Overland Content Feedback Thread

spartaxoxo

CP5 wrote: »

The simple fact of the matter is, you can get more kills against easier targets, resulting in more times to get exp and loot from them. By upping the difficulty you kill fewer things, thus get less, so compensating that so two people get the same amount over the same amount of time regardless of their difficulty makes sense. And besides, if I really want gold I would either 1) farm imperials or other gold dropping mobs on 'normal' or 2) get things worth a lot of gold and sell them to other players, and if those things happen to drop from enemies, I'm better off killing large numbers of weak enemies.

Exactly this. Obviously they would need to at the bare minimum be a gold buff and exp buff.

FlopsyPrince

tonyblack wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

tonyblack wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Iron_Warrior wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

LashanW wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

The problem is that the level of effort to make consistent challenging content would be much more than the relatively brief satisfaction of those who want it with such content. It would take more than a run through or two to "pay" for all the effort made.

I could be wrong of course, but I can't see such players being happy with repeating such content so much as those of us who don't demand it are.

What do you mean "pay" for all the effort made? I saw this type of comment earlier too. We make one-time payment for latest chapters and we sub for ESO+ (people pay for ESO+ for a wide variety of reasons, I mostly pay for the craft bag and increased storage space). What other payments are there for replaying content? It's not like you make additional payments every time you replay an overland zone.

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

Some of you may say debuffs are the answer, but isn't turning of CP something like that?

Not anymore.
CP2.0 is not that strong compared to CP1.0. Also ZoS gave extra stats to all characters regardless of CP, when they transitioned from CP1.0 to CP2.0. For example free 1000 weapon and spell damage for everyone, and increased health. You can't turn these off.

Also, you can have builds that do 20k+ dps with good self heals/shields while having enough sustain to fight for days. And this is with only basic gear and zero CP. It comes from knowing well how the game works, and being skilled with your class. Can't exactly turn these "off".

I am not talking about a payment anyone would make. I am using the business term if some effort will "pay" for the effort it costs. That means "will it be worth more than the cost and level of effort it would take."

Hopefully that clarifies things. I was not suggesting making anyone pay more, but life is full of tradeoffs, including all development.

Why are we as players are worrying about the cost of things right now? We know nothing about the business side of things, we are not zenimax employees so talking about it is pointless. Plus zenimax is not an indie company, this is a b2p game with all kinds of monetization, 40$ chapters, sub, lootboxes, cash shop that sells all kinds of things. Stop worrying about corporate incomes.

Some people call us a minority. Ok maybe we are a minority but i'm sure the people that want a harder overland, outnumber the card game fans by at least 10 to 1, yet here we are getting a card game as the main feature of the next chapter

Where did I speak of corporate income?

It sounds like you have not dealt with the business end of things in the real world. Getting a good value for the effort you spend is always a part of planning. Any effort made must give enough feedback to justify its cost.

For example: Spending $1000 to make $100 would be a poor investment if the $100 was the top expected additional income from all areas. Companies will sometimes still spend money on such things if other factors push the value up, but spending lots of money (dev time boils down to costs at some point) to do something that will not get the return is not going to happen in most companies, at least those that want to stay solvent.

Talking about the cost vs. reward of efforts in this area is VERY appropriate because of that.

Unless ZOS would make data about their financial planning public, which is unlikely, discussing cost of anything would do nothing but derail discussion. You can only make inaccurate assumptions based on your perception and limited experience in that area of what is feasible, and what isn’t.

That is not true in the slightest. The software development and game development process is a well-known area. We may not know the exact specifics for ZOS, but we do know general principles. We can assume some broad principles, like the level of effort to customize each and every world zone and boss to make them "harder" (which is still not well-defined).

The payback does not look to be worth the time cost in this case, whatever the exact numbers involved.

Some want debuffs, some despise them and want customized content (much more costly in time/salaries/etc.), some want something that has not been clearly defined.

Thus even the group wanting "harder overland content" is widely split.

So from what data did you draw a conclusion that it would not worth the cost? Everything you wrote is vague assumptions without any details. There wasn’t a single concrete fact of how much would any of the suggestions cost or how much players would be satisfied with any of the changes. Discussing cost vs benefits based on some unrelated quotes from streams isn’t very productive, especially considering how obscure most of them were.

Ok, let’s assume universal veteran instances for all zones are unrealistic. What about limiting it to new content only? What about limiting it to specific locations like main quest, delves and public dungeons within that zone? Or hard mode scrolls for bosses only? Or creating specific challenge areas within that zone?

There was a lot of different suggestions in this thread. Obviously, some of them are less desirable and easier to implement than the others, but it doesn’t look to me that all of them are impossible and there are a lot of possible workarounds.

I wrote it based on my extensive development experience and lots of reading about MMOs over many years, including nothing indicating effort in custom content will ever satisfy those who only focus on that, which would be the case here. This is not something to do over and over, it is to do one or perhaps several times and then to want even more challenge.

Note the cost of Tamriel One and Warcraft's past revamp(s). Very costly due to the level of effort.

I am fine with them doing whatever they want for new content and it would make much more sense for something like this. Though many of the replies here would not be satisfied with just that. Also keep in mind that making new zones too hard would alienate many more casual players, doubling the effort for new zones if they wanted (and even could) produce both.

How much large scale software development work have you done? How much/long have you followed the MMO business?

I myself never state anything related to costs of any solution. It’s not my area of expertise and if developer experience would be a requirement to participate in this discussion I don’t see a point keeping it open. I just provided thoughts and feedback of my in game experience and how I feel if any of suggestions would be implemented.

And yet I remember there was different opinions from users who claimed to be related to IT and software speculated ESO already had means and technologies available to them to resolve this through instances utilizing different scaling with low/moderate effort. So there is already contradiction at this stage and by the lack of concrete evidence based on your past expert experience or rough estimates of how much it would cost, how much time and personnel it would require I have hard time putting any cohesive arguments about it. Discussing costs with what little data available seems pointless and counterproductive. Unless we get clearer communication from ZOS representatives, we can only guess what solutions are feasible and what kind of effort they could invest into it.

From your reply, I get the impression that you don’t see value in this yourself and see no reason to make any improvement because those who do have different take on how they want it. This is not very productive course of action for any business that wants to succeed. If sizable group of your clients had a persistent request for your product you decided to ignore it they will be unsatisfied and eventually pick another product that meet their needs better. Compromises and different solutions can always be found. However, if this is just a collateral damage ZOS is willing to make then it’s logical to scrap this discussion and return to regular weekly posts about “overland is too easy”.

I am not saying it is not doable, I am arguing that the effort involved would make it cost prohibitive. You don't have to know much about dev work to see that it would take a lot of tuning to make things compelling throughout, without just using something that would be almost like a debuff, which many here oppose. Tuning all overland encounters would require tuning all overland encounters! That is a LOT of work no matter how you look at it.

YellowFridge wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

summ0004 wrote: »

mocap wrote: »

BroughBreaux wrote: »

Novice > Apprentice > Adept > Expert > Master > Legendary
These options would attach a Battle Spirit-like buff and debuff to your character

Legendary:
Damage Taken: 300%
Damage Done: 30%
Healing Taken: 30%

Thats the routes I would prefer to go down, it just needs to be balanced with the appropiate rewards in terms of gold, experience and/or higher item quality.

And that is the key thing that gets denied by many. Some claim they just want to have a higher challenge, but it is fairly clear most want that with higher rewards, which upsets the whole apple cart.

Ah yes, god forbid a greater challenge offers greater or unique rewards. Everything needs to be beatable and obtainable by the lowest common denominator right? There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with this concept. I wouldn't be surprised if there are people already complaining about vDungeons /vTrials offering better rewards - I just personally haven't come across it.

It's quite simple, if you have the option to avoid harder content - then don't do it. There are many posters that say they're "for" some sort of a vet overland as long as it's a choice - BUT it can't offer better rewards. ??????
Isn't that the whole point of difficulty (especially in an MMO)?

I truly don't understand the entitlement. It's absolutely fine for YOU to not want harder content without shaming others that DO want it. There are already harder difficulties for the same content in the game which give better rewards, so why not the same for overland????

Who am I shaming? I am just noting the inconsistency. Many of the earlier arguments claimed harder content was the point. You clearly do not agree and want higher rewards, yet that desire was denied by many who wanted harder encounters earlier.

I have no problem with higher rewards for harder content, so please don't label me with something I am not saying.

I also do not oppose the idea for some vague reason, I just do not see it being cost effective for them, as I have noted several times. This would take lots of time and only please a few people for a short time, as far as I can see. How many times have you run the core questline in Alik'r Desert, for example? How many times would you run it if it was all tweaked higher?

Though I would note that giving higher rewards for harder content that could never be accessed by those who did it at a lower level. That is not true of other scaled content. I could run vet dungeons and trials if I wanted, they are not taken away because I already did the "easier" version.

CP5

They're making a card game, FlopsyPrince. I don't think any of us have any standing as to how they decide to spend their time. As for updating "all encounters," enemies spawned throughout the world are based off of templates, so things like "goblin shaman" or "trinimac sword and shield user," and updating those many encounters comes down to modifying the stats of the base template they're spawned from.

spartaxoxo

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I also do not oppose the idea for some vague reason, I just do not see it being cost effective for them, as I have noted several times. This would take lots of time and only please a few people for a short time, as far as I can see. How many times have you run the core questline in Alik'r Desert, for example? How many times would you run it if it was all tweaked higher?

Though I would note that giving higher rewards for harder content that could never be accessed by those who did it at a lower level. That is not true of other scaled content. I could run vet dungeons and trials if I wanted, they are not taken away because I already did the "easier" version.

They have actually explicitly stated in the past that it's a "TON" of work, so you're correct there. None of us are looking at the way ZOS did it's code back then, so none of us are in a position to contradict them. They have openly stated in the past on unrelated topics that their old tools weren't great and that it's often too much of a waste of time to go back to old stuff to fix it and they'd rather work on new projects. One example was they was estimated for me that it would take 3 months of work just to shorten the wait between dialogue in DSA.

But your second point has been solved with Account Wide Achievements. Now if you want the achievement on your main, you can do it on your alt and still get it. No more permanent lockouts. AWA has solved a big stumbling block on this topic and I hope the devs recognize that because I know Rich was talking about how they didn't know they could incentivize it, also implying that enough people wouldn't play if they didn't incentivize it. Well, that problem is fixed. No more incentive issue.

Parasaurolophus

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I am not saying it is not doable, I am arguing that the effort involved would make it cost prohibitive. You don't have to know much about dev work to see that it would take a lot of tuning to make things compelling throughout, without just using something that would be almost like a debuff, which many here oppose. Tuning all overland encounters would require tuning all overland encounters! That is a LOT of work no matter how you look at it.

It could be a debuff. It could be a new Adventure Zone with a switch as a function of the new chapter. And it is natural that any work requires money and time. Recall that ZoS does CCG.

mocap

A popular myth about "it would require too much work to make X feature".

No one say that devs must implement X feature next day/month. After OT update devs had like 5 years to do something with overland difficulty. And yet they did nothing despite a lot of community ideas.

spartaxoxo

mocap wrote: »

A popular myth about "it would require too much work to make X feature".

No one say that devs must implement X feature next day/month. After OT update devs had like 5 years to do something with overland difficulty. And yet they did nothing despite a lot of community ideas.

That they could have started working on it a while back if they had so chosen does not negate that it's a ton of work.

mocap

spartaxoxo wrote: »

That they could have started working on it a while back if they had so chosen does not negate that it's a ton of work.

They remade a lot of sets makes them hybrid. Many changes in skills, passives. They remade CP. They made card game. Did someone ask for all that? Like in 90 pages thread with almost 3k of posts. Isn't that hard to make some changes into overland via toggle debufs (slider, food, debuf sets, whatever you name it)?

I don't see a ton of work to do that. It is a long story ESO myth, when the opponents of certain ideas ran out of arguments they start saying that "it will take a lot of work, we need better perfomance, we need bug fixes" etc...

spartaxoxo

mocap wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

That they could have started working on it a while back if they had so chosen does not negate that it's a ton of work.

They remade a lot of sets makes them hybrid. Many changes in skills, passives. They remade CP. They made card game. Did someone ask for all that? Like in 90 pages thread with almost 3k of posts. Isn't that hard to make some changes into overland via toggle debufs (slider, food, debuf sets, whatever you name it)?

I don't see a ton of work to do that. It is a long story ESO myth, when the opponents of certain ideas ran out of arguments they start saying that "it will take a lot of work, we need better perfomance, we need bug fixes" etc...

I also suspect that debuffs would be easier, but the conversation about them saying it would be a ton of work was about making a separate vet instance for all the existing zones not the concept in general.

CP5

Years ago ZOS updated base game delves. Prior to these updates, every delve was a literal circle. You entered, passed a 1-way door, killed things on your way to the boss/skyshard, then went out the 1-way door and went on your way. They didn't do them all at once though, starting with each factions 1st zone, then the 2nd, and so on. It didn't need to be all at once, but it showed they cared and were intent on making progress.

Action has to start somewhere, and like the prophet says at the beginning of the game 'indecision becomes decision.' They decided to put effort in making a card game, with a leaderboard no less, and in doing so decided to not do other things, they'll either start somewhere or not at all, and having no clue what their plans are going forward definitely doesn't help matters.

FlopsyPrince

CP5 wrote: »

They're making a card game, FlopsyPrince. I don't think any of us have any standing as to how they decide to spend their time. As for updating "all encounters," enemies spawned throughout the world are based off of templates, so things like "goblin shaman" or "trinimac sword and shield user," and updating those many encounters comes down to modifying the stats of the base template they're spawned from.

It is more complicated than that, as the reply after yours notes. Tuning the entire world is not just a template, but a LOT of work. Otherwise a debuff would be sufficient, since that is an easy apply.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

I also do not oppose the idea for some vague reason, I just do not see it being cost effective for them, as I have noted several times. This would take lots of time and only please a few people for a short time, as far as I can see. How many times have you run the core questline in Alik'r Desert, for example? How many times would you run it if it was all tweaked higher?

Though I would note that giving higher rewards for harder content that could never be accessed by those who did it at a lower level. That is not true of other scaled content. I could run vet dungeons and trials if I wanted, they are not taken away because I already did the "easier" version.

They have actually explicitly stated in the past that it's a "TON" of work, so you're correct there. None of us are looking at the way ZOS did it's code back then, so none of us are in a position to contradict them. They have openly stated in the past on unrelated topics that their old tools weren't great and that it's often too much of a waste of time to go back to old stuff to fix it and they'd rather work on new projects. One example was they was estimated for me that it would take 3 months of work just to shorten the wait between dialogue in DSA.

The level of effort would be significant even if it was coded perfectly, which no system ever is, even if that is the intent. I bet most do not see this part or want to consider it. The MMO world has a LOT of working parts, and many of them would need to be adjusted for the full experience.

How many saying it is an easy task have ever modified (or even just reviewed) the code for a really large system?

FlopsyPrince

CP5 wrote: »

Years ago ZOS updated base game delves. Prior to these updates, every delve was a literal circle. You entered, passed a 1-way door, killed things on your way to the boss/skyshard, then went out the 1-way door and went on your way. They didn't do them all at once though, starting with each factions 1st zone, then the 2nd, and so on. It didn't need to be all at once, but it showed they cared and were intent on making progress.

Action has to start somewhere, and like the prophet says at the beginning of the game 'indecision becomes decision.' They decided to put effort in making a card game, with a leaderboard no less, and in doing so decided to not do other things, they'll either start somewhere or not at all, and having no clue what their plans are going forward definitely doesn't help matters.

That would be true. Changing those applied to everyone however. Adjusting "harder content" (still not defined well this far into the thread) would only apply to a subset.

FlopsyPrince

BTW making a card game is a completely different issue, since it is new development - none exists now. It would also involve far fewer working parts.

I think it is rather silly myself, but they didn't survey me on that and my arguments against it are the whole CCG idea, not difficulty and reward. I expect to see lots of "boosts" in the Crown store for the card game. That would be unlikely to happen for 'harder overland content."

Drdeath20

Overland is a necessary evil. More about story telling. How bout more solo and group arenas. How bout a 3rd tier of difficulty for non DLC dungeons.

CP5

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

BTW making a card game is a completely different issue, since it is new development - none exists now. It would also involve far fewer working parts.

I think it is rather silly myself, but they didn't survey me on that and my arguments against it are the whole CCG idea, not difficulty and reward. I expect to see lots of "boosts" in the Crown store for the card game. That would be unlikely to happen for 'harder overland content."

Implementing an entirely new system requires the making of many new moving parts, and hoping those moving parts don't disrupt ones that already exist.

colossalvoids

Just a short and quick kinda feedback. After spending two days in nocp imperial city sewers after not being here properly for some years I'd say it's pretty close to my idea of fun pve, bearing in mind when there's no zerg but you alone on with some lad at your back at max. Mobs generally aren't falling over with just one la+skill, running into a corridor stumbling face to face with a "boss" is a pretty exciting thing still and overall it feels serving the narrative that those daedra potentially can hurt, unlike deadlands when it's kinda one big flaming park.

FlopsyPrince

CP5 wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

BTW making a card game is a completely different issue, since it is new development - none exists now. It would also involve far fewer working parts.

I think it is rather silly myself, but they didn't survey me on that and my arguments against it are the whole CCG idea, not difficulty and reward. I expect to see lots of "boosts" in the Crown store for the card game. That would be unlikely to happen for 'harder overland content."

Implementing an entirely new system requires the making of many new moving parts, and hoping those moving parts don't disrupt ones that already exist.

Still not as complicated as completely overhauling overland content. Have you done development work before?

CP5

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

BTW making a card game is a completely different issue, since it is new development - none exists now. It would also involve far fewer working parts.

I think it is rather silly myself, but they didn't survey me on that and my arguments against it are the whole CCG idea, not difficulty and reward. I expect to see lots of "boosts" in the Crown store for the card game. That would be unlikely to happen for 'harder overland content."

Implementing an entirely new system requires the making of many new moving parts, and hoping those moving parts don't disrupt ones that already exist.

Still not as complicated as completely overhauling overland content. Have you done development work before?

ZOS literally makes varied instances for every dungeon and trial they make. Every house is a personalized instance, every battleground match is adjusted based on what game mode is selected, aka, a unique rule set that determines if particular things spawn. They do this everywhere, and adjusting the templates that creatures are spawned off of is nothing new.

They wouldn't have to go around, hand adjusting every single mob. Even some of the more unique locations only really have 4 enemies, plus perhaps a boss, so what, 5-6 templates and a rule set identical to their "normal vs vet dungeon" templates, and voilà, that location is able to be modified.

FlopsyPrince

CP5 wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

CP5 wrote: »

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

BTW making a card game is a completely different issue, since it is new development - none exists now. It would also involve far fewer working parts.

I think it is rather silly myself, but they didn't survey me on that and my arguments against it are the whole CCG idea, not difficulty and reward. I expect to see lots of "boosts" in the Crown store for the card game. That would be unlikely to happen for 'harder overland content."

Implementing an entirely new system requires the making of many new moving parts, and hoping those moving parts don't disrupt ones that already exist.

Still not as complicated as completely overhauling overland content. Have you done development work before?

ZOS literally makes varied instances for every dungeon and trial they make. Every house is a personalized instance, every battleground match is adjusted based on what game mode is selected, aka, a unique rule set that determines if particular things spawn. They do this everywhere, and adjusting the templates that creatures are spawned off of is nothing new.

They wouldn't have to go around, hand adjusting every single mob. Even some of the more unique locations only really have 4 enemies, plus perhaps a boss, so what, 5-6 templates and a rule set identical to their "normal vs vet dungeon" templates, and voilà, that location is able to be modified.

Flaws in your reasoning:

- Those items were crafted in the past. That was a single effort where all elements were designed at the same time. They don't have to do significant work anymore to tweak those and adjustments could happen (as they felt they were needed) when they were released.

- You assume "5-6" templates would cover anything. Perhaps you are right but that is highly doubtable. Anything that simple would be the same as a debuff which so many here despise.

- Changes this easy could already have been made, at least in a couple of areas. It is clearly not that easy or it would have already been done.

Have you read any of the developer discussion about the level of development effort in this and other MMOs? The effort to go to Tamriel One (which I was not around for)? The level of effort the Warcraft team needed to remake content after Cataclysm? Other MMOs?

How much development experience do you have? Have you ever worked on maintaining and enhancing a large system and do you now how much work it is to adjust even small things? While some may over complicate things, trivializing effort creates false expectations as well.

CP5

Yesterday is "the past," and it is ZOS's choice if they chose to put a day's worth of effort in one direction or another. Their unwillingness to commit time to older content and bring it up to modern standards, in regards to cutting down the banter in DSA is them saying that they don't care if the old content isn't as enjoyable, as their sights are set solely toward the next expansion and the next batch of new players who are going to join for it then leave. Also, the point of updating content at all is to get it to a state where it will be enjoyed again, you know, like what they do with countless skills and items every patch, or should they have "tweaked those when they were released" with years of foresight to go off of?

Literally, go to any delve, public dungeon, heck even group dungeon, and count the 'types' of enemies you encounter. All of the 'goblin shaman' in the stormhaven public dungeon are spawned from the same template. Modify that template and they all get updated. Entire zones can be counted down to only a few handfuls of unique templates, and if ZOS put in some effort (or already put in the leg work giving mobs unique tags) then it wouldn't be nearly as challenging as you seem to think it would be.

If they never chose to bother with something it will never be done, no matter how easy or hard it is. Their unwillingness to give us any insight beyond 3 months doesn't help, but again it is their choice.

Yes, I am aware it takes time to do things. They've had years to do anything but have consistently, for the past few years, ground their release cycle into a predictable loop of the same thing with different skins again and again. You get your dlc dolmen clone, your pre-determined set of dungeons and what not, a zone devoid of any substantial gameplay for many players, and a cycle of nerfs to make the new stuff attractive. And do I need to bring up the 'year of performance,' and how decent numbers of players failed to see any sort of change (sorry cyrodiil, not today)?

When I studied to become a game designer as a career, I did both design and programming, particularly in regards to managing systems and QA. If I made a game with dozens of different types of enemies, I wouldn't have them each have to be modified one at a time. It is easy to have templates to create enemies off of, even applying modifiers to enemies as they're created to tweak them, adding tags to them to modify them en mass that way, you know, mass data management. Is an mmo bigger than what I worked on in the past? Sure. Does ZOS have more than 1 person working on this thing? I better hope so.

And since ZOS's communication comes up a lot, here are some videos to mull over. Final Fantasy 14 did a five and a half hour QnA stream explaining what they have in store for the future, including the scope of a game wide graphical overhaul, with before and after examples, as well as a secession where they answered questions about their upcoming expansion as well. Where is a fraction of that? Not 1 second of video showing the card game that will be 'carrying' the expansion as the main new feature. Not an explanation as to some of their changes, like "what other sets people should use with bashsei's nerfed" or "why did you up combat prayer's healing when it's healing is fine, and we don't need it." Just months of silence, both in terms of the balance patches, the forum post, what they actually intend on doing. So yes, this would take time, but if their game is halfway well-made it shouldn't break their back. They need to put forward effort, show it and care, and if they chose to do nothing then this is all we have.

This Is their stream, and this is a 30 minute summery, since it took that long to summarize it. We don't get anything like that, ever, even a fraction of it. What matters is that ZOS needs to show some effort, in some way. Anything is better than nothing, and nothing is what we have.

CP5

Also, I have been keen on finding this patch note since I remembered having read it, but here is a tidbit from patch 2.1.4 patch notes. (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/2074057/#Comment_2074057)

• Mages, skirmishers, and tanks have all been tweaked to have less dramatic variation. In general, mages will have less damage and more health, while tanks will have less health and more damage. This means the average fight length and amount of incoming damage will be more balanced, while retaining the thematic differences between monster types.
• All mage monsters now have more health, and output less damage.
• All tank monsters now have high spell and physical resistance.
• All mages now have low physical resistance, but high spell resistance.
• All skirmishers now have average physical and spell resistance.
• On average, delve bosses now have more health.

And.

• Monsters throughout the game have had their faction abilities updated; you will now see these abilities more often in combat, and some abilities have had their effects adjusted to increase their impact in a fight.
• Bandit traps now persist for long periods of time, creating more danger as the fight goes on.
• Daedric Arches now summon Banekin to charge at enemies and explode until the arch is destroyed.
• The Necromancer’s self-sacrifice now summons a ghost instead of a soul shriven, and they no longer sacrifice themselves at full health.
• Soldiers of the Covenant, Pact, and Dominion (in PVE zones) now use a Warhorn ability to rally and empower their allies in combat.
• Undead now have a chance to create an area of desecrated ground when killed, dealing damage over time to their enemies and healing undead allies.
• Vampires who drain health now heal nearby allies.

They've mass changed mobs based off of keywords years ago. This isn't some far-fetched impossibility. It is something that they can do, modify enemies in any particular way that suits their needs, based on keywords to single out particular changes. Give tank mobs more health and less damage, basically reversing their change, possible. Giving enemies new skills like the zombie death aoe, they did it here, why not again? They just need to do, something, literally anything, but all we get is silence.

newtinmpls

Well I have been in IC for a while this event and Holy Crap it has given me a new appreciation for my first love - overland content.

It is such a blessing to have content where I can explore and survive and not struggle not to die .. then die... then struggle and die some more.

I am not a "fast twitch" reflex person and I am not someone who plays all day long.

I come to ESO to relax, not to constantly get outclassed by my opponents. Yes I want a fight, but I also don't want to constantly lose. That is not fun.

I'm glad there are parts of this game that are really hard content for the people who love really hard content:

DLC and Vet dungeons
Trials
PvP
Some of the nastier Harrowstorms (they are not all created equal for some reason)
Some of the nastier World Bosses (Bittergreen - I'm looking at you)

For me...once a year is about right to face this level of pain in the parts.

Parasaurolophus

FlopsyPrince wrote: »

How much development experience do you have? Have you ever worked on maintaining and enhancing a large system and do you now how much work it is to adjust even small things? While some may over complicate things, trivializing effort creates false expectations as well.

Oh... Despite the fact that you have a lot of development experience, you still haven't come up with a single convincing argument why overland couldn't be more difficult and fun. Rich said that it would be very difficult to give all the old zones Veteran difficulty. Perhaps because each mob is manually configured, despite the fact that they are all the same. Again, maybe. Because even you don't know how eso works. I'm sorry, but precisely because the discussion goes to the side, these threads have always been closed. This is a feedback thread, we respond that overland is bad, boring, trivial, not MMO-like, not TES-like. Questing is nothing more than just a chain of dialogues for a couple of evenings.
You constantly ask if we have development experience. But sorry, this is real bait. It looks like:

- This yogurt has an unpleasant sour taste.. It would be nice if the manufacturer changed the recipe..
- Have you ever made yogurt? Do you know how difficult it is?
- No, but... We have a lot of good sweet yoghurts and we liked them. We do not understand why this particular yogurt must remain sour.
- Tell me, do you understand a lot about yogurt?
- Yes, I ate a lot of them and I can appreciate them. This yogurt is sour, it would be nice to change it.
- Did you make a lot of yoghurts? You do not understand that it will be very expensive.
- But yoghurt doesn't taste good.
- You made a lot of yoghurts, what do you understand?

Malthorne

Elden Ring is the number one selling game on steam right now and it hasn’t even released.. there is absolutely a market for players who want a more dangerous overland and harder quest boss challenges in an RPG.

CP5 wrote: »

Yesterday is "the past," and it is ZOS's choice if they chose to put a day's worth of effort in one direction or another. Their unwillingness to commit time to older content and bring it up to modern standards, in regards to cutting down the banter in DSA is them saying that they don't care if the old content isn't as enjoyable, as their sights are set solely toward the next expansion and the next batch of new players who are going to join for it then leave. Also, the point of updating content at all is to get it to a state where it will be enjoyed again, you know, like what they do with countless skills and items every patch, or should they have "tweaked those when they were released" with years of foresight to go off of?

Literally, go to any delve, public dungeon, heck even group dungeon, and count the 'types' of enemies you encounter. All of the 'goblin shaman' in the stormhaven public dungeon are spawned from the same template. Modify that template and they all get updated. Entire zones can be counted down to only a few handfuls of unique templates, and if ZOS put in some effort (or already put in the leg work giving mobs unique tags) then it wouldn't be nearly as challenging as you seem to think it would be.

If they never chose to bother with something it will never be done, no matter how easy or hard it is. Their unwillingness to give us any insight beyond 3 months doesn't help, but again it is their choice.

Yes, I am aware it takes time to do things. They've had years to do anything but have consistently, for the past few years, ground their release cycle into a predictable loop of the same thing with different skins again and again. You get your dlc dolmen clone, your pre-determined set of dungeons and what not, a zone devoid of any substantial gameplay for many players, and a cycle of nerfs to make the new stuff attractive. And do I need to bring up the 'year of performance,' and how decent numbers of players failed to see any sort of change (sorry cyrodiil, not today)?

When I studied to become a game designer as a career, I did both design and programming, particularly in regards to managing systems and QA. If I made a game with dozens of different types of enemies, I wouldn't have them each have to be modified one at a time. It is easy to have templates to create enemies off of, even applying modifiers to enemies as they're created to tweak them, adding tags to them to modify them en mass that way, you know, mass data management. Is an mmo bigger than what I worked on in the past? Sure. Does ZOS have more than 1 person working on this thing? I better hope so.

And since ZOS's communication comes up a lot, here are some videos to mull over. Final Fantasy 14 did a five and a half hour QnA stream explaining what they have in store for the future, including the scope of a game wide graphical overhaul, with before and after examples, as well as a secession where they answered questions about their upcoming expansion as well. Where is a fraction of that? Not 1 second of video showing the card game that will be 'carrying' the expansion as the main new feature. Not an explanation as to some of their changes, like "what other sets people should use with bashsei's nerfed" or "why did you up combat prayer's healing when it's healing is fine, and we don't need it." Just months of silence, both in terms of the balance patches, the forum post, what they actually intend on doing. So yes, this would take time, but if their game is halfway well-made it shouldn't break their back. They need to put forward effort, show it and care, and if they chose to do nothing then this is all we have.

This Is their stream, and this is a 30 minute summery, since it took that long to summarize it. We don't get anything like that, ever, even a fraction of it. What matters is that ZOS needs to show some effort, in some way. Anything is better than nothing, and nothing is what we have.

I was planning to take a few months long break from ffxiv but that livestream convinced me to keep my sub active a little while longer. It really feels like those devs care about and respect the players time and money.

haelene

I don't know nearly enough to discuss the probability of this or the amount of work it would take, so i'm going to stick to what I know.

Sure, as long as dungeons all get a story mode. And you can have better rewards as long as the story mode get's the skill point. (I might even use both depending on how it's implemented).

spartaxoxo

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.

@ZOS_Kevin

Can we have an eta on this statement please? It's been 2 months.

Fennwitty

Playing other games recently, and I experienced the feeling of "oh this overland thing might kill me if I'm not careful".

Was a nice change.

SilverBride

I seriously doubt there will be a separate veteran overland because of the amount of data it would use, but would difficulty sliders or debuffs and/or challenge banners be a possibility?

I would probably never use these options myself but feel there should be something for those who want it.

Malthorne

SilverBride wrote: »

I seriously doubt there will be a separate veteran overland because of the amount of data it would use, but would difficulty sliders or debuffs and/or challenge banners be a possibility?

I would probably never use these options myself but feel there should be something for those who want it.

This is very legitimate concern, not just for the possibility of veteran instance, but for the game overall. Maybe whatever changes they are making to server architecture in the future will help.

S0Z0H

A vet mode sounds great for overland , I agree. Let's add this to the game somehow. Challenge is a key part of the greater Elder Scrolls series. And it would be a truly awesome addition to ESO. It is something easily implemented. But would add so much to the experience