Kamatsu wrote: »

Spinkledorf wrote: »

The lack of difficulty also restricts the potential amount of players interested in questing. Given that the only value they provide is that of story and lore, this severely limits the number of people who actually do quests. Many people in my guild, for example, don't bother with quests, due to having zero interest in lore. Given that half of yearly updated are dedicated to giving quest content, this seems paradoxical. Why would ZOS not want to expand content for all audiences?

Your sample size for what players actually play is way too small to even consider. It's anecdotal evidence. Fact is yes there are those who want harder overland, thus why threads like these pop up fairly regularly - but if there was a sizeable enough population playing 'hard' content, then ZOS would put more effort into the 'hard' content - it should be telling that the majority of their efforts goes into 'casual' story based content... that is where the $$$ is.

So what's the solution? I'm not a game designer by any means, but I really think that having a toggleable difficulty increase (and no, taking off all gear and CP doesn't work in this regard) - maybe to be that of the level of vMA would really help.

If there was a way of doing this that wouldn't allow griefing of players then I'd wholeheartedly support this. Sadly I don't see how to do this in an online game like ESO without separating players into different worlds/shards/servers. Because if, as has been suggested elsewhere, 'the 1st to hit a mob triggers it's difficulty'... you could have ppl set to 'hard' griefing ppl trying to quest on easy/normal or vice-versa.

I'm no programmer, so maybe there would be some way of mitigating/alleviating/removing this issue... but I dunno. To look at other games which had problems with toggable players griefing others one just has to look at SW:TOR - it used to have a toggable PvP switch for characters (when playing on a non-PvP server), where you could toggle yourself for open PvP and then fight others with the toggle on, but those with the toggle off should be safe. I said 'should'... because players found way after way of forcing non-flagged players to become flagged so they could be killed by the PvP'er.

SW:TOR did try and fix this multiple times. In the end they revamped the whole mess and made PvE/PvP separate instances. If you flipped the PvP switch you were moved out of the PvE instance and thus would only ever come across PvP players. Thus ending the griefing of PvE only players.

Introducing exclusive rewards for these 'veteran quests' would also go a long way, in order to reward players for their efforts. Maybe outfits, currency, mounts, something along those lines. That would make sure that players are consistently questing in order to obtain these rewards.

Personally I don't care either way about this. However this suggestion will get a lot of people riled up. I can see the argument for both sides - playing on harder difficulty does mean you will tend to take longer to get through content. However on the other side many people have seen what happens if only a minority of players get exclusive rewards - one just has to look at the toxic WoW raid community for a clear example of this.

And no, not saying it 'would' happen here in ESO, but it's something ppl will be afraid of and concerned with.

Oh, and before you suggest your not a 'minority'... yes you are. The vast majority of MMO players are casual's, lore-hounds, questers, role-players, etc. Only a small % of ppl in MMO's are into things like raiding, hard content, pushing the extreme's. And no, I'm not saying ZOS shouldn't try and provide content for this group, or try and find a way to appease both sides... but good luck with that. lol

- As of the launch of WotLK WoW expansion, only 5-6% of the playerbase had ever touched foot in a raid.
-- As stated by a WoW dev back on the old WoW forums when discussing why they made the changes to raiding they had in LK & why they brought in the LFR system.
-- This does tie in with why WoW was such a big hit. When it launched, the other MMO's at the time were all fairly hardcore, group-focused, with lots of hard content. In came WoW which was accessible to casual players, and could be solo'ed (apart from dungeons, raid(s) & world bosses). There's a reason why Hunter was the most played class - it was the easiest to solo the open world content with.

- GW2 listened to people crying that the game was way too easy and made their 1st expansion HoT way harder, more group focused, and non-soloable...
-- As a result their revenue plummeted 67% as the casual player base abandoned the game due to the difficulty spike.
-- Those crying for 'harder' content were extremely vocal for years on the GW2 forums & reddit, and got what they wanted... a harder game where you had to actually dodge, block, use appropriate skills at the right time (hmm, sounds familiar right?)... and ANet learned the harsh lesson why not to listen to this crowd.
-- ANet apologized and majorly nerfed the expansion, made it soloable, etc in an effort to stop the flood of it's playerbase from leaving the game. This did work as their income level's steadied after doing this.

Regardless, if you or anyone can come up with a way that allows you to play overland with harder content, while not effecting others, and not splitting the playerbase... I'd support that 100%. I hope someone can come up with a workable solution, and that ZOS pays attention.

Spinkledorf wrote: »

First things first, I think that ESO triumphs over other MMOs in terms if its questing content. Stories and experiences are weaved in a very organic way, leading you to become attached to the characters and stories, making questing a very engaging experience.

Quests excel in their stories, but unfortunately, while they do storytelling well, I believe it is the only thing they do well. In terms of gameplay or combat, they fall short.

This isn't due to underdeveloped game mechanics, or subpar level design, but to the lack of difficulty. ALL overland mobs, save world bosses, can be killed in a manner of seconds by even sub-level 50 characters. When questlines are built around killing bad guys that have been built up to be ultra powerful, it feels anticlimactic when I can kill a boss in under 10 seconds just by spamming warden birds.

This anti-climax becomes even more apparent with end-of-campaign bosses, like Nocturnal in Summerset for example. There was such a grand set up, and really cool visuals, but no difficulty or engagement to complement the great aspects. Although I haven't played Elsweyr, I would assume it will be largely similar.

The lack of difficulty also restricts the potential amount of players interested in questing. Given that the only value they provide is that of story and lore, this severely limits the number of people who actually do quests. Many people in my guild, for example, don't bother with quests, due to having zero interest in lore. Given that half of yearly updated are dedicated to giving quest content, this seems paradoxical. Why would ZOS not want to expand content for all audiences?

So what's the solution? I'm not a game designer by any means, but I really think that having a toggleable difficulty increase (and no, taking off all gear and CP doesn't work in this regard) - maybe to be that of the level of vMA would really help. Make it so that roll dodging, blocking, and interruptions are vital for survival. It would attract the more hardcore crowd, and keep people engaged due to another level of demand from the user. Killing a boss at the end of a quest would be truly earned. Introducing exclusive rewards for these 'veteran quests' would also go a long way, in order to reward players for their efforts. Maybe outfits, currency, mounts, something along those lines. That would make sure that players are consistently questing in order to obtain these rewards.

Some might be concerned that this would 'split the playerbase', but doesn't normal questing 'split the playerbase' anyway? And it's not like people aren't gonna do trials or dungeons anymore, this just gives players another difficult PvE avenue to pursue. Plus, with more and more people joining the game, the whole concenpt of 'splitting the playerbase' is becoming less and less relevant, imo.

I love ESO and its quests, but I can't help thinking that they fall short at times. I just want a fantastic gameplay experience to complement the fantastic stories being told, instead of just a mediocre gameplay experience.

SydneyGrey wrote: »

After you've been playing for a while it becomes easy, but it's not easy for new players who have zero CP, zero armor, and zero gold to buy armor or weapons, and who haven't yet figured out how to play. I remember my first couple of weeks playing as a newbie, I struggled to get through a simple delve. I could do it, but it took forever. Now I can breeze through easily.
They don't want to make everything so difficult for a newbie that they give up in frustration and stop playing.

Jeremy wrote: »

Spinkledorf wrote: »

First things first, I think that ESO triumphs over other MMOs in terms if its questing content. Stories and experiences are weaved in a very organic way, leading you to become attached to the characters and stories, making questing a very engaging experience.

Quests excel in their stories, but unfortunately, while they do storytelling well, I believe it is the only thing they do well. In terms of gameplay or combat, they fall short.

This isn't due to underdeveloped game mechanics, or subpar level design, but to the lack of difficulty. ALL overland mobs, save world bosses, can be killed in a manner of seconds by even sub-level 50 characters. When questlines are built around killing bad guys that have been built up to be ultra powerful, it feels anticlimactic when I can kill a boss in under 10 seconds just by spamming warden birds.

This anti-climax becomes even more apparent with end-of-campaign bosses, like Nocturnal in Summerset for example. There was such a grand set up, and really cool visuals, but no difficulty or engagement to complement the great aspects. Although I haven't played Elsweyr, I would assume it will be largely similar.

The lack of difficulty also restricts the potential amount of players interested in questing. Given that the only value they provide is that of story and lore, this severely limits the number of people who actually do quests. Many people in my guild, for example, don't bother with quests, due to having zero interest in lore. Given that half of yearly updated are dedicated to giving quest content, this seems paradoxical. Why would ZOS not want to expand content for all audiences?

So what's the solution? I'm not a game designer by any means, but I really think that having a toggleable difficulty increase (and no, taking off all gear and CP doesn't work in this regard) - maybe to be that of the level of vMA would really help. Make it so that roll dodging, blocking, and interruptions are vital for survival. It would attract the more hardcore crowd, and keep people engaged due to another level of demand from the user. Killing a boss at the end of a quest would be truly earned. Introducing exclusive rewards for these 'veteran quests' would also go a long way, in order to reward players for their efforts. Maybe outfits, currency, mounts, something along those lines. That would make sure that players are consistently questing in order to obtain these rewards.

Some might be concerned that this would 'split the playerbase', but doesn't normal questing 'split the playerbase' anyway? And it's not like people aren't gonna do trials or dungeons anymore, this just gives players another difficult PvE avenue to pursue. Plus, with more and more people joining the game, the whole concenpt of 'splitting the playerbase' is becoming less and less relevant, imo.

I love ESO and its quests, but I can't help thinking that they fall short at times. I just want a fantastic gameplay experience to complement the fantastic stories being told, instead of just a mediocre gameplay experience.

My solution would be to introduce a veteran version of each zone so veterans of the game could actually have fun questing and exploring too. Because you're right - the overland PvE content on this game has gotten pitifully easy to the point it's affecting the game play and making it boring. It's a real problem and they need to do something about it (let's hope they are).

I think you may go a bit too far though to suggest VMA difficulty. I think that would be a bit too much. Something inbetween would probably be better. It just needs to be challenging enough to make the fights interesting and fun.

srfrogg23 wrote: »

If you want a small MMO made purely of hardcore end game raiders who want nothing more than to group up and "make lifelong friends" while questing like the golden days of Vanilla WoW, then feel free to go play Wildstar.