Zones main story quest bosses needs to be stronger!

martygod12 · April 2020

ZOS_FelipeF wrote: »

Greetings,
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Remove as you want, but stop finally ignoring this huge problem and start doing something to fix it please.

Ri_Khan · April 2020

What about something like Cadwell's Platinum? 🤔

XomRhoK · April 2020

I think i have solution for all overland content, not only bosses. It includes thoughts of @Silent99 @martygod12 @YandereGirlfriend maybe some other posters too.
First of all players, the ones who choose Hard mode and who don't, must play together at same instance, to not devide players population, and expirienced playres still could help new ones.
Secondly, taking into account, previously voiced, concerns about AOE damage to players who don't chose Hard mode and simplicity of calculations and implementation, best solution, in my opinion, will be to place debuff on players who chose Hard mode, which decrease their damage done and increase damage recieved. But no one want to be weaker, so important part is right wording in description and rewards.
For example, two options in menu:
- Overland Veteran: Rumors about your adventures are widely known, all enemies will fight against you with additional fervor, they will deal double damage against you and resist against your attacks twice as good (+100% damage done and +50% more resist to overland NPCs. Dungeons, trials, duels and PvP excluded). While this option is active you will recieve special frame around your Health bar:

and can set special title Menace of Tamriel or Hero of Tamriel. Option can't be changed while in combat.
- Overland Veteran Hard Mode: Every citizen of Tamriel know your name and deeds, all enemies will fight for their lives against you, they will deal quadruple damage against you and resist against your attacks four times better (+300% damage done and +75% more resist to overland NPCs. Dungeons, trials, duels and PvP excluded). While this option is active you will recieve special frame around your Health bar:

and can set special title Terror of Tamriel or Champion of Tamriel. Option can't be changed while in combat.

Technicaly it's a debuff, but presented like achievment. The only doubtful moment is that Orc in pink towel, who didn't turn on Veteran mode, still can run and kill your boss in two hits, but at least he has no frame

Option purely for those who want additional challenge in overland and questing, no additional loot, gold or achievements, because this option easy to abuse.

And returning to quest and delve bosses, their health must be buffed anyway even for new players, becase it's too low, and players often even do not have time to see their mechanics and skills, there are some interesting ones. Recently i started do nothing in combat with quest/delve bosses just to see what they capable off.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

Feizao · April 2020

Septimus_Magna wrote: »

Normal overland doesnt have to change, some people just want to enjoy the story which is fine.

For more experienced players there is absolutely no challenge while questing, I dont get immersed while questing like I used to back when the game was launched. Every boss at the end of a long quest is weaker than a random mob in a vet dungeon. The only real solo challenge is vMA, of course you can solo many normal/vet dungeons and world bosses but its just not the same.

I would be happy with a simple veteran overland mode in which the mobs have a lot more health and deal a bit more damage. It would make the fights at the end of a quest a lot better if you have to chip away 3m health, avoid hits, heal yourself and manage sustain. The incoming damage is so low for high CP players that you dont need a self-heal or damage shield.

There could be a motivation for running veteran overland like gaining more XP or higher chance for sets items to drop. To be honest I dont really care about that, I would be happy not the steamroll through every quest like I am fighting low level mudcrabs.

I blame CP. There's no excitment in almost dying anymore. It was fun needing a group to complete dolmens. Tanks needed DPS to burn, DPS needed healers to survive. Everyone has high damage, sustain, and mitigation. not needing others

I think it'd be better if the CP system would function like an attribute table allowing players to find a balance between the three. Right now its like everyone has 64 points into Health, Mag, and Stam

Mayrael · April 2020

Olauron wrote: »

Silent99 wrote: »

You want devs to somehow reduce the skill lvl of endgame players? Not sure how that is possible other than dumbing down core game mechanics. That would be removing one of the most fun parts of eso combat in both pvp and pve. The fact that eso combat is more skill based sets it apart from some other mmos that just rely on mashing 1 button...

Devs should reduce the resulting gap between endgame players and new players. There should be significant diminishing returns for improving the skill. There should be no big steps, especially in the upper part. The higher you go, the smaller the resulting increase for much more effort.

Mayrael wrote: »

What do you understand as "proper fix"? Because if you think about performance than sorry to disappoint you, but it's not going to get better anytime soon if ever at all... and even if, better performance = easier rotations/combos = even easier content (maybe we should leave lag as it is to bring up the difficulty...🤔).

That is not so. Simpler rotations = better performance, complex rotations = bad performance. More calculations per second = bad performance, less calculations per second = better performance.

Proper fix (decreasing the skill gap) will also improve performance. But also it will positively affect overland, dungeons and trials. With ideal execution it is possible to remove normal and veteran dungeons and keep just dungeons with optional (voted) hard mode, that will greatly improve group finder, but I don't believe in the possibility of ideal execution.

1. Your statement about more actions = worse performance is totally bad. Currently the most performance drop we can see with ball groups on, which leads us to AoE abilities. 1 AoE ability = calculations * number of group members, now imagine 24 people casting AoE abilities. 24*24 just with spamming one ability. And now add someone else attacking them with another AoE ability and calculating this with consideration of their buffs, debuffs, timing etc. And now watch how zerg of 40 people fights with 24 man ball group. See how much calculations is this?

Some single player fighting 1 mob is the cause of all our problems! Riiiiight...

2. About skill gap.
Maybe this gap is really to big but it's the Devs who forced players to do it by setting requirements so high. Decrease DPS requirements, put more pressure on mechanics not pure DPS and we can talk about it.

Nevertheless those arguments are very loosely connected to the topic of this thread. Overland difficulty. Not endgame difficulty, not performance issues, but thing that covers biggest part of this game. Overland. I lost interest in new expansions because I know I won't find those quests challenging. I do them because I need them for certain achievemnts or rewards but this is a walk through pain, simply boring experience. Even the best story can be broken by poor implementation.

Olauron · April 2020

Mayrael wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

Silent99 wrote: »

You want devs to somehow reduce the skill lvl of endgame players? Not sure how that is possible other than dumbing down core game mechanics. That would be removing one of the most fun parts of eso combat in both pvp and pve. The fact that eso combat is more skill based sets it apart from some other mmos that just rely on mashing 1 button...

Devs should reduce the resulting gap between endgame players and new players. There should be significant diminishing returns for improving the skill. There should be no big steps, especially in the upper part. The higher you go, the smaller the resulting increase for much more effort.

Mayrael wrote: »

What do you understand as "proper fix"? Because if you think about performance than sorry to disappoint you, but it's not going to get better anytime soon if ever at all... and even if, better performance = easier rotations/combos = even easier content (maybe we should leave lag as it is to bring up the difficulty...🤔).

That is not so. Simpler rotations = better performance, complex rotations = bad performance. More calculations per second = bad performance, less calculations per second = better performance.

Proper fix (decreasing the skill gap) will also improve performance. But also it will positively affect overland, dungeons and trials. With ideal execution it is possible to remove normal and veteran dungeons and keep just dungeons with optional (voted) hard mode, that will greatly improve group finder, but I don't believe in the possibility of ideal execution.

1. Your statement about more actions = worse performance is totally bad. Currently the most performance drop we can see with ball groups on, which leads us to AoE abilities. 1 AoE ability = calculations * number of group members, now imagine 24 people casting AoE abilities. 24*24 just with spamming one ability. And now add someone else attacking them with another AoE ability and calculating this with consideration of their buffs, debuffs, timing etc. And now watch how zerg of 40 people fights with 24 man ball group. See how much calculations is this?

Some single player fighting 1 mob is the cause of all our problems! Riiiiight...

2. About skill gap.
Maybe this gap is really to big but it's the Devs who forced players to do it by setting requirements so high. Decrease DPS requirements, put more pressure on mechanics not pure DPS and we can talk about it.

Nevertheless those arguments are very loosely connected to the topic of this thread. Overland difficulty. Not endgame difficulty, not performance issues, but thing that covers biggest part of this game. Overland. I lost interest in new expansions because I know I won't find those quests challenging. I do them because I need them for certain achievemnts or rewards but this is a walk through pain, simply boring experience. Even the best story can be broken by poor implementation.

1. Do you think that developers want to address the gap of Low-APM and High-APM because they feel bad for Low-APM players? Sorry, I don't. I am sure that performance is the reason for them to promote channelling skills (look at monster helmet of last DLC) and HA (that is channelling too). And from my own experience performance actually depends on the actions per second (or minute) number. When I am fighting near Low-APM players (who use only skills or only weapon attacks) performance is good. When I am fighting near High-APM players performance is worse, sometimes much worse. It is not only AoE that cause trouble.

2. Certainly. That is why it is up to devs to look for fixing it.

3. Sorry, I can't agree. Overland difficulty is set the way it is set because of existing skill gap. And given that performance problems are not fixed even by the performance fixing patches (for so long time), it is rather clear, that, first, we should be very careful with implementing anything that will increase stress on existing system, and second, since nothing else helped, only combat tweaks are the last hope. I may be wrong. In essence my personal position doesn't matter. If developers need to choose between helping Low-APM players and performance they will choose performance. If developers need to choose between helping High-APM players and performance they will choose performance. In general lowering APM improves performance, but it is all that can be said without looking at the code.
Again, I want to stress that this is one system, one whole system. It is simply impossible to make proposals and discuss only part of the system without understanding other parts of this system, the causes and consequences of internal influence of these parts on each other.

navystylz_ESO · April 2020

I wish ESO was more like GW2 in that respect. For some reason people always compare ESO to other MMOs that are nothing like ESO. GW2 is the MMO that is most similar to ESO.

Both games have limited bars where you pick your build
Both games use weapon swaps
Both are action combat using systems that need be blocked/interrupted/dodged
Both games stop progression of gear after a point and side progresses from there
Both have robust crafting that is worthwhile gearing.
GW2 scales you down to the zone, ESO scales you up
GW2 focus on currencies, ESO on RNG drop
GW2 balances skills with CDs, ESO balances skills with resource management

Etc, etc, etc

GW2 has a world that is dangerous at every level. GW2 has a world that is very easy to be faceplanted, especially if overwhelmed if you aren't good at dealing with mechanics, telegraph dodging, and countering skills. Has a story that short but sweet. Bosses actually feel like fighting bosses.

ESO has a world that is utterly laughable. Brand new players can mow down groups of mobs like it's nothing. You can look at telegraphs wondering why they even exist because the aoes, or abilities that are supposed to be blocked or interrupted won't kill you, then you're health is back in 1 skill. The story is deep but you're ultimately left feeling like a bystander listening to an audiobook. It is especially hillarious to have NPC talk up a boss no how powerful they are, and the months that went into preparing weapons to fight them only to lose, and then you fight them and they drop in seconds. That's assuming someone doesn't run in and help you making it even faster. At least GW2 will scale bosses when that happens.

Oh. And GW2 isn't trying to get money from you constnatly with new chapters, DLCs else ESO plus to maintain access to the many DLCs, pushing so much of the interesting stuff you can get to crown store.

But at least people can just sit back and relax without needing to actually mentally check in to playing 80% of the game.

Lysette · April 2020

i guess the main problem to understand it is that there are 2 different ways game play is expected to be:

1. those who want it so hard, that they die often at first until they'll finally master the content
2. those, who don't want to die at all and for whom any death is worsening their experience

Both groups have different views on what fun game play is in regards to combat - overland content is made for the 2nd group, those, for whom dying is not fun at all and who expect content to be doable without having to die on a regular basis. This is contrary to the expectation of group 1 - and basically that is where the problem is coming from.

So after having read through this thread a second time, i think group 1 has a point - there should be another option, but it should not have an effect on the 2nd group and disturb their game play - it would have to be a separate mode.

XomRhoK · April 2020

Lysette wrote: »

i guess the main problem to understand it is that there are 2 different ways game play is expected to be:

1. those who want it so hard, that they die often at first until they'll finally master the content
2. those, who don't want to die at all and for whom any death is worsening their experience

Both groups have different views on what fun game play is in regards to combat - overland content is made for the 2nd group, those, for whom dying is not fun at all and who expect content to be doable without having to die on a regular basis. This is contrary to the expectation of group 1 - and basically that is where the problem is coming from.

So after having read through this thread a second time, i think group 1 has a point - there should be another option, but it should not have an effect on the 2nd group and disturb their game play - it would have to be a separate mode.

I think there is third group in the middle, those who want some challenge in thier questing, want that upgrading appropriate gear, using food, potions and enchants have meaning. They ready to die once in a while in a wilds and couple of time more at the quest boss. But don't want hardcore difficulty.

Lysette · April 2020

I personally, if I would have the feeling like some, that the content is too lame, then I would try permadeath pve - not dying at all or delete the character, only exception being disconnects or insane lag issues. If it is really that easy and lame, this would be the challenge I would choose in their place - basically prove that it is so lame and easy, that i wouldn't die at all, not once, and be a true hero - not a dead hero who never would have made it in the first place. But i doubt they will dare it.

btw i am serious about that - I'm a permadeath player in single player games - this is to me the ultimate challenge - basically answering the question, would I have made it, well knowing that there is no 2nd chance?- The answer from my experience to that question is - no, i wouldn't have made it. Feeling too secure and overconfident kills me in the end somewhere in between - but it is an interesting experience.

Luckylancer · April 2020

Grab a brand new and free grey item from ground. Reset your cp and you are ready for challenging run!

Faulgor · April 2020

We needed optional higher diffculty systems like yesterday, but for some reason that escapes ZOS.

The demands and gameplay logic between the whole experience up to endgame and endgame itself are totally disjointed.

On the one hand you have a solo-focused game centered around improving your character through leveling, questing, crafting, exploration, collecting (such as skyshards, lorebooks, etc), and once you reach the logical conclusion of all these endeavours and maxed out your character, you are told you can only effectively use your char to its full potential in group content. So you have a fully developed character with nothing challenging or worthwhile to do in the way you played the game before. It becomes a completely different game. You can do this up to 17 more times by rolling a new character before you quit in boredom.

On the other hand, you are totally unprepared for the challenges of group content once you stumble into it at that point. The whole game before is so easy it can be completed with a hand behind your back. This is how you meet CP 810 players in vet dungeons that just spam light attacks or snipe, or don't know how block works.

They have to find a way to make the solo experience more challenging to prepare players for the mechanics necessary in group content, as well as add more worthwhile solo endgame content (besides vMA).
They might be able to achieve this by beefing up certain areas of overland content (delves, public dungeons, quest bosses) and finally adding a higher difficulty option for overland, preferably tied into something like a Tel Var / reputation system like suggested dozens of times already.

navystylz_ESO · April 2020

XomRhoK wrote: »

I think i have solution for all overland content, not only bosses. It includes thoughts of @Silent99 @martygod12 @YandereGirlfriend maybe some other posters too.
First of all players, the ones who choose Hard mode and who don't, must play together at same instance, to not devide players population, and expirienced playres still could help new ones.
Secondly, taking into account, previously voiced, concerns about AOE damage to players who don't chose Hard mode and simplicity of calculations and implementation, best solution, in my opinion, will be to place debuff on players who chose Hard mode, which decrease their damage done and increase damage recieved. But no one want to be weaker, so important part is right wording in description and rewards.

So it's not enough that people are saying too bad if you want a challenge; we don't. Either leave or suck it up because my play shouldn't change because you want it to be harder. People are acting like those who want a challenge are entitled. but several of yall suggested that these players be forced to play with everyone else "cuz our population??"

What the heck is that? Nah deal with simple, unchallenging gameplay, BUT if somehow ESO changes to give an option, y'all can't be split from the rest of us because... what? It would hurt your gameplay to not see as many people in the world? Why the heck should anyone who wants more challenging gameplay care if they are in the same worldspace with yall when your answer to the challenge is gimp yourself, leave the game or deal with it?

darthgummibear_ESO · April 2020

Olauron wrote: »

martygod12 wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

No. They are good as they are. Anyone can make any content harder by removing gold gear and taking white non-set weapon. There is no need to do anything on dev side when making content harder is always in players hands.

Well I have read a lot of these suggestions on the previous threads, but It is a terrible suggestion I am sorry. Dumb youself down Is absolutelly not that same. Because you will always know that you are not playing at 100% just to have some challenge and trust me that way you will never have the feeling of challenge so it will not solve anything.

Then ask devs to nerf your abilities. You will be playing at 100% and have some challenge. The irony is a lot of players are against decreasing a skill gap and at the same time want overland to be challenging.

Maybe...just maybe...if overland wasn't such a complete faceroll the skill gap wouldn't be as big as it is.

Iccotak · December 2020

EDITED A FEW TIMES

darthgummibear_ESO wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

martygod12 wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

No. They are good as they are. Anyone can make any content harder by removing gold gear and taking white non-set weapon. There is no need to do anything on dev side when making content harder is always in players hands.

Well I have read a lot of these suggestions on the previous threads, but It is a terrible suggestion I am sorry. Dumb youself down Is absolutelly not that same. Because you will always know that you are not playing at 100% just to have some challenge and trust me that way you will never have the feeling of challenge so it will not solve anything.

Then ask devs to nerf your abilities. You will be playing at 100% and have some challenge. The irony is a lot of players are against decreasing a skill gap and at the same time want overland to be challenging.

Maybe...just maybe...if overland wasn't such a complete faceroll the skill gap wouldn't be as big as it is.

This whole "blame the players" mentality is getting old. It is the game's job to make the content harder. NOT the players. That has been the case for any RPG, the whole idea of "Self-Nerfing" is complete and utter nonsense.

We are already seeing the consequences that many have seen and warned about. Too many players are not learning how to play the game in overland content because nothing encourages them to get better. It's face-roll easy the whole way through.

So what happens is that level 50 players try dungeons and do really poor. Then they're discouraged and confused when they were treated like competent great heroes in the rest of the content but suck at dungeons and never try it again. This would have been solved if they got into dungeons earlier and eased into them.

It's only because I got into dungeons that I actually got good (which are honestly some of the best content the game has to offer, both in mechanics and good quest-lines)

martygod12 wrote: »

You have the tools to fix the consequences yourself. You don't want to do it. Waisting dev resourses on fixing the same consequences is meaningless.

What you still dont understand is that even if you dumb yourself down as much as you can (no CP, white non set gear no OP skills) you just cant dumb your human skill which you got from playing the game.

Believe me most of players who have hundrets of CP are experienced and have some skill with the game and you just cant turn that off.

And if you at least a little know what are you doing in the combat, then even running around naked and punching everything wont help you to have a challenge because even on lvl 1 mobs and quest bosses are incapable of killing you and you will have to intentionally play badly in order to get some challenge which is idiotic idea and I am pretty sure that this is also by human nature almost impossible

Problem is that the game is too easy even for a lot new players playing ESO for the first time. Man I remember when I started playing and I rarely even died when questing. Golding my gear before coming back to questing only changed that the enemies died much faster, but were still weak as before when I even was not lvl 50 and started doing CP.

The difficulty of the game overland as it is now looks like it is designed for 5-10 years old kids or people who are playing their first game ever in their whole life and dont even know where the buttons on the keybord are. I am sorry for being harsh, but I cant see how for at least somehow experienced gamer this came can offer even a little bit of challenge when questing even if you are totally new to the game. Thats how pathetic the overland difficulty is. It is lame even compared to other MMOS.

And if we cant have vet overland why dont give us at least OPTIONAL vet boss fights, so we can enjoy the game more. Quests are like 60-70% of the game which is rather unfair. There is just nothing absolutely nothing in the quests, no change of pace nothing ever slowing you down nothing. You just read a dialog in a point A, then steamroll everything in you path towards the point B, where you read another dialog and then continue to steamroll everything towards point C and over and over again. And that gets reallly tedious, boring and repetitive way too fas, which is really shame because the quests are really well written, they have good plots, characters, epic buildups: yes epic buildups which are then completelly killed by a stupid, dissapointing retardely easy boss fight, which just kills the whole quest atmosphere.

I could not agree more.

it’s not that people are looking in the wrong direction for challenging or hard content - it’s that making the main antagonists incredibly easy makes them boring, unremarkable, and overall NOT fun. It’s hard to care about the story when the final antagonist can be beaten in 2 seconds. It can seriously undercut the story.

We want the Main Antagonists to be memorable experiences that live up the how the storyline and marketing build them up. We want the story and the gameplay to match up.
We want to look forward to fighting them.

I am frankly tired of the Gatekeeping-of-Fun whenever this discussion comes up. It is incredibly exclusionary and it only considers one play style while completely disregarding others who find enjoyment when the gameplay matches up to the story.

Then they try to shut down the discussion by saying we only really want the rewards when all we're doing to following how the rest of the game works. You get added reward if you increase the difficulty - that has been the case across the board and we're just proposing that ZOS use that system in other areas in ESO that sorely need it.

But yes it would have to be separate instance and NO it would not be like before One Tamriel

Whenever difficulty options is brought up people almost always mention Craglorn and how bad things were before One Tamriel. People are quick to use these examples to shut down any discussion about difficulty. However, I think there is a misconception about what the old system was like.

Original vet zones were a mess, not because they spit the player base not into 2-3 groups, because they actually got split into 9 different groups.
Before OT, you could only play with people in the same faction. The Faction you chose determined the level of all the zones and it was different for each side. Different alliances had different zones at different difficulties.
So for if you chose EP then their zones were 1-50, and Veteran rank order went from DC to AD.
Meanwhile AD Veteran ranks went from EP to DC
DC Veteran Ranks went from AD to EP
(That may not be the entirely correct order but you get the point)

the original problem with Craglorn was that it was 1. end game only. 2. pretty much entirely group required. 3. had incredibly disappointing rewards for all the hassle. 4. its story was NOT repeatable, so once you are done? you are done. there was no incentive to help anyone else with those quests.

craglorn is a different case and trying to frame it as if everyone asking for harder stuff wants another craglorn is disingenuous.

coj901 · December 2020

I’ve been playing since 2015 and only completed one quest line because I wanted the dark brotherhood robe. I really enjoyed it but I don’t see the point in questing. The content is super easy and there’s no rewards. On the other hand players that level up by questing and then jump in a 4 man dungeon get steamrolled. They get steamrolled because overland didn’t prepare them for the huge jump to endgame.

eovogtb16_ESO · December 2020

worrallj wrote: »

I think an easier way to accomplish the same thing is to give players a "no cp mode," just a way to set all your CP to zero without paying 3k gold or having to respec. CP is probably the biggest reason overland content has to be so easy, and supposedly they're trying to get rid of CP anyway.

I agree deliberately running with crappy gear is a bad solution. Adds inventory management overhead and it's just silly.

Even with cp removed and player naked the game is mind boggingly easy to anyone who has any sort of basic understanding of the game mechanics.

Daemons_Bane · December 2020

coj901 wrote: »

*SOME* players that level up by questing and then jump in a 4 man dungeon get steamrolled.

Fixed it

Chyro · December 2020

Maybe take an idea from another MMO that is doing this in a way that works?

In FF14 when there is a solo-instance for the story quest, it can be challenging at the default difficulty. Not to the point that any halfway-decent player would struggle with it, but enough that it feels like an actual battle. For those players that struggle too much with the story instance battles - a window opens with the options to challenge the battle in 'easy' or 'very easy' mode, once they die at least once to the normal difficulty.

Though I think the underlying issue is the balance of scaling. Overland monsters and story quest enemies are all scaled to cp160 at a mostly easy difficulty, so that a player of any level with any thrown together gear has a chance to defeat them. Not to mention they don't take into account all the extra stats from CP's above 160 up to 810 CP. You can't make the same battle challenging (or even just not 4-second doable) to a CP160+ set-geared character and at the same time ensure that even a low / average level new player with random gear can pass the same battle to continue his story - at least not without adjusting the enemy's power to the player, or bringing the player's power down to the enemy.

ZOS_ConnorG · December 2020

Greetings all,

After review we have closed this thread as it is old and the information within may be out of date. You can create a new thread to continue this discussion to ensure that all of the information will be as up to date as possible. Thank you for your understanding.