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

Dahveed · May 2015

Moonshadow66 wrote: »

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.

The point about threads like these is to give feedback to the community managers to pass on to the appropriate dev teams. If we give them suggestions about what we would like to see in the game, they might listen.

I think ZoS could really be a pioneer in the area of difficulty adjustment. They've already made an important stride in dungeon scaling, and there's no reason they couldn't do similar innovation for single player. It would in fact be relatively easy to accomplish with player-exclusive debuffs.

mtwiggz · May 2015

Personally I find the leveling content ridiculously easy. Going through for the first time was enjoyable; learning all of the areas, seeing new things, fighting new creatures, etc.

Now on my attempted third run through I cannot express how happy I am the content is so easy. I want to get through it as fast as possible as the leveling zones provide no enjoyment to me anymore. As a relatively casual player I don't have a lot of time to play, so spending an incredible amount of hours leveling alts is not high on my priority list.

I would love an item in the Crown Store that would be an "instant VR1" or even a "instant VR14" potion. Seems most people are against this idea, so I digress.

Dahveed · May 2015

mtwiggz wrote: »

Personally I find the leveling content ridiculously easy. Going through for the first time was enjoyable; learning all of the areas, seeing new things, fighting new creatures, etc.

Now on my attempted third run through I cannot express how happy I am the content is so easy. I want to get through it as fast as possible as the leveling zones provide no enjoyment to me anymore. As a relatively casual player I don't have a lot of time to play, so spending an incredible amount of hours leveling alts is not high on my priority list.

I would love an item in the Crown Store that would be an "instant VR1" or even a "instant VR14" potion. Seems most people are against this idea, so I digress.

As a lover of the Elder Scrolls series (not MMOs) it saddens me that this will inevitably be the crowd that ZoS caters more to. The "everything sucks let's just get it over with" crowd.

ES games are supposed to be about exploration, questing, experiencing the unexpected and enjoying the journey, not the destination. Soaking in the lore, appreciating the story, just enjoying every minute of it.

Now it's quickly becoming just another MMO grind where players don't even want to play the content. They just want to get it over with to get the trophy at the end and say "There, I did it."

I understand that endgame is an important MMO "thing", but this was supposed to be an Elder Scrolls game, too. I really wish they would just change the name already and stop pretending to be an Elder Scrolls hybrid or whatever and just admit it's another MMO grinder.

Endurance · May 2015

spoqster wrote: »

I like this game so much that I decided to pull up a second character. It's really sad to see that the content is so easy, that it is very hard to have fun playing the leveling zones as intended.

TL;DR
I know that a lot of people have been complaining that the game is too hard and that leveling takes too long. This thread is to point out that there is also another side to the story, that the game currently is way too easy and thus creates a lot of boredom and encourages players to skip content.
There is not much fun content for experienced players while leveling, only the parts of the zones where you are still under-leveled, the public dungeons while you are under-leveled and the group dungeons.

Getting the skill points from the quests and the skyshards from solo dungeons is thus a very boring and frustrating (as in not challenging) experience.

Constantly worrying about being over-leveled is a terrible experience.

Field Report
I played through the first zone by myself and quickly realized that I am leveling way too fast and the mobs are getting easier and easier. It felt much worse than when I played it the first time, probably because I have better gear (crafted by main), I am a better player, but maybe they also nerfed the content. (I know the content would be harder if I didn't wear set armor, but not by much. And I am enjoying my Ashen Grip fire breath. :-))

So I decided to just do the zone main quests, skipping almost all side quests and postponing the main story, fighters and mages guild until later. Doing that I was still over-leveled in zone 3.

Now a friend joined in and we wanted to play together. You'd think that would be great fun, but no. For two players playing content of their level it's so ridiculously easy, it's like whacking corn with a baseball bat. So we skipped to the next (fourth) zone and did Dolmen hunting.

That was still too easy, so we skipped to the fifth.

I am talking about roughly 8 hours of gameplay here and we increased about 8 levels in that time. Leveling went even quicker since we were under-leveled now.

In zone 5 we realized that being roughly 5 levels below the mobs (35 vs 40), we could still solo the vast majority of the content.

Now we are trying out Coldharbor at level 37 and it's still too easy for two players. We had a lot of fun in the public dungeon Village of the Lost, though.

I am looking forward to the vet zones.

PS. I tried out the first main story quests which are scaled to my level and it was also not challenging at all.

Conclusion
I cannot fathom that it is intended that good players have to skip all the beautiful content so that they don't get bored to tears because they are too powerful.

Solution
What to do? This is not easily solvable unless they significantly lowered (at least cu in half) the XP you are getting. But that would make leveling twice as long for those who want to get to endgame quickly.
Allow players to lower the xp gain rate at character creation (and possibly later on). This would effectively increase the difficulty of the game without the need for rebalancing the content. The xp gain rate should be a slider with the max set to the current setting and the minimum to go as low as they want, then every player can find the right rate for them.

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.

Give players access to all skill points while they are in PVP and in endgame dungeons/trials (and scale their stats). This would allow players to get started with PVP and endgame quickly and they can switch between these competitive modes and the more relaxed single player experience from early on in the game.

Any other ideas? What do you think?

UPDATE
Please do not suggest to use low level gear or similar meta gaming solutions. This thread is about wanting to play the game as intended, including the use of gear, potions and food. Please comment on my suggestions or provide better ideas. Put yourself in the shoes of the game director and ask yourselves: "What would I do to allow some users to play a more difficult game without changing the experience for everyone else who is content with the current gameplay? What can be done so that it offers the best possible experience for the players and yet requires as little work as possible from the developers?"

sooooooo 1-50 is sooo easy its boring? and VR1 - VR14 is sooooo hard people demand it be removed from the game and replaced with something easier? i just dont get it really

Shunravi · May 2015

Endurance wrote: »

spoqster wrote: »

I like this game so much that I decided to pull up a second character. It's really sad to see that the content is so easy, that it is very hard to have fun playing the leveling zones as intended.

TL;DR
I know that a lot of people have been complaining that the game is too hard and that leveling takes too long. This thread is to point out that there is also another side to the story, that the game currently is way too easy and thus creates a lot of boredom and encourages players to skip content.
There is not much fun content for experienced players while leveling, only the parts of the zones where you are still under-leveled, the public dungeons while you are under-leveled and the group dungeons.

Getting the skill points from the quests and the skyshards from solo dungeons is thus a very boring and frustrating (as in not challenging) experience.

Constantly worrying about being over-leveled is a terrible experience.

Field Report
I played through the first zone by myself and quickly realized that I am leveling way too fast and the mobs are getting easier and easier. It felt much worse than when I played it the first time, probably because I have better gear (crafted by main), I am a better player, but maybe they also nerfed the content. (I know the content would be harder if I didn't wear set armor, but not by much. And I am enjoying my Ashen Grip fire breath. :-))

So I decided to just do the zone main quests, skipping almost all side quests and postponing the main story, fighters and mages guild until later. Doing that I was still over-leveled in zone 3.

Now a friend joined in and we wanted to play together. You'd think that would be great fun, but no. For two players playing content of their level it's so ridiculously easy, it's like whacking corn with a baseball bat. So we skipped to the next (fourth) zone and did Dolmen hunting.

That was still too easy, so we skipped to the fifth.

I am talking about roughly 8 hours of gameplay here and we increased about 8 levels in that time. Leveling went even quicker since we were under-leveled now.

In zone 5 we realized that being roughly 5 levels below the mobs (35 vs 40), we could still solo the vast majority of the content.

Now we are trying out Coldharbor at level 37 and it's still too easy for two players. We had a lot of fun in the public dungeon Village of the Lost, though.

I am looking forward to the vet zones.

PS. I tried out the first main story quests which are scaled to my level and it was also not challenging at all.

Conclusion
I cannot fathom that it is intended that good players have to skip all the beautiful content so that they don't get bored to tears because they are too powerful.

Solution
What to do? This is not easily solvable unless they significantly lowered (at least cu in half) the XP you are getting. But that would make leveling twice as long for those who want to get to endgame quickly.
Allow players to lower the xp gain rate at character creation (and possibly later on). This would effectively increase the difficulty of the game without the need for rebalancing the content. The xp gain rate should be a slider with the max set to the current setting and the minimum to go as low as they want, then every player can find the right rate for them.

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.

Give players access to all skill points while they are in PVP and in endgame dungeons/trials (and scale their stats). This would allow players to get started with PVP and endgame quickly and they can switch between these competitive modes and the more relaxed single player experience from early on in the game.

Any other ideas? What do you think?

UPDATE
Please do not suggest to use low level gear or similar meta gaming solutions. This thread is about wanting to play the game as intended, including the use of gear, potions and food. Please comment on my suggestions or provide better ideas. Put yourself in the shoes of the game director and ask yourselves: "What would I do to allow some users to play a more difficult game without changing the experience for everyone else who is content with the current gameplay? What can be done so that it offers the best possible experience for the players and yet requires as little work as possible from the developers?"

sooooooo 1-50 is sooo easy its boring? and VR1 - VR14 is sooooo hard people demand it be removed from the game and replaced with something easier? i just dont get it really

Nope, v1-v14 is a grind. Its actually far easier because you have more skills.

MyNegation · May 2015

1) make death matter and not just another way of fast travel.
-- when you die you drop all of your unbound gear and your money on your corpse
- you have to pick it up after you materialize from the soul gem or run from the closest shrine.
- during this time other players can loot all your gear. but this gear is treated like stolen gear: the looting player will have to go to fence to "wash" the gear and he will get bounty if he was seen by anybody else ( player or NPC)

2) when you fail a quest you have to actually start over and not simply choose a different dialog line to succeed.

3) remove all damage scaling from magica/stamina completely. it is a resource pool not a power indicator.
the damage output of the player will be lower. and it will solve many other problems with stagnant character building.

4) aggro range of sentient beings should be higher. the see you with their torches from far away but they count the steps to when they can jump on you?
also they should hear you if you are mining a node or cutting a tree behind them...

5) more mobs with special abilities like "harvester" and their healing orbs. that you have to think a little when you fight them.

6) dynamic bosses, not sitting on the same spot on the map but roaming the map and even ambushing you.

but this will never happen unless we will have a new MMO.
all they care now is consoles and crown store

MercyKilling · May 2015

I was just in a public dungeon earlier today with my NB....and a boss killed me. Twice. Also killed the guy I was teamed with.

No, it's just fine as it is. Not everyone that plays the game is an uber leet God's gift to gaming type player that minmaxes and optimizes every little facet of their character.

Shunravi · May 2015

MercyKilling wrote: »

I was just in a public dungeon earlier today with my NB....and a boss killed me. Twice. Also killed the guy I was teamed with.

No, it's just fine as it is. Not everyone that plays the game is an uber leet God's gift to gaming type player that minmaxes and optimizes every little facet of their character.

Lol.

Well, I can tell you this much, I'm not either.

In my own opinion, I'm terribad. I just find stuff that works and run with it. I know my character, but I'm a long way from optimizing anything.

I find the game to easy, and you feel it's about right. Congratulations. If history is any guide, and it usually is, they will continue to dumb stuff down. So you win. I may as well be shouting into a void. But as long as I have the breath to shout, I'm going to try to make it echo.

mtwiggz · May 2015

Dahveed wrote: »

mtwiggz wrote: »

Personally I find the leveling content ridiculously easy. Going through for the first time was enjoyable; learning all of the areas, seeing new things, fighting new creatures, etc.

Now on my attempted third run through I cannot express how happy I am the content is so easy. I want to get through it as fast as possible as the leveling zones provide no enjoyment to me anymore. As a relatively casual player I don't have a lot of time to play, so spending an incredible amount of hours leveling alts is not high on my priority list.

I would love an item in the Crown Store that would be an "instant VR1" or even a "instant VR14" potion. Seems most people are against this idea, so I digress.

As a lover of the Elder Scrolls series (not MMOs) it saddens me that this will inevitably be the crowd that ZoS caters more to. The "everything sucks let's just get it over with" crowd.

ES games are supposed to be about exploration, questing, experiencing the unexpected and enjoying the journey, not the destination. Soaking in the lore, appreciating the story, just enjoying every minute of it.

Now it's quickly becoming just another MMO grind where players don't even want to play the content. They just want to get it over with to get the trophy at the end and say "There, I did it."

I understand that endgame is an important MMO "thing", but this was supposed to be an Elder Scrolls game, too. I really wish they would just change the name already and stop pretending to be an Elder Scrolls hybrid or whatever and just admit it's another MMO grinder.

As someone who has played all of the ESO games I thoroughly enjoyed the vast open world and all of the awesome ESO elements... The first play through, even on the second. You can't continue to say explore and enjoy the lore when you've already done the same exact things twice. It's been explored, it's been enjoyed. All that's left now is the destination, I've already completed the journey. Perhaps if there was more variety then it would continue to be enjoyable. At this rate, it is not. At least for me.

Robotmafia · May 2015

as this is an mmo and not a single player game I feel the challenge should start with the end game... I see the lvling part of an mmo as a tutorial to learn ur class and skills... if they make it harder the time it takes to lvl another char would take to long.. don't get me wrong I like challenges but id prefer them adding more endgame challenges rather than working on the lvling content

ahstin2001nub18_ESO · May 2015

the weak and sarcastic logic that "you must be a gamer god" is the thing that erks me about how these threads end up. honestly, how long does it take to figure out this game or any MMO. don't stand in the red and press 1-5. there you have the basics. what? you don't have magicka/stamina- heavy attack. still having issues then weave heavy attacks into pressing 1-5. still having issues? wear medium/light armor. dying a lot? toss in some heavy pieces. how many heavy? i don't know go try different sets. what abilities should you be using?!? okay, now we know you are just being lazy....

honestly this game isn't that hard. im color blind and while i have issues seeing red on the ground, i can still manage it well enough. the other part of the game is managing resources. thats not a one size fits all deal, but that isnt that hard. block versus interrupt, again not that hard and i again have issues with differentiating the colors and can still do it fairly well.

biggest advice, read the tool tips. don't be "that guy" and ignore them with the assumption that you have the end game to "figure it out". no one but yourself is interested in standing around waiting for you to "figure it out" or "find your flow" when they are chin deep into a raid or a group instance.

Frawr · May 2015

From phone hence typos.

The game is easy. Once you figure out how to dodge and block then it shows its simplicity.

Better would be for the mobs to hit a bit harder.

It's labelled an MMO but the entire story is a solo experience. It is a story so th at itself bring s a start and an end. For the game to survive for years, I really believe that it needs more sandbox elements at endgame. That way you can complete the story and then go on to 'llive' in Tamriel.

sources of inspiration might be:

Star wars galaxies in 2004
darkfall
xsyon
2nd life

Other similar. Give us stuff to do that is our own content. Let us build uninstanced houses/ccities in persistent areas of the world. Give us free reign to design and shape them.

Give us the abilities to set up shops and military outposts and pvp to defend our outposts and our territory.

All of this and more can coexist with the solo story experience of 1-50.

titanofdoom · May 2015

These threads drive me to distraction!

I think the game balance from 1- 50 is just about right. You can die extremely quickly if you'are not paying attention!

Some classes have greater survivability than others - so play a class that doesen't fair so well in the staying in one piece stakes, and please quit bringing these threads to the forum!

Egonieser · May 2015

TheShadowScout wrote: »

Or just try more. Aggro two groups of mobs at once, fight twice the number one usually does. Solo dolmen, public dungeons and world bosses, if you can.

There's always means and ways...

Two groups at once...
I sometimes pull 5-6 (~20 mobs) groups in grind areas and can kill them all without losing a sliver of health.
Dolmens i can solo so fast other plays in the area don't even have a chance to reach it before i finish it (though i nowadays i leave the last boss standing until a few players arrive so they can complete it or i feel bad and selfish).
Public dungeons - this a joke? Even group dungeons on-level are solo-able in current state (non-veteran obviously)
The only world boss i found difficult (only because he hits so hard) was the storm atronach boss, but not that difficult that it killed me, just took my health quite low.

Now, I'm not saying the game should be changed or buffed/nerfed w/e. I'm talking about my personal experience. I enjoy it the way it is (excluding bugs and crashes), however what I (emphasis on the "I") would like to see is crafted sets have some kind of minimal level restrictiom loosely based on thr time it takes to get the researches for it done.

If someone who has a max crafter makes a new alt and makes him a sweet kickass gear which would be otherwise only available, lets say.. at VR2 it kindda breaks the early level challenge. When i equipped a nice 4x/5x bonus sets at lvl 12 my stats almost doubled and i could almost kill all non-boss mobs with 1 heavy attack. A regular player with no high level crafters in their disposal can't achieve (or afford) this kind of luxury.
Most other MMO's have level/stat requirements even for crafted items to avoid such a situation to prevent new alts from being horribly overpowered.

Again, this is my personal opinion and i make no pleas to change the game mechanics, but if they did, i wouldn't mind at all and even be pleased.

Dahveed · May 2015

titanofdoom wrote: »

These threads drive me to distraction!

I think the game balance from 1- 50 is just about right. You can die extremely quickly if you'are not paying attention!

Some classes have greater survivability than others - so play a class that doesen't fair so well in the staying in one piece stakes, and please quit bringing these threads to the forum!

The point of these threads (you admit yourself you keep seeing them) is that a lot of people obviously disagree with you about difficulty.

They need to address this point, urgently. If players - even new players, like me - come in here and find everything too easy and hence too boring, they won't have the patience to stick around until end game.

An option for a simple difficulty slider which tweaks your characters stats would be ideal.

Shunravi · May 2015

titanofdoom wrote: »

These threads drive me to distraction!

I think the game balance from 1- 50 is just about right. You can die extremely quickly if you'are not paying attention!

Some classes have greater survivability than others - so play a class that doesen't fair so well in the staying in one piece stakes, and please quit bringing these threads to the forum!

I disagree.

And what class would you be referencing by chance? Because I've played them all, and Nightblade is my main.

MercyKilling · May 2015

Shunravi wrote: »

Lol.

Well, I can tell you this much, I'm not either.

In my own opinion, I'm terribad. I just find stuff that works and run with it. I know my character, but I'm a long way from optimizing anything.

I find the game to easy, and you feel it's about right. Congratulations. If history is any guide, and it usually is, they will continue to dumb stuff down. So you win. I may as well be shouting into a void. But as long as I have the breath to shout, I'm going to try to make it echo.

Well, if you'd read my sig, you would have seen that while I'm against arbitrarily jacking up the difficulty, I'm not against giving the player the choice to choose their difficulty level.

A personal difficulty setting/slider is a far better suggestion than simply "make it harder for everyone". That's all I'm saying.

Shunravi · May 2015

MercyKilling wrote: »

Shunravi wrote: »

Lol.

Well, I can tell you this much, I'm not either.

In my own opinion, I'm terribad. I just find stuff that works and run with it. I know my character, but I'm a long way from optimizing anything.

I find the game to easy, and you feel it's about right. Congratulations. If history is any guide, and it usually is, they will continue to dumb stuff down. So you win. I may as well be shouting into a void. But as long as I have the breath to shout, I'm going to try to make it echo.

Well, if you'd read my sig, you would have seen that while I'm against arbitrarily jacking up the difficulty, I'm not against giving the player the choice to choose their difficulty level.

A personal difficulty setting/slider is a far better suggestion than simply "make it harder for everyone". That's all I'm saying.

And I don't disagree, as I've said.

Faugaun · May 2015

Anu_Saukko_Tutkija wrote: »

if you find it easy, nothing stops you running naked, toggle off ui. stupid post

Did that level 3 to 30 only a staff.. Was not hard enough