THEDKEXPERIENCE wrote: »

Phage wrote: »

I honestly think people are just reading the title and voting no.

That’s what I did. Haha. Optional instances for small dungeons would be fine.

Well there you go. Just like Brexit.

The entire game could use a scaling overhaul, One Tamriel didn't go far enough.

What they did with world bosses was bad news for most people; Where they could be done as a duo before, some of them now are ridiculous to do so that way. So being able to adjust the difficulty of world bosses would be welcome. Similarly, being able to scale group dungeons/trials down to as few as one player (even though I play as a duo, I always think of the solo players). And generally just provide as many options for people to tweak the game experience to what they want out of it.

Sadly, none of this is going to happen as MMO developers have very confused ideas about what makes money. As has been seen with Wildstar, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Champions Online, and many other promising titles. The only ones hanging in there right now are ESO and GW2.

Many, many studies have told us that PvPers account for <1 per cent of any MMO's population; And hardcore raiders account for <5 per cent of the population. This is true regardless of the game, and it's why sandbox MMOs flop much more quickly and spectacularly than 'themepark' MMOs. MMO developers don't seem to understand that it's the enjoyment of play, the story, the characters, the lore, and gathering all of the things that can be gathered which keeps us coming back. The addon Pocket Apocrypha (also Librarian) keeps me playing as much as any feature built into ESO as I love collecting books. I just love collecting!

And like the majority of players, I have a case of altitis as I thoroughly enjoy putting together new characters. If an MMO let me I'd happily stay for years, going through alts, collecting things, and simply enjoying myself and having fun. I think that the first truly, genuinely successful MMO, post-WoW, is the one that puts control of things like difficulty, level of grind, and other factors in the hands of the players. Also, having a variety of types of play on offer is a great way to keep people playing. I know a number of people who solely play GW2 for the jumping puzzles, these days.

MMO developers are quite detached from reality, which is why MMOs regularly fail. I'd vote for granular control over the experience, but I know that in the end we won't even see the OP's desire for more difficult quests. The truth is? Many MMO project leaders just aren't great at their jobs.

Oh, their creative teams will put together lovely characters, and beautiful areas, with enticing mysteries and intoxicating lore. Then they'll flub the gameplay and other, important elements and turn players away. One example of this, for me, was Hew's Bane. The Thieves Guild area is so, so breathtakingly beautiful, sometimes I can't get over the sheer effort that must've gone into its aesthetic design. I've done area design myself, so I have so much respect for ESO's art team. And the Thieves Guild characters, from Velsa to Silver-Claw, they're simply sublime. I love them! I love them to bits. I will always remember them. And so it's a damn shame that the Thieves Guild content is let down by it being a bad thief-y game experience. It has no soundscape, it occasionally has bad level design, and so on.

MMOs often suffer with this. They'll rock aesthetics, story, and characters to a degree other games could only imagine. Then they'll drop the ball on gameplay unlike any other kind of game out there. It's stunning, really.

MMO developers want to appeal to everyone to make the most money but they only have a very narrow view of what 'everyone' looks like. The new market announce spam system that would just wind up people with anxiety, OCD, and autism rather than getting them to buy things shows how incredibly short-sighted the people at Zenimax Online Studios are. They don't... This is weird to say, but it's true. They don't understand us, the players. They don't get the kind of groups of people playing their game and how diverse they are, and they don't know how to appeal to us. They've become too detached.

It reminds me of DC Comics and how the aged, ancient editors (and I'm a fine one to talk at my ripe age) love Barry Allen. But very few other people do. Most people prefer Wally West, or even Jay Garrick, Impulse, or any other number of speedsters over Barry Allen. Barry's kind of Captain Whitebread, in a way, he's this dull, Aryan stereotype that appeals to upper-middle class white men. Wally was never that. Wally West could be more easily related to by the kinds of people who actually read comics.

Similarly, the editors at Marvel didn't understand why their push for diversity didn't work. It was because it was gimmicky and had no legacy or story backing it up. It was just 'boop, Captain America's a black person now because he literally stole Captain America's suit after having an argument with him and declared himself to be Captain America.' That's ridiculous, but that's kind of what Marvel did with their diverse line-up. And it was insulting. It was especially insulting to the intelligence of minorities who had seen veiled prejudice in the past, and knew what a manipulative, half-hearted handout looked like. It was clear to everyone but Marvel how obvious it was that they didn't want to spend time actually building up characters and legacy to introduce diversity properly in the way DC did.

This detachment is what leads to these issues.

It's why balance is so out of whack as well, instead of listening to the people in the community who can crunch numbers like some kind of super-powered actuary alongside playing every day, they just listen to themselves in an echo chamber. They opt for heavy handed nerfs because it's what they think is best without consulting with the community. I wonder what a community-wide poll would look like if ZOS themselves ran it asking whether we liked heavy-handed nerfs?

Yeah, this is an essay, but I can't help it. This sort of complete detachment is commonplace and it's what tends to ruin things. ESO doesn't just need a difficulty option for quests. What it needs is for the people in charge to really touch base with the community and start listening. To offer us the options we all want, to provide us with a customisable gaming experience that suits us so that we can enjoy ourselves. That way we'll stick around longer, we'll buy more things, and we'll spend more money.

That's just too reasonable, though, isn't it?

Edit: If I were ZeniMax, I'd look at what people were saying and start running community wide polls. I'd also add a Universal voting system for posts in threads, like up-votes. Not to rearrange the threads, but to present ZOS with a 'top 5' posts in each poll thread for what the community this ZOS should be reading. That's how I'd go about getting some immediate data.

And make them visible -- such as putting them in the launcher -- so that everyone knows that there's an issue to be voted on.

Edit 2: Also things that ought to be customisable?

* Choose whether to enter a duel or no-duel zone;
* Choose whether to enter a free PvP or no-PvP zone (yes, world PvP);
* PvE Cyrodiil map.

And so many more that would make the game so much more accessible, and enjoyable, for all players.

Maybe they are not interested in any of the virtual achievements or virtual challenges that others might be? Beating a "challenging" boss/quest is no more a "rewarding" experience as say picking flowers for some of if not most of us.

This might be true, but I am not so sure. A great, if unusual, experience for me in TES was to run into a high end boss, be totally outmatched, run like the wind out of there and preparing for a return. There was also an amazing mod for Oblivion that did this; it made the world more static and made monsters on the deeper levels of caves WAY tougher. You´d actually sneak around scared for your life trying to get good treasure.

And I don´t think I was the only one to enjoy the survival mode in Fallout 4.

I think a lot more people would enjoy it even if they don´t think so now. I don´t know what modern gamers expect to be honest. But the ESO difficulty is embarrassing. Main Quest Summerset boss fights so far have taken like 5 seconds. Literally. 5 freaking seconds. And this isn´t a super souped up character I have; I only have 1 gold onehander on each bar, rest purple, and run Unfathomable Darkness...

This would actually be easier to implement in ESO since stats are maintained within a fairly tight spectrum with autoleveling (it´s not like people do 100 - 500000 DPS).

IMO the game is moving far to quickly in the direction of some kind of hoarding game where you mindlessly slaughter enemies to complete your collection of Sheogorath´s pumpkin hats or whatever, rather than being engrossing. Yeah, it´s an MMO, but come on...

MaleAmazon wrote: »

IMO the game is moving far to quickly in the direction of some kind of hoarding game where you mindlessly slaughter enemies to complete your collection of Sheogorath´s pumpkin hats or whatever, rather than being engrossing. Yeah, it´s an MMO, but come on...

Sums it up nicely

I think it would be great if they focused on the scaling and came up with ways to make it more difficult for those higher level players.

I wish it would scale with cp ^^'

Dracane wrote: »

It will never happen. Overland PvE remains a complete rollthrough so that even CP 0 people can faceroll anything. Because dying is not modern anymore, you are not supposed to die in a game anymore. Modern day developers must prevent their customers from making negative experiences.

I could imagine there will be tomes or something like that to trigger hardmode for overland worldbosses in content to come, doubtful though. TESO has wonderful lore and conversation in its quests, all fights however are boring. I pity those who just rush through and don't breathe the lore etc. because that's all there is. One Tamriel destroyed everything.

I recently bought Bayonetta 1 and 2 for the Switch. I was horrified when I discovered that you can't increase the game's difficulty until you've beaten it at least once. That would be fine if it wasn't faceroll easy at the default setting. The game has a wonderful combo system that you can completely ignore in favour of button mashing on the normal difficulty.

MaleAmazon wrote: »

Maybe they are not interested in any of the virtual achievements or virtual challenges that others might be? Beating a "challenging" boss/quest is no more a "rewarding" experience as say picking flowers for some of if not most of us.

This might be true, but I am not so sure. A great, if unusual, experience for me in TES was to run into a high end boss, be totally outmatched, run like the wind out of there and preparing for a return. There was also an amazing mod for Oblivion that did this; it made the world more static and made monsters on the deeper levels of caves WAY tougher. You´d actually sneak around scared for your life trying to get good treasure.

And I don´t think I was the only one to enjoy the survival mode in Fallout 4.

I think a lot more people would enjoy it even if they don´t think so now. I don´t know what modern gamers expect to be honest. But the ESO difficulty is embarrassing. Main Quest Summerset boss fights so far have taken like 5 seconds. Literally. 5 freaking seconds. And this isn´t a super souped up character I have; I only have 1 gold onehander on each bar, rest purple, and run Unfathomable Darkness...

This would actually be easier to implement in ESO since stats are maintained within a fairly tight spectrum with autoleveling (it´s not like people do 100 - 500000 DPS).

IMO the game is moving far to quickly in the direction of some kind of hoarding game where you mindlessly slaughter enemies to complete your collection of Sheogorath´s pumpkin hats or whatever, rather than being engrossing. Yeah, it´s an MMO, but come on...

I'm not pulling numbers out of my backside. If you look at the ps4 trophy list or achievement list on xbox you can scroll down to normal maelstrom arena and vet maelstrom and take a look at the percentage of players who have not even completed normal, which is super easy. Less than 5% (correction, it's actually 1.5%)I believe, so yes, I'm pretty sure of my statement when I say most of eso's players don't want/enjoy "challenging" content in their videogames.

Pretty sure most of us are grown and have been gaming for a long long time. We know what we like and don't need to be told or shown what we are missing. We know it and we don't want/like it. I enjoy hoarding. I enjoy gathering. I don't enjoy fighting a monster for 10-15mins. I find it tedious and boring. They only have so many mechanisms and once you know them it's no longer challenging, just a boring and tedious process that's in the way of me picking flowers and fishing, something I do enjoy doing.

Again everyone plays videogames for different reasons and eso is no different. Plenty of other activities for me and gamers like me to partake in when I/we want a meaningful and challenging experience that matters.

Not going to get excited because I beat some challenging videogame boss or something of that nature. Been there done that many years ago and I've moved past that stage of gaming. I'd wager lots have and so will others later down the road in life. You just get to a stage where besting pixels is no longer "rewarding". Well for most us anyway.

Always up for harder material

DanteYoda wrote: »

If its too easy go play something thats aimed at your difficulty levels, stop trying ruin the game for everyone else.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/option?s=t

The OP suggested an OPTION for more difficult content. Nobody suggested forcing you to do anything. The only one trying to force their gameplay style onto others here is you (suggesting that we shouldn't play this game if we want content that's different from what you enjoy).

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

DanteYoda wrote: »

If its too easy go play something thats aimed at your difficulty levels, stop trying ruin the game for everyone else.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/option?s=t

The OP suggested an OPTION for more difficult content. Nobody suggested forcing you to do anything. The only one trying to force their gameplay style onto others here is you (suggesting that we shouldn't play this game if we want content that's different from what you enjoy).

Well put.

Honestly, how anyone can oppose a veteran toggle is beyond me. It's an option. People can ignore it if they so choose.

Sevn wrote: »

MaleAmazon wrote: »

Not going to get excited because I beat some challenging videogame boss or something of that nature. Been there done that many years ago and I've moved past that stage of gaming. I'd wager lots have and so will others later down the road in life. You just get to a stage where besting pixels is no longer "rewarding". Well for most us anyway.

I am not saying vMA is for everyone. I play on PC, but I don´t think 95% of people playing ESO choose not to play Maelstrom just because it is hard. For one it is in a DLC.

I´m not trying to tell other people how to enjoy the game. Still; there is a reason why they put in Survival mode in Fallout 4 and even bothered to put one in Skyrim several years after it was released. And ESO of course already *has* a veteran mode. It´s just that for some strange reason it leaves out the entire overland game in this mode.

Questing in ESO when you are high leveled is so skewed it actually feels 'off'. Unless I run into a group boss´s special attack, nothing kills me. Most stuff doesn´t take close to half my HP, and this is on a character who has in essence ZERO investment in health...

ESO has a combat system with interrupts, blocking, several skills etc - and all you have to do to kill everything in the game once you are an experienced player is to click shrouded daggers again and again.

Unless you deliberately try to *avoid* it, your character will become so strong just by playing ESO that no solo battle I´ve seen is even remotely challenging. It is a problem.

Maelstrom is there SPECIFICALLY for anyone looking for challenging content. Dlc? It's been on sale for as low as 750 crowns and available for at least 2 years, anyone interested in challenging content would have it. What other reason would one avoid it if not due to its difficulty? Most play eso like a solo experience so lack of grouping up wouldn't hinder them. I welcome any theories as to why you think most have ignored it besides it being dlc.

Maelstrom IS eso's survival mode. If most are avoiding it, it says alot about what the vast majority are looking for. There is no dispute that overland is super easy, not once have I implied that, but it is not meant to be challenging to high level players like us, it is for all the noobs and players like me who just want to roam around unbothered with tedious combat. It takes 5 minutes to look around and you'll see players who are struggling with enemies that if a player like you and I sneezed at they'd die.

Agreed, eso has a great combat system, perfect for when you are engaging in some of the games more challenging content, which the game already has. Whenever I'm looking for such I drop my uber gear and go find it in normal 4 man dungeons or something similar because I fail to see the logic in using uber gear that makes the game easy when I'm looking to challenge myself. But as my vote indicates, I'm totally fine with an option to amp up the difficulty for those looking for it, just with zero added rewards as beating challenging content should be all the reward and motivation needed, if that indeed is what you are looking for.

vMA is an arena and just a single piece of disjointed content. People typically play RPGs to quest, not fight waves of the same enemy over and over in an arena.

There is something like 450 hours of quest content in the base game, and another 120 in the DLC and expansions. That's what some of us want to be able to enjoy.

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Sevn wrote: »

MaleAmazon wrote: »

Not going to get excited because I beat some challenging videogame boss or something of that nature. Been there done that many years ago and I've moved past that stage of gaming. I'd wager lots have and so will others later down the road in life. You just get to a stage where besting pixels is no longer "rewarding". Well for most us anyway.

I am not saying vMA is for everyone. I play on PC, but I don´t think 95% of people playing ESO choose not to play Maelstrom just because it is hard. For one it is in a DLC.

I´m not trying to tell other people how to enjoy the game. Still; there is a reason why they put in Survival mode in Fallout 4 and even bothered to put one in Skyrim several years after it was released. And ESO of course already *has* a veteran mode. It´s just that for some strange reason it leaves out the entire overland game in this mode.

Questing in ESO when you are high leveled is so skewed it actually feels 'off'. Unless I run into a group boss´s special attack, nothing kills me. Most stuff doesn´t take close to half my HP, and this is on a character who has in essence ZERO investment in health...

ESO has a combat system with interrupts, blocking, several skills etc - and all you have to do to kill everything in the game once you are an experienced player is to click shrouded daggers again and again.

Unless you deliberately try to *avoid* it, your character will become so strong just by playing ESO that no solo battle I´ve seen is even remotely challenging. It is a problem.

Maelstrom is there SPECIFICALLY for anyone looking for challenging content. Dlc? It's been on sale for as low as 750 crowns and available for at least 2 years, anyone interested in challenging content would have it. What other reason would one avoid it if not due to its difficulty? Most play eso like a solo experience so lack of grouping up wouldn't hinder them. I welcome any theories as to why you think most have ignored it besides it being dlc.

Maelstrom IS eso's survival mode. If most are avoiding it, it says alot about what the vast majority are looking for. There is no dispute that overland is super easy, not once have I implied that, but it is not meant to be challenging to high level players like us, it is for all the noobs and players like me who just want to roam around unbothered with tedious combat. It takes 5 minutes to look around and you'll see players who are struggling with enemies that if a player like you and I sneezed at they'd die.

Agreed, eso has a great combat system, perfect for when you are engaging in some of the games more challenging content, which the game already has. Whenever I'm looking for such I drop my uber gear and go find it in normal 4 man dungeons or something similar because I fail to see the logic in using uber gear that makes the game easy when I'm looking to challenge myself. But as my vote indicates, I'm totally fine with an option to amp up the difficulty for those looking for it, just with zero added rewards as beating challenging content should be all the reward and motivation needed, if that indeed is what you are looking for.

vMA is an arena and just a single piece of disjointed content. People typically play RPGs to quest.

People play rpg's for a variety of reasons, but I'll agree with you for arguments sake. Still doesn't mean people play RPGs for challenging quests now does it?