Selstad wrote: »

Joining the fray on this debate again, though let me say from the outset; I'm not against higher difficulty. But difficulty is and will always be a crux, since some think it's too difficult while others think it's too easy. It's a personal experience, and each has his own take on how it should be.

Now to the idea that I read most about is the applying of a buff that decreases your health and damage, and/or increases the health and damage of monsters. Now fundamentally, the idea is sound and good. Practically though, not so much.

Balance the buff to function on all monsters and areas of the game

This is in my view one of the trickiest departments to make the idea work. Each NPC in the game has his sort of damage output. Some are nothing more than canon fodders, others pose a bigger threat. Let me take an example, as a sorcerer with 10k health and 25k shields. However against the archer attacks, I can seriously take a pounding, since arrows count as physical damage, and I have no physical damage mitigation. So it's a ranged attack, dealing damage as a melee attack, but as I'm a ranged, I shouldn't be in range of melee attacks, and as such shouldn't need physical damage mitigation. Now scale this up, and/or scale me down, and this monster will 1 shot me. Other monsters however with ranged attacks - such as magicka based ones - don't do any damage at all to me, due to high spell resistance. These monsters would have to be seriously buffed and me seriously debuffed, to pose an actual threat to me.

Now what is my point here? My point is that balancing the buff that increases the difficulty, is easier said than done. The buff isn't dynamic, yet the damage you receive will be, based on what creature you fight. Where do you draw the line? How much should you decrease the player's health and damage output? Which creature do you base your calculations on? People might not think it will be a balance act, but it will be, and difficulty adjustments in an MMO isn't easy, it's rather complex due to the amount of quests, creatures and abilities.

Another side is that this is an open world MMO, and some might not choose to have that buff on them, so they operate on full power. Why is this important? Well say you have the buff on that decreases your health and damage, happy camper, things take time to kill, and you have to avoid and dodge around to survive. You come across a boss, engages it, it's difficult but fun. Then comes a regular player that doesn't have that buff. Within 3 seconds the boss is dead, mostly killed by the regular player.

Since you will always be along other players that might not choose the same as you, you'll most definitely eventually end up along players that don't have your difficulty setting, and as such kill things quickly, and inadvertently make things easy for you.

What can be done?

This is a rather good question. I do understand that some people want higher difficulty, and perhaps it's about time the MMO companies start looking into the dynamics of difficulties and build their game around that dynamic. Players are not a static group, they're rather complex and diverse, and some want it more difficult than others. I don't think that a sliding difficulty setting or a buff option, is a viable or good solution. I foresee a load of problems that way, as explained above. It sounds good on paper, but it can go sour really quickly.

Lets bear in mind a few points here while going through what can be done:

1. Monsters are dynamic and their damage output is as well
2. Quest diversity and quest specific monsters / bosses have their own difficulty
3. It's an MMO, and as such also an open world with many players around that select their difficulty
4. A lot of different areas, dungeons and other places that offers their own difficult, per example public dungeons

Now all of this has to be taken into consideration, and the difficulty buff has to be balanced so that the player is challenged, yet not overcome by it. Is this achievable with a regular buff? No, I'm sorry, it's not. The game is too complex for that to function, and there are too many areas of the game that has to be taken into consideration when you decide how much of the damage output and health you're going to remove from the player.

Potential solutions

A potential solution is a bit of mixture. Lets lean back a bit; what do we have available that can be used? We can buff players, removing health and damage output. Though as I've said above, this adds a host of different problems that's difficult to do something about in a dynamic world of an MMO. What else do we have? Well, we do have death, and as it stands today, there's not that much of a penalty to die. You die, you resurrect, you take some repair bill, that's about it. Hm, why not use that in some way? Penalize dying in such a way that players would think twice before they set themselves into a dangerous situation. But what else can we do? Consequences? Hm, why not? We have a justice system, and a bounty system, why not a more severe punishment if caught? And at the same time, make it so that sneaking around problems where you can, is a lot better than running strait into battle?

So lets recap and boil a soup of a potential solution to this problem.

First off, this package is selected by players and can be turned on and off at their own wish from an option in the game's menu. However, just to make it interesting, once set, the "reset" time to revert it to the "normal" difficulty, is 2 days. So even if you select to have it off, you still have to wait 2 days until it's normal again. Gives the players something to think about. Now what to do?

We give the players a debuff that decreases the following attributes by 20%:

• Effectiveness of healing
• Health
• Damage output
• Resistances (physical / spell)
• Primary resource (magicka / stamina)

Then we penalize death. Each time you have to resurrect yourself, the above list is increased by 20%. So if you've died 4 times, you're practically useless; you're Soul Shriven. This debuff lasts for 30 minutes and can't be removed. Each time you die, the time resets. As soul shriven, your visuals change to reflect that stage as well.

And to sprinkle it a bit for flavour; the justice system. If you're caught committing a crime, the heat doesn't reset, and the bounty doesn't disappear unless you're paying a fencer for it. And if you're caught, your options on what to do, is based on the heat. If you're a very wanted person, you'll get killed on sight. If you're caught just as a notorious one, you're thrown into jail (good luck getting out of that one). However, sneaking should also come with some benefits, per example, if you're on a quest and you successfully sneak past most of the monsters, you're rewarded for your effort. And a thief who manages to survive without being caught by the guards, gain "notoriety" with the Thieve's Guild, which reaps its benefits as well (such as a higher cut of the ill-gotten goods you're selling).

So lets recap; you're debuffed, penalized for dying, and face some severe consequences for being caught committing a crime. Yet you're also rewarded if you manage to do quests by minimal killing, and gain respect amongst your fellow thieves for managing to avoid the law.

This system should allow players to gain some difficulty back if they want to, and as well reap some rewards if they so choose the harsh life.

Zakor wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

Zakor wrote: »

Alphashado wrote: »

@Dahveed you can lol all you want at the notion that 1-50 is a starter area, but this simply exemplifies your ignorance. Ignorance is a harsh word, but when you pointedly ignore the facts and base your argument around 1-50 zones, then sorry, that is pure ignorance.

1-50 is a starter area. Get the hell out of the starter area if you want to be taken seriously and stop insisting that the game is too easy based on what you find in the starter area.

Until you get it through your thick skull that leveling from V1-V16 is the VAST MAJORITY of the leveling content in the game and actually stop whining about 1-50 long enough to get a character to level 50 (You could have 8 V1 characters by now) I will no longer take you seriously and I will no longer respond to any of your posts.


Considering the time we are required to spend in V1-V16 content just to get to V16 the time required to dwell in 1-50 is minimal and therefore those zone are no different than a starting area designed to give new players and casual players time to learn the game so they are ready for the HUGE amount of content and leveling required to get from V1-V16.

I will no longer respond to anyone too stubborn to leave the starter area then complain about how easy the game is.
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Now in regards to other responses from people who have actually played the entire game: I am opposed to a difficulty slider/debuff for two main reasons. I have stated them before and I will state them again.

#1 If your debuff effects other players IN ANY WAY, then it's a bad idea imo. Therefore, if you join an open world dynamic event like a Dolmen, Public Dungeon, or World Boss, and that event takes longer to complete than it normally would due to your debuff, then you are effecting other people whether you only have the debuff on yourself or not. When you step into an open world dynamic event, other people are counting on you to do your best to help them finish the event.

Obviously group dungeons/raids are excluded. Any debuff would have to be removed as soon as you entered. None of you have refuted this logic, but my questions is this: How is an open world event any different? People trying to finish that event are still counting on you for all the same reasons they are counting on you in a dungeon.

#2 It is my opinion that it's a waste of resources. If you want hard content, there is plenty of it to find and it's EASY to find. If it's such an easy and cost effective thing for them to do, then why has no other persistant world MMO ever done it before? Nobody has answered that question. And please don't use experimental potions that were meant as a joke and only last a few seconds as an example of how this has been done before.

1. You should stop insulting people just because they don't have finished the normal zones yet. Srsly what kind of god are you that you are better than they are?
2. If i follow your logic every "bad" player should be reported in this game since nobody can count onto him in open world events. Do you even think about that what you say there? Few days ago i had a random dungeon grp with 3 dps and me as healer on vet spindleclutch. All 3 dps together did as much damage as a friend of me is able to deal on his own. Should i report them now for being weaker than average? Damn no! And the same applies to people that are willing to "suffer" under the debuff. You can't "count" on somebody just because he is v16 or whatever level and has decent gear. He may just suck at his role, respecced to test something or whatever.
3. Why hasn't anyone done this before? Idk, better scaling, no CP, they havn't had battle leveling in questing areas? Lots of reasons actually. The main reason: The questing system in ESO works different than in other MMO. And again, your argument is "it was never doen, why should we do it?". In this way we wouldn't even have a computer to play the game.

After all you start to repeat yourself.

1. ig·no·rance
ˈiɡnərəns/
noun
noun: ignorance

lack of knowledge or information.
"he acted in ignorance of basic procedures"
synonyms: incomprehension of, unawareness of, unconsciousness of, unfamiliarity with, inexperience with, lack of knowledge about, lack of information about;

If a certain individual has 100+ hours and is still in the lowbie areas, intentionally ignores several different options to find more challenging content and refuses to advance into more challenging content, then intentionally dwells in easy content only to express concerns as to how easy the game is, then by definition he/she clearly fall under that above listed word and definition. If you or he/she finds it insulting, then so be it. It's not meant to be insulting, but rather a word used to accurately describe the situation.

2. I didn't say anything about reporting anyone. Some players are good, some players are bad. Debuffs involved in "any sort" of group activity effects everyone involved in that group activity. Therefore by joining any kind of group activity with an active debuff on, you are subjecting those individuals to your nerf. Everything else you are saying is subjective.

3. Of course I am not opposed to innovation. Don't be silly. It is my opinion that developing and implementing this particular type of "innovation" in this particular game would be a waste of resources. You have your opinion, and that is mine.

4. Everyone in this thread is repeating themselves. Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house.

There is just this ONE little point everyone else got and you just don't: We don't talk about other content. We don't want to talk about other content. We talk about the questing content in ESO and that it is too easy. That has absolutly nothing to do with decisions someone may have made. That has nothing to do with other content, may it be as challenging as it wants to.

We proved that it wouldn't be much effort to implement, we proved that there are many ways to implement it and we proved that the other players wouldn't be very much impacted by this system because you can't rely on a complete stranger. At this point i think you don't want to discuss anymore but talk badly about it. I provided answers to every of your concerns. You in turn haven't provided any proof or new argument.

And yeah, you haven't said anything about reports, but what else would you do "against bad players"? Ban them maybe? Aren't they affecting the other players just like people that would debuff themself to get a challenge? Maybe they play bad on purpose to get a challenge? Sorry to tell you, but your argument doesn't hold.

If you think what I've said was subjective you clearly haven't got the message. Actually these players affected my ingame experience. But I didn't care because I...

1. talked to them, found out 2 of them were new in this dungeon and that the other one made bad use of his skills. So i provided them help.
2. had fun with the challenge this provided. I wasn't just healing but also tanking and doing damage. We had to play the boss mechanics and almost wiped at one DPS-Check. It was definately better than rushing through that dungeon in 10 mins and goodbye.

In case you still don't got it: Talk to people! If you see someone behaves bad talk to them. If they have the debuff on them you could ask them to remove it. But don't force players to play a certain way because you don't like the other way or it is like that everywhere else. Yeah, sometimes you may have a jerk or troll in your group. Deal with it. Would be even better if those guys were a reason to don't implement a feature. Even today you got people that won't invite you to a group because you don't have an achievement or don't do xyzDPS. They also affect my ingame experience. So what?

A player that searches for a challenge knows what he is doing. He probably knows the encouters by heart or is very well equipped and skilled. Such a player would also know when he is able to turn difficulty up and when he shouldn't. And such a player would be very likely able to realize if he puts to much weight on a decent group.

Selstad wrote: »

Dahveed wrote: »

I really appreciate your response, you've clearly thought about a LOT of things.

I'll try to go through most of them...

1. Balance the buff to function on all monsters and areas of the game

Interesting points here, but I think we have a different mindset. You gave the example of a spellcaster being vulnerable to archers, but not so much against spells (i.e. high spell resistance). You say that we'd then have to worry about re-balancing these numbers...

My response? No, not all all. If I roll a spellcaster and I *choose* to play at a much higher difficulty, my point of view would be that this imbalance would be FANTASTIC. You know why? Because all of a sudden you've just added a MAJOR strategic consideration to every battle. My squishy mage will be kept on his toes 100% of the time in every fight. I have to know who I am fighting, what level, what class they are, how many of them are there, how to plan my escape if they hit too hard, how to mitigate their damage, LoS, stuns, CoC etc etc etc.... because those archers are now really freaking DANGEROUS! As they should be! Arrows are sharp, and when they penetrate your lungs, they tend to hurt and you normally start to bleed. So your mage might want to think about ways to prevent said arrows from entering your ribcage. As I said in previous posts, what's missing in these kinds of MMO open worlds are UNPREDICTABILITY and DANGER to add some sense of excitement and challenge. As it stands now, we basically know what's going to happen all the time, and nothing feels dangerous. Now those archers are fricken scary, and you'll have to really be aware of them at all times.

2. What if a stronger/higher level/vanilla difficulty character comes along and destroys the boss I'm fighting?

Not much I can do about that, unfortunately. Tough luck. This happens in online games, and it's something I can live with. I remember once back in Vanilla-era WoW I was wiping about 9 times in a row against an elite quest NPC, until I finally got my sh*t together and had a winning strategy,...he was going down and I was winning, it was exhilarating. Until a level ?? guy came up and finished him in one hit, lol. Sh*t happens.

3. "How much damage input/output should be tweaked?"

A: Ideally this is for the player to decide, not ZoS. Ideally (in my version of this) there would be several options. Not too many so as to be confusing and complicated unnecessarily, but not too few either. I had imagined something like this:

Option A (default): Vanilla. Nothing changes; nothing is done; the player doesn't even realize these options exist (i.e. brand new players) and no tweaking is required.

Option B - hardmode. All damage output is reduced by 25%, all damage taken increased by 25%, all healing received reduced by 25%. Option B would be for those player who still want a relatively casual and stress-free experience, but who still want to feel that there is danger out in the world from time to time.

Option C - Very hard. All damage output is reduced by 50%, damage taken by 50%, all healing received reduced by 50%. A very big step up from vanilla for players who want to stay on their toes and feel like their gear upgrades and talent choices are important and meaningfull.

Option D - Hardcore. output reduced by 50%, damage taken increased by 100%, healing received reduced by 50%. The world is a very, very dangerous place, and you are punished for being stupid. If you don't know how to dodge roll, expect to die repeatedly.

Option E - Insane. Output reduced by 75%, damage taken increased by 200%, healing reduced by 50%. For masochists only who really love danger, and who want to grit their teeth and stare death in the face to see who blinks first. Stealth is a must, having an escape route is a must, and you absolutely have to know *exactly* how to play your class, or you're fodder. Ultra realistic mode, as a lot of NPCs could probably kill you in a few hits.

Of course these wouldn't have to be the exact numbers; they could be up for discussion. Personally I'd probably use Option D, or even option E if I were playing a stealth-type character (i.e. nightblade), I would enjoy feeling like a backstabbing rogue having to constantly hide in the shadows or face death. But it's something you could adjust yourself as you play.

4. Penalties for death.

Interesting stuff! Honestly I hadn't even thought of this. I am coming at this mostly from a Skyrim/Oblivion background where the "quicksave" key is a godsend, lol. Not much real penalty for dying, other than the fact that it's a pain in the butt to start over if I forgot to save. For me the "penalty" is merely the knowledge that the game beat me. But this would be interesting to explore... but my own philosophy on the whole idea would be to keep things as simple as possible.

5. Justice system.

Ugh, sorry I'm not even going to touch this one. I applaud ESO for trying this, I really do. My own point of view is that it's too watered down, but still a very interesting mechanic. Like I said in point 4, I think we really just need to stick to basics and keep the idea as simple as possible, kind of like a "beta" version of the idea. The justice system is its own thing and shouldn't be brought into the discussion... sorry. (That is not to say I don't find your ideas interesting in this regard!)

So yeah, in conclusion.... I like what another guy said here, KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid), we shouldn't try to overreach with something like this. It ought to be relatively simple, because otherwise it would require too many resources to balance and maintain over the long-term.

Thanks for providing your input, it was a very interesting read!

My point with the spellcaster Vs archer was the imbalance of the game's mechanic. Basically a sorcerer avoids physical encounter through melee, because it's a weakness, we roll, dodge and do what we can to avoid it. An archer brings physical damage at a range, making it unavoidable and imbalanced since the game doesn't have any "ranged" damage, and counts arrows on the same ledge as swords and other melee weapons. This makes it so that a buffed archer would 1 shot a class that's vulnerable to physical damage if they're increased in damage output. A challenge doesn't necessitate that a player shouldn't stand a chance because the game's mechanics doesn't allow it.

We know what's going to happen and how to encounter it because we've played the game. That is something you can't program away. In the beginning, it would be "difficult", with these changes, but eventually you learn and the game becomes "easy" again. Simply amping up the damage output and lowering your damage and health, doesn't change too much, it's just one system and you'll learn quick enough.

In terms of players coming around and 1 shotting the mob, it is a problem if you wish for difficulty. If you take 1 player that's been debuffed and 1 player that hasn't, and put them against a boss, the debuffed player would spend more time trying to survive, while the unchanged player could ignore certain abilities or survive them where you couldn't. So the unchanged player would kill of the boss while you roll around. How fun would that be? Would you feel like you accomplished anything? Or would you feel like you were "carried" through that encounter by the stronger player?

The problem with having so many options as you suggest, is that you eventually need to balance it in the world. Difficulty isn't simply making the game, then increase / decrease health and damage output, you also need to consider what monsters and how they work. Per example in an FPS, the damage you do and receive is often not changed by big variables, instead the difficulty comes in less ammo, less health packs and more accurate enemies. Increasing and decreasing stats is an incredible difficult way of making things more difficult, since you have to make sure that each and every monster becomes more challenging, yet doesn't become impossible for the player to kill. Take the storm antronachs, back in the beginning they were impossible to kill even for Dragon Knights, on solo. Especially on Veteran rank. They had this insane AoE that they more or less pulsated all the time, and even with stamina up the wazoo, you still ran out of it and couldn't roll and dodge any more, and so died. Then again you had other monsters that you could steam roll. The difficulty in the beginning of this game was all over the place and rather unpredictable, and annoying. That is what you would introduce by a simple slider system with increased / decreased stats. Some monsters would 1 shot you without you having a chance to do anything, while others could be steamrolled.