Hi, I know there was a lot of topics on this subject here on the forums lately and I also noticed mostly negative reactions, which was a little bit suprising for me. So first of all I would like to ask all the players, who thinks this wouldn´t be a good idea to write here why? As I can see it, most topics regarding this subject are not suggesting overall difficulty increase or switch to veteran zones and therefore forcing players, which are struggeling with overland content to make things harder for them. They are asking for separate instances of the zones for more experienced players, who also loves to quest and explore overland (like myself), but just don´t have any challenge doing so and therefore they can´t enjoy that content properly. In my opinion I can´t see how this can go wrong, if this will be implemented correctly.

First of all we are talking about separate veteran instances of the original zones, so all the players who doesn´t want any more challenge or are struggeling with the difficulty as it is now, can still play in normal zones, which would be exactly the same as they are now.

And now for the veteran zones themselves. Firstly the zones must be implemented in a way so they can convince the biggest number of players acutally playing them. I know that there are only few of us, who would play them just for the bigger challenge, so there must also be better loot from bosses and rewards for quests, so In that way you acutally get something back for making your game harder. Now in my opinion there should be more than just one veteran zone. Lets say for example 4 levels of veteran zones ( for example CP160, CP300, CP600, CP810) each providing more difficult content, but also more and better rewards. Basically it would work little bit like normal and veteran dungeons.

As for the rewards there could be bigger drop rate and better quality set items, tempers, crafting mats, style pages etc. etc. and maybe a chance for dropping some loot box (like pyandonean bottle). The quest rewards will consist from more gold and exp. Naturally on higher tiers of the veteran zones the drop rates and quality of the items will be higher. And if you think, that this could ruin the game economy, then maybe there shouldn´t be crafting mats, alchemy ingredients, style pages etc., but just way more gold from loot and quest rewards. Lets say like 10x more gold, which will be naturally also scaled with veteran zones tiers.

Now I don´t think that it would be a good idea to make everything harder in those zones (no one wants to waste time killing basic mob which will be just bullet sponges), so I think that they should make only the bosses harder and the mob should be given just a slight buff (lets say as difficult as the quest bosses are now :P you can still kill it in less than five seconds ) and maybe some particular mightier monsters (like giants, trolls, minotaurs etc.) could use some bigger buffs, so it makes sense, that they are more powerfull than some basic monsters and therefore harder to kill. They will also provide a better loot if you kill them.

And now the main idea. Harder bosses. They need to be challenging enough, but also not too hard so you don´t have to group for every quest boss and you can solo them. I would say make them strong somewhere between public dungeon bosses and starter zones world bosses. That way there are some challenge, but and experienced players can still deal with them solo. Give them some buffs to health (like 700k-2m maybe, also scaled and based on the veteran zone tier), resistances, damage etc., so they are acutally able to kill you sometimes and that you actualy have to think a little bit about how the handle the fight and not just spamming one skill untill its dead. This would also make lots of quests much more epic, because they are really well written and lots of them have awesome atmosphere, which is then often totally ruined with disapointng boss fight.

The world bosses on the other hand should be adjusted separately, because I think they would need more love to balance them properly so they are not impossible hard to kill. Because in my opinion lots of the base game bosses are easy enough to be killed solo, but lots of the DLC bosses are very tough even in group. So maybe some of them should be buffed and become stronger and some of them should remain as they are now (or maybe some slight buff).

Some problems could maybe occur for really experienced players, which are already have most of the quests completed. Here I am not sure how to implement it correctly, so they can replay the quests in veteran zones again, but how to make it so, that they dont lose any important progress or so. Here I would love to hear any ideas or suggestions from you guys how do you think this should be handled.

If I forgot about some important things which should be handled with making veteran zones, please also write them here

I am adding a poll also just to see what do you thing about those ideas in general, but since this is mostly a discussion please write here all your ideas, suggestions, opinions etc. regarding this topic. Thanks

And sorry for my bad english I am not a native speaker