightly related to the topic to redirect here, all in an effort to keep the subject ignored. The "it will be used later in the event that they want to do this" won't matter when the state of the game will change, making the feedback less relevant, and the players who gave the feedback will have given up long before. It's just a really poorly done bit of pr to add to the pile of times they've ignored players for the worse.

I don't want to get into yet another discussion on silver and gold, so I'll just slide right past that for now. I think it's pretty established we disagree on it.

But, I'm right there with you on the incentives. They actually said "ultimately what it comes down too" which tells me they not only consider this a hurdle, but one of the largest hurdles. And it's like a massive slap in the face because there's over a hundred pages of posts in here, and almost none of them mention giving a single fig leaf about rewards. It tells me they probably really did not read this thread. Hardly anyone cares about rewards. We just want to have fun during quests. Geeze Louise.

And tbh the was quite a lot of posters who did mention rewards in their suggestions but it was immediately derailed by certain individual with the argument “that this mode only wanted by minority and most players fine with current overland as it is” and so if this complaint would ever be addressed it should be done with minimum investment possible. Personally, I don’t think that it’s so big of a hurdle for the devs rather they weren’t as interested in the feedback (as there were a lot of different suggestions on possible ways to address it) and Rich just repeated same line from his stream.

In the end it all comes down to what sort of rework we are talking about and what are expectations about it from both players and devs. Though in the very least it should compensate for extra time spent if not to add additional reasons to engage it.

Here's a hypothetical question; if one of the options was a straight increase in overland difficulty across the board, would the rewards still need to be adjusted? I mean, if they were to overhaul all of it, would the players asking for a separate overland still ask for increased rewards in this iteration?

Id guess that answer would be "no." This only really comes up with the mention of sliders or separate levels of difficulty. Many of the people asking for a game thats immersive are doing so for our own benefit. So the game feels better. If they offered a version where it was all increased, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. The reason why most specify an optional level is because we know that it would bother others. The optional part isnt for me. So, why would rewards matter in one of these cases and not in the other?

The precedence was set with dungeons already anyway.

The thing is if any of the proposed solutions would require significant resources than just from business standpoint it should try to appeal to broad audience as well. Take dungeons and trials for example: some players might not be interested in running them in the first place, let alone in vet mode but to give them a reason to try there are monster sets, skins, dyes, furniture, perfected sets, etc. They might just do it for rewards and never touch it again or they might enjoy that experience and become frequent participants of said content. Take the rewards away and there still would be a portion of the playerbase, which enjoy this part of the game but the amount of new players coming in said content would definitely drop because they’d have fewer reasons to try it.

Mind you, i’m not telling to copypaste trial/dungeons rewards structure to overland. What it would look like would strictly depend on what sort of the solution we’re talking about. But like i said in my previous post it should at least compensate for extra time spent with extra gold and xp if nothing else. Though if the option would require significant resources to implement it would be rather stupid to not try to appeal to as many players as possible with something else. And if this part is completely ignored and the rework wouldn’t reach the numbers they hoped for then I suspect there would be small chance of any continuation in the future and it would add to the pile of failed experiments.

Dagobertfuk

spartaxoxo wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

It was funny when they first mentioned that as a reason, as if actually doing the content wouldn't be incentive enough. Since they haven't spoken on it for so long, I wonder if that point has changed, but given their other points remain unchanged during the months that these threads have gone on I wouldn't expect it to have.

We have millions of players that play The Elder Scrolls Online, and a large portion of them find the game hard and the Overland content challenging, especially as a new player when you don't have gold, all the gear, and Champion Points. Ultimately it comes down to, if we make the game harder, what are the incentives for players to play it at the harder level? That opens up a whole huge can of worms.

This was actually brought back up again as a reason why they aren't doing it. In case you didn't catch that part, on Rich's last interview.

The reasons why are

1) They tried with silver and gold and it failed
2) large portion don't like difficulty (because they already find the overland challenging)
3) They would want to give it incentives but they don't know how they'd do and think giving incentives would open a can of worms.

Edit
But personally, I don't understand why point 3 is even a problem. They say they were looking at options, dropped the too much work point, and said there was nothing major coming. I hope that means we can at least hope for a minor change. But, I'm not gonna hold my breath.

1) right

2)+3) That was only related to Cadwells Silver and Gold. Related to their Data and forums and what not, didnt exsist any complains from larger scale of players at all related to own faction base game overland difficulty. Wich still was way more difficult than the Difficulty we got after One Tamriel, what we have now.
No issues adressed by ZoS due to feedback from Forums and what not or their gamedata, specific to own alliance overland difficulty. Just minor things like to some specific quests or bosses back in the days.

So saying (whoever says that) that large potion didnt like difficulty is pulled out of the air. Rich also stated that a Ton of people played all content without issues or those people wouldnt just hate on Cadwells silver + gold difficulty. And since nobody complained about its impossible to say that even a single person back in the days didnt like difficulty at all.

Most People from today know nothing else, because they didnt experience ESO before One Tamriel and have no other chance rather than excepting the current experience of the boring quest experience without any difficulty.
But im sure there are people wich accepted it and learned to be happy with it.
Maybe it would a mistake to raise the difficulty to the old basegame difficulty, because of those people. But that would also increase their learning curve, to prevent the wall they hit when they start Veteran content.

I am also for optional difficulties, with better loot as another reason for harder overland content, rather than just for more enagaging experience. But imagine they do that. Then the old problem of instances comes back and thats very bad. Or some debuffs for you character would also feel awkward, when you are fighting a group of mobs/boss and somebody without debuff comes around the corner and just twoshots the enemys you are fighting.

Revert the old own faction base difficulty from pre ONE TAMRIEL would solve the problem in my eyes. It was a good mix of Difficulty. Wasnt to hard and it definitely wasnt to easy. And its also better to prepare people for vet content, instead of letting them do 500 Normal Dungeons, wich arent harder than anything before in overland, until they can tryhard another 500 Vet Dungeons to nearly reach the lvl of Skill to complete new DLC Vet dungeons. Burnout syndrom inc

Fingolfinn01

I think its time to move on, and close this thread. lol However that would only spawn plenty of lets change overland to hard difficulty in the general discussion thread. The fact is and will remain that overland will be the same as it is for a long time. Some say its easy and other believe not so.

I believe it will be like this until they turn the lights off in this game. Eso shelf life would be at least 20 years. So for that long.