Level 1-50 zones so easy, it's frustrating! Suggestions wanted.

spoqster · February 2015

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

Level 1-50 is supposed to be easy. You dont want to run off your players quickly with overly difficult content. Now you go back and do that content after you have done vet ranks of course to you it will seem easy. You have gear, money and experience. Probably have a couple chars to craft you the best food too. Potions and enchantments etc.

So ya 1-50 is supposed to be a face roll for people who have already done it once (or more than once). Its working as intended.

I am not challenging that, but what do you say about my suggestions? Implementing these will not increase the difficulty of the game and will not drive away players. It will simply give players the OPTION to increase the difficulty (and be rewarded for it) while keep playing the same way the game is meant to be played (improving gear and passives). I am also perfectly fine with this option being unlocked by reaching a certain level with one of your chars. What is wrong with offering this additional option to players?

spoqster · February 2015

Kragorn wrote: »

spoqster wrote: »

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

Take off all of your armor. Unslot all of your weapons and skills. Eat no foods, drink no drinks, and sell all of your potions. Only attack groups of five or mobs using light and heavy attacks with just your fists.

That should solve your problems.

Let me make clear that I did not mean to come across as arrogant. I am an experienced player, but there are many, many better players out there. I am certain that most players who roll an alt will face the exact problems as me. And also I had similiar problems, if not as pronounced, when I ran the content for the first time.

Now as to your suggestion - and I do know that you are being a bit ironical, but I still would like to comment - what you are suggesting might work, but it feels a bit beside the point. I don't want to play a gimped game and I want to get recognised in some way for beating a more difficult game.

Tell me, what recognition are you expecting for 'beating' a video game? Especially one like an MMO where there is no actual 'win' because the game doesn't ever 'end'.

For example the same as you get for beating Dragonstar Arena: A title. I'll enjoy the game more playing in Ironman mode, and if I will be rewarded with an "Ironman Victor" title for beating Molag Bal this way, that's even better.

spoqster · February 2015

Brother_Numsie wrote: »

I hit the VR1 leveling zone around the third week after launch on my NB. The first thing I thought when I began was that this should have been what leveling 1-50 felt like. It was still easy, but you had to start paying attention to what you were doing or you would wipe. It just felt... good. If they could zone in on what they did there, I would be happy.

This is EXACTLY how I felt hitting the VR zone for the first time. Unfortunately I was late, and a few days after I beat Molag Bal they deployed the update that nerfed the VR content. That sucked.

This experience is also part of the motivation for writing this post. I've gotten a glimpse at how much fun this game can be.

spoqster · February 2015

Lynnessa wrote: »

Karmine wrote: »

You are just better than you used to be, many people still struggle and die against same level mobs.

Pick randomized builds that don't make sense. Such as pick first Two Ability of your weapon and then First ability of all your classes. These are only abilites you are allowed to use now. Do not craft any gear, only use Quest Rewards.

Also all blocking/dodging is disallowed.

This. It's not that easy for all players; in fact, some players find it quite difficult. There are many reasons for this.

If you are seeking a challenge, others have suggested ways to make it challenging... but I wouldn't expect ZOS to make it harder when there are plenty of folks who already find it to be hard enough.

Have you actually read my post? I am not suggesting to make the game harder, I am suggesting to add additional settings that make the game harder for individual players without influencing the game for other players and without the need of any rebalancing whatsoever.

These kind of settings could potentially add significant added value to the game and greatly improve the replayability of the game, keeping users in the game longer - and all that at a cost that is significantly(!) lower than the cost of all the changes included in update 1.6.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO · February 2015

spoqster wrote: »

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

Level 1-50 is supposed to be easy. You dont want to run off your players quickly with overly difficult content. Now you go back and do that content after you have done vet ranks of course to you it will seem easy. You have gear, money and experience. Probably have a couple chars to craft you the best food too. Potions and enchantments etc.

So ya 1-50 is supposed to be a face roll for people who have already done it once (or more than once). Its working as intended.

I am not challenging that, but what do you say about my suggestions? Implementing these will not increase the difficulty of the game and will not drive away players. It will simply give players the OPTION to increase the difficulty (and be rewarded for it) while keep playing the same way the game is meant to be played (improving gear and passives). I am also perfectly fine with this option being unlocked by reaching a certain level with one of your chars. What is wrong with offering this additional option to players?

Ill be honest with you. I think it would be a waste of development resources which are limited. Those resources in my opinion would be better used on development of the DLC to generate revenue.

zeuseason · February 2015

TL;DR I think the game has TONS of content, all being quite fun. Every single char I play and level I always make it a point to hit every quest hub and not skip any of it. The downside to that is I often out-level the quests and get little to no reward in finishing a zone.

spoqster · February 2015

Athas24 wrote: »

Op: I'm with you man. The first time I ran through with my character I thought the difficulty was about right, even though I was constantly over leveled. I find that ALL MMO's allow crazy fast xp gain because all the babies Q_Q that they can't level fast enough. There's countless threads complaining about things taking to long regarding levels, vet levels etc. Leveling is supposed to be the fun part of the game IMO, since that is where 80% or more of an MMO's content typically resides until much later in the game's life span. This is after several updates, major patches etc. With ESO it looks like it's going to be the majority of the content for quite some time yet. That being said, we are apparently going to get even faster XP gain for being subbed soon lol.

I never understood why they reacted to these complainers by increasing xp gain. I was always under the impression that it was the pvp'ers and the endgame pve'ers who complained, rather than the single player folks. Why would the Skyrim folks complain about leveling? In Skyrim it's all you do. The game is over before you are done with leveling, so it has to be the MMO crowd that was complaining. The reason they are complaining is because they want to reach max-level quickly to be competitive. That's understandable. If there is a max level, you'll want to reach it.

But, why solve this issue by increasing xp gain and nerfing the content?

Why not just give players 200 skill points while they are in Cyrodiil and in vet dungeons/trials? The stats are scaled in Cyrodiil anyway, so this way they are competitive straight away. If someone buys this game and wants to spend every second in Cyrodiil from day one, let them. There are still reward mechanics in place, in the form of alliance points, ranks and gear. They could just have a separate gear set for PVE and PVP. Most players wear different sets in Cyrodiil anyway.
Or they could just stop increasing the stats at level 20, so that from level 21 on you still get skill points, but your stats will stay flat. Then people could compete in Cyrodiil from level 20 onwards.

This game is supposed to appeal to millions, so there are likely different groups of players with different interests. Not everyone needs a vertical progression to have fun. The hardcore players spend 3 weeks to get to max level and then play for years at max level without getting a bit of reward for it, except for gear and recognition.

Just design it so that everyone can do what they want. Instead they keep forcing everyone to go through the leveling process and at the same time quicken the leveling process so that there are less complaints. But that way they are not giving the complainers what they really want but are ruining the game for the single player folks. Instead of giving everybody what they want, they are giving nobody what they want and everybody is unhappy. There are really some questionable management/game design decisions at play here.

Arandear · February 2015

I don't mind the difficulty as it is as sometimes it's hard to come across other players at certain times in certain area's, though I am not against the difficulty being upped.

NotSo · February 2015

What if there was a 1 button toggle that made you phase out of easy land and into dark souls land, where enemies are not limited to their original standpoint and can aggro as soon as you enter line of sight?

wilsonirayb16_ESO · May 2015

I appreciate the thread is old, but felt I wanted to voice my concern somewhere (have already done in game feedback).

The levelling is way too quick.. and it seems to fall in line with the rest of the game's feel ..fast action, 'quick run' all your dungeons, skip content, rush to end game.

I think they really did TES fans (and MMOs fans) a disservice when they decided to make the game arcadish, so it would 'appeal' to a wider audience.

It's very frustrating to be leaving the starting zones at level 20, to find that you have guild quests qued up in a level 15 area, where all the mobs, quests and dungeons en route to the next main city is several levels beneath your character.

By the time you leave that zone, the pattern has repeated itself and you're once again far ahead of the curve.
This is particularly glaring because with how easy the content is, you're able to manage mobs/quests several levels higher than you. There is nowhere you can go to get an appropriate level/skill challenge.

And this is coming from someone whom often runs around in broken gear.

It also doesn't help that there is no auto scaling mechanics or mentoring system for higher level players in lower level areas. A good example is that three of us sometimes play together, though due to schedules we don't always sync up.
On a new set of characters, two of us reached Grahtwood at 19 (And I am not sure we did everything in Auridon?) while the third was still 15. He is not around as much and also skips ahead of content when he does play, missing out on important gains. We decided to park our characters until he is on and then adventure with him. Yet when he does come on, we find that when he skipped ahead to Grahtwood, he scooped up a lot of quests in eagerness to catch us in level. Now, quest wise we are out of sync with him. Meaning that if we want to go and do the quests when he is not around, we will once again leap frog him in levels and much like Auridon, when we leave Grahtwood we will be significantly ahead.

And even in games tha tdo offer auto levelling down and mentoring systems, this issue still exists. What the games lack is a guaranteed activity of objective that you can do together, that you can plan and lasts more than twenty minutes. To me the simple answer is mob experience grinding, like in old school EverQuest and FFXI. You find a spot, setup camp and pull mobs to grind it out - rather than aimlessly running around public dungeons where there's nothing to kill, little to see and do. The rest of your time is spent ping ponging across the map in a quest grind.

So either way, we're stuck with a grind, yet a grind that can't facilitate group activity in a consistent fashion. You can only do group dungeons so many times...

In summary, they could have made levelling about twice as long, or experience gain from quests twice as little to ensure that we get to properly experience each zone. They also could have thrown in some additionaly experience gaining/group activity methods.

Fortunately Skyrim (with mods) still kicks butt, and any time ESO frustrated you, you can go see how it should be done.
Never the less, it would be nice to adventure through content without worrying about this sort of thing!

ahstin2001nub18_ESO · May 2015

wilsonirayb16_ESO wrote: »

I appreciate the thread is old, but felt I wanted to voice my concern somewhere (have already done in game feedback).

The levelling is way too quick.. and it seems to fall in line with the rest of the game's feel ..fast action, 'quick run' all your dungeons, skip content, rush to end game.

I think they really did TES fans (and MMOs fans) a disservice when they decided to make the game arcadish, so it would 'appeal' to a wider audience.

Never the less, they could have made levelling about twice as long, or experience gain from quests twice as little.
It's very frustrating to be leaving the starting zones at level 20, to find that you have guild quests qued up in a level 15 area, where all the mobs, quests and dungeons en route to the next main city is several levels beneath your character.

By the time you leave that zone, the pattern has repeated itself and you're once again far ahead of the curve.
This is particularly glaring because with how easy the content is, you're able to manage mobs/quests several levels higher than you. There is nowhere you can go to get an appropriate level/skill challenge.

And this is coming from someone whom often runs around in broken gear.

Fortunately Skyrim (with mods) still kicks butt, and any time ESO frustrated you, you can go see how it should be done.
Never the less, it would be nice to adventure through content without worrying about this sort of thing!

this is why i loved rifts level modifying ability. being able to adjust our levels would address this concern, while also addressing the difficulty concerns (if something is too easy). i too skip repairs while soloing in solo zones. this doesn't help with the games inflation either. if i don't repair my gear, then there is more money in my pocket that isnt getting removed from the game. too much money in the game and we have a few issues with new players coming into an inflated market sooner which isn't a bad or good thing, but could be discouraging. it would also come in-line with the CS, so you can get champion points while farming lower level resources easier. you could also work with your friends better at a reduced level, as my wife and friends have all fallen WAY behind me, and they all agree, grouping with my kills experience so they tend to avoid it unless something requires a group. one friend was wondering if he was even getting experience. its gotten to the point where i don't even bother grouping with them, since i feel i do more of a disservice to them, than i do help them.

wilsonirayb16_ESO · May 2015

ahstin2001nub18_ESO wrote: »

wilsonirayb16_ESO wrote: »

I appreciate the thread is old, but felt I wanted to voice my concern somewhere (have already done in game feedback).

The levelling is way too quick.. and it seems to fall in line with the rest of the game's feel ..fast action, 'quick run' all your dungeons, skip content, rush to end game.

I think they really did TES fans (and MMOs fans) a disservice when they decided to make the game arcadish, so it would 'appeal' to a wider audience.

It's very frustrating to be leaving the starting zones at level 20, to find that you have guild quests qued up in a level 15 area, where all the mobs, quests and dungeons en route to the next main city is several levels beneath your character.

By the time you leave that zone, the pattern has repeated itself and you're once again far ahead of the curve.
This is particularly glaring because with how easy the content is, you're able to manage mobs/quests several levels higher than you. There is nowhere you can go to get an appropriate level/skill challenge.

And this is coming from someone whom often runs around in broken gear.

It also doesn't help that there is no auto scaling mechanics or mentoring system for higher level players in lower level areas. A good example is that three of us sometimes play together, though due to schedules we don't always sync up.
On a new set of characters, two of us reached Grahtwood at 19 (And I am not sure we did everything in Auridon?) while the third was still 15. He is not around as much and also skips ahead of content when he does play, missing out on important gains. We decided to park our characters until he is on and then adventure with him. Yet when he does come on, we find that when he skipped ahead to Grahtwood, he scooped up a lot of quests in eagerness to catch us in level. Now, quest wise we are out of sync with him. Meaning that if we want to go and do the quests when he is not around, we will once again leap frog him in levels and much like Auridon, when we leave Grahtwood we will be significantly ahead.

And even in games tha tdo offer auto levelling down and mentoring systems, this issue still exists. What the games lack is a guaranteed activity of objective that you can do together, that you can plan and lasts more than twenty minutes. To me the simple answer is mob experience grinding, like in old school EverQuest and FFXI. You find a spot, setup camp and pull mobs to grind it out - rather than aimlessly running around public dungeons where there's nothing to kill, little to see and do. The rest of your time is spent ping ponging across the map in a quest grind.

So either way, we're stuck with a grind, yet a grind that can't facilitate group activity in a consistent fashion. You can only do group dungeons so many times...

In summary, they could have made levelling about twice as long, or experience gain from quests twice as little to ensure that we get to properly experience each zone. They also could have thrown in some additionaly experience gaining/group activity methods.

Fortunately Skyrim (with mods) still kicks butt, and any time ESO frustrated you, you can go see how it should be done.
Never the less, it would be nice to adventure through content without worrying about this sort of thing!

this is why i loved rifts level modifying ability. being able to adjust our levels would address this concern, while also addressing the difficulty concerns (if something is too easy). i too skip repairs while soloing in solo zones. this doesn't help with the games inflation either. if i don't repair my gear, then there is more money in my pocket that isnt getting removed from the game. too much money in the game and we have a few issues with new players coming into an inflated market sooner which isn't a bad or good thing, but could be discouraging. it would also come in-line with the CS, so you can get champion points while farming lower level resources easier. you could also work with your friends better at a reduced level, as my wife and friends have all fallen WAY behind me, and they all agree, grouping with my kills experience so they tend to avoid it unless something requires a group. one friend was wondering if he was even getting experience. its gotten to the point where i don't even bother grouping with them, since i feel i do more of a disservice to them, than i do help them.

Agreed. And the point about people falling behind (or getting ahead), is something I touched on in my edited version of the last post. I mention adding an old style MMO mechanic of monster grinding, as an alternative and yet consistent method of experience, loot and skill /practice/chemistry gains by groups of players. Though that is not a resolution to the underlying issue, just an avenue to be explored. Players will still get ahead of one another. At least with the option to camp grind mobs, you can go to the place, do what you need to and then log off. With the current quest grind style of MMOs, once people get even slightly out of sync, it falls apart.

Besides, with the way they've setup the game and Veteran ranks(play the game again in a different alliance area(s)), it's obvious you are not meant to have tons of alts. So, it's a shame we have to make alts just to keep in line with one another.

MercyKilling · May 2015

1) Don't just dump all your points into one stat. Evenly distribute them.
2) Do not take any FotM build abilities. At all.
3) Absolutely, positively do not do ANYTHING that is geared towards min-maxing your build. No uber leet gear. No set pieces. Nada, zip, zilch, nothing.

Then cry the game is still too easy.

Warraxx · May 2015

i get sauced up before I log in...

wrlifeboil · May 2015

I always chuckle when people say the intro levels in an mmo are too easy. You can tell that they are newbies.

Note to newbies: intro levels are supposed to be easy.

Ysne58 · May 2015

Some of the game is too easy. I took a level 12, not FOTM nightblade into Toothmaul Gully about a week ago. She managed everything, I mean everything and was only wearing 4 pieces of armor. She only died nine or ten times.

She should not have been able to handle any of the bosses by herself, especially the group monster, yet she did.

@ZOS_GinaBruno could you have someone take another look at the difficulty level of those monsters? Some of them only had 1 * difficulty.

Shunravi · May 2015

MercyKilling wrote: »

1) Don't just dump all your points into one stat. Evenly distribute them.
2) Do not take any FotM build abilities. At all.
3) Absolutely, positively do not do ANYTHING that is geared towards min-maxing your build. No uber leet gear. No set pieces. Nada, zip, zilch, nothing.

Then cry the game is still too easy.

That sounds EXACTLY how I leveled my main. Before the nerfs. Its to easy.

TheDarkShadow · May 2015

I've seen this kind of "too hard/too easy", "too fast/too slow" argue sooo many time in sooo many MMORPG. I've suggest this idea a few time but no game has pick it, maybe because they'd have to change too many codes, and so they usually add a "XP lock" item in the store.

My solution is let the player choose the reward for quests. A- xp; B- money; C-item... (d- trophies to barter items, e- cast shop money...). If you want to level fast, choose XP. If you want to be strong at low level, choose some items. If you want challenge, get money and fight high level mob with crap gear.

Shunravi · May 2015

TheDarkShadow wrote: »

I've seen this kind of "too hard/too easy", "too fast/too slow" argue sooo many time in sooo many MMORPG. I've suggest this idea a few time but no game has pick it, maybe because they'd have to change too many codes, and so they usually add a "XP lock" item in the store.

My solution is let the player choose the reward for quests. A- xp; B- money; C-item... (d- trophies to barter items, e- cast shop money...). If you want to level fast, choose XP. If you want to be strong at low level, choose some items. If you want challenge, get money and fight high level mob with crap gear.

I like it!

But its not happening. As countless discussions like this have shown, they prefer to reduce than improve.

Cody · May 2015

the game is too easy, not just for solo content, but in group dungeons as well.

fungal grotto used to be hard, it used to be fun, now its a chore to play thru(unless its the vet version:D)
the veteran zones are also too easy. they were a bit to hard at launch, but ZOS massively over-nerfed them, now they are a joke.

Moonshadow66 · May 2015

Some months ago I read somewhere here on the forums that some group/guild has done some Trials naked and without weapons (or was it just without the weapons?), using skills/spells only. Would this be an option?

Shunravi · May 2015

Moonshadow66 wrote: »

Some months ago I read somewhere here on the forums that some group/guild has done some Trials naked and without weapons (or was it just without the weapons?), using skills/spells only. Would this be an option?

Been there done that :P

Its certainly an option, but as it cuts out 1/4 - 1/3 of the game (crafting and loot) its not a desirable option.

MercyKilling · May 2015

And again, in my signature is a solution to THIS woe:

A difficulty slider. One that buffs you for easy mode, and debuffs you for harder, more challenging adventures....and because it's personal, only YOU will feel the effects of it.

Shunravi · May 2015

MercyKilling wrote: »

And again, in my signature is a solution to THIS woe:

A difficulty slider. One that buffs you for easy mode, and debuffs you for harder, more challenging adventures....and because it's personal, only YOU will feel the effects of it.

Never been a fan of sliders, but you wont hear any argument from me as its likely the best option.

Of course, at this point i should probably add an addendum; I honestly don't care too much. Yes, I find it easy. Yes im posting here about it. But I'm simply stating my perspective.

kijima · May 2015

Nerf sorcs...

Jezriel · May 2015

As an actual noob (I've been in ESO about a week), I don't really find the game too easy. I'm just now learning mechanics like blocking and interrupting. I'm sure there are a lot of things I don't know yet. It seems to me that the ease comes with familiarity with the game rather than the solo experience being objectively unchallenging.

Dahveed · May 2015

I agree with your thread, and I really appreciate the time you took into posting your full experience and your proposed solutions. Personally I am still on my first character here and I'm not even that good at MMOs. Yet I still find the questing really boring and far too easy and fast.

My favourite part of your post was:

spoqster wrote: »

[*] Introduce a difficulty setting by downscaling the character's attributes and possibly associating this with a set of achievements. So for example, you could start a new character in "Ironman Mode" that significantly downscales all attributes for the single player experience, but has no downscaling when entering Cyrodiil or vet dungeons and trials. There should be multiple ironman settings to make this useful for many players.

I made an entire thread about this exact topic, with pretty much this exact solution. Furthermore I ran into the same problem about people just telling me to go naked or make my own rules or whatever... but they just don't get it. I want to play the game as it was meant to be played, but I want it to challenge me. I want to feel like my progression matters.

Check out this thread if you like, I really believe you would agree with pretty much everything I post:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/164917/eso-needs-a-simple-difficulty-slider/p1

I truly believe ZoS could pull this off quite easily, with relatively little development time, and it would have a HUGE payoff in the long-term. They have a fantastic infrastructure for literally thousands of hours of replayability with the fun combat, the fun crafting, the many classes, the great graphics, pvp, etc etc etc... but for me it all seems wasted because the numbers from lvl 1-50 are just absolutely horrible. Nothing EVER hurts me or poses a threat.

Dahveed · May 2015

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

Take off all of your armor. Unslot all of your weapons and skills. Eat no foods, drink no drinks, and sell all of your potions. Only attack groups of five or more
mobs using light and heavy attacks with just your fists.

That should solve your problems.

In other words, don't play 90% of the game and it will be more fun.

I can't imagine how incredibly boring this game would be if all I did was run around and punch NPCs in my underwear.

People like you completely miss the point about threads like these.

Shunravi · May 2015

Dahveed wrote: »

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

Take off all of your armor. Unslot all of your weapons and skills. Eat no foods, drink no drinks, and sell all of your potions. Only attack groups of five or more
mobs using light and heavy attacks with just your fists.

That should solve your problems.

In other words, don't play 90% of the game and it will be more fun.

I can't imagine how incredibly boring this game would be if all I did was run around and punch NPCs in my underwear.

People like you completely miss the point about threads like these.

well said

Moonshadow66 · May 2015

Dahveed wrote: »

Lord_Kreegan wrote: »

Take off all of your armor. Unslot all of your weapons and skills. Eat no foods, drink no drinks, and sell all of your potions. Only attack groups of five or more
mobs using light and heavy attacks with just your fists.

That should solve your problems.

In other words, don't play 90% of the game and it will be more fun.

I can't imagine how incredibly boring this game would be if all I did was run around and punch NPCs in my underwear.

People like you completely miss the point about threads like these.

I guess no one missed the point about threads like these (I posted "naked", too). It's just that this would be an option which is doable, unlike using a difficulty slider, because.. there isn't any. Your choice.