Telling someone to intentionally handicap their character for difficulty is like telling a kid that is bored with their school work to try to do it on LSD instead of giving them something more challenging to work on.

Every time I get someone to try the game it's the same thing. I cheer them on with "don't worry, it gets better!" Of course they want to play together so I'll create a new character and go naked, unallocated, but it's still just the open world/delves/public dungeons to start so we pretty much take turns hitting things.. I'll back off and be like "yeah, kill it!" while I watch. It's terribly boring and difficult to get them hooked on the promise that some dungeons and PvP will eventually be engaging.

Then it's hilarious when we do finally get into PvP and they quickly die to someone they can't even scratch. Having no difficulty in most of the game prepares you for nothing. It's the same reason that newbies get kicked from vet dungeon groups they innocently queued for at CP100 because the game told them to. I can't DPS wearing all heavy using a bow with my magicka abilities? What's going on?

I'd be fine with them removing CP. I'd be fine with them never increasing the gear level. I'd actually prefer these things, so I'm not wanting the typical treadmill of "make it harder" followed by "give me more stuff to make it trivial", rinse, repeat. I just want to adventure with the character I've built the same way that I want to play a FPS without turning on console cheats. I just want to kill some stuff that can kill me.

Nobody should expect some vet DLC dungeons and vet trials to be enough content to for an MMO that keeps pumping out expansions/DLCs that you keep paying for. Would it really ruin the elder scrolls experience to have new areas, like 5% of the open world, that were supposed to be difficult for everyone? That's even assuming that it's really a good thing that the rest of the world is "supposed" to be so easy in it's entirety that someone who learns absolutely nothing about the game/is encouraged to never adapt/improve.

The majority of the world is too easy and every expansion/DLC mostly increases this portion of the game. There has to be some sort of compromise. ESO expansion areas make GW2 look like Dark Souls.

MehrunesFlagon wrote: »

Feanor wrote: »

ZoS refusing to do what every other game does and stubbornly, stupidly, and lazily insist on trying to balance PvP and PvE is the cause of ALL nerfs ~ to classes and fun sets, etc et al...

This just a forum myth that doesn’t gain more truth the more it gets repeated. The fact is that both PvE and PvP are getting out of hand, and that ZOS tries to combat this with band aid fixes to sustain, class abilities and passives, and set adjustments.

If you pretend CP didn’t exist, most balancing problems would be just a matter of adjusting numbers. But as long as you have to balance content for CP and noCP and you increase player power via CP system with every update, the sweet spot for both PvE and PvP is always out of reach.

If you take vMA, some years ago the best players ran this in 1h 30m. Then the benchmark shifted to under an hour. Now the best ones run it under 30 minutes. It was never intended to be like that.

how can they even manage that with load screens?unless they don't have much of a load screen at all.

Just watch a run done by Andy S. on youtube - stuff melts so fast it doesn't even render most times, including bosses. He needs 2 to 3 minutes per whole stage max, the rest indeed is loading screens.

How many % of people have finished vMA, how many have got FL and SP achievement, how many have done all HM trials and have all the gears... ZOS have all the numbers. They won't change the game to fit 1% of the playerbase. You might have time to commit to a trial group hours/day and get BiS within a couple days after each patch, but 90% players out there can maybe run 1-2 normal trial a week and can't even get the 2'nd BiS gear before the next update change all the meta.

Sylosi wrote: »

AuldWolf wrote: »

What's ESO for the most part?

Very casual and very story-focused.

Hence the popularity.

I hate to break it to you, but as far as online games go ESO is not particularly popular, in fact that goes for the MMORPG genre fullstop, ESO has about 2.5 million active accounts per month, LoL has 80 million, Overwatch 30 million, Fortnite has 3 million concurrent players and so on.

The problem with MMORPGs is they are stuck in the past, 20 years ago everyone was amazed by an online world, so that was enough, that the gameplay (PvE especially) was basically substandard didn't matter, but 20 years later and the world has moved on, online worlds are no longer an amazing new experience, which leaves low quality gameplay and a model where grind is used as substitute for gameplay, genuine progression (such as long term skill improvement) and content.

Which has left it as a declining niche genre stuck between genres that offer much better gameplay, offer genuine progression and then at the other end mobile games that do casual, grind based gameplay in what is a more attractive way for most casual gamers.

Hi there

I'm not sure about this, but I'm not a games industry insider. However, my gut feeling is that while Overwatch etc are phenomonally successful, mmos are still holding their own even if their market share is smaller. For starters, I think the global gaming playerbase has increased so much in the last 5 - 10 years, there are simply more people with an interest and income to spend on gaming full stop. I also think people play a variety of different things? I dunno.

If the mmo market was as dire as you suggest I would expect far fewer new mmos in the works - again clearly there aren't as many, but then there was a massive bubble after the surprise success of WoW and lots of companies wanted a piece of the pie. I think that may have lead to an oversaturated market, and many mmos died fairly quickly because they couldn't capture a loyal player base. I suspect the mmo marketplace has settled into a less volatile landscape now?

That said, I agree mmos need to come up with new and interesting ways to keep players engaged. I watch the genre with interest and hope!

But I'm not sure making open world questing harder is the answer, and I do think the vast majority of mmo players still focus on PvE casual story questing. But I would like my mmos to cater to a broad variety of players - that keeps the game alive and makes the mmo world we're farting around in richer. I'm all for that.

doublepost

I don't think CP is the root of the problem, I think it's actually pretty good as far as advancement goes.

However it does make the current problem worse. ESO is a game that mixes the good (diminishing returns which are seen with CP) and the bad (compounded % amps). For example:

I spend 1cp in the blue tree to increase damage, this doesn't just increase damage, but it also increases your magicka, which is increased by % amps for some races, which in turn increases damage, etc etc. It can spiral up fairly rapidly. This is one reason there is such a massive DPS at the top end, and very low at newbie level. (other two are gear and skill) It gets stacked to be mathematically highly efficient.

My suggestion would be to massively expand the CP system and migrate literally everything into it, targeting anything with % amps as a priority, and then things with static values.

Doctordarkspawn wrote: »

Kolache wrote: »

Telling someone to intentionally handicap their character for difficulty is like telling a kid that is bored with their school work to try to do it on LSD instead of giving them something more challenging to work on.

Every time I get someone to try the game it's the same thing. I cheer them on with "don't worry, it gets better!" Of course they want to play together so I'll create a new character and go naked, unallocated, but it's still just the open world/delves/public dungeons to start so we pretty much take turns hitting things.. I'll back off and be like "yeah, kill it!" while I watch. It's terribly boring and difficult to get them hooked on the promise that some dungeons and PvP will eventually be engaging.

Then it's hilarious when we do finally get into PvP and they quickly die to someone they can't even scratch. Having no difficulty in most of the game prepares you for nothing. It's the same reason that newbies get kicked from vet dungeon groups they innocently queued for at CP100 because the game told them to. I can't DPS wearing all heavy using a bow with my magicka abilities? What's going on?

I'd be fine with them removing CP. I'd be fine with them never increasing the gear level. I'd actually prefer these things, so I'm not wanting the typical treadmill of "make it harder" followed by "give me more stuff to make it trivial", rinse, repeat. I just want to adventure with the character I've built the same way that I want to play a FPS without turning on console cheats. I just want to kill some stuff that can kill me.

Nobody should expect some vet DLC dungeons and vet trials to be enough content to for an MMO that keeps pumping out expansions/DLCs that you keep paying for. Would it really ruin the elder scrolls experience to have new areas, like 5% of the open world, that were supposed to be difficult for everyone? That's even assuming that it's really a good thing that the rest of the world is "supposed" to be so easy in it's entirety that someone who learns absolutely nothing about the game/is encouraged to never adapt/improve.

The majority of the world is too easy and every expansion/DLC mostly increases this portion of the game. There has to be some sort of compromise. ESO expansion areas make GW2 look like Dark Souls.

Tried GW2's expansion area's. This is an apt comparison.

But I honestly dont think that ESO's wrong for being that easy. The question is, really, do people wanna play a game where they gotta do research just to do basic questing?

Given the success of ESO's solo content, survey says no.

IMO we're sort of jumping from one extreme to another here. Some people are talking about open world/overland stuff and some people are mentioning how hard vet DLC dungeons are. I don't think you'd have to necessarily up the difficulty on all open world content or not make vet DLC dungeons a little easier in some cases... it wouldn't make sense to paint with one broad brush across the entire game. I'm simply stating the majority of the environment is extremely easy by any MMO bar that I'm aware of.

They could make some open world maps harder.. they could adjust scaling as it affects higher CPs.. they could even get clever with something like having brutal assassin NPCs hunt down high CP players down the longer they fight in the open world.

Power creep is needed, but does it have to be that fast? If it was slower in general (from both sets and CPss) maybe things would get less out of hands

I like the CP system. With that said, I really wish Overland enemies would be buffed. I'm not a pro or anything, run julianos, slimecraw, willpower and seducer (far from being competitive) and yet i two-shot mobs in overland. It feels really unrewarding to quest unfortunately. I remember back in the beginning where quests were actually challenging and you would die (that was really great and I felt like questing was a rewarding experience). I wish we could go back to that...

I never understand why this wish for hard overland and quest content
I am rather casual player; I like to do quests for first time to hear the new stories; I like to read lore books which interest me, I like to loot all available containers and always excited to see treasure chest - even in zones with bad sets; I like to gather materials, do fishing, watch wildlife and don't panic when I see a group of mobs guarding the resource node which I'm going to pick cause I know they won't kill me. I also have done many vet dungeons solo, run vMA for more than 200 times, did hard modes for 6 out of 8 DLC dungeons, did vAS - it was stressful and I chose to suffer when I was doing it, just for loot and achievements; I would never want to see such difficulty in overland, delves and public dungeons
For me if killing a lowly mob on my adventuring path takes longer than 1-2 seconds, it's personal offense - as if I hear the mob telling me "you're so weak, why everyone says you're a hero?" Troll and gryphon type of mobs have longer acceptable time limit of max 4 seconds to die. My character should naturally become stronger all the time; if mobs don't fear my character - they die fast and don't take away my time. From RP perspective, I did so many epic things, and yet I should have long difficult battles with pair of bandits, or maybe a mudcrab?..



Enemies are there as source of loot and source of annoyance - they get in my way, I have to kill them, they stop me from exploring or progressing in quest. The faster they die, the better. I welcome any power creep, and even in gutted past-Morrowind state CP is currently the only thing left in game which gives any feeling of progress, becoming a tiny bit stronger each update. I'm proud that I can casually walk through overland zone, delve, public dungeon and don't have hard time there - I earned this, it feels right.

Also, it's funny how someone would love old Craglorn back I remember horrors of empty Craglorn before One Tamriel - zone which had hard content. It is horrible memory, and it makes me truly appreciate the relief of becoming more powerful than those 3 godly Lamia bosses in one of delves Almost nobody ever wanted to go to old Craglorn, it was mostly land of material farmers; land where people were dumping ultimates in despair or running away when they aggroed pack of lowly wasps... Need a skyshard in delve and nobody ever around to group with?.. Sneak past all the enemies, like a true Tamriel Hero!



Players who like difficult content in this game are in minority, and old empty Craglorn alone is the best proof which anyone could ever need.

They should make the Normal -> Veteran difficulty toggle affect overland the same way it affects dungeons. That way newer/casual players could quest together in bliss and those who want a harder experience can do so using an existing system. Not sure how it would work instance-wise though.

Imo CP is a good idea at its root but has been executed imperfectly. The cap should be lower (300?), you should have to pick ONE of three signs for each color-based group (red, blue, green) to invest in and they should be categorized more appropriately for different playstyles (tank, healer, dps). The max stats increase for the first 160cp I'm unsure about, I like the idea of it rewarding you for your progress more but I understand it complicates the power creep a bit.

At a certain point you should stop progressing. As others have said this would make the balancing dance a bit easier since damage done/taken etc. skill values are not constantly being inflated or deflated every 3 months. I doubt a change this drastic will ever take place since they have been steamrolling in the current direction for years now, but that is what I think a better version would be.

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

Anyway if they want to grow and learn from what happened with fortnite, go free to play, but first sort out this messy, exclusive, un-inviting, progress system, or the only way will continue to be down.....

Your whole post was insigtful.

I agree with this statement - by just rehashing the same old model over and over the content is becoming increasingly meaningless.

Astrid_V wrote: »

First thing to stop endless power creep is by removing broken system called Champion Points.

ZeniMax could you please limit the number of times a year when you raise the CP cap.? Each DLC/Chapter is outscaling older content.

Who are the math RoboBrains @Alcast @Gilliamtherogue . I want to ask you super smarty types a good question. What is the minimum CP required to clear the hardest content in the game? And when that number is calculated and scribed by you Robotrons could Zenimax set that number to be fixed until Content is revamped to match such said number?

Aurielle wrote: »

Don’t forget that ESO appeals to Skyrim bros who play this game as though it’s Skyrim. The average damage dealer in normal and vet dungeons pulls about 10k DPS or less by spamming light and heavy attacks (with the occasional bit of Snipe spam thrown in for good measure), and they don’t care to improve. It’s not uncommon to find people with 300+ CP struggling to kill overland mobs in under 3 seconds.

This doesn’t scream “bad player” to me as much as it does “bad game balance”. The reason those filthy casuals are taking more than 3 seconds from a cold start (horrors!) is because they don’t read forums to determine what the new overpowered build of the month is, and instead find skills they like to use with the expectation that all skills should be viable.

To be honest, the biggest issue the game faces for me right now are the people with such ridiculously high DPS that they one-shot everything in a public dungeon. When one of those FotM DPS players rolls through, it causes others to have to wait to get to experience the content. It’s no fun to be fighting a boss and have somebody run through and kill it in three seconds.

A heavy reduction on the top end is needed, and soft caps are the way to accomplish that.

I really disliked the vet system, I literally would just delete my characters when they hit 50 and remake them to jump back into Black Water Blade campaign.

With CP it wasn't too bad cause I just had to get passed 160cp then I could play in nocp cyrodil, but being forced to get to 160 is still kinda dumb. Like congrats your level 50, now your weak as a level 10 and have to grind up to 160points just to be the bottom rung in no cp environments.

I get they want something for players to continuously work for or to keep them busy but man CP is such a drag, I have a few really good friends that we usually play every game together, they all REFUSE to play eso because the #1 thing in their way is the CP grind, they don't think they should have to grind for months and months just to be at the same level as everyone else if they have already grinded to level 50. Not to mention that skyshards/lorebooks/mount training are all based on per character instead of being account wide. Those reasons I cannot get any of my friends to stick with the game, 2 of them made it to level 50 and bailed out when they got to the CP grind, another one made it just passed 160cp and was getting kicked from dungeons and was not near as powerful as my character, although we had the same gear our stats were wildly different and he quit the game.

The CP system isn't doing anyone any favors. I would really like to see it removed or changed. A lot of people want to play the game to have fun, not as a 2nd job.