Overland Content Feedback Thread

Sylvermynx

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Thanks for tagging me, SilverBride.

Several of us have been keeping tabs on and reading this forum post over the last several weeks since starting it up. We will be going through this thread to build out a report specifically on this topic and sharing that with the team at large for their consideration in the future. We think this thread will be helpful to get to the root of player concern on various sides of this conversation of overland difficulty. So thank you all of the time put into having lively discourse around the topic.

Beyond that, nothing to report now, but we will be working toward having a more detailed answer regarding overland content in the future.

Enlightening and encouraging. Thanks Kevin!

Chilly-McFreeze

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Thanks for tagging me, SilverBride.

Several of us have been keeping tabs on and reading this forum post over the last several weeks since starting it up. We will be going through this thread to build out a report specifically on this topic and sharing that with the team at large for their consideration in the future. We think this thread will be helpful to get to the root of player concern on various sides of this conversation of overland difficulty. So thank you all of the time put into having lively discourse around the topic.

Beyond that, nothing to report now, but we will be working toward having a more detailed answer regarding overland content in the future.

Great to hear! Whatever the outcome may be, it's pleasant to know that this topic and the ideas in this thread actually get considered. Thanks for the response!

ShalidorsHeir

@ZOS_Kevin thank you.


... but i already mentioned it before, folks Everyone, take your chance in here! I want to see want opinions for this summary (not reasons or technical solutions/issues, thats for ZOS to decide)

Lysette

In regards to overland difficulty when I was out adventuring in blackwood a while ago, I thought, would I be happy, if all those creatures around me would take me 2-3 hits more to take down - and after a while pondering I thought, certainly not, even I would want one or the other creatures to be more challenging, this is not the same for normal critters and standard wildlife - it would be incredibly annoying to double or triple the time to get rid of them.

So if difficulty is considered to be upscaled, could we limit the increase to those worth fighting and leave the normal ones as they are, maybe even give us some repellent against them attacking, because they are no challenge, but just incredibly annoying, and this would be even worse, if difficulty is overall scaled up - the scaling should not include trash mob, because this would make the game just cumbersome without to add a challenge - it would just increase annoyance.

Chilly-McFreeze

Lysette wrote: »

[...] I feel it myself and I have just characters around level 35 yet - I do often not even need to fight, because my armor does the fighting for me - or I just stand there and wait for the enemies to get bored - that can happen actually, they run back to their spawn points if they achieve nothing and are not getting killed in a certain amount of time.

Well, that explains a chunk. Now imagine how someone well skilled with further leveled, may even good geared toons feels like.

Lysette wrote: »

But I'm not here for the combat at all. but just to enjoy myself in the world of Nirn - my characters are deliberately no heroes or heroines - I role play them like that, so they do not have an urge to have challenging fights, as non-heroes they try to avoid confrontation.

And yet again. Nobody wants to take away any option for you to play that way. It's totally fine to play like that. But it's also fine for others to play differently. Yet I wouldn't dare to tell you "you're playing it wrong, they shouldn't cater to the likes of you. It's a you-problem, change your perspective!"

Lysette wrote: »

In regards to overland difficulty when I was out adventuring in blackwood a while ago, I thought, would I be happy, if all those creatures around me would take me 2-3 hits more to take down - and after a while pondering I thought, certainly not, even I would want one or the other creatures to be more challenging, this is not the same for normal critters and standard wildlife - it would be incredibly annoying to double or triple the time to get rid of them.

So if difficulty is considered to be upscaled, could we limit the increase to those worth fighting and leave the normal ones as they are, maybe even give us some repellent against them attacking, because they are no challenge, but just incredibly annoying, and this would be even worse, if difficulty is overall scaled up - the scaling should not include trash mob, because this would make the game just cumbersome without to add a challenge - it would just increase annoyance.

Correct. People aren't talking about critter level mobs. Somehow the anti-vet crowd comes along with that every other page. It's mostly about bosses (chapter, dlc, quest, side, etc.) and to a good chunk about standard mobs. Not about mudcrabs or nix hounds.

If you have played the single player titles (don't know if you did), e.g. skyrim, you'd notice different power tiers of enemies. A wolf is a pushover, a bandit a bit tougher, a vampire or dremora gave you a beating.
It even scaled further. The everyday bandit was no issue, but a bandit leader could pose a threat.

To have such a fine scaling here may be asked for too much, but you get the idea. Plus, as a reminder, with a seperate instance not a single one of the "normal" enemies would get touched.

ShalidorsHeir

@Lysette I think so far it was mostly referred to quest bosses, world bosses and world events such as dark anchors and, but thats is a personal opinion, all mobs inside public dungeons and delves. Because usually you only kill them once / play the content once (per character) --> other than that i would like to see an option to reset the quests in zone once i have done them all - this way i can enjoy my favourite stories again and again with my favourite characters, which is a personal dream of mine.

edit: let me correct - world events and bosses are done more frequently. I was linking that to my idea of veteran zones in my head somehow, but i guess you got the point

Lysette

ShalidorsHeir wrote: »

@Lysette I think so far it was mostly referred to quest bosses, world bosses and world events such as dark anchors and, but thats is a personal opinion, all mobs inside public dungeons and delves.

Welcome back, I thought you are still ignoring me - we are actually not even that far from each other than you might think, I understand your problem, I just try to figure out, how this could possibly be combined in the same environment with an average casual - I paid a bit more attention lately to how they fight and especially what I see on their health bar - when I look at mine, it is normally not or just a little bit going down with permanent regeneration pointers active - and then I look at how a lot of casuals fight and recognized that their health bar goes often dangerously close to them getting killed - so a lot have neither a proper damage shield active nor a decently enough health regeneration running - so there is as well a tutorial issue here, which is not our concern in this thread though, but just something what came to mind, when I watched them fighting.

And yes, that is about where I would like a bit more challenge as well - in those places, but not overall in overland.

The resetting of quests which are already done - we can abandon incomplete quests already - so it would not be any more immersion breaking than it already is, to reset a quest in full. I would like this for example for the time breach side quest line of the psijic order, because they give out some armor pieces as rewards, which I really like, but due to me not being at level 50, I get them at all kind of levels and they are getting pretty useless once I levelled up a couple of times - so this would as well be a helpful feature for me.

Lysette

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

[...] I feel it myself and I have just characters around level 35 yet - I do often not even need to fight, because my armor does the fighting for me - or I just stand there and wait for the enemies to get bored - that can happen actually, they run back to their spawn points if they achieve nothing and are not getting killed in a certain amount of time.

Well, that explains a chunk. Now imagine how someone well skilled with further leveled, may even good geared toons feels like.

Lysette wrote: »

But I'm not here for the combat at all. but just to enjoy myself in the world of Nirn - my characters are deliberately no heroes or heroines - I role play them like that, so they do not have an urge to have challenging fights, as non-heroes they try to avoid confrontation.

And yet again. Nobody wants to take away any option for you to play that way. It's totally fine to play like that. But it's also fine for others to play differently. Yet I wouldn't dare to tell you "you're playing it wrong, they shouldn't cater to the likes of you. It's a you-problem, change your perspective!"

Lysette wrote: »

In regards to overland difficulty when I was out adventuring in blackwood a while ago, I thought, would I be happy, if all those creatures around me would take me 2-3 hits more to take down - and after a while pondering I thought, certainly not, even I would want one or the other creatures to be more challenging, this is not the same for normal critters and standard wildlife - it would be incredibly annoying to double or triple the time to get rid of them.

So if difficulty is considered to be upscaled, could we limit the increase to those worth fighting and leave the normal ones as they are, maybe even give us some repellent against them attacking, because they are no challenge, but just incredibly annoying, and this would be even worse, if difficulty is overall scaled up - the scaling should not include trash mob, because this would make the game just cumbersome without to add a challenge - it would just increase annoyance.

Correct. People aren't talking about critter level mobs. Somehow the anti-vet crowd comes along with that every other page. It's mostly about bosses (chapter, dlc, quest, side, etc.) and to a good chunk about standard mobs. Not about mudcrabs or nix hounds.

If you have played the single player titles (don't know if you did), e.g. skyrim, you'd notice different power tiers of enemies. A wolf is a pushover, a bandit a bit tougher, a vampire or dremora gave you a beating.
It even scaled further. The everyday bandit was no issue, but a bandit leader could pose a threat.

To have such a fine scaling here may be asked for too much, but you get the idea. Plus, as a reminder, with a seperate instance not a single one of the "normal" enemies would get touched.

Yes, I played all the TES since TES:Morrowind - I played as well all the Fallout games with the exception of Fallout 76 - even those not made by Bethesda. But I played them all in normal mode (Fallout 4 in hardcore though) - because I think that is the intended mode to play the game, so my game experience with those games might differ widely from yours.

The reason why I play so slow paced in ESO is, I don't want to overpower myself, because then overland would be for me like it is for you - and I rather keep it as it is for me now - a bit more challenge at specific points in quests would be ok though.

I do as well not upgrade my gear to higher than blue gear with purple enchants - and my stats are normally around 30k. So far I haven't used potions, food yes, potions no - there was no need to. I somewhat want to look into that, but then again, I have no real need for those - this might change, if there would be a more challenging option.

SilverBride

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

It's mostly about bosses (chapter, dlc, quest, side, etc.) and to a good chunk about standard mobs. Not about mudcrabs or nix hounds

ShalidorsHeir wrote: »

I think so far it was mostly referred to quest bosses, world bosses and world events such as dark anchors and, but thats is a personal opinion, all mobs inside public dungeons and delves

This was not made clear but if this is truly the case then there is no need for a separate veteran overland because trash mobs make up the majority of overland mobs and story bosses are already instanced so challenge banners for these would suffice, and debuffs for the rest.

And to clarify, mudcrabs and nix hounds are standard mobs and not critters. They may not be aggressive and don't attack first but they do fight back, unlike critters. Also mudcrabs are very farmable for their chitin.

I'd like to add that dolmens and delves are all standard mobs except for one boss each. It would be overkill to create a separate veteran overland that really isn't veteran level at all.

Lysette

Well some of the medium enemies might need some upgrade as well - like river trolls, haj mota, bristlebacks and the like - they are classified as "dangerous enemies" - in the endeavors they count as dangerous creature. My level 30 explorer fought 4 of them (river trolls) at the same time (I fell into a river in the Reach, key got stuck and I pulled 4 of them behind me - lol) and he survived it - if those are dangerous beasts, he shouldn't have survived there.

SilverBride

There is no consensus about what a veteran overland would include. Some want mostly bosses and a good chunk of standard mobs. Some want quest bosses, world bosses and dolmens and delves. And some want to include dangerous enemies such as river trolls.

Three very different suggestions, so no matter which is chosen only one group would be satisfied and the other two would be saying it needs to be changed.

ShalidorsHeir

SilverBride wrote: »

There is no consensus about what a veteran overland would include. Some want mostly bosses and a good chunk of standard mobs. Some want quest bosses, world bosses and dolmens and delves. And some want to include dangerous enemies such as river trolls.

Three very different suggestions, so no matter which is chosen only one group would be satisfied and the other two would be saying it needs to be changed.

doubt that - from what i gathered in many conversations with other players in ESO anyone would be happy about a first step - and maybe a second one after ZOS could get some more feedback, for instance. - a veteran instance would offer ZOS much more flexible space to do that and to make adjustments afterwards. Besides that i think the expection of what "more difficulty" means is very scalable. Vet zones offer another way to implement much harder content without interupting players who are fine with its current state.

Lysette

SilverBride wrote: »

There is no consensus about what a veteran overland would include. Some want mostly bosses and a good chunk of standard mobs. Some want quest bosses, world bosses and dolmens and delves. And some want to include dangerous enemies such as river trolls.

Three very different suggestions, so no matter which is chosen only one group would be satisfied and the other two would be saying it needs to be changed.

Yes, but we could solve this by something what could be worn like standard disguises - in the disguise slot, for different options - eventually one option at a time - so we could flexibly use one or the other challenge dependent on what we currently are doing. I come mainly across these medium enemies like river trolls when I do excavations, for me this would be good enough if it would be just about them. But this could change over time, like I said, I haven't used potions yet, so there is still potential for me to get better in nearly no time. Well. and delve bosses, sometimes I did not even feel that it was a boss, when the "completed" message appears.

Lysette

ShalidorsHeir wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

There is no consensus about what a veteran overland would include. Some want mostly bosses and a good chunk of standard mobs. Some want quest bosses, world bosses and dolmens and delves. And some want to include dangerous enemies such as river trolls.

Three very different suggestions, so no matter which is chosen only one group would be satisfied and the other two would be saying it needs to be changed.

doubt that - from what i gathered in many conversations with other players in ESO anyone would be happy about a first step - and maybe a second one after ZOS could get some more feedback, for instance. - a veteran instance would offer ZOS much more flexible space to do that and to make adjustments afterwards. Besides that i think the expection of what "more difficulty" means is very scalable. Vet zones offer another way to implement much harder content without interupting players who are fine with its current state.

That is true, especially because the opinion what is "more challenge" differs a whole lot - for me more challenge would already be making river trolls double or triple as strong - if my level 30 can survive 4 of them struggling, then 3 times is good for a challenge without to be too stressful - but that is just my point of view, others might think that is nuts and again some others that is peanuts - there is no common ground and that makes it hard to design it.

ShalidorsHeir

One more thing i need to say because it really comes to my mind everytime. I need a toggle to slow down my horse. When im there just riding, not sprinting, just normal walk but on hourse it really feels unconfortable watching it ... its leveled to max speed and i cant take a chilled relaxing ride to enjoy the way through a zone. I dont know how you feel about this but for me thats one favourite thing to do honestly when im done with stuff. Im missing this slow relaxed ride on realistic speed since my mounts are max leveled.

SilverBride

ShalidorsHeir wrote: »

One more thing i need to say because it really comes to my mind everytime. I need a toggle to slow down my horse. When im there just riding, not sprinting, just normal walk but on hourse it really feels unconfortable watching it ... its leveled to max speed and i cant take a chilled relaxing ride to enjoy the way through a zone. I dont know how you feel about this but for me thats one favourite thing to do honestly when im done with stuff. Im missing this slow relaxed ride on realistic speed since my mounts are max leveled.

I removed every Champion Point and skill that increased mounted and walking speed for that very reason. I hated rushing around at a frenzied pace all the time. And I don't use the ring either.

I enjoy a relaxed experience, in overland and in general.

ShalidorsHeir

Well im happy to have it in Cyrodiil but in overland i feel like mount speed level alone is too much since the animation of the mount looks so uncomfortable and its still a way to fast.

Sylvermynx

ShalidorsHeir wrote: »

Well im happy to have it in Cyrodiil but in overland i feel like mount speed level alone is too much since the animation of the mount looks so uncomfortable and its still a way to fast.

I agree. I usually don't use mounts (unless I'm fishing in Cyro) because just running is actually more comfortable and effective when farming (which I do on every character I play at any time).

CP5

I've not been keeping up with this thread since making my last post on it but did want to come by and say it is good to see that the feedback is being listened to. It will be nice to have something concise to work over rather than running circles which was accomplishing little, and I hope we'll be able to learn something sooner rather than later. Did want to respond to this since it does a good job showing what I was mentioning earlier.

Lysette wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

[...] I feel it myself and I have just characters around level 35 yet - I do often not even need to fight, because my armor does the fighting for me - or I just stand there and wait for the enemies to get bored - that can happen actually, they run back to their spawn points if they achieve nothing and are not getting killed in a certain amount of time.

Well, that explains a chunk. Now imagine how someone well skilled with further leveled, may even good geared toons feels like.

Lysette wrote: »

But I'm not here for the combat at all. but just to enjoy myself in the world of Nirn - my characters are deliberately no heroes or heroines - I role play them like that, so they do not have an urge to have challenging fights, as non-heroes they try to avoid confrontation.

And yet again. Nobody wants to take away any option for you to play that way. It's totally fine to play like that. But it's also fine for others to play differently. Yet I wouldn't dare to tell you "you're playing it wrong, they shouldn't cater to the likes of you. It's a you-problem, change your perspective!"

Lysette wrote: »

In regards to overland difficulty when I was out adventuring in blackwood a while ago, I thought, would I be happy, if all those creatures around me would take me 2-3 hits more to take down - and after a while pondering I thought, certainly not, even I would want one or the other creatures to be more challenging, this is not the same for normal critters and standard wildlife - it would be incredibly annoying to double or triple the time to get rid of them.

So if difficulty is considered to be upscaled, could we limit the increase to those worth fighting and leave the normal ones as they are, maybe even give us some repellent against them attacking, because they are no challenge, but just incredibly annoying, and this would be even worse, if difficulty is overall scaled up - the scaling should not include trash mob, because this would make the game just cumbersome without to add a challenge - it would just increase annoyance.

Correct. People aren't talking about critter level mobs. Somehow the anti-vet crowd comes along with that every other page. It's mostly about bosses (chapter, dlc, quest, side, etc.) and to a good chunk about standard mobs. Not about mudcrabs or nix hounds.

If you have played the single player titles (don't know if you did), e.g. skyrim, you'd notice different power tiers of enemies. A wolf is a pushover, a bandit a bit tougher, a vampire or dremora gave you a beating.
It even scaled further. The everyday bandit was no issue, but a bandit leader could pose a threat.

To have such a fine scaling here may be asked for too much, but you get the idea. Plus, as a reminder, with a seperate instance not a single one of the "normal" enemies would get touched.

Yes, I played all the TES since TES:Morrowind - I played as well all the Fallout games with the exception of Fallout 76 - even those not made by Bethesda. But I played them all in normal mode (Fallout 4 in hardcore though) - because I think that is the intended mode to play the game, so my game experience with those games might differ widely from yours.

The reason why I play so slow paced in ESO is, I don't want to overpower myself, because then overland would be for me like it is for you - and I rather keep it as it is for me now - a bit more challenge at specific points in quests would be ok though.

I do as well not upgrade my gear to higher than blue gear with purple enchants - and my stats are normally around 30k. So far I haven't used potions, food yes, potions no - there was no need to. I somewhat want to look into that, but then again, I have no real need for those - this might change, if there would be a more challenging option.

This is a good mentality to have, knowing how you enjoy part of the game and allowing yourself to just enjoy it. This works for many players and is a good thing, but two groups of players can't fit into this area. Some players are new to ESO, have overland been their first experience with the game, and perhaps have a higher standard of what an action rpg should be expecting of them combat wise and leave early thinking ESO is bland and boring.

Others, like myself, have done veteran content to the point where many dungeons and trials even are little more than routine, so stepping back into overland we experience the very issue you mention. Once you're used to the higher pace of more demanding combat, it isn't that you can't self nerf or slow yourself down, it's that you know full well these enemies are being held back by design as to not be too much for newer players to handle. But that's the whole world, and it is hard to feel much when you have seen behind the curtain as it were and know full well that there won't be any real sense of danger or memorable encounters when the opposition as built around primarily one group of players.

Thankfully, as ZOS has shown in every other area of the game they can use zone instances to easily provide and tweak such an experience for others just like they do with every other piece of content in game, without needing to disturb the player base who are content with what is already there.

SilverBride

CP5 wrote: »

Some players are new to ESO, have overland been their first experience with the game, and perhaps have a higher standard of what an action rpg should be expecting of them combat wise and leave early thinking ESO is bland and boring.

I see ESO as story based rather than action. I think of first person shooters as action games, so if players are coming here looking for that type of combat they probably will be disappointed.

Cireous

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Several of us have been keeping tabs on and reading this forum post over the last several weeks since starting it up. We will be going through this thread to build out a report specifically on this topic and sharing that with the team at large for their consideration in the future. We think this thread will be helpful to get to the root of player concern on various sides of this conversation of overland difficulty. So thank you all of the time put into having lively discourse around the topic.

Beyond that, nothing to report now, but we will be working toward having a more detailed answer regarding overland content in the future.

This is the single most exciting thing I have read on the forums. Kevin, I think you are my new favorite human.

NightwindArcher

Veteran Mode for quests please!!

Lysette

NightwindArcher wrote: »

Veteran Mode for quests please!!

This could be pretty annoying though, a lot of these quests are of the type speak to A, then speak to B, go and acquire C and bring it to B, then speak to A to get your reward kind of quests - if the fetch part is in outdoor overland, where just the normal mob is present, making those harder would be quite annoying - it is a different thing in delves and dungeons, but to upscale outdoor overland is not a huge benefit but could be quite a cumbersome experience with no value to enjoyment.

FlopsyPrince

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

That is not sufficient to note. How many of those are not playing now? How many would it retain, even for those 2 costs? How many would it acquire? How many would keep playing past a short bit? Would it really pull $60/year in on all such players?

Those are the numbers to consider, not just how many would like it.

None of us have the data so unfortunately the only thing we can do is observe and speculate. As mentioned above, I would love to see Zenimax Online publish more data so we can see how 'casual' the playerbase actually is because rudimentary observations in the open world illustrate a very different scenario than the rhetoric I see in these threads. It's not the top 1% of players killing stuff before they can even perform their attack animations or getting through quest dialog, it's easily a third of the active playerbase.

Frankly the seams are starting to show for anyone spending a reasonable amount of time in the buy2play game they've already paid for. How much longer will it be sustainable to sell content where a sizable portion of the playerbase is one-shotting enemies throughout a 20-30 hour long chapter?

I doubt they will ever share the numbers, since that goes against the trends in these games, but you are right that the game is old. Though it has a strong following. Unless it is in serious financial trouble they are concealing now, it is likely to stay around for a fair bit longer, even with the low participation guilds you note.

They would have to have a major scandal like Blizzard (that impacted World of Warcraft) to do them in most likely. I am personally unhappy with a few things (especially having to lose all my "stuff" accumulated over 3+ years to switch to the PC), but I am still here. I am sure that is true with many others.

My guilds are all decent and do have an activity policy far shorter than what you note. Most also require a donation and rent a guild trader. So at least some guilds are still active.

What competition is out there? What will players play instead? That is another important question. New World fizzled out and I don't know of anything else that is a likely pull now. (FFXIV would face similar challenges most likely.)

Many of us also play this to relax, not to get beat on when we are questing. Yes, the claim was it would be optional, but that is tough with 1-time rewards and such. I still remember the first Psijic quest in the guy's mind where I needed help (no CP and misbalanced gear). It is much easier now, but I am not disappointed. I have probably done that at least 30-40 times now, if not more.

I don't note this to say your desire for something hard is not wanted by some, but I do think that is a much smaller audience than the casual who only plays a bit. I would bet many (most?) of those who want really hard stuff but play a bit less often are content with Trials and even Veteran Dungeons.

Thus the numbers would matter because making new content at all is expensive. Making multiple versions or a scaling one would be even more challenging and take a fair bit more time. Thus it would take a lot of players to make the extra work worthwhile and I am skeptical they could ever cost justify it, especially when they have not gotten to so many annoying bugs that have been around for years (almost certainly because a lack of people to spend time fixing them).

You would have to find a way to strongly argue that this hurdle could be overcome.

Competition in the space would make it much more likely to happen, but I don't see anything now serving that purpose, even FFXIV.

FlopsyPrince

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

This would be a lot of work for a very short play experience for a limited number of people. New content in any MMO is consumed at a fast rate already. Designing content (or updating it) for a smaller subset would take a lot of time to properly tune and then would likely only be interesting for a while, as Harrowstorms and such have shown.

I was hoping to see some notable exceptions to this in past questions I asked, but I did not. (Perhaps I missed them, but I find that unlikely.) Please tell me how this would not be true if you believe it would not.

How would the financial cost of all this work be offset by the benefits if this is true?

You're misrepresenting the argument by downplaying the number of people this affects as if it's a small handful of neckbeards that don't touch grass. The power creep problem is readily apparent in the open world and from what I've observed, CP300 is when players are basically one-shotting enemies in overland. The game is eight years old and there's been 15+ DLCs including five retail expansion packs. Even someone who only touches the game once a year when chapters release would be able to reach CP300. That's nothing, especially after CP2.0 essentially cut the XP needed in half.

That was not the intent of what I wrote. It would take a whole lot more than that minimal number of players to justify the costs involved. A LOT more. Please do not twist what I am saying. You are free to disagree, but I would expect anything they devote serious time to would be cost justified by its positive financial contribution, not just for a portion of the players.

How many players are in the category you note? 10-20% of the playerbase? More? Less? How much revenue do those players drive?

Remember to separate those who want harder overland content and those who will quit (or not start) if they do not get it. I am asserting it is relatively low, but it would only be worth all the work

I'm in four super casual guilds on PC-NA that allow me to log out for six months and still be in them so they allow varying levels of lengthy inactivity. In one guild that has players that haven't logged in up to 40 months, over a third of the 471 players we have are above CP300. The others that don't keep inactive members around for years, the overwhelming majority of players in them are above CP300. I look around the open world and out of 25 people completely at random prime time, 16 of them were above the level of CP300. I observe combat encounters outside the cities, the vast majority of mobs are killed in a blink of an eye.

A sizable portion of the playerbase is capable of steamrolling the overwhelming majority of content being sold to us every year. What's the exact percentage? Not sure and I would love for ZOS to release their analytics on this because I am positive it would be favorable to me and my side of the argument but it's certainly a hell of a lot more than some individuals in this thread seem to be implying.

The players wanting this may not like Harrowstorms, but that would just reinforce my point. They are very hard content for most of us (really tough in a small group and impossible to solo - for a sizeable group of us). Yet they didn't hold the interest of those who want veteran content (according to posts here at least, and my own experience going by them in game) once they were farmed out

Why would the community who have been told to shut up and stay in our instanced veteran content since One Tamriel (six years ago) be in the overland in 2021-2022? They're most likely taking the advice of staying in their instanced content running vMA for the 5000th time or not playing the game period (as you can see in the Reddit thread discussing ESO's lack of difficulty above)... Because expecting them to fork out $40 for an expansion where you one-shot mobs for twenty hours is a hard sell even if you're really invested in the lore.

It may be, but how many will not pay it if they don't invest the significant amount of development work required to do this?

And the issue of "one-shotting mobs" has been shown to only be true for a limited subset. I would assume you really mean "easily kill" here, not literally a single shot, since many (likely most) of us cannot do that for all but things like deer. Even wolves in Summerset take me multiple shots on my main who is well outfitted.

I would also like to see you and others like you tell how whatever they do would keep you engaged for long. How long would it be until you had figured it out enough to be asking for even harder overland content? Keeping people happy with content is very hard for most MMOs, it would be even harder for this kind of content, especially since you would likely consume it even faster than normal, at least until you were tired of it.

FlopsyPrince

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Thanks for tagging me, SilverBride.

Several of us have been keeping tabs on and reading this forum post over the last several weeks since starting it up. We will be going through this thread to build out a report specifically on this topic and sharing that with the team at large for their consideration in the future. We think this thread will be helpful to get to the root of player concern on various sides of this conversation of overland difficulty. So thank you all of the time put into having lively discourse around the topic.

Beyond that, nothing to report now, but we will be working toward having a more detailed answer regarding overland content in the future.

I will note nothing I say should discourage you from doing this Kevin (nor was it intended that way).

It is just based on my following of the MMO field for many years and my own experience in the software development area.

I would be quite fine if ZOS made something here, but I would also like to see many long-standing bugs fixed first at least (such as marking the ladders properly with quest markers in IC.

I would of course have you prioritize other quality of life things, but your dev teams (and their management) can decide which is the best use of your time.

Lysette

There is no serious concurrence to ESO for those of us, who basically more or less grew up with Elder Scrolls or played it in our younger years - we are not here because it is just some fantasy game which we could easily switch out for another one - we are here because it is Elder Scrolls and other fantasy games might be nice, but they aren't Elder Scrolls.

Chilly-McFreeze

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I would be quite fine if ZOS made something here, but I would also like to see many long-standing bugs fixed first at least (such as marking the ladders properly with quest markers in IC.

Don't fool yourself. If they'd delay new content until every long standing bug is resolved, we'd be gray before the next DLC hit. With a game of this magnitude and the plan to rewrite fundamental parts of the code bug fixing is a never-ending work. Killer argument, so to say.

Lysette

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I would be quite fine if ZOS made something here, but I would also like to see many long-standing bugs fixed first at least (such as marking the ladders properly with quest markers in IC.

Don't fool yourself. If they'd delay new content until every long standing bug is resolved, we'd be gray before the next DLC hit. With a game of this magnitude and the plan to rewrite fundamental parts of the code bug fixing is a never-ending work. Killer argument, so to say.

Yeah and it is quite normal to just let bugs in the game, if they do not effect a lot of people or are just rarely happening - take windows with it's roughly 250,000 unfixed bugs - it works most of the time, and fixing those, might introduce new bugs. In average development and bug fixing stops when it is "good enough" by that very reason.

ShalidorsHeir

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

This would be a lot of work for a very short play experience for a limited number of people. New content in any MMO is consumed at a fast rate already. Designing content (or updating it) for a smaller subset would take a lot of time to properly tune and then would likely only be interesting for a while, as Harrowstorms and such have shown.

I was hoping to see some notable exceptions to this in past questions I asked, but I did not. (Perhaps I missed them, but I find that unlikely.) Please tell me how this would not be true if you believe it would not.

How would the financial cost of all this work be offset by the benefits if this is true?

You're misrepresenting the argument by downplaying the number of people this affects as if it's a small handful of neckbeards that don't touch grass. The power creep problem is readily apparent in the open world and from what I've observed, CP300 is when players are basically one-shotting enemies in overland. The game is eight years old and there's been 15+ DLCs including five retail expansion packs. Even someone who only touches the game once a year when chapters release would be able to reach CP300. That's nothing, especially after CP2.0 essentially cut the XP needed in half.

That was not the intent of what I wrote. It would take a whole lot more than that minimal number of players to justify the costs involved. A LOT more. Please do not twist what I am saying. You are free to disagree, but I would expect anything they devote serious time to would be cost justified by its positive financial contribution, not just for a portion of the players.

How many players are in the category you note? 10-20% of the playerbase? More? Less? How much revenue do those players drive?

Remember to separate those who want harder overland content and those who will quit (or not start) if they do not get it. I am asserting it is relatively low, but it would only be worth all the work

I'm in four super casual guilds on PC-NA that allow me to log out for six months and still be in them so they allow varying levels of lengthy inactivity. In one guild that has players that haven't logged in up to 40 months, over a third of the 471 players we have are above CP300. The others that don't keep inactive members around for years, the overwhelming majority of players in them are above CP300. I look around the open world and out of 25 people completely at random prime time, 16 of them were above the level of CP300. I observe combat encounters outside the cities, the vast majority of mobs are killed in a blink of an eye.

A sizable portion of the playerbase is capable of steamrolling the overwhelming majority of content being sold to us every year. What's the exact percentage? Not sure and I would love for ZOS to release their analytics on this because I am positive it would be favorable to me and my side of the argument but it's certainly a hell of a lot more than some individuals in this thread seem to be implying.

The players wanting this may not like Harrowstorms, but that would just reinforce my point. They are very hard content for most of us (really tough in a small group and impossible to solo - for a sizeable group of us). Yet they didn't hold the interest of those who want veteran content (according to posts here at least, and my own experience going by them in game) once they were farmed out

Why would the community who have been told to shut up and stay in our instanced veteran content since One Tamriel (six years ago) be in the overland in 2021-2022? They're most likely taking the advice of staying in their instanced content running vMA for the 5000th time or not playing the game period (as you can see in the Reddit thread discussing ESO's lack of difficulty above)... Because expecting them to fork out $40 for an expansion where you one-shot mobs for twenty hours is a hard sell even if you're really invested in the lore.

It may be, but how many will not pay it if they don't invest the significant amount of development work required to do this?

And the issue of "one-shotting mobs" has been shown to only be true for a limited subset. I would assume you really mean "easily kill" here, not literally a single shot, since many (likely most) of us cannot do that for all but things like deer. Even wolves in Summerset take me multiple shots on my main who is well outfitted.

I would also like to see you and others like you tell how whatever they do would keep you engaged for long. How long would it be until you had figured it out enough to be asking for even harder overland content? Keeping people happy with content is very hard for most MMOs, it would be even harder for this kind of content, especially since you would likely consume it even faster than normal, at least until you were tired of it.

How long this will be reasonable? Given ZOS' current yearly schedule forever. I didnt quest in 4 years other than the recent 2 weeks for this forum thread. I would come back so would many others, so thinks a whole guild of mine and many more players i discussed this topic with in recent yrears- besides that. >60% of ZOS content in chapters and DLCs is overland and its the content they make advertisement for. I think its a bit more urgent than certain other things
Btw for me its oneshot - i go into stealth for crit damage and oneshot up 65K health. Besides that i can kill 20 mobs in 4-6 secs and 50 mobs + 4 dangerous foes in around 20 secs as tested in rimmer necropolis 2 days ago where i pulled the whole dungeon it seems, without dropping below 70% health. Also i removed all my CP and ALL gear. Quest boss with 250K health was dead in 6 secs. with only weapons equipped - also no need to care about the boss mechanic with literally 0 armor rating.
I just say this to underline that player like me do exist. It is not just a rumor.