Harder Story/Quest Bosses

KapiteinBoterham

Original thread here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/549560/harder-main-story-bosses#latest

Most overland difficulty is honestly fine for casual- and hardcore players alike, just increase the HP of story related bosses so they have the chance to say their voice-lines and us their abilities. This gives the illusion that they actually pose the threat that they are supposed to represent during the build-up of the story and quests. The low HP of these specific bosses is really hampering the enjoyment of a lot of players and a simple solution would be to give quest/story bosses a little more HP.

Those complaining about the game becoming too hard will barely notice a difference and the people complaining about overland being too easy will get so overjoyed these specific bosses are no longer mudcrabs in disguise (because of the low HP) that they will not care about the HP of regular mobs.

You could also create a difficulty slider (only for these specific "story bosses") that gets introduced before/after the gargoyle fight in the tutorial. That would be a classic Bethesda move an everybody would be happy! How that would work on a technical level is probably very complicated so a simple HP increase would be the easier solution.

Let me know what you guys think! Have you ever felt like the root cause for players complaining about the overland content being too easy/boring is because they got so disappointed by a final boss being killed too fast?

ArchMikem

I do tend to defeat a lot of big baddies mid monologue.

Erickson9610

I think the easiest solution is to scale enemy health off of player offensive stats, and enemy damage off of player defensive stats. A player with low offensive power and low defensive power would face an enemy with low health and low damage, while a player with high offensive power and high defensive power would face an enemy with high health and high damage.

tomofhyrule

As was mentioned to you in the previous thread as well, there's a whole stickied thread about harder overland already. It even focuses on several of your points, namely that story bosses are defeated too quickly by experienced players, and even includes you suggestion of increasing boss HP, as well as including several other options.

It also addresses potential drawbacks which your OP does not, including:

• Any dev time added to give one-time bosses extra mechanics needs to come from somewhere, potentially meaning that repeatable bosses like dungeons and trials will not get as much love because the story bosses are getting more time
• Story bosses are designed to be defeated by all players, including those with poor internet connections, disability, lack of time to practice or gear up, playing a support role in overland content, or any other reason that means they will have very low damage output. The dungeons and trials are for experienced players, but the stories are for the others
• Any slider for difficulty would also need to recognize that players would need to have different slider values, meaning that two players in the same instance could have different DPS and healing based on their value. That could therefore lead to balance issues in group content and loads of extra calculations for the server.
• Fragmenting the playerbase by instancing zones could lead to lower-experience players being unable to do any content because the world is so empty, thus forcing them into the harder version of the world to even see other players, therefore making an endless loop of difficulty. There's even a thread on the front page already saying that a new player was getting discouraged by getting attacked by and not being helped with wandering bosses in a first-level zone.

Another thing people don't tend to realize is that ZOS is making end bosses more mechanically intense. I play a tank and I keep in my trial gear overland, and I don't try to DPS things down as fast as possible. That gives me the ability to see the bosses as they are without nuking it down before they finish their lines and I can see their mechanics. It's night-and-day the difference in what needs to be done for basegame story bosses like Magistrix Vox compared to bosses like Lady Belain with actual mechanics at the end of the Reach. Each story boss since the Greymoor chapter (and possibly even the dragons in Elsweyr) have had unique mechanics and have been much more interesting to deal with... but people don't remember them because you only see these bosses once. After all, a lot of later story bosses are in the Endless Archive so we finally get a chance to see their mechanics again.

I'm perfectly okay with basic story bosses. If I want an intense and difficult story with customizable difficulty, I'll play a single player game (I've actually been doing a lot of BG3 lately). But when I come to an MMO like ESO, I know that the harder content will be the group content and the overland and story are for the lore instead of the difficulty. I don't need to play the Necrom story like an Unchained run - I don't want to get that sweaty every time I turn this game on. I let the stories play out in my head, and yeah some I see more differently or more intense than others, but I realize that it's meant for a certain population, and I let my imagination fill in the gaps.

KapiteinBoterham

@tomofhyrule Don't you find it sad that you have to play other singleplayer games to experience the very basic/common feeling you get from defeating a challenging enemy in an (MMO)RPG? I am talking about bosses that entire zones are dedicated to about how evil and powerful they are! It's such a slap in the face of the players (and writers) really!

I'm am here to offer my opinion not to offer a watertight solution for the problem, that's ZOS' job. After seeing the thread dating back to November 2021 focusing on ALL of overland i found it necessary to put my finger on the true problem (the quest/story boss' HP).

Also can we keep the reply's more concise please? In case an actual dev is gonna read this, we dont want them to get fatigued from reading a lot of text. Especially after the holidays!

Hapexamendios

As long as it's optional. First time doing I'd probably enjoy it. Taking alt characters through to get the skill points would get tedious. Just want to blow through them on those runs.

KapiteinBoterham

@Hapexamendios What would have to be optional (the exta HP?). Creating this option would take the devs extra time and resources, not something they are keen to do.

Just a little exta HP won't hurt; You would spend 5-10 seconds extra at a story/quest boss. But in exchange you get so much back:

- A satisfying bossfight to end the zone story that has been building up
- Story related voice lines (already in the game, but bosses die too fast to be able to say them)
- Bosses getting the chance to use their unique moves/attacks (if i were an animator of one of these moves i would not like it if the enemy constantly died before they could show off the animation)
- increased playerbase due to less people getting bored by questing (and whatever else positives that come with that)

I hope i can make you see that this solution is just a small price to pay (for some) to increase the gameplay experience for many!

ZOS_Hadeostry

Hey there,

Due to there already being a thread discussing Overland Content Feedback, we are going to close this down so that you may continue the discussion here Thank you for your understanding.