Studio Director’s Letter: 2025 & Beyond

sarahthes

silky_soft wrote: »

Over 300 posts since last staff interaction.

To be fair they have been very active on the forums overall got the past week even though it's just about the holidays, including commenting on separate reaction posts.

XSTRONG

SilverBride wrote: »

I will never understand why anyone would want trash mobs in overland to be more difficult. How is it rewarding to spend 2 minutes on one wolf when you are trying to reach your quest objective, or harvest some mats for crafting? And the story bosses have already gotten so difficult starting with High Isle that many players can no longer defeat them and complete the story.

What baffles me the most is that difficult overland almost killed this game. No one was doing the veteran zones or Craglorn. But a handful of players, most of which haven't even played in years, said they'd come back if overland was made more difficult again. Even though many of us that have been actively playing and subscribed asked to please leave it as it is. But for some reason they are going back to what didn't work before.

If you into the story and want an easy walk along there is Normal difficulty option on dungeon, trials, arenas.

If you want more of a challange and abit higher rewards you can do vet dungeon, trials, arenas.

That works fine and I have never heard anyone complain over that you can play vet/hardmode content for better rewards.

Should be same with overland difficulty the player choose difficulty themself, if you dont want to play the harder content you shouldnt expect the extra stuff that it yields .

I also dont think Zos will make everything in overland uber hard and a Wolf one shots you, that is ridiculous.

Lumsdenml

Sakiri wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

It wouldn't need to. The scaling works as normal and the player receives debuffs which increase their own level of difficulty, which is functionally identical to any other form of difficulty implementation from that player's point of view. The only difference is that players who don't use the feature don't receive the associated debuffs. This way, everyone can engage with the same content at the same time.

And if you're about to say "but why would anyone want this if we're going to be standing next to players who don't bear the same burden?" Well, that's something you have to accept when you choose to enable a challenge setting. It's your choice to play the game at a higher difficulty, and I don't personally think it should matter what other people around you are doing.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience, and only my experience, is what defines my enjoyment of the game.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

So what do you really want, then? Do you want to feel godlike, or do you want to be challenged? The seem kind of mutually-exclusive to me.

self debuffs only go so far though, i mean you could reduce your healing/dmg/shields by 90% basically a self only battle spirit type of thing, but it doesnt make the content harder, it again just makes things take longer, literally no different than just running without gear or skills

you could be slogging your way in a public dungeon with those debuffs and another player could come through without any self debuffs (aka the "normal" game) and blitz through everything anyway, thats not increasing your challenge

for instances though they could easily scale the enemies using the current "normal" and "vet" difficulties

for your 2nd point, they are not mutually exclusive, we have easy overland, and easy or hard instanced content (dungeons/trialas/arenas/archive), there are times i dont want to run vet dungeons and just go solo a normal dungeon, etc

i would personally be fine if they released a zone that was slightly more challenging, that would be similar in scope to old craglorn, i did all of the old craglorn content, i improved myself and my build and overcame the challenge that existed. in fact im personally fine with the game difficulty as it currently is, the overland as is allows more enjoyment of the story, though the final boss fights dont necessarily have the feel of a final boss fight because of the lack of "urgency" theres a lot of times in the fights that the npcs are yelling at you to "hurry do some mechanic now before its all over" but theres never any real rush that if you didnt perform said action you would die or would fail the quest or something

one tamriel was not the "death knell" of old craglorn, but it was the heavy nerfs that followed sometime after that which changed it to basically the public dungeon of overland zones

Based on the letter, it sounds like you're going to get your new Craglorn. Congrats.

Again, if someone comes along who isn't using challenge mode and they work through content faster, that's part of the game. There are plenty of players who deal with this kind of thing right now, and all it would look like to me is a balancing of that high-level group back down to the level of the normal players who struggle with the content we have now. They would just be doing it voluntarily.

We have discussed segregating the population into normal and hard mode instances in the Overland Content Feedback thread recently, and I really don't think it will ever happen because MMOs generally don't like separating players unless there is more than enough people to sustain servers for both groups, and I just don't think we'll have enough players who want a challenge for that implementation to be worth the effort.

For these reasons, if there is a way to keep everyone playing together, I think it's for the best.

i agree that there wont be normal and vet overland instances either, overland is likely going to only remain 1 difficulty

the only option they would have is likely self nerfs, which wont really make the overland more challenging or engaging for someone, i mean if you can do 100k dps on a trial dummy, and then you apply the "self nerf 'challenge' mode" which reduces your dmg and healing by 90%, your now on a fully geared up 100k dps setup, doing 10k dps with a full rotation, thats just going to feel bad because people dont like seeing smaller numbers, and its going to take 10x longer to kill something without changing anything else about the encounter including rewards

i have no idea what the devs have in mind to try to make overland more "engaging" for the folks who want more of a challenge, but i dont think the idea of a self nerf is the answer, i see that as something very few people would actually use, especially if it provided no additional incentive

it might also have to be something that only works in overland too, how would you feel getting into a dungeon with a bunch of people who are running -90% self nerfs and doing 30k combined dps because thats how your adding "challenge"?

It would be an overland system so it would only affect overland. Dungeons would remain unchanged as they have their own difficulty system. I fully expect that there would be rewards for enabling this kind of system otherwise reward-focused players won't use it and ZOS understands that.

Regarding more engaging overland content, my hope is that they're taking the time they're regaining from not building a new chapter in order to work on things like dynamic and repeatable content which occurs within the zones we already have. There's really so much that could be done.

Vet overland with perfected overland sets

No.

Fun

DaveMoeDee

While I don't care much about "overland", the bosses for DLC just melt atm. This may be partly due to my build. When the game first released, I remember players that couldn't really do much of anything without being carried, even overland stuff. I don't want the game like that because I want it to be accessible to crappy gamers. But I am a single-player focused gamer with little interest in MMO grinding and repetition.

Personally, if the game isn't releasing substantial narrative content, I don't really care what they do as the game isn't really intended for me, which is fine.

old_scopie1945

DaveMoeDee wrote:- "crappy gamers"

You may possibly want to reflect on that term. Don't you think it is rather disrespectful to fellow gamers. As the saying goes "manners cost nothing" and you may gain some respect in return. Though I do appreciate the sentiment behind your post.

Chamillex

Another doomsdayer coming to say her piece. We’re a household of 4 who play ESO together on Xbox EU and NA. Affording 4 ESO+ subs is not an option. We buy the chapter updates one on day one and the rest when on sale.

I’ve already been bitter a long time that if you buy a dlc for someone in household on NA server or an assistant or house, it doesn’t carry over to the EU server. our Gold Road collectors editions work across both servers so why can’t crown bought items do the same. Even twitch stream drops go on accounts ok both servers. Make dlc bundles available in an add on store so you can have same benefits on both NA and EU instead of having to buy twice.

I worry the new releases will cost crowns or be locked to eso + if we want to enjoy them on both servers again and effectively play them together… well. We cannot afford that.

Also gloomy about more difficult overland. Example. Each of the “newer” zones have public dungeon bosses that are quite difficult to solo and hardly anyone in them and sometimes difficult to get help on EU server. I think the games overland should still should be soloable to the average new-ish player.

old_scopie1945

Chamillex wrote: »

Another doomsdayer coming to say her piece. We’re a household of 4 who play ESO together on Xbox EU and NA. Affording 4 ESO+ subs is not an option. We buy the chapter updates one on day one and the rest when on sale.

I’ve already been bitter a long time that if you buy a dlc for someone in household on NA server or an assistant or house, it doesn’t carry over to the EU server. our Gold Road collectors editions work across both servers so why can’t crown bought items do the same. Even twitch stream drops go on accounts ok both servers. Make dlc bundles available in an add on store so you can have same benefits on both NA and EU instead of having to buy twice.

I worry the new releases will cost crowns or be locked to eso + if we want to enjoy them on both servers again and effectively play them together… well. We cannot afford that.

Also gloomy about more difficult overland. Example. Each of the “newer” zones have public dungeon bosses that are quite difficult to solo and hardly anyone in them and sometimes difficult to get help on EU server. I think the games overland should still should be soloable to the average new-ish player.

I think you know the answer to the first part of your post and a lot of us feel your pain. Just think Crown Crates or the Great Train Robbery. As for the DLC zones you are also right. The first couple of months from the release all is fine and dandy. After that it all falls apart, and you have a snowball's chance in hell to find enough players to complete the major activates. It only bucks up when there is an event going on. It would me nice if there is a solution to it as it is very frustrating. The strange thing is folk complain about base game difficulty but these zones struggle with folk to do these activities. Strangely there always seems to be plenty in the base game zones.

linlilia

A little late to respond but needed to think on a response that was not completely ripping the leadership of the game apart which I am not sure I am able to do though maybe this will be slightly more reason behind the criticism.

For those that say this is TLDR, a summary I trust nothing in this letter and this is trolling us to try to save face.

I find this letter with little to hope for. Seasons to me shows that you are no longer committed to deadlines and have even less respect to the community. You say these changes are so you can be more nimble and "listen" to the community, issue is, over the 9 years that I have played the game you have shown no interest in listening to us as a community in general. You have said that few people comment in the PTS forums and the reason I know of is that you don't respond there, and you openly say we aren't changing it or it will come in an "incremental" patch which can sometimes take 2 big patches to get done or longer and sometimes never.

Your ability to communicate has long been a major frustration to the community. And every year or so you say you will have a greater commitment to this aspect that you have not done to date making me suspicious of these remarks. You have said that you will communicate with us about changes and how things are going and yet the main reason most of my friends came back when they did was due to the regularity of the big changes. "4" Upgrades a year at very designated times. I know people that would take off far in advance from work to have Chapter Week off to play through it. Removing the largest "reason to return" to the game seems like an odd way to entice people about the game and keep us wanting to play more.

Also please stop with the vague hints about stuff. Saying that an entire Quarter or to be "Season" upgrade will be "Housing" or "PVP" related and then the "big" upgrade has little to nothing to do with the main part of that is just wrong. Stop trolling for click bait. 2 seasons in a row with this crap is too much. Stop trying to impress us with things you know will disappoint.

Although some of the items I find interesting, I don't find interesting enough to be willing to wait a year for, like possible upgrades to visualizations. Although nice, the only thing I see with this is decreased performance, I would rather have more housing slots. The focus on new players in your letter, I feel is another punch to older players. Things we have been asking for for ages are still not being addressed and the few solutions that you have stated have rarely done much to increase performance. I know so many people that left the game due to the mail changes it is not even funny and yet our constant remarks that it causes major issues in the trading game and yet you refuse to listen to us, saying that performance was the reason it was done, which by the way I have seen NO Performance increase with the changes in fact the game has been LESS stable since the Q3 patch.

The PVP upgrades are well wanted but you have gaslighted and trolled us for years now on it especially this year with PVP updates which was in my honest opinion a major down-grade in Battle Grounds with no main land PVP changes. So this is another thing that I hold out no hope for being completed especially with no timeline in place to push for innovation.

I also am not a fan of the experimenting. I went to PVP when you did the constant rule changes in there to "make it better" and it was painful, 1 for not really understanding the rules and 2 it lost people's interest and enjoyment. If this is to get more people involved in the testing, maybe it would work but will likely frustrate people.

I find the overland possible changes amusing since you had that and with One Tamerial you took it out due to low population and people always whining about dying. I understand this is a no win situation but I honestly think it will hurt more than it will help anything.

And here is the thoughts on the Anniversary Event.

I have been playing for around 9 years and to say I am disappointed would be an understatement. These types of things are typically years in the making and you swore over and over again that you would have a large American Event and then "decide" half way through after telling not even 2 months earlier that it was still on, oh by the way its cancelled. You knew that you were never going to have an American event from the start and your team just wanted a vacation, I remember you saying a while back last year that you did not want another event in Vegas BECUASE you wanted the entire team to be able to go (how EXCATLY does Europe equal being closer to your home base than Vegas?) This shows complete disrespect to a large portion of your player base because we choose to not bend over backwards to get to either of the BACK TO BACK European events because you SWORE that you were going to take care of us in the US. Complete and udder disrespect to the Community as a whole.

joergino

XSTRONG wrote: »

Should be same with overland difficulty the player choose difficulty themself, if you dont want to play the harder content you shouldnt expect the extra stuff that it yields .

There should be absolutely no extra stuff in the first place.

sarahthes

joergino wrote: »

XSTRONG wrote: »

Should be same with overland difficulty the player choose difficulty themself, if you dont want to play the harder content you shouldnt expect the extra stuff that it yields .

There should be absolutely no extra stuff in the first place.

They should remove perfected gear from vet content, and trifecta mounts, as well. No extra stuff for doing the harder version. After all, it's optional.

Eldartar

I sense a shift in the force . . . . . . . .

I feel this is the beginning of the end . . . . . . . . . . . . . .(for me). . . . . .

I see the Devs team scaling back work on ESO . . . . . . . So they can work on 'other' projects. . . . . . . .

I've just got a gut feeling about this . . . . . .

. . . . . . It could be a dodgy Curry . . . . or not. . . . . . . . . . . . .

I sense a shift in the force. . . . . . . .first time since Beta. . . . . . . .

alpha_synuclein

Dear ZOS....
While I'm not exactly hating what I'm reading, this whole "we drop a bomb and shut up for 4 months" is very obviously not doing the trick...

Your vaguenes do not create hype. It creates concerns. You're planning rather divisive changes that will affect pretty much your whole playerbase. Asking us to wait until April for anything concrete is absurd.

The things that you're releasing this year are in motion already. You obviously have a plan.
Share it.
Timelines are obviously flexible, but tell us what we're getting. Without the usual dripping info in glacial speed and expecting us to be excited about the who knows what...

Because with the current attitude you will start loosing people before they even get to hear what's actually coming.

Kallykat

I have mixed feelings after reading this. I'm trying to keep my dread in check until we find out more details, but I do have some concerns. Maybe it's just the fear of change. I don't know, but I'm very apprehensive to say the least...

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Since 2017, we have released amazing content and systems every year - but always on the same schedule. This annual cadence pushed the team to focus on short deadlines – every June – where all types of content (systems, content, zones, etc.) had to be completed at the same time and has not left us much time for experimentation or thinking about doing things differently.

I can understand wanting a more flexible schedule.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Turning the Page on Chapters 
We have been incredibly successful with our strong annual Chapter releases: starting with Morrowind in 2017 up through Gold Road just six months ago. Zone design and quest/content is at the core of every Elder Scrolls game, as our annual Chapter release model highlighted. We will still do lots of story content, but now, looking into 2025, we need to concentrate on different types of content to support all types of ESO players. So, we are putting Chapters aside and will be focusing on new types of content, and a new release philosophy. More on that below.

As 2025 will be a transition year for new content, we are going to have new zone-based content launch in 2025 - but you'll have to wait until April to hear the specifics about how it is different. Stay tuned!

My heart sunk when I read this. Chapters releases are what I look forward to the most. What are the "different types of content" mentioned? What does "all types of players mean" here? As someone who mainly participates in solo questing content and exploring new zones, I don't know if the types of players they are now focusing on will include me.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Introducing Seasons  
Over the course of 2025 we will be moving more towards a seasonal content model and away from launching massive content updates once a year, as we did with Chapters. We will be talking much more about this in the future, but in 2025 expect to see named Seasons of three or six months duration with a mix of themed story content, events, store items, dungeons and more.  
2025 will be a mix of old and new as we move the dev team towards creating smaller bite-sized pieces of content. We will still have some larger items that we've been working on for over a year, which you'll see launch as well. 

Freeing up the dev team from needing to adhere to a strict annual cycle means we will be able to have teams launch content when it is ready throughout the year and not work to a date in June – this will let us focus on a greater variety of content spread over the year. This supports the new Seasons model, and will enable us to release content, updates, fixes, and systems in a more efficient manner.

Again, I get wanting more flexibility. My main concern with these seasons is the cost. Are we going to be expected to pay chapter prices multiple times a year now for less content? I was doing well to budget for two big purchases a year (my yearly sub and the new chapter) plus the occasional crown sales. How will the new seasons mesh with subscriptions? Will new content continue to be added to the sub after a year?

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

A new focus on change and experimentation  
We have been hearing from you, the community, that we need to experiment more, to shake things up and not be so predictable. The game needs new and different types of content, and for long-standing feedback to be addressed. We have already started on some ideas that will be tested in 2025. These systems and ideas will be clearly marked as "experiments" in patch notes and are ideas that may or may not be fleshed out into full game systems. With our new focus on breaking up content into seasons and away from years, it gives us time to do these experiments and changes.

Here are some of the ideas that we are working on, some of which you may see on the live servers as tests in 2025 and beyond. Some of these will be tests and some will be improvements based on player feedback: 

• We need to seriously address Cyrodiil performance. Our (ambitious) goal is to return it to the concurrency levels we supported in 2014. So, we will be experimenting with a Cyrodiil campaign where all classes will have PvP-specific (and more performant) skills that replace the standard player skills with the expectation that we can support more players per campaign.

•  Increasing the difficulty of standard overworld combat

• Improving the overall feel of combat with animation, FX, and potentially audio work

• Experimenting with more zones like Craglorn (although not as large in area or scope), created exclusively for high-end group and soft-group content with associated gear chase 

• Adding and refining tools to make guild recruitment, interaction, and management easier and more logical 

• We have many more ideas here, and of course we are listening to you and will be coming up with new ideas based on your feedback 

Experimenting with new ideas before introducing them sounds like a good idea at first glance. Hopefully this will allow all community members' feedback to be considered. As far as the list given here, I'm not thrilled with it. I don't look forward to more group content personally, and I really HATE the idea of increasing overworld combat difficulty. I'd be more interested in something like story-mode dungeons. I'm just hoping the fact that the overworld difficulty increase is listed as an "experiment" means there's still a chance it won't be implemented in the end.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Concentrating on new and returning user experience 
It is long past time that we address ESO's new and returning user experience. The game is so large at this point that we need to refine the new user experience. Our goal is to shield new players from being overwhelmed by dozens of content options presented to them on entering the world, and instead give them the essential guidance they need to enjoy the game before opening it up to all possibilities.

Additionally, we have many millions of players who return to the game every year after taking months to years off – and it is often confusing to them what they should be doing. We need to address this by making sure that the game’s map and other quest/informational UI areas clearly show the user where they were when they left, what has been added since then, and where they will find content they will love. 

Here are just a few of the items planned to improve the new and returning user experience – some of these will launch in 2025, some afterwards:  

• A new patcher, with improved visuals and performance (PC only) 

• Returning to the original Wailing Prison tutorial area for all new players - this has already launched, but we will be regularly tweaking it to improve the experience 

• Visually improving base game zones with updated textures and art assets, starting with the "starter islands" - these should start rolling out in March 2025 

• Not showing new players prologue quest or Chapter quest compass pins. The jury is still out on how Stuga will feel about this

• Sprucing up the game's PC UI, which is long overdue for a modern visual upgrade

• Other map and UI systems (still in design/idea stage) to make returning to the game more seamless and get you back into the action quickly 

I think this is important for recruiting new and returning players, so I'm all for it. The actual implementation, however, could make or break it. I'm interested to see the improved graphics for starter zones. The Wailing Prison quest always made the most sense story-wise as an intro to this game, so I'm not mad about the reversion. I'll add that I hope they find a new use for Direnni Tower if it's no longer part of the starting quest. I really enjoyed that story, NPC, and location and would hate for them to disappear completely.

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

Continuing to tell great stories
With the changes to our content release model, please be assured that we are not abandoning new quest content – but we will do it in different ways than we previously have. As our focus will not be on adding giant new landmasses – although we will do that from time to time – instead, we will use existing zones and areas to tell new stories. Some of these are:

• Continuing the stories in existing zones and storylines and bringing back familiar characters 
• New stories focused on hallmark Elder Scrolls organizations like Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, and Mages Guild
• Splitting a large zone across multiple updates

 

I don't know what to think of this yet. I probably need to experience it before I decide exactly how I feel. Right now, I like the idea of adding new content to the guilds, but I'm curious how costs will differ with splitting a large zone across multiple updates and how that will feel as an experience.

Final thoughts:
I know ESO has lots of types of players interested in different types of content. I've never really complained when an update was geared toward playstyles and content that didn't particularly appeal to me. At least I knew I had the chapter update (and formerly the zone DLC update) to look forward to. I also felt that my solo and story- and exploration-oriented playstyle was one of the playstyles supported by ZOS, despite it not being the playstyle with the most vocal online support or content-creator support. Now, I'm just wondering if that is going to change. I really love this game the way it is, and I hope the coming changes can continue to support all playstyles, including mine. I guess there's nothing to do but wait and see how it all plays out.

VoxAdActa

Tandor wrote: »

VoxAdActa wrote: »

New and returning player experience

Here's a thing that I just ran into: Make skill-line leveling faster. Much faster.

I just got my new alt to level 50, and none of my class lines are maxed, even though I handicapped myself throughout the leveling process by keeping the latest skill from all three class lines + my backbar weapon on my front bar the whole time. I haven't even gotten to the point where I can morph the last skills in those lines. They're still at rank III. My backbar weapon isn't at 50 either, in spite of wasting my #5 slot for 50 levels.

A new player shouldn't have to be well into champion points before they get to play with their whole skill bar. By 50, they should be able to have all the skills they want to actually play with arranged the way they want to play with them. (Edit: I guess maybe excluding alliance/guild skills).

I disagree. Champion Points are an integral part of the levelling process, and shouldn't come after you have maxed all your skill lines. One of the commonest complaints about LoTRO is that you run out of skills to develop long before you've got anywhere near the maximum level. When that happens, all the players are left with is the question "What's the point in continuing? What does levelling some more actually give me?"

How's that supposed to work? How am I supposed to know where I want to put my new Champ Points if I haven't even had a chance to play around with all the skills yet, much less seen what the morph options are? How do I know whether to put points into extra DD damage, extra DOT damage, extra AOE damage, or extra single-target damage when the skills I don't have might morph into any of those and I can't tell until they hit rank V and I can see the morphs?

If you don't even know whether a group of skills will fit your playstyle or not, how do you know where to put champ points?

We should be able to get our hands into all of our core skills and decide how we want to use them, and which ones we want to use, before we need to start making choices about how to fine-tune the build with CP.

Avran_Sylt

VoxAdActa wrote: »

New and returning player experience

Here's a thing that I just ran into: Make skill-line leveling faster. Much faster.

I just got my new alt to level 50, and none of my class lines are maxed, even though I handicapped myself throughout the leveling process by keeping the latest skill from all three class lines + my backbar weapon on my front bar the whole time. I haven't even gotten to the point where I can morph the last skills in those lines. They're still at rank III. My backbar weapon isn't at 50 either, in spite of wasting my #5 slot for 50 levels.

A new player shouldn't have to be well into champion points before they get to play with their whole skill bar. By 50, they should be able to have all the skills they want to actually play with arranged the way they want to play with them. (Edit: I guess maybe excluding alliance/guild skills).

Maybe make it so that:
Basic abilities and ultimates unlock faster.
Passives unlock more slowly
Morphs unlock at higher levels (instead of coming freely).

Avran_Sylt

JonnytheKing wrote: »

VixxVexx wrote: »

Anyone else getting maintenance mode vibes from reading this? I read this as restructuring/downsizing.

pretty much

Perhaps.

But I’m also reading this as they want to polish old content (because yes it all looks bad).

So, like how they re-used lots of assets in the old dungeons to make “Normal Elden Hollow” and “Veteran Elden Hollow” in roughly the same areas with different creature encounters and mechanics, that’s what they’ll be doing in 2025: making seasonal stories in existing zones while the art teams focus on polishing their old stuff to look better for a new audience.

Avran_Sylt

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

part of game progression is feeling more powerful, at least in my opinion, not making yourself weaker

Then a difficulty increase of any kind will not be something you will want to interact with. Understandable, it's not going to be for everyone no matter how it's implemented. Continue enjoying the game as you always have.

This is not interesting or fun progression as I see it. I never want to feel like I'm godlike, I want to feel like I have a wider breadth of tools at my disposal to overcome a challenge. This is exactly why difficulty should be optional, people just have different ideas of what is fun and we can still all play together if it's handled properly.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

scaled up enemies is the ideal challenge because you can actually build for it

You can 100% still fully interact with the build system with a player-level difficulty setting. That's what makes it great, there is no need to hobble yourself by not wearing your best gear and using the full library of abilities at your disposal. There is functionally no difference in your perception of challenge versus a global change, and no disadvantage other than what you perceive other players to be doing, and I don't see why that should make a difference if all you really want is a challenge.

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

I’m willing to bet it’ll be a toggle:

Normal or Veteran mode. Kinda like with dungeons.

But this toggle applies to everything, and will have distinct instances between normal mode players and Veteran mode players.

Normal mode is more or less the same.

Veteran mode the Mobs have amped stats, drop higher quality gear, more XP, and drop some exclusive set pieces (like monster helms, or possibly boss sets acquired via killing the overland bosses in a zone).

And harvesting/dailies have a chance of dropping transmute stones or dropping more.

There wouldn’t be any restrictions to entering this Veteran mode (but if you do I hope you’ve got friends to carry you).

old_scopie1945

Whatever may happen I still have Skyblivion to look forward to. It is due to be released in '25, all being well. I can hardly wait. I guess this will be deleted then

magnusthorek

By the sound of it, for now, I liked the removal of Chapters. Being locked behind a stupid and abusive currency exchange ratio paywall (because my country sucks at taxes and such) having to play the game a year late, when zones are kinda dead already, is awful — Necrom's increased difficulty of World Bosses and bastion Nymic, although appreciated was… complicated as a mostly solo player. I'm kinda really hopeful they come to Crown Store sooner. Fingers crossed!

old_scopie1945

magnusthorek wrote: »

By the sound of it, for now, I liked the removal of Chapters. Being locked behind a stupid and abusive currency exchange ratio paywall (because my country sucks at taxes and such) having to play the game a year late, when zones are kinda dead already, is awful — Necrom's increased difficulty of World Bosses and bastion Nymic, although appreciated was… complicated as a mostly solo player. I'm kinda really hopeful they come to Crown Store sooner. Fingers crossed!

I think you will disappointed. It is ZOS you know and you will still have to put your hands into your pocket

sarahthes

VoxAdActa wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

VoxAdActa wrote: »

New and returning player experience

Here's a thing that I just ran into: Make skill-line leveling faster. Much faster.

I just got my new alt to level 50, and none of my class lines are maxed, even though I handicapped myself throughout the leveling process by keeping the latest skill from all three class lines + my backbar weapon on my front bar the whole time. I haven't even gotten to the point where I can morph the last skills in those lines. They're still at rank III. My backbar weapon isn't at 50 either, in spite of wasting my #5 slot for 50 levels.

A new player shouldn't have to be well into champion points before they get to play with their whole skill bar. By 50, they should be able to have all the skills they want to actually play with arranged the way they want to play with them. (Edit: I guess maybe excluding alliance/guild skills).

I disagree. Champion Points are an integral part of the levelling process, and shouldn't come after you have maxed all your skill lines. One of the commonest complaints about LoTRO is that you run out of skills to develop long before you've got anywhere near the maximum level. When that happens, all the players are left with is the question "What's the point in continuing? What does levelling some more actually give me?"

How's that supposed to work? How am I supposed to know where I want to put my new Champ Points if I haven't even had a chance to play around with all the skills yet, much less seen what the morph options are? How do I know whether to put points into extra DD damage, extra DOT damage, extra AOE damage, or extra single-target damage when the skills I don't have might morph into any of those and I can't tell until they hit rank V and I can see the morphs?

If you don't even know whether a group of skills will fit your playstyle or not, how do you know where to put champ points?

We should be able to get our hands into all of our core skills and decide how we want to use them, and which ones we want to use, before we need to start making choices about how to fine-tune the build with CP.

Class skills and morphs change constantly for anyone who plays at a level where it matters. Even on console this is done, though less. The rest of the game is so easy, they aren't even really impactful and you can beat any normal and most vet content without curating your skills hardly at all - awareness and not standing in red are more important.

Sakiri

Lumsdenml wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if its a player level difficulty setting, it will not work in the overworld, because how would it scale the spawned enemy for each player if they had different settings?

It wouldn't need to. The scaling works as normal and the player receives debuffs which increase their own level of difficulty, which is functionally identical to any other form of difficulty implementation from that player's point of view. The only difference is that players who don't use the feature don't receive the associated debuffs. This way, everyone can engage with the same content at the same time.

And if you're about to say "but why would anyone want this if we're going to be standing next to players who don't bear the same burden?" Well, that's something you have to accept when you choose to enable a challenge setting. It's your choice to play the game at a higher difficulty, and I don't personally think it should matter what other people around you are doing.

As far as I'm concerned, my experience, and only my experience, is what defines my enjoyment of the game.

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

also im not sure how you got that i wouldnt want any kind of difficulty increase, i run vet dungeons, trials, and arenas, and have gotten to arc 10 in infinite archive. by being more powerful i meant improving your build (gear) and skills rotation, telling someone to unequip their gear/skills to make things more difficult is the direct opposite of trying to improve yourself. you dont have to instagib everything to feel more powerful

So what do you really want, then? Do you want to feel godlike, or do you want to be challenged? The seem kind of mutually-exclusive to me.

self debuffs only go so far though, i mean you could reduce your healing/dmg/shields by 90% basically a self only battle spirit type of thing, but it doesnt make the content harder, it again just makes things take longer, literally no different than just running without gear or skills

you could be slogging your way in a public dungeon with those debuffs and another player could come through without any self debuffs (aka the "normal" game) and blitz through everything anyway, thats not increasing your challenge

for instances though they could easily scale the enemies using the current "normal" and "vet" difficulties

for your 2nd point, they are not mutually exclusive, we have easy overland, and easy or hard instanced content (dungeons/trialas/arenas/archive), there are times i dont want to run vet dungeons and just go solo a normal dungeon, etc

i would personally be fine if they released a zone that was slightly more challenging, that would be similar in scope to old craglorn, i did all of the old craglorn content, i improved myself and my build and overcame the challenge that existed. in fact im personally fine with the game difficulty as it currently is, the overland as is allows more enjoyment of the story, though the final boss fights dont necessarily have the feel of a final boss fight because of the lack of "urgency" theres a lot of times in the fights that the npcs are yelling at you to "hurry do some mechanic now before its all over" but theres never any real rush that if you didnt perform said action you would die or would fail the quest or something

one tamriel was not the "death knell" of old craglorn, but it was the heavy nerfs that followed sometime after that which changed it to basically the public dungeon of overland zones

Based on the letter, it sounds like you're going to get your new Craglorn. Congrats.

Again, if someone comes along who isn't using challenge mode and they work through content faster, that's part of the game. There are plenty of players who deal with this kind of thing right now, and all it would look like to me is a balancing of that high-level group back down to the level of the normal players who struggle with the content we have now. They would just be doing it voluntarily.

We have discussed segregating the population into normal and hard mode instances in the Overland Content Feedback thread recently, and I really don't think it will ever happen because MMOs generally don't like separating players unless there is more than enough people to sustain servers for both groups, and I just don't think we'll have enough players who want a challenge for that implementation to be worth the effort.

For these reasons, if there is a way to keep everyone playing together, I think it's for the best.

i agree that there wont be normal and vet overland instances either, overland is likely going to only remain 1 difficulty

the only option they would have is likely self nerfs, which wont really make the overland more challenging or engaging for l

sarahthes wrote: »

joergino wrote: »

XSTRONG wrote: »

Should be same with overland difficulty the player choose difficulty themself, if you dont want to play the harder content you shouldnt expect the extra stuff that it yields .

There should be absolutely no extra stuff in the first place.

They should remove perfected gear from vet content, and trifecta mounts, as well. No extra stuff for doing the harder version. After all, it's optional.

That's not overworld. We're talking about overworld. And as someone that does vet trials that don't give perfected gear, I'd be perfectly fine with that. Challenge is its own reward.

Your comparison is moot.

OtarTheMad

old_scopie1945 wrote: »

Whatever may happen I still have Skyblivion to look forward to. It is due to be released in '25, all being well. I can hardly wait. I guess this will be deleted then

This too. I am excited if this happens. If not, Skyblivion.

https://gamerant.com/elder-scrolls-4-oblivion-remake-january-announcement-leak/

old_scopie1945

OtarTheMad wrote: »

old_scopie1945 wrote: »

Whatever may happen I still have Skyblivion to look forward to. It is due to be released in '25, all being well. I can hardly wait. I guess this will be deleted then

This too. I am excited if this happens. If not, Skyblivion.

https://gamerant.com/elder-scrolls-4-oblivion-remake-january-announcement-leak/

Yes, I have just been watching the vids on YouTube about it.

colossalvoids

OtarTheMad wrote: »

old_scopie1945 wrote: »

Whatever may happen I still have Skyblivion to look forward to. It is due to be released in '25, all being well. I can hardly wait. I guess this will be deleted then

This too. I am excited if this happens. If not, Skyblivion.

https://gamerant.com/elder-scrolls-4-oblivion-remake-january-announcement-leak/

After seeing some stuff about this one I'm way less surprised about zos dedicating next year for a different audience than some last years, big landmass plus story people are probably expected to buy a remaster and spend more time in mainline title again. And if next tes also on an observable horizon it makes even more sense that way.

old_scopie1945

colossalvoids wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

old_scopie1945 wrote: »

Whatever may happen I still have Skyblivion to look forward to. It is due to be released in '25, all being well. I can hardly wait. I guess this will be deleted then

This too. I am excited if this happens. If not, Skyblivion.

https://gamerant.com/elder-scrolls-4-oblivion-remake-january-announcement-leak/

After seeing some stuff about this one I'm way less surprised about zos dedicating next year for a different audience than some last years, big landmass plus story people are probably expected to buy a remaster and spend more time in mainline title again. And if next tes also on an observable horizon it makes even more sense that way.

I never joined those dots together, makes sense though. A pat on the back for thinking outside the box. I loved Oblivion, much more that Skyrim. Though a bit wonky the story was top notch.

disky

I just want to counteract some of the negativity and say that I am absolutely no white knight, I have been quite critical of ZOS in the past, and basically everything in the letter looks like positive things to me. It seems to address a lot of what people have been asking for over the past several years, and it also pulls back on the normal chapter format which I think has been an unsustainable cadence that has led to formulaic content. I think a lot of people cling unnecessarily to familiarity, and I think that if handled properly this new direction can be a huge boon for the game.

ZOS needs to refresh old zones. ZOS needs new content ideas. ZOS needs to address challenge gaps. Choosing to continue on the same release cadence they've been on forever will lead to a stale game that even die-hards will eventually tire of. I think ZOS understands this and they know this is the time for progress. I agree and I wish them the best.

Tandor

VoxAdActa wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

VoxAdActa wrote: »

New and returning player experience

Here's a thing that I just ran into: Make skill-line leveling faster. Much faster.

I just got my new alt to level 50, and none of my class lines are maxed, even though I handicapped myself throughout the leveling process by keeping the latest skill from all three class lines + my backbar weapon on my front bar the whole time. I haven't even gotten to the point where I can morph the last skills in those lines. They're still at rank III. My backbar weapon isn't at 50 either, in spite of wasting my #5 slot for 50 levels.

A new player shouldn't have to be well into champion points before they get to play with their whole skill bar. By 50, they should be able to have all the skills they want to actually play with arranged the way they want to play with them. (Edit: I guess maybe excluding alliance/guild skills).

I disagree. Champion Points are an integral part of the levelling process, and shouldn't come after you have maxed all your skill lines. One of the commonest complaints about LoTRO is that you run out of skills to develop long before you've got anywhere near the maximum level. When that happens, all the players are left with is the question "What's the point in continuing? What does levelling some more actually give me?"

How's that supposed to work? How am I supposed to know where I want to put my new Champ Points if I haven't even had a chance to play around with all the skills yet, much less seen what the morph options are? How do I know whether to put points into extra DD damage, extra DOT damage, extra AOE damage, or extra single-target damage when the skills I don't have might morph into any of those and I can't tell until they hit rank V and I can see the morphs?

If you don't even know whether a group of skills will fit your playstyle or not, how do you know where to put champ points?

We should be able to get our hands into all of our core skills and decide how we want to use them, and which ones we want to use, before we need to start making choices about how to fine-tune the build with CP.

That's what player guides are for, as well as the opportunity to respec, and (if on PC) the chance to try things on the PTS.

Surgee

I have to say that making PvP a separate game by giving it its own gear and skills kills the game for me. I know that this is a very unpopular opinion on these boards, as most PvP players left long ago.

I enjoy playing PvE because I work towards upgrading my role in PvP. For a lot of people, that's the value of MMO in comparison to some battle royale or quick jump in and out games. Having a separate everything for PvP will disconnect me from the experience and make PvE not rewarding. Having to re-learn my character and key bindings every time I switch between PvP and PvE also doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

Let's be real. The only people that asked for splitting PvE and PvP entirely were PvE players complaining about set and skill nerfs. Once more, instead of thinking of PvP players, you're catering towards PvE by restricting PvP. What about Cyrodil improvements that would attract new players? You know, things such as castle upgrades so they will be worth defending, claiming, and won't fall in 30 seconds? Making sieges longer and epic, so the whole experience won't rely on mounting 50 times within 10 minutes to run from castle to castle?

Aside from that, other patch notes sound very exciting. Finally something more than a bunch of quests in a game that has probably close to 10 thousand quests already.

Avran_Sylt

silky_soft wrote: »

Over 300 posts since last staff interaction.

Surgee wrote: »

I have to say that making PvP a separate game by giving it its own gear and skills kills the game for me. I know that this is a very unpopular opinion on these boards, as most PvP players left long ago.

I enjoy playing PvE because I work towards upgrading my role in PvP. For a lot of people, that's the value of MMO in comparison to some battle royale or quick jump in and out games. Having a separate everything for PvP will disconnect me from the experience and make PvE not rewarding. Having to re-learn my character and key bindings every time I switch between PvP and PvE also doesn't sound like a lot of fun.

Let's be real. The only people that asked for splitting PvE and PvP entirely were PvE players complaining about set and skill nerfs. Once more, instead of thinking of PvP players, you're catering towards PvE by restricting PvP. What about Cyrodil improvements that would attract new players? You know, things such as castle upgrades so they will be worth defending, claiming, and won't fall in 30 seconds? Making sieges longer and epic, so the whole experience won't rely on mounting 50 times within 10 minutes to run from castle to castle?

Aside from that, other patch notes sound very exciting. Finally something more than a bunch of quests in a game that has probably close to 10 thousand quests already.

Yeah I will miss that a bit. Probably won’t be chasing or theorycrafting sets from PvE in PvP anymore.

Maybe the more difficult overland would tide more over content-wise as a new avenue to theory-craft gearing sets.