One Tamriel - a clean slate for open-world balancing

Elsonso · August 2016

snakester320 wrote: »

my issue is there so called mega server has issues at best even with the different pacts/starting zones .. are they going to remove the pacts alltogether? Allow you to start from where ever you want ? group more players together in zones and watch the game become even more unplayable in there so called buggy mega server!!

Best guess is that you start in the appropriate zone for the Alliance, but are free to travel, in some manner, to other zomes.

This does not change the population we see in the zones. From our perspective, the base zones will be the same number of players. The Cadwell zones will be more populated, but that is expected since they will be the base zones.

Dubhliam · August 2016

BlackguardBob wrote: »

Kendaric wrote: »

Quite frankly, I like the difficulty (or lack thereof) we currently have.
I've been around since the beta weekends and I remember how Doshia and Molag Bal were back then. I have no interest whatsoever to go back to that difficulty (or anything even closely resembling it).
If ZOS were to increase difficulty of world content, I can safely say I'd stop playing ESO. Dungeons and trials are a different thing, they can be hard as hell and I don't mind as I can ignore them.

... and Gutstripper!

Well said, fella. I 100% agree with you and so apparently does ZoS since they implemented the changes to where they are at now.

[directing my remarks elsewhere]
Some people have become so good at this game that they seek a greater challenge where no greater challenge exists. They have beaten the game but instead of moving on they advocate that the entire game should be rebalanced so that it becomes even more difficult than it currently is for their own personal satisfaction with little to no regard for the majority of players who are not that way inclined.

ESO cannot and never will appeal to everybody at once. It has to appeal to most of the players most of the time. That's the best ZoS can hope for and some players should learn that and not preach to us about learning game mechanics like this was some kind of serious thing going on.

This is definitely not what I or anybody else want.
Experienced players have no incentive to go back to starter zones, nor will they once OT comes live.
This proposal for balance does not benefit experienced players in any way. It can only be beneficial to new players.

For example:
I am an officer in one of my guilds. I tend to notice a large gap in knowledge between people.
Some people learn the mechanics, they build their character to the best of their possibilities and they overcome an obstacle quickly when they come to it.
Others don't learn the mechanics. They play mostly solo, doing every quest in every zone which overlevels them really quick. They spend most of their first months playing against lower level monsters, and this gives them liberty to build their character highly inefficiently yet still be able to complete content with ease. Then those people get to "end game" and start doing dungeons. Since dungeons are scaled content, they no longer play against underleveled monsters, thier build now starts showing that inefficiency, and their gap in knowledge makes the dungeon experience horrible for the whole group.
This almost always results in this situation:

That player decides never to step foot in a veteran dungeon again, even when asked to join.
Only does normal pledges and random dungeons.
Never steps foot in Cyrodiil.

And this is all because that player thinks the difficulty of veteran dungeons requires for him to have BiS legendary gear to be able to complete it, and that he is never going to be as powerful as other people that can afford robust Agility or Arcane Willpower jewelry.
Or even worse, he buys robust Willpower or arcane Agility jewelry.

What this game lacks is better ingame tutorials, and the possibility to improve with incentives to perform better.

As I mentioned before, they should simply rework all story quests to include an additional (more difficult) objective, like DB and TG quests which will give better reward for completion.

snakester320 · August 2016

lordrichter wrote: »

snakester320 wrote: »

my issue is there so called mega server has issues at best even with the different pacts/starting zones .. are they going to remove the pacts alltogether? Allow you to start from where ever you want ? group more players together in zones and watch the game become even more unplayable in there so called buggy mega server!!

Best guess is that you start in the appropriate zone for the Alliance, but are free to travel, in some manner, to other zomes.

This does not change the population we see in the zones. From our perspective, the base zones will be the same number of players. The Cadwell zones will be more populated, but that is expected since they will be the base zones.

okay but what real advantage will that have over the format already seems stupid to change to this OT when it seems like nothing is going to change as i progress through the story i can go to places in other pacts ( well after the story or high enough lvl ) as for the cadwell zones for silver etc thats a given its aways going to be busy!! by your reasoning the places that are busy now are going to stay busy so whats the reason to change i can get to the other pact areas later on and unless there going to allow you to fast travel to them at lvl 5 -40 then whats the point?? if they do of course what benifit am i going to get by doing quests from a diff pact at such lowbie lvls therers nothing .. isnt the game all about end game and then the cp grind? I cant help but wonder that there making more mess for themselves to clean up( which is clearly and issue with the state of the console versions ) WHY make more trouble!!

Dubhliam · August 2016

snakester320 wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

snakester320 wrote: »

my issue is there so called mega server has issues at best even with the different pacts/starting zones .. are they going to remove the pacts alltogether? Allow you to start from where ever you want ? group more players together in zones and watch the game become even more unplayable in there so called buggy mega server!!

Best guess is that you start in the appropriate zone for the Alliance, but are free to travel, in some manner, to other zomes.

This does not change the population we see in the zones. From our perspective, the base zones will be the same number of players. The Cadwell zones will be more populated, but that is expected since they will be the base zones.

okay but what real advantage will that have over the format already seems stupid to change to this OT when it seems like nothing is going to change as i progress through the story i can go to places in other pacts ( well after the story or high enough lvl ) as for the cadwell zones for silver etc thats a given its aways going to be busy!! by your reasoning the places that are busy now are going to stay busy so whats the reason to change i can get to the other pact areas later on and unless there going to allow you to fast travel to them at lvl 5 -40 then whats the point?? if they do of course what benifit am i going to get by doing quests from a diff pact at such lowbie lvls therers nothing .. isnt the game all about end game and then the cp grind? I cant help but wonder that there making more mess for themselves to clean up( which is clearly and issue with the state of the console versions ) WHY make more trouble!!

Read the first few sentences of my original post. Everything is explained there.

SickDuck · August 2016

Totalitarian wrote: »

IMO, ZOS has done a good job at creating both hard and easy content as of late.

We have normal Maelstrom Arena, and vet mode, and while vet mode is horrifically stressful at first, normal mode is easy. It caters to both skilled and less skilled players.

Same goes with the revamped trials, or the new dungeons in Shadows of the Hist. The normal modes provide relatively easy, straightforward gameplay, while the veteran versions cater to better players.

Of course, this has caused a sizable discrepancy in difficulty between the two modes.

I have to disagree. The difficulty is gap is so huge it only caters for the two ends of the player spectrum. MA normal is horribly easy and does not provide any challange to anyone knowing the basics of this game. On the other hand vMA requires tedious amount of repetition and muscle memory with near BiS gear to complete. Both feels like a chore for different reason.

Similarly, half of the dungeons are a faceroll if 1-2 people know their way around. This includes all legacy dungeons. You can do them with pretty much any pug. Again it is mostly boring and not challenging, while the veteran dlc dungeons are an almost guaranteed failure for pugs.

No middle ground. ESO should offer a more sophisticated method of dealing with difficulty, the current approach is poor. Why the hell the game support dungeon scaling on player level which players cannot explicitly control but no real options to choose from?

DHale · August 2016

When the game started break free and dodge roll were less expensive spells and abilities were less expensive regen was higher for both Stam and magic. Blocking was easier as well. So if you are going to make it harder which us fine then give us back our power.

Dubhliam · August 2016

SickDuck wrote: »

Totalitarian wrote: »

IMO, ZOS has done a good job at creating both hard and easy content as of late.

We have normal Maelstrom Arena, and vet mode, and while vet mode is horrifically stressful at first, normal mode is easy. It caters to both skilled and less skilled players.

Same goes with the revamped trials, or the new dungeons in Shadows of the Hist. The normal modes provide relatively easy, straightforward gameplay, while the veteran versions cater to better players.

Of course, this has caused a sizable discrepancy in difficulty between the two modes.

I have to disagree. The difficulty is gap is so huge it only caters for the two ends of the player spectrum. MA normal is horribly easy and does not provide any challange to anyone knowing the basics of this game. On the other hand vMA requires tedious amount of repetition and muscle memory with near BiS gear to complete. Both feels like a chore for different reason.

Similarly, half of the dungeons are a faceroll if 1-2 people know their way around. This includes all legacy dungeons. You can do them with pretty much any pug. Again it is mostly boring and not challenging, while the veteran dlc dungeons are an almost guaranteed failure for pugs.

No middle ground. ESO should offer a more sophisticated method of dealing with difficulty, the current approach is poor. Why the hell the game support dungeon scaling on player level which players cannot explicitly control but no real options to choose from?

This exactly is the core of the problem.
Not the lack of difficulty, but the steep difficulty curve.
Players generally feel like hitting a wall the first time they enter a more difficult dungeon or arena.
While more experienced players blaze trough that content with ease.

There is no middle ground.

Dubhliam · August 2016

Here is another great video from the EC team:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKEzMz6FcXs
It is a broad theme, but it says much about how designers should approach to the development of their game.
One particular thing that caught my eye in this video is how they say that the designer should choose which is the more important immersion:

The World
The Character

What do you think?

dotlife · August 2016

I hate faceroll world content. It is as boring as it is unenspiring. Silver became boring very fast when i leveled 8-10 months ago and gold was pretty much a drag.

Lysette · August 2016

Dubhliam wrote: »

Here is another great video from the EC team:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKEzMz6FcXs
It is a broad theme, but it says much about how designers should approach to the development of their game.
One particular thing that caught my eye in this video is how they say that the designer should choose which is the more important immersion:
The World

The Character

What do you think?

I think it is both and that is the problem we have with a lot of the mechanics, abilities, passives and overall balancing in ESO - because the single-player TES games and the PvE part of ESO is "world-fantasy", whereas the PvP part of the game is "character fantasy", using the meaning of those words as presented in the video. And due to that it is both, it is so hard to find a solution which works for both - each area should have separate settings and eventually as well different abilities and passives which go with the orientation of this sector.

Take for example poisons - a whole lot of them are PvP poisons, which have no use at all in PvE, because they effect stats and resources of the enemy - but NPC do not have such stats and resources. Or take traits like impenetrable, which does not make any sense in PvE, because NPCs do not do critical damage. Or take some abilities, which are awesome in PvE, but when used in PvP, their effects are dumped down to do nearly nothing - this simply does not allow for having one build, which would work for both - PvE and PvP - we definitely would need 2 sets of atttributes and skill points to accommodate both.

STEVIL · August 2016

A few comments.

When i started my four new bought charslots off, i did not spend 531cp for them only 10 in the recovery tree for the double harvest. My choice but was good for me.

When i see veteran players talking about how they want to raise the difficulty of casual content because they know whats better for inexperienced players or what would be more fun for inexperienced players or even what inexperienced players should "have to learn" i usually cringe at their anecdotal evidence and borderline condescension.

People here have observed that the current battle leveked zones do better job towards balance. Great. In OneT all zones will be battle levelled.

People have observed here that overlevelling the intro questlines is an isdue. Great. In OneT there wont be any overlevelling.

An issue i have commented on before, regarding silver and gold, was that the DESIGN LIMITATIONS of challenges built for early game characters (people still learning the ropes, with only 3-5 skills, with not even bar swap or full armor slots) wont ever challenge high end characters with full sets and plenty of experience. Early players and their characters dont have the tools to deal with multiple threat types all hitting at once like vets do. Raising the difficulty and frustration for new players seems counter productive and this never learn to block never learn to break free worry seems overblown. Not sure i have ever seen anyone more than a few zones in with those blindspots.

When i see someone saying "everything is too easy" i wonder if they do vet trials, vmsa etc and park on top the leaderboards? Seems to me there is tough content for those that want it.

Finalky, when i see vet players asking for difficulty ups and how it is for the benefot of the casuals or whatever you want to call new players ot those less interested in competitive, i look to see if they want it forced onto those folks.

Me? Here would be my views.

First, no, dont do this complete redo in conjunction with OneT release. Its silly risky to add OneT and redo all thid content at same time.

Second, release OneT with the all battle scaled and no overlevelling and THEN assess after a bit the impact on new and vet play based on the actual numbers, not stray cherry picked youtube vids.

Third, ANY subsequent broad scale difficulty changes for the open casual quest and repeatable content AFTER ASSESSING ACTUAL RESULTS should IMO be optional (slider, several set scales, options) not forced down on folks "for their own good" or "health of the community" or other such... crap.

Fourth, increases in difficulty should be accompanied with increases in reward.

Fifth, higher end difficulty content should be supported and continued.

Sixth, IMO there should be a SOLO/GROUP setting which eliminates/empowers the mechanics built into certain content that mandates groups. This way those wating to group or not could still get access to content equally. This should imo be being done over time as they are revamped.

Jar_Ek · August 2016

We have vet dungeons and trials and we have undaunted gold pledges. So why not have phase options of vet and normal for OT, with vet given a slight gold and drop bonus (such as more blue/purple drops vs green/blue). And have a nightmare mechanic for bosses where you can trigger a boss to be another level of difficulty from the vet phased version of Tamriel... esp for instanced bosses - but also world bosses.
This way we have options for everyone?

So if I want the old Doshia back then maybe I run in vet phasing, and if I have 500+ CP and want Doshia to be difficult on a new character then maybe I run her in nightmare mode.

Marktoneth3 · August 2016

make open world mob and boss in vanilla map much much harder.

and more puzzle game outside dun would be a good idea tho.

NewBlacksmurf · August 2016

I did enjoy the original beta difficulty BUT you can't just throw that on ppl.
It would be O K to allow the brackets around NPCs to indicate difficulty like what shows on guards and elite monsters but there needs to be a clear view.

Now I'll say this tho
World monsters are hard in DLC since Orsinium

I'd like Dolemans to be a lot harder but less than world bosses.
I'd like the Desmond that drop to change

Regular NPCs could benefit from a difficulty tweak too but maybe it's just circumstancial.
But many will strongly disagree with almost everything I've wrote above.

One Tamriel could have phased difficulty
When you enter a zone you could set your settings for hard phase, normal phase and veteran phase.

Just an idea vs changing everything for everyone.

Dubhliam · August 2016

Zone phasing to difficulty actually sounds like a nice idea.
Although it does not fall into the idea of One Tamriel, which is to get people to play together, not to separate them.

We as a community should really stop segregating.
PvP vs PvE
Casual vs Core
This is not helping anybody.
Instead, we should have compassion and help each other, and ZOS should enforce the use of their game mechanics, instead of enabling players to play with total disregard of them.
Primate Artorius was an excellent learning boss, we should have more of those memorable fights accompanied with tips and instructions on death recap screens.

STEVIL · August 2016

I recall comments from veyeran player, streamer, 1vX lover who proudly said paraphrase "i main a templar and i dont block $#'+"

Wonder how they would feel about ZOS deciding to force (enforce) "thou shalt blobk" on him?

I dont think anyone should be forced to play the ways i think they should.

I think options should be there, not "enforced" (forced) styles.

Letting players choose different difficulties isnt necessarily dividing them, in an environment which scales content anyway. A lvl 30, cp 30 and cp 160 can all play side by side in orsinium... they could also do so in open world with different difficulty sets if done right.

The reason grouped trials etc have locked vet vs norm is in part bc leaderboards and bc at times they use different mechanics. Thats not applicable to open content and quests.

Dubhliam · September 2016

From the PTS patch notes:

World bosses throughout Tamriel have been rebalanced to target groups of four instead of two.

Thank you ZOS!

bryanhaas · October 2016

Dubhliam wrote: »

There are many threads opened in the past week, mostly by people that are concerned about overcrowding and server performance.

While I do expect some hiccups when OT goes live, I don't share the concerns of those people, server capabilities will remain the same, the same number of people will be handled, simply in different zone shards.
Currently there are 3 types of shards for each zone - AD, EP and DC, each of which can get another copy when it gets overcrowded.
After OT, there will be only one type of shard for each zone, where all alliances are present, and it also will be copied multiple times to accommodate as much players as needed.

Great, now that we have that covered, I'd like to point out on a problematic that bugs me for a long time in ESO:
Open world monster difficulty.

I am one of the players that played ESO when it was challenging, when you could not solo a world boss, let alone a Public dungeon Group event.
One Tamriel and battle leveling grants ZOS a clean slate for difficulty balance, and I would hate to see that opportunity wasted.

The current battle leveling might be too punishing for new players, so there would have to be some kind of an additional boost for players under level 10, but after that, I believe the player should learn and follow the basic game mechanics to progress in the world.
This means bashing casting monsters to prevent a dangerous spell, keeping out of red, dodge rolling or blocking heavy attacks, then using heavy attacks themselves to knock down a concussed enemy.
EDIT: oh yeah and break free, how did I forget about break free? (hello Primate Artorius)
These are some of the game mechanics that ALL players should know by heart, and use them daily while playing ESO.

Also, bump the difficulty of world bosses and Public dungeons.
Wrothgar is a masterpiece in terms of world monster difficulty, World boss difficulty and public dungeon difficulty, it should serve as an example.
Make every world boss worthy of the achievement tied to killing it.

Honestly, I would not mind bumping the world monster difficulty even higher than the current battle leveled equivalent, but I guess it is good enough.

The current game difficulty has a serious gap that tends to hit new people really hard once they reach lvl 50.
The experience of entering a veteran dungeon for the first time can be overwhelming.

One Tamriel and battle leveling should serve to smoothen the difficulty curve, and prepare new players for every endgame content.

Dolmens too, would like to see them made harder as well with perhaps some good sellable loot (need some incentive for people to do them).

Arthur_Spoonfondle · October 2016

Balance and difficulty level is why One Tamriel was never going to work well for everyone. As long as you have new/newish players, with no Champion Points, playing in the same instance of the game as players with hundreds, making the difficulty work well for all is impossible.

bryanhaas · October 2016

Arthur_Spoonfondle wrote: »

Balance and difficulty level is why One Tamriel was never going to work well for everyone. As long as you have new/newish players, with no Champion Points, playing in the same instance of the game as players with hundreds, making the difficulty work well for all is impossible.

Perhaps wait and see how OT does and then slow ratchet up the difficulty for certain aspects world bosses dolmens public dungeons. Although it should be a sliding scale, ie: dolmens then public dungeons are harder than dolmens and world bosses are harder than public dungeons or something like that. It doesn't have to be incredibly difficult just a little more challenging, they could then sync that up with your gear rating. Hover your cursor over a public dungeon and it suggests a gear rating 293 or something like that. Also do away with stars for the gear rating and make it a combination of your combined DPS and defense which would also help in comparing which gear to run you still have to take into account your rotation and all but a gear rating like that would give a better indication of a starting point and perhaps tie that into group finder at least for the random dungeon queue. If your gear is only good enough for Banished cells that don't queue them for WGT although if they try to queue directly for WGT don't stop them just give a quick message on screen that says it appears this content may be beyond your current skill level do you wish to proceed?