Yeah, doing the quest areas in a group is a bit pointless. Better head off and do a Veteran Dungeon with 3 people. Try the Veteran DLC dungeons perhaps. Then there is Craglorn events you can do, and Dragonstar Arena. There's also group delves in Craglorn.

It seems that much as I personally don't like it they've hit the nail on the head with core audience there actually. A LOT of people like current open world and some even struggle with it. A lot of people just aren't looking for a challenge of any kind and would as soon jut read through quests with no fighting at all I guess. I personally think there still needs to be some kind of learning curve in open world but evidently ZOS think otherwise.

Far as instancing goes it used to be a much bigger thing at launch(but it'd be instanced to you only, not group), but people complained because they couldn't play with each other and now like only main quest/fighter's/mage's guild ones are instanced(to you). Well and dungeon/trials of course(to group).

Also, you're getting crazy battle leveled at low levels, it will subside as you level up and, especially if you don't bother upgrading your gear, game will become a bit harder. Like I'm leveling a new toon on EU atm through questing and at lvl 3 she could breeze through everything with no armor whatsoever, at lvl 14 she got set gear and could breeze through everything even easier, at lvl 33 in lvl 14 armor she actually died a few times to openworld mobs.

I'd suggest World Bosses(those are good. Their difficulty is just right imo), perhaps Craglorn and of course dungeons, vet dungeons moreso than normal(cos/rom are goooood on vet hm). Or at least versions II of the dungeons. That aside, yeah...just play overworld as a visual novel or something

Katahdin wrote: »

Dreepa wrote: »

Katahdin wrote: »

Domander wrote: »

LordGavus wrote: »

Domander wrote: »

Yes, you can light attack your way to victory.
I'd like to see hard mode zones, same content just much more challenging and in a different instance.

I wonder how hard it would be to have veteran level overworld option. So you can change the difficulty like you would a dungeon or msa/dsa.

Yeah, I wouldn't think it would be too difficult with all the work they have already put in to doing it with dungeons.

Its more difficult than you think. They would have to recode the game to make every map instanced to every player or group like Guild Wars 1 was.

ESO is huge compared to GW1 in terms if the data it needs to process to render maps.
Dungeons are much smaller and most are broken up into smaller rooms so the server only has to load the relevant room.

There isn't enough server capacity to do that and it will never happen in this game.

If servers are not coded in a way to handle instanced game-play and group difficulty, then that is a technical limitation the design should try to work around.

For example dynamic spawn times. Or dynamic population system. If mobs are weak in strenght, then compensate with amount of mobs and make it more a diablo feel on the overland world, where you are fighting a lot of enemies at the same time coming from everywhere.

Or have ambushes that pop up, when players are in a group. I mean, there probably are multiple ways to create some dynamic system that does not require instancing to make the experience more solid.

That might be great for a max level, CP 600+ character in purple set gear with runes, but a newly minted level 50 would get crushed.

Anyone that is complaining the game is too easy, try making a new character using dropped armor and no CPS allocated whatsoever. It will be a completely different experience.

Normal dungeons are pretty easy. Vet version of all dungeon 1 add a bit more difficulty but fully geared CP 600 characters don't flinch most of the time. Vet dungeons get a bit harder and vet dlc dungeons are the highest of difficulty for 4 man. After that, it's vet trials and VMA. The problem is once you learn the mechanics and timing it all becomes easier.

I don't think it's possible to code in random mobs all over the place, at least not easily. There are set spawn points for everything. Thats inherent in how games are made. Some things like chests and nodes have a certain set of spawn points that the game may chooze randomly which one to spawn at. Some muliple bosses in Cyrodiil delves have random spawn timers but they still spawn in the same place. You have to tell the program what to spawn, where to spawn, when to spawn.

Having a bazillion mobs popping up every second wouldn't be fun for many either. Imagine trying to harvest a node with 20 mobs on you constantly. It would just be rediculous. If you want that kind of random, frenzy of action, perhaps an FPS game would be more your taste.

Well, actually right now I am doing exactly what you describe, and my new character just auto attacks his way to victory. Rarely do I have to use an ability. So I don't know where your experience comes from, but mine is surely different. I have an altmer mage with cloth armor.

Then you continue to talk about vet stuff, which wasn't really my point at all. I am really only talking about the new player experience. If the game can't keep a new player due to the lackluster in the early experience, chances are that that customer is lost and will never get to the veteran stage anyway, due to total boredom in the initial first days spend in the game.

About random mobs: Well, of couse it wouldn't be super easy. It would still be doable within some reasonable amount of work. A designer would need to go along and insert new spawn points, or an algorithmic approach would need to scan the area around current spawn points and use them as a reference point from which offset spawn points are virtualized. Some checks would need to be made to guarantee no spawning in inaccessible areas and the likes. Both paths would probably work with reasonable amount of work.

I also do not think that those spawns should be popping up every second, once cleared. The time set for respawning an entitiy is not related to the amount of entities spawned in the first place. There could be an initial spawn time, and a spawn delay time which is used for as long as a player character is in the vicinity.

Take one good designer and one good programmer, lock them up in a room for 2 weeks and I am sure then can come up with some good rules for dynamic spawning that take player population and player vicinity into account. It is not rocket science, it is simple game development. TESO just follows a very dated model that is basically an iteration of the DAOC approach. Very static. Very linear. Non reactive and non adaptive.

When they did the auto scaling thing, they should have tackled the whole topic with a feature task force that pulls through, and deliver a new solid system, in my opinion. What they did now is only half hearted, I find.

Magdalina wrote: »

That aside, yeah...jst play overworld as a visual novel or something

Hehe, yeah... that it kind of the feeling I get too. Though that part is then destroyed by other players stomping your quest mobs. Like the example I mentioned earlier on: We go into a boss room, and the quest completed immediatelly, skipping half the narrative the boss had due to other players being already engaged with the boss. We entered right at the moment it got slaughtered. This kind of "other players interfere with my novel" stuff happens frequently.

Ive tried to suggest that they should remove Gear Upgrade System and while they add it back to the game, add more challenge and difficult to the game, green gears hard, blue easier, purple easier, legendary easiest.

Sausage wrote: »

Ive tried to suggest that they should remove Gear Upgrade System and while they add it back to the game, add more challenge and difficult to the game, green gears hard, blue easier, purple easier, legendary easiest.

Im gonna add to my own post, but maybe monsters/enemy should scale from your gears?

Tholian1 wrote: »

Milvan wrote: »

Zone content is ridicously easy. I don't know what kind of players they intend to cater with that approach.

I see new players struggling with zone content all the time now that I am playing through the game again with my second character. It's easy to forget what it was like to be new and a real low level player.

This, I also sent two horse feeder characters down in two delves during the jester festival for the quest reward and achievement. DB and DK who I have never played, neither stamina build, not crafted set armor and just the random junk they found in coldharbor or messing around a bit on starting island.
It was not very easy as in died a couple of times yes an level 5 is a bit low for delves but I used some sort of rotation with DoT who I don't expect an new player to think of.

Domander wrote: »

Yes, you can light attack your way to victory.



I'd like to see hard mode zones, same content just much more challenging and in a different instance.

+1

Bartdude wrote: »

Dreepa wrote: »

Bartdude wrote: »

It was different and a lot harder in the day of VR levels b4 1T. Funnily enough it was the player base that asked for the removal of VR which was replaced with cp levels which they wanted and now player base moans about it. LMAO

No, I do not think that this is what happened.
I think the developers made the right decision with 1T. They just didn't iterate it to a point where it is actually good.

The base idea is still good. Player numbers are dropping. People have different character levels etc. The premise of 1Tamriel with auto leveling is very good. It allows differently progressed character to play together. It allows more easy drop in and drop out game-play with less commitment by a player. He can still have fun with his friends without the need to "keep up".

Also it allows true open world exploration, where you go where you want, which is a core brand value of the Elder Scrolls franchise.

I really think the general decision was a good one. It is just a lazy implementation, and it needs much more work to have the scaling work well. Exploration, immersion and story are the core values of TES. They seemed to have realized that, but they don't do enough to get the game where it could be with those goals in mind.

Why is it that no1 actually reads? I said that is what happened I didn't say 1T was a bad thing...erm did I? I ran 2 chars through the old system up to vr16 and it was a lot harder than it is now with 1T, that was "all" I was saying. I've been visiting these forums long enough to see what was asked for and moaned about to know.

Sorry, I was framing my response wrong.

Howeer, just keep in mind, in a large enough group there will always be people that dislike something. A forum is a bad place to judge if the player base likes or dislikes something. The vocal minoarity are usually 5-10%, while the rest just plays.

Furinol wrote: »

Meh.

From an MMO perspective is this a surprise?

Using WoW as an example - (context: I left mid Cataclysm) there was very little in the open world that offered any challenge. Open world was for farming/leveling etc. If anything I think ESO is a bit more challenging in this effect since it is at least possible to pull aggro and get overwhelmed - as a max level in WoW you would limit exposure to relevant content by traveling to a zone you outlevel where nothing could touch you.

Do people expect the basic open world content to be truly challenging? That is an expectation that is out of line as far as MMOs are concerned in my experience.

It is really only about the new player experience (solo, and especially while playing with friends), where everything just drops in seconds. Max level seems to be a different story entirely, judging by the responses here in this thread.

Enemies are lacklustre and the programming is poor at best, as a Mod developer for Skyrim AI I have seen my fair share of bad programming and like Skyrim's AI ESO's is just as Bad if not worse.

This is what I would do to shake things up...

- Enemies should have logical resistances, I should NOT beable to poison a Robot or kill a Flame Atronach with Fire, all classes would have foes they excel at defeating as well as having foes which they need help to defeat.

- I would clear some damn room and not have enemies everywhere I turn, I would like to at least beable to walk somewhere at least once and not get dragged into combat by some weakling 50 levels lower then myself.

- Enemies should try to flee if their allies are killed quickly.

- I would like to see diversity among these enemies, why does every Lich dress like an Ayleld when only a very small minority of the Lich's you encounter actually are Ayleids?

- There should generally be less hostility in Tamriel as well, not everything in real life tries to kill you on sight.

ZOS should just code in a "craftable poison" that we could make that when taken would have a (say a two-hour) debuff effect of weakening our toon as if they were just off the starter island pre-1T. De-activates CP while in effect, is only usable in PvE and can be "removed", if desired, before timer ends.

Have it do whatever math on the back-end that would basically keep your toon underpowered across Tamriel until removed or expired.

Those that want to run around in hard mode could just make a batch of the poisons and keep popping them to their hearts content, experiencing a more challenging world and those that enjoy 1T as is, nothing will need to change.

And more importantly, ZOS would need only code the math for the poisons effect on the individual player and not worry about "re-balancing" the overworld/Tamriel as a whole.


Just a thought!