Sticky threads, player feedback and communication.

Snamyap

VaranisArano posted this in the Overland Content Feedback Thread.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Bit of an update in Rich Lambert's interview here: https://wccftech.com/the-elder-scrolls-online-high-isle-preview-qa-fsr-1-0-support-card-game-and-much-more/

Q: The final question is kind of a pet peeve of mine. I love the questing in The Elder Scrolls Online and I've often compared it even to single player RPGs for its quality, but there is a downside that lots of players have been discussing on Reddit and other forums. That's the difficulty level of questing, story, and Overland content; it's just too low even if you are not fully decked in Trial gear. So my question is, did you consider adding an optional Veteran-like mode for those who'd like to play, for example, the storylines or even Overland content with a greater level of challenge?

A: "That's a difficult one because difficulty is definitely subjective. 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. I also look back and remember we had harder Overland content. We had Cadwell Silver, we had Cadwell Gold, and players really didn't like it. It was too hard for them, and when we did One Tamriel, we ripped all that out based on player feedback. Like, nobody did it. So it's a challenging subject and a difficult question to answer. All I can really say is we're definitely looking at it, but we don't have any major changes planned for the Overland difficulty."

Q: I did see that there is a pinned Overland content topic on the official forums where you are gathering feedback, right?

A: "Yeah. It comes up pretty often. It is definitely a hot topic right now."

Q: Okay. Well, I do hope there will eventually be an optional harder difficulty level for those who'd like that kind of challenge even while questing.

A: "Noted!"

Why do I have to find this information on a website I have never heard of? Why wasn't this posted by Rich on these forums? It was sheer coincidence that I stumbled on this post because I (and I guess a lot of other people that are interested in this topic) don't bother following the sticky anymore. The pros and cons have been debated to death long before the sticky and there was zero communication from the dev team anyway. It felt like it was just put up so you only had to ignore one thread instead of the new ones that kept popping up.

Now with all the promises to improve communication you still couldn't be bothered to give an answer here first? Or are you just afraid of people cancelling their subscriptions and moving away when you're actually upfront and plainly tell us you will keep adding content year after year aimed at people who bought the game an hour ago?

Aardappelboom

I agree, it'd be nice to get a response on this more officially, the thread is not bringing anything new to the table and it's pointless to keep it going.

I was glad to read something about it on reddit through the same article you posted.

I love this game but I do think Rich is downplaying the importance of this, I agree they have to find a formula that works for both sides obviously, but there's nothing on the forums and Reddit that gets discussed more than this. It's clear there are two sides to this thing and it's not impossible to cater to both and they should.

Saieden

"Millions of players that play" is straight up false. If SteamDB shows 15-20k, and PC is the most popular platform, you're telling me 900k+ more players are using the standalone version? No.

Overland content is a complete joke in terms of difficulty. While this is OK for when you're just running around gathering or farming, it absolutely not OK for end-story big battles and boss fights, especially more so since many of these are instanced (or could easily be). The simple truth of the matter is that they deem it too much work to rebalance the power scaling to account for gear properly as well as older content. They just don't care and it's too easy to hide behind the lame reasoning presented here.