The Uninvited wrote: »As some people still don't seem to understand what I am trying to say here, maybe this explains it better.
The blue line is where the difficulty is at right now, the red line is where I would like it to be. Not unable to complete by a new player, not overwhelmingly challenging, just a tiny bit more engaging.
Hey dude,
I appreciate the effort you’re making. But with all of that, I have to say, you’re wrong.
And yes, if you made the main questline any more difficult a pile of new, inexperienced players would fail it.
If you made it so that you, as a proficient long term player, would even notice it was more difficult, you’d have swathes of them failing to make it and no one want that. And even then you wouldn’t find it that challenging.
Your fundamental concept, that because Molag Bal is the evil centrepiece of the main quest he should be the hardest boss in the game, is only true if you’re playing a single player game and the main questline is the only quest in town. ESO is not that game.
ESO is a game where the main questline is the easiest part of the game. It’s the gateway drug, the skooma that draws people in and then before you know it they’re doing side quests and delves and World Bosses and public dungeons and dungeons and DLC dungeons and trials. And all of those are more difficult and challenging because they come after the story.
Make the story harder and that doesn’t happen for a pile of people.
You’ve been there and had that first time experience. Let the other people have their go. And when they’ve done it and are all still excited by the game you can say to them “hey champ... come over here.. how about a real challenge?”
Why is it bad if people actually die here and there? That's how you grow as a player , you fail and you win sometimes.
That’s an interesting question. Because everyone dies. A lot.
But I disagree that that’s how you grow as a player. Dying is an indication of not getting better. And it’s a very poor inducement to get better, especially when the in-game teaching is as bad as ESO’s. People don’t suddenly learn to interrupt by being repeatedly killed, they learn to interrupt by being shown (often repeatedly) how and when to interrupt and then practicing it. Dying as a teaching tool is ineffective and disincentivising. It causes players to get frustrated and angry. We know because we’ve all been there.
And the main story quest is not where you want people to do their “learn by dying” thing. Save that for more difficult content, like delves, or dolmens, or public dungeons. The main story is where you want to suck players in. It’s not where you want them to get stuck. Make them really enjoy the game so once they’ve done it they’ll be keen on carrying on.
And that’s the real reason why story quest content is the easiest part of the game. It will take a new player a week or two of gaming, they’ll have fun, be sucked into the game and, hopefully, will stick around to develop further. Even with 4 chunks of new content, that’s barely 2 months of gaming. You have to make them want to do the other content too. And you don’t do that by constantly killing them.
Why is it bad if people actually die here and there? That's how you grow as a player , you fail and you win sometimes.
starkerealm wrote: »Why is it bad if people actually die here and there? That's how you grow as a player , you fail and you win sometimes.
It's bad when you're killing players to the point that the become frustrated and wander off. After that, it's critical to remember that the content we're talking about does not allow other players to come in and provide assistance.
ESO is not a single player game; its continued existence depends on players continuing to play. When you start ramping up the difficulty, your retention drops.
The problem with looking at ESO and saying, "hey, just make it a little harder," is, it's not that simple. Tacking an extra zero to an enemy's health won't make the fight more fun, it'll just make it take ten times as long. Increasing enemy damage makes the fight more threatening, but if you already know the moveset, enemies are always going to be trivial unless they "learn new tricks."
I killed a level 38 Mammoth on a level 12 character in the werewolf quest five years ago. Ever since then, mammoths, even the one in vFalk have been a joke to me ever since. It doesn't matter how much you pump their stats. It doesn't matter if they can kill me in one hit. I know their moveset. At that point, the only way you could make a mammoth a threat is by giving it a completely new moveset. If you did decide to scramble their move set, that just makes the enemy more confusing for new players who don't have it internalized.
Thing is, we all have the move sets for most of the enemies in the game internalized. If you're in this thread saying, "these quests need to be harder," you've been here long enough to see their entire repertoire, to know what they can do, and how to deal with it. You could solo these guys with raid boss stats and it would be fine. You might die occasionally, but you could do it.
You want to make content more challenging? You really cannot do that without slamming the door on new players.
starkerealm wrote: »Why is it bad if people actually die here and there? That's how you grow as a player , you fail and you win sometimes.
It's bad when you're killing players to the point that the become frustrated and wander off. After that, it's critical to remember that the content we're talking about does not allow other players to come in and provide assistance.
ESO is not a single player game; its continued existence depends on players continuing to play. When you start ramping up the difficulty, your retention drops.
The problem with looking at ESO and saying, "hey, just make it a little harder," is, it's not that simple. Tacking an extra zero to an enemy's health won't make the fight more fun, it'll just make it take ten times as long. Increasing enemy damage makes the fight more threatening, but if you already know the moveset, enemies are always going to be trivial unless they "learn new tricks."
I killed a level 38 Mammoth on a level 12 character in the werewolf quest five years ago. Ever since then, mammoths, even the one in vFalk have been a joke to me ever since. It doesn't matter how much you pump their stats. It doesn't matter if they can kill me in one hit. I know their moveset. At that point, the only way you could make a mammoth a threat is by giving it a completely new moveset. If you did decide to scramble their move set, that just makes the enemy more confusing for new players who don't have it internalized.
Thing is, we all have the move sets for most of the enemies in the game internalized. If you're in this thread saying, "these quests need to be harder," you've been here long enough to see their entire repertoire, to know what they can do, and how to deal with it. You could solo these guys with raid boss stats and it would be fine. You might die occasionally, but you could do it.
You want to make content more challenging? You really cannot do that without slamming the door on new players.
Yes, but it doesnt need to be so easy that you can walk around naked and punch everything to death with no cp.
TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
No, the expectation is that their only prior experience with MMOs has been hotbar combat. Which, in case it was unclear, is not how ESO's combat works.
TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
No, the expectation is that their only prior experience with MMOs has been hotbar combat. Which, in case it was unclear, is not how ESO's combat works.
People play many different types of games not just MMO giving them broad experience with many combat systems.
Skyrim even on easy setting was more challenging and I won't even get into Morrowind.
Spaceroamer wrote: »Failing at a fight then beating it is one of the most satisfying things in MMOs.
It also trains a player for more difficult things to come.
This thread isn’t about making things deathly hard, but adding some difficulty so everything outside of a dungeon or PvP isn’t boringly easy.
It got to the point where I can’t even get past Cadwell’s Silver/Gold because I get bored and log off after a few quest hubs.
Rave the Histborn wrote: »The Uninvited wrote: »As some people still don't seem to understand what I am trying to say here, maybe this explains it better.
The blue line is where the difficulty is at right now, the red line is where I would like it to be. Not unable to complete by a new player, not overwhelmingly challenging, just a tiny bit more engaging.
I think you're the only one misunderstanding. The story quest is part of overland it is as difficult as it should be and nothing about it has changed. The same goes for guild quests. They are meant to be accessible to everyone. You're mad that the final quest is easy and your comparison for it is quests that are designed to be so easy you can clear them without any attacks.
How on earth is making it the difficulty between overland and public dungeons making it inaccessible? That's absurd. It just goes from brain-dead easy to easy.
starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
No, the expectation is that their only prior experience with MMOs has been hotbar combat. Which, in case it was unclear, is not how ESO's combat works.
People play many different types of games not just MMO giving them broad experience with many combat systems.
Skyrim even on easy setting was more challenging and I won't even get into Morrowind.
It is also a mistake to assume that a new player has a broad base of experience of previous games. While I'll grant you, many games overcompensate in holding the player's hand, you cannot assume that a new player has any background. We all had to start somewhere.
The Uninvited wrote: »The Uninvited wrote: »Rave the Histborn wrote: »The Uninvited wrote: »Rave the Histborn wrote: »The Uninvited wrote: »@FierceSam and @Rave the Histborn As both of you still don't seem to understand what I mean (although I do appreciate @FierceSam giving a good argument for his views this time), maybe this will finally make you see it. If not, I'm out and I will call for a dev to close this thread as it apparently makes no sense to argue any longer.
This video is from the Doshia boss back in March 2014. Did I think it was too much back then? YES! Do I think it is too easy now and has been nerfed too much? HELL YEAH!!!!
Did we as new players make it through it back then? YES! Did we have to ask other players how to and did it make us better players and act more social, join guilds, ask for crafted gear, tips on how to complete and so on (as you would expect in an MMO)? HELL YEAH!!!
Was it completely impossible? No, but it made you at least grab a sense of how to play the game and be prepared for things like dungeons and pvp. You know... How a game should be in the early stages to prepare you for what's coming next. At least, that's my opinion. It's clearly not yours.https://youtu.be/mwQY57gVAb8
This is what we've been telling you though. The game hasn't been nerfed, Doshia is as hard then as she is now and just because you thought it was hard back then doesnt meant she was ever hard.
People still ask for advice, request crafted sets, etc. None of that has ever changed either. You're just never going to get the same feeling because this isnt your first character and adding increased HP or extra stuns isn't going to solve that.
Except, this is where you are wrong.
It has been nerfed (many of these early quests have been), most players know it and have been talking about it since. See for example this post from 2016: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/242619/anyone-remember-old-school-eso/p1
Was it over-tuned and did it create a roadblock in it's original state? Yes, totally. Was it, in my opinion, nerfed too much? Yes.
But that's just the thing with ZOS, I guess. That nerf hammer gets swinged too hard sometimes.
It's the same thing when pvp-players get blamed for too heavy nerfs, when it really is ZOS that's to blame.
PVP crowd "this stuff is a bit OP, can you perhaps tone it down with like 25% maybe?"
ZOS: "Okay, let's nerf it by 60% and make it totally worthless"
You don't seem to get it. There is no way for what you're proposing to occur and you're linking to a forum post about nerfs from Jan 2016. I'm sorry but if you need to go that far back in the game for it to be "harder" then you'd asking for a lot of content to be scaled differently and for a lot of content to be removed. It's never going to happen because you're asking for things to be overtuned and act as a roadblock which isn't going to be fun for the majority of players and is not going to get more people into the game.
For the last time, in my opinion, it was nerfed too much. Should it be brought back to it's original state? No. But there is a middle ground between too easy or too hard, you know that, right?
Dude, have you seen new players? Do you remember being one? There is no middle ground where their “too hard” would be anything but “way too easy” to you.
You want the story bosses to be hard enough that people fail them. Not you, not me, but other, newer players. You want them to fail the easiest bit of content so you can feel a tiny bit challenged (with your full gearsets, food buffs, potions and years of playing experience). You think it will make the main quest somehow more meaningful for you. Well it won’t for them. And for every level of difficulty you add no matter how small that level is, fewer players will play through the content. And that’s bad.
I once spent hours getting through the Galchobhar fight back when it still had stone atronarchs. Hours. When we finally beat him it was amazingly satisfying. After that it was never a problem. Later ZOS removed the atronarchs because that fight was a total roadblock and stopped too many groups getting through, because not everyone wants to spend hours getting it right. Did I like the original challenge? Yes. Was it an amazing feeling beating it? Yes. Did ZOS do the right thing by removing the atronarchs? Yes.
Am I a bit sad and nostalgic about the old fight every time I go back? Yes. But more players are getting through it and going on to fight the Earthgore Amalgum and finishing the dungeon. More players are doing that content. And that’s a good thing.
After you’ve done something like that a story boss is never going to feel even remotely hard. And Galchobhar isn’t even a final boss.
I already said that I see your point of view. However, it's funny that you mention a fight in a DLC dungeon as I thought we agreed on that's where the challenging content and occasional roadblocks should occur.
Was the Galchobhar fight too much and did ZOS make the right choice? Probably. But this again brings me to my point.
I remember my first time in veteran City of Ash 2, when veteran 14 was the highest level. Took hours as well and yes it was satisfying when we finally made it.
Is it a cakewalk for me now? Yes, and I can surely see the difference my 5 years of experience, CP, meta gear and food make there. Will it still be challenging to new players? Yes. Will it still be engaging content to me? Yes, because no matter my experience/CP/gear/food, I wouldn't be able to complete it with just standing still and light attacking.Artemiisia wrote: »the thing about overland being so easy now, that nothing prepares you for dungeons and raids, you dont need to invest time in learning about skills, ccs, dont stand in red, mechanics, how the mobs react. You can pretty much go naked around doing light attack and beat everything overland now, thats just sad.
in the old days, bosses like Doshia was feared, overland trolls and gargoyle, people needed help killing these in order for progression through the quests from time to time.
I remember having trouble with manimaco, due to not knowing how to interupt when I first met him, and learned it on that fight, now this fight is boring and over in less then 10 secs, so all the mechanics behind the fight is gone, and new players wont have come out of it with learning anything.
Exactly.
starkerealm wrote: »Why is it bad if people actually die here and there? That's how you grow as a player , you fail and you win sometimes.
It's bad when you're killing players to the point that the become frustrated and wander off. After that, it's critical to remember that the content we're talking about does not allow other players to come in and provide assistance.
ESO is not a single player game; its continued existence depends on players continuing to play. When you start ramping up the difficulty, your retention drops.
The problem with looking at ESO and saying, "hey, just make it a little harder," is, it's not that simple. Tacking an extra zero to an enemy's health won't make the fight more fun, it'll just make it take ten times as long. Increasing enemy damage makes the fight more threatening, but if you already know the moveset, enemies are always going to be trivial unless they "learn new tricks."
I killed a level 38 Mammoth on a level 12 character in the werewolf quest five years ago. Ever since then, mammoths, even the one in vFalk have been a joke to me ever since. It doesn't matter how much you pump their stats. It doesn't matter if they can kill me in one hit. I know their moveset. At that point, the only way you could make a mammoth a threat is by giving it a completely new moveset. If you did decide to scramble their move set, that just makes the enemy more confusing for new players who don't have it internalized.
Thing is, we all have the move sets for most of the enemies in the game internalized. If you're in this thread saying, "these quests need to be harder," you've been here long enough to see their entire repertoire, to know what they can do, and how to deal with it. You could solo these guys with raid boss stats and it would be fine. You might die occasionally, but you could do it.
You want to make content more challenging? You really cannot do that without slamming the door on new players.
Yes, but it doesnt need to be so easy that you can walk around naked and punch everything to death with no cp.
TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
No, the expectation is that their only prior experience with MMOs has been hotbar combat. Which, in case it was unclear, is not how ESO's combat works.
People play many different types of games not just MMO giving them broad experience with many combat systems.
Skyrim even on easy setting was more challenging and I won't even get into Morrowind.
It is also a mistake to assume that a new player has a broad base of experience of previous games. While I'll grant you, many games overcompensate in holding the player's hand, you cannot assume that a new player has any background. We all had to start somewhere.
And again you keep ignoring the fact that I suggest solo instances should scale to player stats.
The experience for a new player should be taught by the content.
Aren't circular arguments fun?
Rave the Histborn wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
No, the expectation is that their only prior experience with MMOs has been hotbar combat. Which, in case it was unclear, is not how ESO's combat works.
People play many different types of games not just MMO giving them broad experience with many combat systems.
Skyrim even on easy setting was more challenging and I won't even get into Morrowind.
It is also a mistake to assume that a new player has a broad base of experience of previous games. While I'll grant you, many games overcompensate in holding the player's hand, you cannot assume that a new player has any background. We all had to start somewhere.
And again you keep ignoring the fact that I suggest solo instances should scale to player stats.
The experience for a new player should be taught by the content.
Aren't circular arguments fun?
Solo instances already so scale to single players so you keep suggesting something new for the game THAT ALREADY EXISTS IN THE GAME.
New players have a tutorial, that is where they should be taught as that is the purpose of a tutorial.
Dagoth_Rac wrote: »I think there is a flaw at the heart of this argument. It is making the assumption that the goal of the game is to become better at combat.
But there are players who don't care about combat. Players who are here for the stories and lore, the exploration, and things like that. They might care more about crafting or decorating their house than combat. They might care more about buying and selling items on a guild trader and tracking profits than about combat. They might get more excited finding some rare ingredient like Aetherial Dust while farming than about beating Mannimarco. They might care more about roleplaying as a moon sugar farmer than about combat. They might get more excited at the prospect of talking to a dragon than battling a dragon. They might get more excited about pickpocketing a Redoran motif page than about becoming a great warrior admired by the Redoran. They might be more excited about finding all the skyshards in a zone without consulting an addon or google than about defeating a Lich.
They might want to play in first person to feel more immersed in the world of Elder Scrolls, and first person all but negates the ability to see many of the combat queues. You say, "Don't stand in the red," and they say, "What red?" Because they do not see their feet. You say, "Dodge roll that line of fire coming from the add," and they, "What fire? What add?" Because it is to their left and they can only see straight ahead in first person.
For players who see increasingly difficult combat encounters as progression and endgame, the overland and story quest difficulty seems insanely neutered. But if you are someone who does not care about combat and maybe even actively dislikes it, there is still a lot to do in ESO! So easy, nearly foolproof combat in areas designed for questing/exploring is there for the people who are not focused on combat as their reason for playing the game.
You see combat as the purpose of the game and treat much of what I mentioned above as mindless busy work on the way to more combat. And if that other stuff became less mindless, it might very well start to irritate you. But for other people, the above stuff is the purpose of the game and combat is just mindless busy work on the way to more lore, exploration, commerce, roleplaying, and so on. And if combat became less mindless, it might very well start to irritate them.
The story questing and overland combat does not impede you from more difficult content, if that is what you find fun. And the story questing and overland combat does not impede other players from lore, exploration, commerce, roleplaying, and so on, if that is what they find fun.
TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
TequilaFire wrote: »Rave the Histborn wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
No, the expectation is that their only prior experience with MMOs has been hotbar combat. Which, in case it was unclear, is not how ESO's combat works.
People play many different types of games not just MMO giving them broad experience with many combat systems.
Skyrim even on easy setting was more challenging and I won't even get into Morrowind.
It is also a mistake to assume that a new player has a broad base of experience of previous games. While I'll grant you, many games overcompensate in holding the player's hand, you cannot assume that a new player has any background. We all had to start somewhere.
And again you keep ignoring the fact that I suggest solo instances should scale to player stats.
The experience for a new player should be taught by the content.
Aren't circular arguments fun?
Solo instances already so scale to single players so you keep suggesting something new for the game THAT ALREADY EXISTS IN THE GAME.
New players have a tutorial, that is where they should be taught as that is the purpose of a tutorial.
They do not scale up for players with higher stats else this thread would not exist.
Never fear ZOS won't take the time to change anything anyway.
Rave the Histborn wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Rave the Histborn wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
No, the expectation is that their only prior experience with MMOs has been hotbar combat. Which, in case it was unclear, is not how ESO's combat works.
People play many different types of games not just MMO giving them broad experience with many combat systems.
Skyrim even on easy setting was more challenging and I won't even get into Morrowind.
It is also a mistake to assume that a new player has a broad base of experience of previous games. While I'll grant you, many games overcompensate in holding the player's hand, you cannot assume that a new player has any background. We all had to start somewhere.
And again you keep ignoring the fact that I suggest solo instances should scale to player stats.
The experience for a new player should be taught by the content.
Aren't circular arguments fun?
Solo instances already so scale to single players so you keep suggesting something new for the game THAT ALREADY EXISTS IN THE GAME.
New players have a tutorial, that is where they should be taught as that is the purpose of a tutorial.
They do not scale up for players with higher stats else this thread would not exist.
Never fear ZOS won't take the time to change anything anyway.
Why would you scale players with max stats? If you're max stats you shouldn't need to scale anything because that's what new players are scaled to.
TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
TequilaFire wrote: »Rave the Histborn wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Rave the Histborn wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
No, the expectation is that their only prior experience with MMOs has been hotbar combat. Which, in case it was unclear, is not how ESO's combat works.
People play many different types of games not just MMO giving them broad experience with many combat systems.
Skyrim even on easy setting was more challenging and I won't even get into Morrowind.
It is also a mistake to assume that a new player has a broad base of experience of previous games. While I'll grant you, many games overcompensate in holding the player's hand, you cannot assume that a new player has any background. We all had to start somewhere.
And again you keep ignoring the fact that I suggest solo instances should scale to player stats.
The experience for a new player should be taught by the content.
Aren't circular arguments fun?
Solo instances already so scale to single players so you keep suggesting something new for the game THAT ALREADY EXISTS IN THE GAME.
New players have a tutorial, that is where they should be taught as that is the purpose of a tutorial.
They do not scale up for players with higher stats else this thread would not exist.
Never fear ZOS won't take the time to change anything anyway.
Why would you scale players with max stats? If you're max stats you shouldn't need to scale anything because that's what new players are scaled to.
You scale the difficulty of the boss fight up, not the player.
Rave the Histborn wrote: »
@Artemiisia what are you walking about? How can you say new players won't learn anything when you had to learn to interrupt on that fight? It takes 10sec for you now because it isn't meant for you
Rave the Histborn wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Rave the Histborn wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Rave the Histborn wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »TequilaFire wrote: »Another flawed assumption is that new players can't handle a reasonable amount of difficulty as if they have never played any game other than Hello Kitty in their life.
No, the expectation is that their only prior experience with MMOs has been hotbar combat. Which, in case it was unclear, is not how ESO's combat works.
People play many different types of games not just MMO giving them broad experience with many combat systems.
Skyrim even on easy setting was more challenging and I won't even get into Morrowind.
It is also a mistake to assume that a new player has a broad base of experience of previous games. While I'll grant you, many games overcompensate in holding the player's hand, you cannot assume that a new player has any background. We all had to start somewhere.
And again you keep ignoring the fact that I suggest solo instances should scale to player stats.
The experience for a new player should be taught by the content.
Aren't circular arguments fun?
Solo instances already so scale to single players so you keep suggesting something new for the game THAT ALREADY EXISTS IN THE GAME.
New players have a tutorial, that is where they should be taught as that is the purpose of a tutorial.
They do not scale up for players with higher stats else this thread would not exist.
Never fear ZOS won't take the time to change anything anyway.
Why would you scale players with max stats? If you're max stats you shouldn't need to scale anything because that's what new players are scaled to.
You scale the difficulty of the boss fight up, not the player.
So you don't want harder content that teaches anything, you just want roadblock content that caters to players that have done the story 15 times instead of forcing those people to be in content that is at their level of experience.