Sevn wrote: »

Phage wrote: »

Adding an option to toggle veteran difficulty doesn't change anything for people who like things as it is. It doesn't affect them at all.

Adding a toggle and liking how it is shouldn't be mutually exclusive.

I truly don't understand the resistance to this idea.

I'll help you and OP understand why there would be resistance to even this being an option, time/resources. In order for this to happen something else has to be put aside. Time and resources aren't infinite and lots of us would rather them spend that limited time/resources on content the majority of the fanbase will enjoy and or other more pertinent issues that warrant those funds and that time.

Overworld is a cakewalk for me and I'd still rather them work on new dungeons than rework old overworld content. It's really that simple. Though I would definitely enjoy farming in these vet zones as they would most certainly be emptier than the normal zones.

What time? What resources? The system already exists in-game, it only needs to be applied to overland.

This logic makes no sense. They spend time and resources on much more minuscule things. At least this is worthwhile.

There are 2 ways to do this and only 2 ways

1. A whole seperate veteran level version of the game which would mean more servers, double the amount of PvE servers to allow this for each platform (PC, XBOX, PS4).

2. A toggle or slider that nerfs THE CHARACTER. With zones that a level 1 can be in at the same time as a max CP character there is no way to adjust monsters and mobs. A challenge for a max CP player will be impossible for a lowbie. A challenge for a lowbie will still be too easy for max CP.


I sincerely doubt that #1 will ever happen
So that leaves #2 as the only real way to do this.

Katahdin wrote: »

There are 2 ways to do this and only 2 ways

1. A whole seperate veteran level version of the game which would mean more servers, double the amount of PvE servers to allow this for each platform (PC, XBOX, PS4).

2. A toggle or slider that nerfs THE CHARACTER. With zones that a level 1 can be in at the same time as a max CP character there is no way to adjust monsters and mobs. A challenge for a max CP player will be impossible for a lowbie. A challenge for a lowbie will still be too easy for max CP.


I sincerely doubt that #1 will ever happen
So that leaves #2 as the only real way to do this.

And #2 can be done now in the game: wear a set of lvl1 white gear without traits or enchants (additionally you can reset you CP too, but that might be too expensive to do many times within a day).

Aesthier wrote: »

Linaleah wrote: »

Aesthier wrote: »

Simplest Fix:

Implement a hardcore character mode at the character select screen which enabled veterans to create a toon that would suffer a permanent debuff that reduces "all" stats by a certain percentage on that specific character.

They could still play with their friends while enjoying the increased difficulty of "all" content.

This makes much more sense than creating new servers or implementing some type of toggle for players which lends itself to more breakage.

Hell ZoS could even implement new titles for those who complete certain content using said toons.

Just a simple lifetime debuff that is applied to the character on creation.

unfortunately, this will not work. why? for the same reason people keep buying skyreach carries to level. so you create a debuffed character. and group up with buffed characters. and now you are just someone who is being carried, rather then experiencing personal challenge.

This thread was about overland content being "too easy" not dungeons but since you chose to go there.

My suggestion does not cause people to be carried as you are suggesting. The only people who would use the option my suggestion creates are those who are finding things "too easy", those players who can "one shot" everything have the skill to keep up with or surpass those players who already have a difficult time. Thier "skill" makes up for the handicap..

The suggestion of implementing harder and harder content only serves to widen the gap and effectively "close the doors" to those who are not the best of the best. Which in turn causes people to "buy carries" because they have no other way of completing the content. (Though if you are paying to be power-leveled in skyreach then your really are putting the cart ahead of the horse and thats your own fault and not ZOS's)

Linaleah wrote: »

so don't group up,you say? most of the quest content is uninstalled. which means.. if there are other players around and there tend to be other players around a fair bit nowadays? you just got all things killed for you quickly and without challenge. last but not least

I never said anything about not grouping and my suggestion doesn't cause on to not group. In fact, it strengthens the point of grouping.



As to the original discussion:

jedtb16_ESO wrote: »

as has been pointed out overland stuff is where you build your character, the story line is not for end game it's for developing a character so it can cope with the end game...

^ I agree with this.

Linaleah wrote: »

this doesn't solve the issue of people wanting to play their existing characters in new story content and not feeling like they are god moding through it. (or that there are people who already have their character slots maxed out. rolling a new character is anything BUT a fix. it was bad enough that we had to, to get storage chests and couple of outfit styles that were not retroactive)

You are correct my suggestion does not fix the problem of top skilled players desiring to play characters they have already maxed to the very upper limits of efficiency causing their prosecution of new content to feel lackluster.

However it does give those players an option that would increase their difficulty without closing off new content to the vast majority of the player base like the OP's suggestion does, and it would also be relatively easy for ZOS to implement.



Saying create harder (insert type) content isn't a solution for ZOS when it widens the gap and closes off content for a large group of players just like unskilled players shouting "take off your CP and gear" isn't a working solution to those who are skilled.

^ Those are simply dismissals of the situations at hand and move the burden of coming up with a "working" solution to someone else.


Want to fix the issue?
Then bring forth suggestions with actual solutions/options that could work that don't break or close off content from other portions of the player base.

If you do this then you will garner better support.

i NEVER said dungeons. you do realize that people also group for questing right? you realize that you can take an nerfed character put them in a group with not nerfed character - and voila.. they continue to experience "one shot everything" gamepllay. but fine. they are not trying to cheat their way through, they genuinely want a challenge - HOW do you propose they get it in overworld that is NOT. INSTANCED? you go into a delve, a bunch of other random people zone in and.. good bye challenge. you go into a public dungeon - same thing. you are questing in whatever zone you can think of, bunch of people come along and one shot everything you are working on killing. are you getting my drift yet? the reason why vet dungeons work is BECAUSE they are instanced. when you have content with both nerfed and not nerfed players running around? you. are solving. NOTHING.

that said. if it were up to me? I would simply made the upper gameplay ceiling much lower. i would STOP with CP increases, and would balance the game in that the difference between skilled player and unskilled player is NOT 6 times the performance, give or take.

here is the problem with that though.those upper skill players? are going to HATE that. becasue the paradox is that while they want more challenging content - they do NOT want to be nerfed theselves.

hence the proposal of veteran zones for overworld. and it doesn't actualy break off content, becasue those are same exact quests and stories that you get on normal. just... harder with slightly better but not unique rewards.

and btw? I'm that dirty casual scrap that is on the lower end of the performance. I LIKE current difficulty of overworld. all I'm trying to do is find a working compromise that does NOT change my current experience for the worse, while at the same time making those seeking challenge at least a little bit happier and less likely to keep asking for overworld experience to be harder, period, making ALL of the game inaccessible to me..

Linaleah wrote: »

i NEVER said dungeons.

Linaleah wrote: »

unfortunately, this will not work. why? for the same reason people keep buying skyreach carries to level.

So then I am missing exactly what you are saying here please explain why you brought up a dungeon (aka Skyreach)?
Or was it to show that players would rather be power leveled than face an otherwise unengaging difficulty?

I obviously misinterpreted it.

Linaleah wrote: »

you do realize that people also group for questing right? you realize that you can take an nerfed character put them in a group with not nerfed character - and voila.. they continue to experience "one shot everything" gamepllay.

Linaleah wrote: »

so you create a debuffed character. and group up with buffed characters. and now you are just someone who is being carried, rather then experiencing personal challenge.

Again please explain which it is. Are they so powerful that they will still continue to one shot everything because the debuff cannot be adjusted to hinder them or will they be so hurt by the debuff that everyone else will be carrying them?

Or is it that once those characters begin to play in overland it reduces the challenge for those around them (like one shotting the dolmen boss before anyone else can get a hit in)?

or something else?

Linaleah wrote: »

but fine. they are not trying to cheat their way through, they genuinely want a challenge - HOW do you propose they get it in overworld that is NOT. INSTANCED?

I already gave a suggestion that does this and covers everything above without creating "instanced overland zones". This also allows skilled players to play alongside with their unskilled friends which is the very same reason they got rid of VET zones in the first place. I am not saying it is ideal but from what I have seen its better and easier to implement than any previous suggestions other than @Phage 's Toggle.

Phage wrote: »

Sort of. The system I made a thread on a while back was basically the same toggle used for trials and dungeons.

You flip the switch if you want veteran overland/quests, veteran delves, veteran public dungeons. If you don't, you just leave it on normal.

It makes no sense to me why anyone wouldn't be open to the game having more options. Especially when you still have the choice to keep things the same difficulty.

Linaleah wrote: »

you go into a delve, a bunch of other random people zone in and.. good bye challenge. you go into a public dungeon - same thing. you are questing in whatever zone you can think of, bunch of people come along and one shot everything you are working on killing. are you getting my drift yet? the reason why vet dungeons work is BECAUSE they are instanced. when you have content with both nerfed and not nerfed players running around? you. are solving. NOTHING.

I will agree that my suggestion does not solve a group of individuals coming through a delve and killing the mobs you are working on, however, if skilled players use the options it gives them it would decrease their ability to one shot things thereby increasing the amount of time those mobs last. Just like now when a level 3 and a level 30 fight the same mob the game normalizes the damage by a percentage. The level 3 sees a 10K health mob the level 30 sees that mob as 100K. This mechanic is "already" in the game and does not require additional programming. So effectively the suggestion would solve alot. I beg to differ on the idea that VET dungeons are awesome because they are instanced. You still get alot of unskilled players in with VET players so the problem of the challenge still exists there as well. In fact, it may even be worse as the criteria to be in VET has absolutely nothing to do with skill and only with CP.

Linaleah wrote: »

that said. if it were up to me? I would simply made the upper gameplay ceiling much lower. i would STOP with CP increases, and would balance the game in that the difference between skilled player and unskilled player is NOT 6 times the performance, give or take.

Ultimately I agree that ZOS should work on the gap they have massive holes between difficulty levels. I find it interesting that you would make the gameplay ceiling even lower as that would simply compound the current situation.

Linaleah wrote: »

here is the problem with that though.those upper skill players? are going to HATE that. becasue the paradox is that while they want more challenging content - they do NOT want to be nerfed theselves.

^ I wholeheartedly agree with this. It is the best argument against my suggestion I have seen and absolutely holds the most validity.

You are completely correct in the fact that many of them will hate the idea of creating a new Hard mode toon so that they can find the challenge they seek.

I am glad you called it out at face value allowing me to do the same in the opposite manner.

Linaleah wrote: »

hence the proposal of veteran zones for overworld. and it doesn't actualy break off content, becasue those are same exact quests and stories that you get on normal. just... harder with slightly better but not unique rewards.

The bolded only serves to further increase the gap.

Very skilled players are overpowering things because of their skill as well the gear they receive from end game content which enables them to come back and slaughter overland content.

1. Which comes first the overland or the endgame? So are skilled players power leveling their toons because they do not find the overland content to be engaging? While I found the overland content engaging on my first run through I certainly don't on my 2nd 3rd or 16th run through. If that content is not engaging then getting completely geared out certainly isn't going to make it any better. This is player choice, not ZOS choice. They can't help it if someone wants to put the cart ahead of the horse and then complain about it. Once that content is done the first time the cat is out of the bag. It's been done, it's been seen, the majority of it becomes boring. That's just the way most games work.

2. Gear gap. I understand the frustration of boredom when one of your toons completes the game and feels like it is in continual god mode. Its fun for a few minutes or even hours but pretty soon it feels pointless. The problem with making a new version of existing content (instanced or not) is that hidden unseen desire that you so eloquently proffered forth. "Better rewards". If certain players are complaining that the "base level content" (because that is what overland IS and is SUPPOSED to be) not being hard enough WHY in the world would you give them better gear out of a new version of that? They are asking for a challenge giving better gear than the maxed out versions of what they have only served to defeat the purpose of raising the difficulty. One that gear is acquired then only one of two things can happen. Either they tune new content to that small population effectively cutting it off from the rest of the player base or once again...those players start to complain about no challenge. It is a self-replicating problem.

Some players want a better challenge in specific or all content.

For those who want specific or all areas to be more challenging and don't want to change toons>, @Phage has a solution.

For those who want all content to be more challenging and don't mind creating a new toon to do that with>, I have a solution.

^ neither of these solutions increases the gap.


For players that want a greater challenge with better rewards in a game that prides itself on avoiding gear and leveling creep, unfortunately, this may not be the game for them.

If I push myself to become the best and play at the top possible level of the skill ceiling to the point I blow through content and the programmers of the game don't keep up with my skill, then I gain the benefits that come with that. It's a double edged sword but I earned it.

If I don't push myself and don't want to learn the benefits of certain playstyles to the point I can't complete certain content then guess what. I earned it.

Those are both player choices. Subconscious perhaps for some but still choices.

For those that are really after the challenge and not after new shinies that further complicate the core problem, those are the players that something can be done about and that some of us are attempting to find solutions for.

Making new versions of overland in mass (instanced or otherwise) only puts more load on the servers, and if better rewards are added compounds the core issue.

Dubhliam wrote: »

I agree overland is too easy.

We all agree overland is too easy, the amount of threads prove that.

However!

I don't think it's worth the dev's time to invest into something that takes so little of our time. We all did the quests only once. Even if you repeat the quest, the facepalm difficulty is actually very welcome that second time around.

I think this might actually be the only example where self gimping is the right way to make things more interesting for yourself. Make a new character and do the quests with gear you just found along the way.
Then just blaze through it on your main if you need the achievements or skill points.

Again... I also think it's facepalm easy.

It's just not worth investing resources into overland and story difficulty.

No we don't and this poll proves that "we all" don't..

They need to add a toggle to turn off all CP instantly, then you get your hardmode and we still play happily in our standard modes..

Craglorn everywhere will kill the game population overnight.

jcm2606 wrote: »

I do think overland is far too easy. But I also understand that raising the difficulty globally isn't a solution.

The solution I propose, as I've explained in more detail in other threads, is to add a status effect that is automatically applied to the player when they're in overland zones/instances, similar to Battle Spirit in that it adjusts several stats based on a chosen difficulty setting to make the experience easier or harder.

Battle Spirit is a status effect that is applied to all players in any PVP-enabled zones/instances, such as Cyrodiil, Imperial City & Battlegrounds. It makes a few adjustments to improve balance for PVP, without affecting PVE, such as increasing max health by 5000, reducing damage done by 50%, reducing healing effectiveness by 50%, reducing the strength of damage shields by 50%, and increasing the range of very long range abilities (ie abilities with 28+ meter ranges) by 8 meters.

Something similar can be added for overland zones, where the status effect adjusts several behind-the-scenes stats, such as damage done & damage taken, based on the difficulty the player has chosen. This way any and all players can choose their difficulty setting, not just vets, without affecting anybody else outside of maybe a player dealing a little more damage to a boss, killing it quicker.

Azuramoonstar wrote: »

Like i said, overworld isn't really meant for vets, end game dungeons are though.

It's a pity that overland content makes up the vast majority of all content in the game, then. If we're being generous, overland content makes up a good 70-80% of the game. And that's if we're being generous.

which a vast majority of time spent in an MMO (at first) is leveling up. Once you hit max you do endgame content, which is dungeons, raids, big boss fights.

ff11 did have some of its overland change by adding lvl 70-90 mobs in lower level zones. completely ruined the game actually as the mobs that were changed, were some if the best solo locations for early lvling. I rather not see that in this game.

I enjoy gathering and crafting in this game and don't want that made harder for me. But i never seen an MMO completely change to add a "vet mode" that would take too much time and resources in to code all the zones to have a vet mode. Jut not feasable.

end game is meant to be dungeons, raids. big bosses. Not the overworld. Overworld is for leveling/questing/gathering.

ff11 had a dangerous overworld... it never peek past 500K players. wildstar was talked to being a hardcore MMO and i haven't heard a peep from it.

I like Veteran overland difficulty with higher quality drops and more gold

Vet mode isn't something I specifically want but I wouldn't mind if it was added, so long as normal mode isn't changed.


We all play games for different reasons. Believe it or not, difficulty is not a prerequisite for a game. Sometimes I feel like challenging content and so I go to dungeons or PVP.

But usually when I'm playing ESO I am just relaxing. If I'm farming mats and a bandit attacks me I want to be able to off it in a hit or two and go on my way, not have "CHALLENGE" around every turn.

Not everyone is here for a challenge.

Tandor wrote: »

Tavore1138 wrote: »

At launch overland was harder 1-50 was challenging at times especially the 3 mob fights and some bosses were too tough for many to take on without a firm grasp of mechanics plus buffs in place. Zones were levelledand sneaking into a zone too far above you was an invitation to a quick death for all but the pros.

After the MB fight in which you could die you then went into the Silver and Gold content feeling tough only to have your face melted by single mobs with scary hp and damage... welcome to veteran mode! This was where you truly had to l2p, master your skills and learn to fear the red. Questing through these areas and doing their dungeon content was not trivial.

Cue several years of complaining and the eventual switch to One Tamriel where everything is at the same level and you can go anywhere with little consequence. Even normal dungeons and trials have become too easy and no longer serve as a training ground for the vet mode end game stuff.

In short it is like this because people wanted it like this. The problem is that the questing and other solo content no longer forces players to learn the mechanics that will help them survive end game pve and pvp.

What's often forgotten, of course, is that a lot of players have no interest in end game PvE and PvP. That's not why they play the game, and because they tend to be the ones with a lot of characters to spread their time between many of them never actually reach the end game, of if they do that's their cue to roll another character and enjoy running through the main game again. They play for the questing, exploration, crafting, housing and all manner of other things and don't look for a serious challenge or for a competitive build etc.

Which is perfectly valid (you'll note i expressed no opinion in the poll) - just a bit of a history lesson as to why it is like it is

You do see people complain from time to time about the step change between solo content and group content though so it would be nice if ZoS could offer something between face roll and face melt...

A lot of handicapped people play this game, and it's nice that this difficulty level lets them complete the content if they work at it. I've even done veteran dungeons and trials helping out people with severe disabilities and it's nice that there is a game out there that can cater to their needs and be inclusive.

There are lots of games out there that require deft hand-eye coordination, and I play a lot of them, but MMOs have always been a good place for people who have trouble with physical coordination and I'm glad there is a place for our friends to enjoy a game they can beat.

I think it's just unethical to have a game that is so socially inclusive but then physically exclusive.

AhPook_Is_Here wrote: »

I think it's just unethical to have a game that is so socially inclusive but then physically exclusive.

How do the blind play?

I love one shotting things with my dps...but it is boring and tiring and detracts from the quests...an option to make things more difficult would always be on for my dps, but toons like my tank that can't kill things will have that option off...

Can't be that hard to modify the instances and world variable based on a menu option...dungeons do it...