Why is this game so easy?

Everest_Lionheart · May 2020

robertthebard wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

EmEm_Oh wrote: »

Mortac wrote: »

It annoys me to no end. I want to play content that isn't tuned for a 5-year old. But it seems 90% of the PVE content is tuned for just that.

I'm not talking about raids or dungeons (public dungeons excluded). Those seem alright.

But when it comes to general questing, delves and the world in general, you can literally run around in crappy green gear 10 levels below your level and still demolish everything like nothing. How is that in any way fun?

I'm currently leveling with a friend and we're closing in on level 40. The game is a huge yawn-fest and we're craving for something to challenge us. He's playing a healer, but almost never have anything to heal. Questing and killing mobs is just a tedious running from A to B, only stopping to kill monsters in 2-8 seconds and it doesn't really matter how many monsters we pull either. We're basically playing an MMO that is tuned for under-geared 5-year olds. I'm saying that because my son can play this game without being able to read or have any understanding of what the skills on his hotbar do. He just mashes them randomly and kills things.

Doing delves feels so pointless. Usually you run into other players as well and everyone's just aching to kill stuff, but everything is mowed down in 2 seconds, and delves really become nothing but something you just run through, trying to get a hit or two in on things to gain exp. So incredibly boring, and such incredibly bad design.

Delves shouldn't even be public when the game is tuned in this way. I say this because they're literally tuned for a badly geared, completely unskilled SOLO player. So the moment you add more people in there, the already trivial content becomes fully and completely pointless from a gameplay perspective.

What's been by far the most fun so far has been killing world bosses (those skulls on the map) and running (non-public) dungeons as a duo. But as soon as you add a couple more players, even that content becomes quite easy. The only annoying thing is that dungeons are in general quite easy, too, but they add certain one-shot or nearly one-shot mechanics into the game to make it harder. That's a lousy way of adding challenge, because it means you can run through everything you're thrown against, but then a sudden and sometimes unavoidable mechanic prevents you from advancing further. Those are some of the most frowned-upon things from a player perspective because they're just not fun.

I'm not level 50 yet so some things might change, but overall this game needs a huge re-tuning. Doubling mob health and damage would be a start, but much more would certainly be required. Delve bosses are more like what normal mobs should be like, but even those are ridiculously easy. Would much prefer longer, harder fights with higher experience rewards per kill than the current trivial content of killing things in a few seconds without barely taking any damage.

Does nobody want even a tiny bit of challenge these days?

PS: Fix the damn bug that sometimes prevents you from attacking or using abilities!!

Yeah, I notice that content is super easy...or super difficult. Not much of an in-between.

We need more 500K hp bosses across Tamriel, who have a sting. The 1.8M bosses generally require a 4-person group to kill. So, a 500K would be great for solo adventures. ZOS could probably raise some of the quest bosses' hp by 50% with little issue.

Also, still asking for solo dungeons.

Some are places the overland/public dungeon bosses do scale up a bit. I’ve seen a couple group events with 300-400k HP plus adds, though none of them are particularly difficult and can be easily overcome using tactics. I finally had a semi challenge last night in the Lions Den at the Rift. It’s the last public dungeon in the pact zones. Had to be aware a couple of times to make sure I didn’t bite it because I was mindlessly button mashing. I found the mobs there more difficult than the bosses though sadly and the group event was also a pushover. I did die there though but not because of an enemy. Jumping down from the last cliff I missed the water and landed on the rock instead! Definitely a rofl moment!

Some of the 1.8 mil world bosses from the vanilla game have easy enough mechanics to solo with decent CP, but they do scale up difficulty as you progress through the alliance zones. DLC bosses are already more robust to begin with and do often requisite assistance. People with high CP can handle many of them alone but there are a few that require help. There are also a couple that can be cheesed and kited to a place where they can be hit while dealing minor damage.

One thing I wish was a tad harder are delves. It’s just too easy to melt through anything in those with a few levels under your belt. Because there are skyshards in all of them their difficulty should be boosted a bit in general for everyone below the level of a public dungeon and probably be solo instanced with the option to group.

So I'm curious, why should delves be boosted based on having skyshards? There are an awful lot of skyshards scattered throughout the open world...

Skyshards are the main incentive to enter delves. If the 6-7 delve sky shards were in the open world people likely would never go down there unless they were questing. Of course you don’t really need those shards if you choose to skip them so why not boost the content. Every delve is the same long hallway 2 enemies, turn corner 1 enemy, go through door 2 more enemies, bookshelf in the corner of main chamber 3 enemies, skyshard with one lone enemy guarding it if anything at all, and finally mini boss fight with mechanics that most people can DPS though.

Also there are achievements tied to collecting all skyshards in the zones and beating all the delves as well why not make us work for it at least a little?

Where do we cap the "make us work for it" at? Full CP with years of vxx experience? Level 45 with no CP? Too hard, and people will complain, not hard enough, and people will complain, see this thread, and the free for all PvP thread. I do the delves because there's a yellow bar on my map that needs to be filled up, that includes a delve count, which I can't get by simply getting the skyshard, and a skyshard count where I can. I have yet to enter an empty delve, not in the last few weeks I've been back, and I don't recall being in one before I left the last time. There's been more than one instance of "where this delve boss at" only to have it spawn right on top of me... That's amusing. So I'm pretty sure people are actually using them for more than just skyshard collection.

In my original post I also said they should be solo instanced with the option to group up. This way delves could scale with level/CP and give players a chance to learn a little bit about more than button mashing to win. As it stands now delves are little more than running from point A to B to C and mashing a few buttons in between. I would like to see harder enemies, a couple mobs and bosses with some real mechanics that can’t be killed before they spit out their second line of dialogue mid battle. It would be a nice practice or learning experience if delves worked differently than they do now.

That's what the entry level dungeons are for. Unfortunately, if you're not board certified, you're not welcome, mostly. I don't have to worry about it, I'm geared enough, and good enough at my class to be safe from vote kicks. But entry level dungeons are where we're supposed to be picking up the nuances of group play. If we sub them out with delves, it won't be long before they suffer from the same issues. Now they'd be easy to instance, DDO has had that since they made it, all quest areas and explorers are instanced. The explorers have a level range, where if you're above it you don't get any xp, and if you're too low you can't enter, unless you're in a group, but the quests have difficulty settings. Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite, and for most quests now, Reaper 1-10, a direct result of "the game's too easy" on the Reaper settings.

Of course, after years of lobbying for that harder setting, once they got it, it took less than two weeks for the same people to be complaining that it was "stupid hard", and needed to be nerfed. I got banned from the forums, I was laughing so hard at them, because all through the process of convincing the devs we needed that extra difficulty, I predicted that a call for nerfs would be forthcoming. Apparently someone got mad and reported me for it... Their standard battle cry when people they considered noobs was "play a lower difficulty". They got irate when that got turned on them. I'd just as soon not see ZoS waste the dev time on it here. After all, the same people complaining about how easy the overland is are the same people that are complaining if someone in their party isn't living up to standards a third party website set for grouping. Evidently, the challenging content, meaning the content that's supposed to have this group synergy running, is working just fine. How are they going to handle it when they're the ones underperforming?

Good points. I guess what I am looking for is more of a medium-hard tier one there. Overland and delves are very basic. The next step up is group dungeons and that even with a few CP under your belt is easy enough to solo. The next step after that is regular dungeons and it’s a big step. The rest of the progession makes sense after that, Regular DLC, vet dungeons, vet DLC, trials and finally vet trials Though some DLC regular flips with vanilla vet dungeons in terms of difficulty for progression sake that is still logical as you progress through harder content.

I’m not sure where MA and vMA fit in, just reading guides on them and preparing to start.

Anyway I see quite a large gap between public dungeons and normal dungeons in my own personal experience. Of course it geared to group content but most regular content can be done solo or is a group of 2 if you wish. A bridge between those 2 levels of the game would be nice. Maybe that’s where PvP slots in? I don’t PvP often and when I do it’s Non CP BG PvP.

So harder delves or at least the option for harder delves makes sense to me. But until something comes along I’ll take the distractions and side quests that come because I do play this game mainly for the quests to begin with.

Lysette · May 2020

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Ok, I got it, ESO should be balanced for the people who can't see difference between 10 and 100 (though I bet if you'll propose them to take 10 or 100 USD they'll realize difference in few milliseconds and 99.9% of them will "equip" 100).

Most of the numbers do not make any sense to a new player - sure they can see that one number is higher than another, but without a reference these values mean like nothing to them. Especially because with any level their resources decrease and don't increase - due to scaling, clear, we know that, but a newbie doesn't - that is all pretty confusing for a newbie. He might even experience that he isn't progressing but getting weaker with every new level - because he might not min/max bur distribute his attribute points rather equally. The result of it is that every level makes him weaker and he struggles more and more.

robertthebard · May 2020

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

EmEm_Oh wrote: »

Mortac wrote: »

It annoys me to no end. I want to play content that isn't tuned for a 5-year old. But it seems 90% of the PVE content is tuned for just that.

I'm not talking about raids or dungeons (public dungeons excluded). Those seem alright.

But when it comes to general questing, delves and the world in general, you can literally run around in crappy green gear 10 levels below your level and still demolish everything like nothing. How is that in any way fun?

I'm currently leveling with a friend and we're closing in on level 40. The game is a huge yawn-fest and we're craving for something to challenge us. He's playing a healer, but almost never have anything to heal. Questing and killing mobs is just a tedious running from A to B, only stopping to kill monsters in 2-8 seconds and it doesn't really matter how many monsters we pull either. We're basically playing an MMO that is tuned for under-geared 5-year olds. I'm saying that because my son can play this game without being able to read or have any understanding of what the skills on his hotbar do. He just mashes them randomly and kills things.

Doing delves feels so pointless. Usually you run into other players as well and everyone's just aching to kill stuff, but everything is mowed down in 2 seconds, and delves really become nothing but something you just run through, trying to get a hit or two in on things to gain exp. So incredibly boring, and such incredibly bad design.

Delves shouldn't even be public when the game is tuned in this way. I say this because they're literally tuned for a badly geared, completely unskilled SOLO player. So the moment you add more people in there, the already trivial content becomes fully and completely pointless from a gameplay perspective.

What's been by far the most fun so far has been killing world bosses (those skulls on the map) and running (non-public) dungeons as a duo. But as soon as you add a couple more players, even that content becomes quite easy. The only annoying thing is that dungeons are in general quite easy, too, but they add certain one-shot or nearly one-shot mechanics into the game to make it harder. That's a lousy way of adding challenge, because it means you can run through everything you're thrown against, but then a sudden and sometimes unavoidable mechanic prevents you from advancing further. Those are some of the most frowned-upon things from a player perspective because they're just not fun.

I'm not level 50 yet so some things might change, but overall this game needs a huge re-tuning. Doubling mob health and damage would be a start, but much more would certainly be required. Delve bosses are more like what normal mobs should be like, but even those are ridiculously easy. Would much prefer longer, harder fights with higher experience rewards per kill than the current trivial content of killing things in a few seconds without barely taking any damage.

Does nobody want even a tiny bit of challenge these days?

PS: Fix the damn bug that sometimes prevents you from attacking or using abilities!!

Yeah, I notice that content is super easy...or super difficult. Not much of an in-between.

We need more 500K hp bosses across Tamriel, who have a sting. The 1.8M bosses generally require a 4-person group to kill. So, a 500K would be great for solo adventures. ZOS could probably raise some of the quest bosses' hp by 50% with little issue.

Also, still asking for solo dungeons.

Some are places the overland/public dungeon bosses do scale up a bit. I’ve seen a couple group events with 300-400k HP plus adds, though none of them are particularly difficult and can be easily overcome using tactics. I finally had a semi challenge last night in the Lions Den at the Rift. It’s the last public dungeon in the pact zones. Had to be aware a couple of times to make sure I didn’t bite it because I was mindlessly button mashing. I found the mobs there more difficult than the bosses though sadly and the group event was also a pushover. I did die there though but not because of an enemy. Jumping down from the last cliff I missed the water and landed on the rock instead! Definitely a rofl moment!

Some of the 1.8 mil world bosses from the vanilla game have easy enough mechanics to solo with decent CP, but they do scale up difficulty as you progress through the alliance zones. DLC bosses are already more robust to begin with and do often requisite assistance. People with high CP can handle many of them alone but there are a few that require help. There are also a couple that can be cheesed and kited to a place where they can be hit while dealing minor damage.

One thing I wish was a tad harder are delves. It’s just too easy to melt through anything in those with a few levels under your belt. Because there are skyshards in all of them their difficulty should be boosted a bit in general for everyone below the level of a public dungeon and probably be solo instanced with the option to group.

So I'm curious, why should delves be boosted based on having skyshards? There are an awful lot of skyshards scattered throughout the open world...

Skyshards are the main incentive to enter delves. If the 6-7 delve sky shards were in the open world people likely would never go down there unless they were questing. Of course you don’t really need those shards if you choose to skip them so why not boost the content. Every delve is the same long hallway 2 enemies, turn corner 1 enemy, go through door 2 more enemies, bookshelf in the corner of main chamber 3 enemies, skyshard with one lone enemy guarding it if anything at all, and finally mini boss fight with mechanics that most people can DPS though.

Also there are achievements tied to collecting all skyshards in the zones and beating all the delves as well why not make us work for it at least a little?

Where do we cap the "make us work for it" at? Full CP with years of vxx experience? Level 45 with no CP? Too hard, and people will complain, not hard enough, and people will complain, see this thread, and the free for all PvP thread. I do the delves because there's a yellow bar on my map that needs to be filled up, that includes a delve count, which I can't get by simply getting the skyshard, and a skyshard count where I can. I have yet to enter an empty delve, not in the last few weeks I've been back, and I don't recall being in one before I left the last time. There's been more than one instance of "where this delve boss at" only to have it spawn right on top of me... That's amusing. So I'm pretty sure people are actually using them for more than just skyshard collection.

In my original post I also said they should be solo instanced with the option to group up. This way delves could scale with level/CP and give players a chance to learn a little bit about more than button mashing to win. As it stands now delves are little more than running from point A to B to C and mashing a few buttons in between. I would like to see harder enemies, a couple mobs and bosses with some real mechanics that can’t be killed before they spit out their second line of dialogue mid battle. It would be a nice practice or learning experience if delves worked differently than they do now.

That's what the entry level dungeons are for. Unfortunately, if you're not board certified, you're not welcome, mostly. I don't have to worry about it, I'm geared enough, and good enough at my class to be safe from vote kicks. But entry level dungeons are where we're supposed to be picking up the nuances of group play. If we sub them out with delves, it won't be long before they suffer from the same issues. Now they'd be easy to instance, DDO has had that since they made it, all quest areas and explorers are instanced. The explorers have a level range, where if you're above it you don't get any xp, and if you're too low you can't enter, unless you're in a group, but the quests have difficulty settings. Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite, and for most quests now, Reaper 1-10, a direct result of "the game's too easy" on the Reaper settings.

Of course, after years of lobbying for that harder setting, once they got it, it took less than two weeks for the same people to be complaining that it was "stupid hard", and needed to be nerfed. I got banned from the forums, I was laughing so hard at them, because all through the process of convincing the devs we needed that extra difficulty, I predicted that a call for nerfs would be forthcoming. Apparently someone got mad and reported me for it... Their standard battle cry when people they considered noobs was "play a lower difficulty". They got irate when that got turned on them. I'd just as soon not see ZoS waste the dev time on it here. After all, the same people complaining about how easy the overland is are the same people that are complaining if someone in their party isn't living up to standards a third party website set for grouping. Evidently, the challenging content, meaning the content that's supposed to have this group synergy running, is working just fine. How are they going to handle it when they're the ones underperforming?

Good points. I guess what I am looking for is more of a medium-hard tier one there. Overland and delves are very basic. The next step up is group dungeons and that even with a few CP under your belt is easy enough to solo. The next step after that is regular dungeons and it’s a big step. The rest of the progession makes sense after that, Regular DLC, vet dungeons, vet DLC, trials and finally vet trials Though some DLC regular flips with vanilla vet dungeons in terms of difficulty for progression sake that is still logical as you progress through harder content.

I’m not sure where MA and vMA fit in, just reading guides on them and preparing to start.

Anyway I see quite a large gap between public dungeons and normal dungeons in my own personal experience. Of course it geared to group content but most regular content can be done solo or is a group of 2 if you wish. A bridge between those 2 levels of the game would be nice. Maybe that’s where PvP slots in? I don’t PvP often and when I do it’s Non CP BG PvP.

So harder delves or at least the option for harder delves makes sense to me. But until something comes along I’ll take the distractions and side quests that come because I do play this game mainly for the quests to begin with.

My thoughts run to "Story content should be just that", I guess. I was a progression raider for a long time, so I pick up on this kind of stuff pretty fast. Not to say I don't "fall asleep at the wheel" sometimes, but for the most part, if I'm running group content I focus on my job, and get it done. I don't feel like every encounter has to keep me on the edge of my proverbial, or literal seat.

newtinmpls · May 2020

eKsDee wrote: »

The answer is simply: most people paying for the game, only play for the stories.<snippage> "I don't want to play this game like a job, I just want to jump in and relax."

When most of your player base only play for the stories, why raise the difficulty? Why waste the effort in putting individual difficulty increases in place, when most people either don't want, or don't care about challenge? This is probably Zenimax's line of thinking.

I have to say this is quite insightful and reflective of the changes that ZoS has made, including concerns about areas where very few of the players would do or complete certain content - and it was due to combat difficulty.

There are a lot of aspects of this game, and ways of playing it:

-Exploring an ES world "with friends"
-Following the storylines, and the many many side quests
-Housing, crafting, creating items, furnishing dwellings
-Guilds, group activities including shared content and challenging trials
-Trading, selling, harvesting, bargaining, both via a guild and/or in zone chat
-PvP including leader-boards, Emperor/ess-ship and Battlegrounds and even dueling
-RPGing including group activites such as weddings, and political and other events
-Completionist participation including getting "all" of the various achievements (master fisherman I'm looking at you)

eKsDee wrote: »

It is unfortunate, because for a large portion of those who take the game more seriously

(emphasis added by me)

Aaand you just lost me. Disrespecting those who prefer a different play-style is not helpful here. There are plenty of way to take the game seriously that are not combat-centric. In fact watching the advertising and content changes over the years (remember when the idea of housing was a non-starter?), you can see that ZoS started from the presumption that everyone would eventually want to be involved in the Alliance War, and that this would be the natural and primary focus of the game.

That did not turn out to be the case.

Look at the updates. Look at the crown store items. The biggest chunk of players (and money - and therefore attention from ZoS) are NOT PvP or high difficulty combat.

The answer to OP's question is simple: ZoS made it easy in order to please/facilitate the player base that 1-plays most AND 2-spends the most.

I do actually agree that I would prefer to see harder overland content, but I also admit that it took me about 4 years of gaming to get to that skill level (this was my first ever regular online gaming).

I remember when dolmens were de facto zone and community events. I would like to see that again.

I would like to see more World Bosses that are harder than Bittergreen.

I would like to see the combat/difficulty more similar to Borderlands 2 & 3 as they did an incredible job of having the game be challenging, but never overwhelming. In ESO, the "skill needed" jumps between various parts/difficulties of the game are too far, and not intuitive.

But failing that, according to my completely unprofessional/fairly off the cuff list up there, I totally enjoy 7/8 of the list, so I'm okay with "this game being really easy".

anon307 · May 2020

first off, sorry, didn't read 8 pages of content.

I don't think it's too easy.

I do often get annoyed with delve boss farming. I want to complete a quest or finish a delve. And not wait around for the boss to respawn because folks are farming/killing it within seconds of it spawning. But I defiantly don't want to see those delves made harder. Harder isn't the answer.

A couple options I'd like to see are 1) delve/public dungeon instance options.

Another, 2) is a handicap setting. With handicap a player(s) can make things as easy or as hard as desired. And in order to appease the vast majority of the players the rewards for the hardest setting can't be too good. Yep, elites get an "atta girl/boy" and gear is targeted at average players.

Bryath · May 2020

Something like 95% of the quests in this game are overland, and pretty much every one can be done by a brand new player without too much difficulty. Maybe they die a handful of times, as I did, during their first ~20 hours.
Problem is, there are many hundreds of these quests, perhaps over a thousand. Designing every one of them for brand new players just doesn't make sense. ZOS should want us to play the whole game, not 5% of it and then get on the dungeon humping treadmill.
None of it needs to be particularly difficult either, just hard enough that an average experienced player could potentially lose a boss fight if they play it poorly.

Vaoh · May 2020

@Mortac
There was a patch which standardized/eased all Overland difficulty which was called One Tamriel - the purpose was to let you quest anywhere the moment you turn on the game. Previously the enemies of each zone were within a different level range. We’ve also experienced over 4 years of power creep (especially this past year). It wasn’t nearly this easy even when One Tamriel launched.

Also special mention to Imperial City which offered truly difficult Daedra to fight. The regular enemies there used to be significantly stronger.

I was lucky enough to quest through ESO back when there was proper balance and I had an amazing time. Sorry, but the close you can get to that is to run around fully naked, wielding a Level1, white quality, crafted non-set Weapon of your choice. Nothing you can do will fix your clunky animations and NPC behaviors though (which also did not ever used to exist).

Tigerseye · May 2020

MattVH wrote: »

@newtinmpls

(man i don't even know how this forum works anymore, when it comes to responses lol)

Why would you not know how the "forum works, anymore"?

It works like every other forum does, doesn't it?

Did they change it from how it worked, originally?

Even then, it works like pretty much every other forum.

So, if you used to know how to quote on a forum, as you used to use it correctly, how come you can't now?

Unless that wasn't you?

rager82b14_ESO · May 2020

Why? Because the combat is poorly design and exploitable.

Tigerseye · May 2020

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Ah, yes, the six trillionth "All the Content Aimed at Anyone Other than Me Must Be Rebalanced for Me" thread.

I especially love when they start off by demeaning those the content is aimed at. The commonness of these threads makes the rank selfishness of them so much more palatable.

So you deny us (those who are bored by overland since One Tamriel) OPTIONAL mode/slider so we can quest/explore game without falling asleep, and then call us selfish? Speaking of this forum there is nobody even close in selfishness as casuals are. Casuals want to delete PVP, to delete animation cancelling, to delete trading guilds, to delete veteran content higher rewards - i.e. remove all that which makes this game worth playing for many of us and after that we are called toxic, demeaning and selfish? This is just hilarious.

But, he didn't come on asking for a slider, or for different difficulty settings, did he?

He came on saying it should be made more difficult, for everyone, because he plays with a friend and it is too easy for them to play together.

He came on saying it should be heavily retuned, for everyone.

He talked about "doubling mob health" - presumably, so he and his friend can play together, but still have the same experience as newer players currently have, playing on their own:

I'm not level 50 yet so some things might change, but overall this game needs a huge re-tuning. Doubling mob health and damage would be a start, but much more would certainly be required. Delve bosses are more like what normal mobs should be like, but even those are ridiculously easy.

Completely forgetting, apparently, that there are are actual new players, playing on their own, too and some of them are playing at times when there are not many people on to help them kill a boss, in a delve, or whatever.

Well, of course the game is too easy, if you're nearly level 40 and playing solo content with a friend...

I totally agree with him that there is virtually nothing to teach people how to heal other people.

Which explains the complete lack of even half decent healers, compared with somewhere like WoW which has more.

Most "healers" in this game seem to be DPSers, who only heal themselves and maybe the tank, once in a blue moon, if they're feeling particularly generous...

Occasionally, you will run into a really good healer, but you are left in shock, when you do, as it's so unusual.

Also agree with him re. one-shot mechanics, which are normally indicative of lazy design and just require the player to remember to avoid that one special attack, rather than playing well as a whole.

But, the point is that he didn't ask for options, or sliders.

He just asked for everything to be retuned for him and his friend's benefit, which is obviously (I would have thought!) a fairly selfish and thoughtless thing to ask for.

Tigerseye · May 2020

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Ah, yes, the six trillionth "All the Content Aimed at Anyone Other than Me Must Be Rebalanced for Me" thread.

I especially love when they start off by demeaning those the content is aimed at. The commonness of these threads makes the rank selfishness of them so much more palatable.

So you deny us (those who are bored by overland since One Tamriel) OPTIONAL mode/slider so we can quest/explore game without falling asleep, and then call us selfish? Speaking of this forum there is nobody even close in selfishness as casuals are. Casuals want to delete PVP, to delete animation cancelling, to delete trading guilds, to delete veteran content higher rewards - i.e. remove all that which makes this game worth playing for many of us and after that we are called toxic, demeaning and selfish? This is just hilarious.

No one is denying anyone a slider.

People are answering the OP, which does not request one.

...and as for stuff that should never have existed, like AC, people (not just "casuals") should have stood up against that being lazily "embraced", at the time.

Tigerseye · May 2020

Skykaiser_Ọlọrun wrote: »

MattVH wrote: »

I'm either ignoring or not seeing the requests that demand the whole game to change.

You're not seeing them because they don't exist. For whatever reason, people just want to argue a point that nobody was trying to make. Like you said, all anyone's asking for is the option for harder overland content. Nobody is suggesting that everyone be forcibly thrown into Veteran-tier difficultly at level 1.

The OP of this very thread demands that content be retuned, for everyone.

Apparently, you're not seeing that, even though it does exist and is the opening post of this thread.

Maybe the problem is that some people just see what they want to see, in this world?

MartiniDaniels · May 2020

Lysette wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Ok, I got it, ESO should be balanced for the people who can't see difference between 10 and 100 (though I bet if you'll propose them to take 10 or 100 USD they'll realize difference in few milliseconds and 99.9% of them will "equip" 100).

Most of the numbers do not make any sense to a new player - sure they can see that one number is higher than another, but without a reference these values mean like nothing to them. Especially because with any level their resources decrease and don't increase - due to scaling, clear, we know that, but a newbie doesn't - that is all pretty confusing for a newbie. He might even experience that he isn't progressing but getting weaker with every new level - because he might not min/max bur distribute his attribute points rather equally. The result of it is that every level makes him weaker and he struggles more and more.

Yes, you are right, progression curve in ESO is awful. From what I remember when leveling my first toons:
1) you are OP from level 1(3)-15. Really OP, simple spammables do damage comparable to those of 810 CP without crit
2) 15-25 - it all becomes stall, but still manageable
3) 25-40 - this is the worse part of the curve, I can't say that mobs were able to kill me but my own dps was really low and I needed to use all the abilities and their combinations to progress in game further with reasonable speed
4) 40-50 - you gain XP slower, and so your gear automatically updates to your level from fresh drops. Boring period, but at least dps reaches agreeable levels
5) CP0-CP80 - this is literally 2 hours of play. All your old gear becomes absolutely outdated, but as you distribute first CP this is hardly matters
6) CP80-160, XP gains through questing becomes really slow, but your character becomes powerful as you get fresh CP80+ drops
7) CP160+, as soon as you get at least blue CP160 gear with full 5-piece sets, you are juggernaut of overland, invincible, high dps etc

So to summarize, if you don't min max your passives AND don't re-grind / craft gear so it is within 5 levels of your level, you are becoming weaker as you level up (before you reach CP). So to compensate for this devs just dumped all difficulty to the ground, instead of fixing curve.

MartiniDaniels · May 2020

Overall, One Tamriel destroyed core essence of open-world RPG. In open world RPG you can dynamically "select" difficulty without any sliders, by simply going to harder areas of enemies of higher level when you want challenge and by freely walking in areas with weaker enemies when you just want to relax and feel that you are progressing.
I didn't played Oblivion, but I heard it had awful auto-leveling and so Bethesda managed to nail it in Skyrim, by making some enemies auto-level, some fixed on low levels and some fixed on high levels. Idk why ZOS didn't used that model and instead just applied stats buffs to low level characters, while main contributor to efficiency is equipment... and so if somebody runs group dungeons from level 10 (or crafts his own gear or grinds dolmens/public dungeons) and gets good gear from them, he is simply over-powered when fresh gear is combined with low level buffs.. and if you don't update your gear, you become weaker as level up.
This system is absolutely flawed and screwed and should be changed if ZOS wants overland to be interesting and engaging for all kinds of players.

MartiniDaniels · May 2020

Tigerseye wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Ah, yes, the six trillionth "All the Content Aimed at Anyone Other than Me Must Be Rebalanced for Me" thread.

I especially love when they start off by demeaning those the content is aimed at. The commonness of these threads makes the rank selfishness of them so much more palatable.

So you deny us (those who are bored by overland since One Tamriel) OPTIONAL mode/slider so we can quest/explore game without falling asleep, and then call us selfish? Speaking of this forum there is nobody even close in selfishness as casuals are. Casuals want to delete PVP, to delete animation cancelling, to delete trading guilds, to delete veteran content higher rewards - i.e. remove all that which makes this game worth playing for many of us and after that we are called toxic, demeaning and selfish? This is just hilarious.

No one is denying anyone a slider.

People are answering the OP, which does not request one.

...and as for stuff that should never have existed, like AC, people (not just "casuals") should have stood up against that being lazily "embraced", at the time.

I saw a lot of such threads, some were about optional changes and some about overall changes, but counter-arguments are always the same:
- devs shouldn't waste resources on this
- if you wanna difficulty go to latest trial on vetHM with pugs and don't return without trifecta
- i don't have problems, but I saw people dying
- you don't need gameplay to enjoy story
- I just wanna grab my skyshards ASAP, i don't want hard mobs on the way
- remove your armor and CP

For me it looks like many want overland to remain "casual paradise", i.e. place where no kind of challenge exist by default and shouldn't be available to anybody, because... I know why, but I won't tell because of forum rules.

Tigerseye · May 2020

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Tigerseye wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Ah, yes, the six trillionth "All the Content Aimed at Anyone Other than Me Must Be Rebalanced for Me" thread.

I especially love when they start off by demeaning those the content is aimed at. The commonness of these threads makes the rank selfishness of them so much more palatable.

So you deny us (those who are bored by overland since One Tamriel) OPTIONAL mode/slider so we can quest/explore game without falling asleep, and then call us selfish? Speaking of this forum there is nobody even close in selfishness as casuals are. Casuals want to delete PVP, to delete animation cancelling, to delete trading guilds, to delete veteran content higher rewards - i.e. remove all that which makes this game worth playing for many of us and after that we are called toxic, demeaning and selfish? This is just hilarious.

No one is denying anyone a slider.

People are answering the OP, which does not request one.

...and as for stuff that should never have existed, like AC, people (not just "casuals") should have stood up against that being lazily "embraced", at the time.

I saw a lot of such threads, some were about optional changes and some about overall changes, but counter-arguments are always the same:
- devs shouldn't waste resources on this
- if you wanna difficulty go to latest trial on vetHM with pugs and don't return without trifecta
- i don't have problems, but I saw people dying
- you don't need gameplay to enjoy story
- I just wanna grab my skyshards ASAP, i don't want hard mobs on the way
- remove your armor and CP

For me it looks like many want overland to remain "casual paradise", i.e. place where no kind of challenge exist by default and shouldn't be available to anybody, because... I know why, but I won't tell because of forum rules.

"A lot of such threads" are not this thread.

Here, people are (mostly) responding directly to the original post.

The OP is specifically requesting a blanket change, for everyone, based on him completing content with his friend.

He doesn't mention sliders, or options, at all.

Naftal · May 2020

Tigerseye wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Tigerseye wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

MasterSpatula wrote: »

Ah, yes, the six trillionth "All the Content Aimed at Anyone Other than Me Must Be Rebalanced for Me" thread.

I especially love when they start off by demeaning those the content is aimed at. The commonness of these threads makes the rank selfishness of them so much more palatable.

So you deny us (those who are bored by overland since One Tamriel) OPTIONAL mode/slider so we can quest/explore game without falling asleep, and then call us selfish? Speaking of this forum there is nobody even close in selfishness as casuals are. Casuals want to delete PVP, to delete animation cancelling, to delete trading guilds, to delete veteran content higher rewards - i.e. remove all that which makes this game worth playing for many of us and after that we are called toxic, demeaning and selfish? This is just hilarious.

No one is denying anyone a slider.

People are answering the OP, which does not request one.

...and as for stuff that should never have existed, like AC, people (not just "casuals") should have stood up against that being lazily "embraced", at the time.

I saw a lot of such threads, some were about optional changes and some about overall changes, but counter-arguments are always the same:
- devs shouldn't waste resources on this
- if you wanna difficulty go to latest trial on vetHM with pugs and don't return without trifecta
- i don't have problems, but I saw people dying
- you don't need gameplay to enjoy story
- I just wanna grab my skyshards ASAP, i don't want hard mobs on the way
- remove your armor and CP

For me it looks like many want overland to remain "casual paradise", i.e. place where no kind of challenge exist by default and shouldn't be available to anybody, because... I know why, but I won't tell because of forum rules.

"A lot of such threads" are not this thread.

Here, people are (mostly) responding directly to the original post.

The OP is specifically requesting a blanket change, for everyone, based on him completing content with his friend.

He doesn't mention sliders, or options, at all.

People respond the same way to veteran overland mode requests. People don't want other players to get the content they want.

MattVH · May 2020

Tigerseye wrote: »

MattVH wrote: »

@newtinmpls

(man i don't even know how this forum works anymore, when it comes to responses lol)

Why would you not know how the "forum works, anymore"?

It works like every other forum does, doesn't it?

Did they change it from how it worked, originally?

Even then, it works like pretty much every other forum.

So, if you used to know how to quote on a forum, as you used to use it correctly, how come you can't now?

Unless that wasn't you?

Wow wtf. I just had a friendly banter with this person and I didn't know how you could tag someone without implementing the whole series of long quotes.

Get that interrogation lamp out of my face XD

Tigerseye · May 2020

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Noxavian wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Mortac wrote: »

It annoys me to no end. I want to play content that isn't tuned for a 5-year old. But it seems 90% of the PVE content is tuned for just that.

I'm not talking about raids or dungeons (public dungeons excluded). Those seem alright.

But when it comes to general questing, delves and the world in general, you can literally run around in crappy green gear 10 levels below your level and still demolish everything like nothing. How is that in any way fun?

Overland is not the universal faceroll being described. I wish some players would group up for overland quest content. They need it.

If you genuinely need to group up for overland quest content, you need major help. This game is so mind numbingly easy in the over-world, it is insane. A level 3 could solo literally all quest content.

Unless you're trying to kill a World Boss or a dragon or maybe even a dolmen, you literally should *never* have to group up with another person.

Pretty much everyone, if not actually everyone, replying to this discussion could be considered an expert in the game.

Yes, some players genuinely do need help. Often times, they are Level 3, but they could be level 10, or 20, or 30, too. If they were us, they could solo all that content with no problems. They are not us, and it is not really fair to them to measure their ability against us. To them, these things are not "mind numbingly easy".

I very often help people from zone chat. Yes, they ask to help with World bosses. But in my ~3k hours in game I never saw anybody asking to help with quest boss or anything like that. About dead players lying around - they are all AFK. They are always "resurrection pending" and have zero activity. It's either disconnects or they simply went to make tea and some mob respawned behind and after couple minutes of chewing managed to kill them. Though it all depends, I don't think mobs can kill PVP character or PVE tank, but PVE dps is squishy enough to die if AFK.

They don't have to ask for help. They are playing the game like a single player game, and can be in instances that you cannot even see them, and could not help if you tried. I wish they would ask for help.

I'm wondering how WoW managed to become most popular game in the world in it's best years when few mobs were enough to kill any player until he reaches cap and gets top gear. WoW was called most casual-friendly game... but in comparison to ESO, even modern non-classic WoW is much harder then ESO overland.

Not when I was playing it, it wasn't.

I played from Cata to WoD.

Tigerseye · May 2020

MattVH wrote: »

Tigerseye wrote: »

MattVH wrote: »

@newtinmpls

(man i don't even know how this forum works anymore, when it comes to responses lol)

Why would you not know how the "forum works, anymore"?

It works like every other forum does, doesn't it?

Did they change it from how it worked, originally?

Even then, it works like pretty much every other forum.

So, if you used to know how to quote on a forum, as you used to use it correctly, how come you can't now?

Unless that wasn't you?

Wow wtf. I just had a friendly banter with this person and I didn't know how you could tag someone without implementing the whole series of long quotes.

Get that interrogation lamp out of my face XD

You do everything like you do everything on pretty much any other forum.

I don't know how you would forget, that is all.

MartiniDaniels · May 2020

Tigerseye wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Noxavian wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Mortac wrote: »

It annoys me to no end. I want to play content that isn't tuned for a 5-year old. But it seems 90% of the PVE content is tuned for just that.

I'm not talking about raids or dungeons (public dungeons excluded). Those seem alright.

But when it comes to general questing, delves and the world in general, you can literally run around in crappy green gear 10 levels below your level and still demolish everything like nothing. How is that in any way fun?

Overland is not the universal faceroll being described. I wish some players would group up for overland quest content. They need it.

If you genuinely need to group up for overland quest content, you need major help. This game is so mind numbingly easy in the over-world, it is insane. A level 3 could solo literally all quest content.

Unless you're trying to kill a World Boss or a dragon or maybe even a dolmen, you literally should *never* have to group up with another person.

Pretty much everyone, if not actually everyone, replying to this discussion could be considered an expert in the game.

Yes, some players genuinely do need help. Often times, they are Level 3, but they could be level 10, or 20, or 30, too. If they were us, they could solo all that content with no problems. They are not us, and it is not really fair to them to measure their ability against us. To them, these things are not "mind numbingly easy".

I very often help people from zone chat. Yes, they ask to help with World bosses. But in my ~3k hours in game I never saw anybody asking to help with quest boss or anything like that. About dead players lying around - they are all AFK. They are always "resurrection pending" and have zero activity. It's either disconnects or they simply went to make tea and some mob respawned behind and after couple minutes of chewing managed to kill them. Though it all depends, I don't think mobs can kill PVP character or PVE tank, but PVE dps is squishy enough to die if AFK.

They don't have to ask for help. They are playing the game like a single player game, and can be in instances that you cannot even see them, and could not help if you tried. I wish they would ask for help.

I'm wondering how WoW managed to become most popular game in the world in it's best years when few mobs were enough to kill any player until he reaches cap and gets top gear. WoW was called most casual-friendly game... but in comparison to ESO, even modern non-classic WoW is much harder then ESO overland.

Not when I was playing it, it wasn't.

I played from Cata to WoD.

I played it in 2019 when it was "dumbed down to the bottom" according to what experienced WoW-ers said and you can die easily if you aggro several mobs on you, especially if they have slightly higher level. And enemies of much higher level just 1-shot you. In ESO just keep 1 heal-over-time over you and you'll never die - on PVE dps toon. Against tank or PVP toon, mobs simply can't outdps health recovery.

Lysette · May 2020

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Overall, One Tamriel destroyed core essence of open-world RPG. In open world RPG you can dynamically "select" difficulty without any sliders, by simply going to harder areas of enemies of higher level when you want challenge and by freely walking in areas with weaker enemies when you just want to relax and feel that you are progressing.
I didn't played Oblivion, but I heard it had awful auto-leveling and so Bethesda managed to nail it in Skyrim, by making some enemies auto-level, some fixed on low levels and some fixed on high levels. Idk why ZOS didn't used that model and instead just applied stats buffs to low level characters, while main contributor to efficiency is equipment... and so if somebody runs group dungeons from level 10 (or crafts his own gear or grinds dolmens/public dungeons) and gets good gear from them, he is simply over-powered when fresh gear is combined with low level buffs.. and if you don't update your gear, you become weaker as level up.
This system is absolutely flawed and screwed and should be changed if ZOS wants overland to be interesting and engaging for all kinds of players.

The scaling of players is intended to make it possible that players with vastly different levels can still play together. Before One Tamriel one of the problems was, that if one wanted to play together with someone else, one had to be in about the same level range or create a new character and level it to be about equal to your friend. But this again put stress on both friends to stay in the same level range to be further able to play together.

One Tamriel scaling removed the issue by giving lower level characters more resources and allows players of very different levels to play together - of course then the content is too easy, because overland content isn't made to be played by 2 skilled players - but it is quite good for 2 average newbies wanting to play together - and so this scaling gives "Tamriel with a friend" to everybody - even those with high ping or no experience or just not wanting to be very proficient in combat - there are plenty out there who do not want to learn game mechanics, but still want to have fun in ESO - and for them it is just good as it is.

in the end ESO is a bit like witcher 3 in story mode only - you can do pretty much all without having to care much about how you do it. ESO is an RPG theme park, it is for everyone without the need to be proficient during level 1 to 50. Who wants more can then try endgame content - but to be honest, for a lot of people "endgame" is the end of the game and not something they would want to achieve, because then they would have to play with the toxic group, which is looking down on them - reaching 50 is kind of the end of the game for them and has to be avoided - by concentrating on other stuff like housing and making a bunch of characters - just to never reach 50.

Elsonso · May 2020

Lysette wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Ok, I got it, ESO should be balanced for the people who can't see difference between 10 and 100 (though I bet if you'll propose them to take 10 or 100 USD they'll realize difference in few milliseconds and 99.9% of them will "equip" 100).

Most of the numbers do not make any sense to a new player - sure they can see that one number is higher than another, but without a reference these values mean like nothing to them. Especially because with any level their resources decrease and don't increase - due to scaling, clear, we know that, but a newbie doesn't - that is all pretty confusing for a newbie. He might even experience that he isn't progressing but getting weaker with every new level - because he might not min/max bur distribute his attribute points rather equally. The result of it is that every level makes him weaker and he struggles more and more.

The One Tamriel scaling that they use is mind boggling, and must confuse the heck out of new players. This is a game where, as you level up, base stats actually go down.

newtinmpls wrote: »

I remember when dolmens were de facto zone and community events. I would like to see that again.

I would like to see more World Bosses that are harder than Bittergreen.

I can remember, prior to One Tamriel, I had an upper mid-level (~40) pet sorc that could solo world bosses up to, and including, Coldharbour. It was easy. After One Tamriel, much harder, in comparison. A lot of factors went into the difference, but the bottom line is that the game was harder. Doing enough DPS to kill bosses was actually easier back then, relative to today.

Dolmens do need to be more challenging. I don't think it would hurt. Molag Bal's minions must wonder why he keeps sending them through the Alik'r anchors. Daedra can't die, but certainly they have figured out that 50 people standing around the dolmen will make their trip to Nirn rather brief. I know that ZOS has done some work here, as the boss now actually has to hit the ground before he instantly dies. Bot mitigation at least makes (some) players move, but if they are strong enough, they can survive until the healing comes. More work is needed, though. Dolmens are predictable and boring, which is the biggest thing they could change.

The hardest part in the life of a dolmen runner is what wayshrine to go to next if they are the first and cannot just follow the chevrons.

eKsDee · May 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Ok, I got it, ESO should be balanced for the people who can't see difference between 10 and 100 (though I bet if you'll propose them to take 10 or 100 USD they'll realize difference in few milliseconds and 99.9% of them will "equip" 100).

Most of the numbers do not make any sense to a new player - sure they can see that one number is higher than another, but without a reference these values mean like nothing to them. Especially because with any level their resources decrease and don't increase - due to scaling, clear, we know that, but a newbie doesn't - that is all pretty confusing for a newbie. He might even experience that he isn't progressing but getting weaker with every new level - because he might not min/max bur distribute his attribute points rather equally. The result of it is that every level makes him weaker and he struggles more and more.

The One Tamriel scaling that they use is mind boggling, and must confuse the heck out of new players. This is a game where, as you level up, base stats actually go down.

newtinmpls wrote: »

I remember when dolmens were de facto zone and community events. I would like to see that again.

I would like to see more World Bosses that are harder than Bittergreen.

I can remember, prior to One Tamriel, I had an upper mid-level (~40) pet sorc that could solo world bosses up to, and including, Coldharbour. It was easy. After One Tamriel, much harder, in comparison. A lot of factors went into the difference, but the bottom line is that the game was harder. Doing enough DPS to kill bosses was actually easier back then, relative to today.

Dolmens do need to be more challenging. I don't think it would hurt. Molag Bal's minions must wonder why he keeps sending them through the Alik'r anchors. Daedra can't die, but certainly they have figured out that 50 people standing around the dolmen will make their trip to Nirn rather brief. I know that ZOS has done some work here, as the boss now actually has to hit the ground before he instantly dies. Bot mitigation at least makes (some) players move, but if they are strong enough, they can survive until the healing comes. More work is needed, though. Dolmens are predictable and boring, which is the biggest thing they could change.

The hardest part in the life of a dolmen runner is what wayshrine to go to next if they are the first and cannot just follow the chevrons.

World bosses are the one exception, and were intentionally made more difficult, because Zenimax didn't like how they could be easily soloed. Everything else One Tamriel touched, though, was nerfed into oblivion, killing all sense of challenge and progression that overland once had.

robertthebard · May 2020

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Overall, One Tamriel destroyed core essence of open-world RPG. In open world RPG you can dynamically "select" difficulty without any sliders, by simply going to harder areas of enemies of higher level when you want challenge and by freely walking in areas with weaker enemies when you just want to relax and feel that you are progressing.
I didn't played Oblivion, but I heard it had awful auto-leveling and so Bethesda managed to nail it in Skyrim, by making some enemies auto-level, some fixed on low levels and some fixed on high levels. Idk why ZOS didn't used that model and instead just applied stats buffs to low level characters, while main contributor to efficiency is equipment... and so if somebody runs group dungeons from level 10 (or crafts his own gear or grinds dolmens/public dungeons) and gets good gear from them, he is simply over-powered when fresh gear is combined with low level buffs.. and if you don't update your gear, you become weaker as level up.
This system is absolutely flawed and screwed and should be changed if ZOS wants overland to be interesting and engaging for all kinds of players.

So now we can just start making up definitions to terms when we need to bolster our arguments? RPG has never, and will never have anything to do with difficulty. If it did, Dark Souls et al wouldn't be anything special, right? It, and games like it, are special because of the difficulty, it's what makes them stand out from the pack.

Hahahahahaha, oh wait, you're serious? Care to guess what the net result of what I bolded from your post would be? Hint: "The game's too easy, we need to step up the difficulty to make it more engaging...". What you seem to be missing here is that we, by our very nature, will trivialize the content. We do that consciously, by gaining optimum gear, and passively, by learning mechanics and using them. At least, it's passive for me, but I've been playing these games for years, and for a lot of those years, I was doing progression raiding, which meant that I had to learn all the mechanics, and how to apply them, and when. So when I was on my first toon going to cap, I didn't marvel at all about how I didn't take damage when I got out of a red circle, because I wasn't in the red circle.

This system, or something similar, is in more than a few OW style MMOs. It's not in DDO, for example, because all the zones where you have to kill stuff are instanced. The quests and explorer zones have level ranges where you won't get any xp, or reduced xp, the higher level above the quest/zone you are. But, it was built that way from the ground up. Ironically, when swtor moved to a similar system, the argument was "but I should be able to go this zone and roflstomp everything"... The same argument was used in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, when they were just trying to keep the "challenge" and loot meaningful.

Faulgor · May 2020

I've just caught myself getting excited for Greymoor with all the changes to Vampires and Werewolves, sketching new builds with different classes, which sets I could use etc. It's the first time with a chapter release we can think of new builds for our existing characters (because we don't have to reroll as a new class), so I was really looking forward to the changes.

And then I remembered there was no point, because there's no content that would require me to make such builds. Even the group content that is more challenging I run as a healer anyway, because it's easier to find a group and that's what I enjoy doing in groups. So why make any DD builds? I'm certainly not rolling a Werewolf healer.
So I'll probably just try the new vamp skills on my PvP stamplar, run through the quests and then be done with this update ...?

Man, this game. It's like a 5 star kitchen and all you're allowed to make is toast.

MartiniDaniels · May 2020

Lysette wrote: »

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Overall, One Tamriel destroyed core essence of open-world RPG. In open world RPG you can dynamically "select" difficulty without any sliders, by simply going to harder areas of enemies of higher level when you want challenge and by freely walking in areas with weaker enemies when you just want to relax and feel that you are progressing.
I didn't played Oblivion, but I heard it had awful auto-leveling and so Bethesda managed to nail it in Skyrim, by making some enemies auto-level, some fixed on low levels and some fixed on high levels. Idk why ZOS didn't used that model and instead just applied stats buffs to low level characters, while main contributor to efficiency is equipment... and so if somebody runs group dungeons from level 10 (or crafts his own gear or grinds dolmens/public dungeons) and gets good gear from them, he is simply over-powered when fresh gear is combined with low level buffs.. and if you don't update your gear, you become weaker as level up.
This system is absolutely flawed and screwed and should be changed if ZOS wants overland to be interesting and engaging for all kinds of players.

The scaling of players is intended to make it possible that players with vastly different levels can still play together. Before One Tamriel one of the problems was, that if one wanted to play together with someone else, one had to be in about the same level range or create a new character and level it to be about equal to your friend. But this again put stress on both friends to stay in the same level range to be further able to play together.

One Tamriel scaling removed the issue by giving lower level characters more resources and allows players of very different levels to play together - of course then the content is too easy, because overland content isn't made to be played by 2 skilled players - but it is quite good for 2 average newbies wanting to play together - and so this scaling gives "Tamriel with a friend" to everybody - even those with high ping or no experience or just not wanting to be very proficient in combat - there are plenty out there who do not want to learn game mechanics, but still want to have fun in ESO - and for them it is just good as it is.

in the end ESO is a bit like witcher 3 in story mode only - you can do pretty much all without having to care much about how you do it. ESO is an RPG theme park, it is for everyone without the need to be proficient during level 1 to 50. Who wants more can then try endgame content - but to be honest, for a lot of people "endgame" is the end of the game and not something they would want to achieve, because then they would have to play with the toxic group, which is looking down on them - reaching 50 is kind of the end of the game for them and has to be avoided - by concentrating on other stuff like housing and making a bunch of characters - just to never reach 50.

I understand your point, but overland is still ~50% of the game in terms of content. I spent more then enough money in this game to have right to play that content within genre principles defined by dozens of other AAA RPG and MMORPG. As for now overland doesn't qualify to those principles. What you describe - "theme park" have all rights to exist, but classical RPG experience should exist as well.
Dungeons and trials are fine in terms of action combat, but they are not open world and they are not RPG - everybody uses absolutely the same gear and builds.
So far the only place in ESO which qualifies for open world RPG is Cyrodiil. But that is only one zone and as of late it is unplayable due to performance reasons.

Galwylin · May 2020

One thing to keep in mind is to have an easy game probably requires you be successful at the RNG game within a game.

My biggest question is what's are so many advance players doing hanging out in overland zones? Like so much of current content, I've seen it and it was fun but I'm not all that interested in seeing it again. I do concede that overland content is easier for experienced players with gear but its also nothing new or interesting I hadn't see before. When new content drops I've just accepted I'm really there to see a new area. Everything attached to it is something I've already experience many times before so eh. The visual is the only selling point at this time until they find a way to make the actual play in the game play new and interesting. Which I've all but given up hope for. Probably explains why I might show up for events and new content drops but otherwise you're not giving me anything worth the time simply because I've been doing the exact same thing for years now. Just to take the example of dragons again. Hard content that you need lots of people for and after a bit they might as well be an out of the way world boss in the old zones at some times.

Lysette · May 2020

Galwylin wrote: »

One thing to keep in mind is to have an easy game probably requires you be successful at the RNG game within a game.

My biggest question is what's are so many advance players doing hanging out in overland zones? Like so much of current content, I've seen it and it was fun but I'm not all that interested in seeing it again. I do concede that overland content is easier for experienced players with gear but its also nothing new or interesting I hadn't see before. When new content drops I've just accepted I'm really there to see a new area. Everything attached to it is something I've already experience many times before so eh. The visual is the only selling point at this time until they find a way to make the actual play in the game play new and interesting. Which I've all but given up hope for. Probably explains why I might show up for events and new content drops but otherwise you're not giving me anything worth the time simply because I've been doing the exact same thing for years now. Just to take the example of dragons again. Hard content that you need lots of people for and after a bit they might as well be an out of the way world boss in the old zones at some times.

They rushed through the content the first time around to get to endgame - and did not do that by questing because questing takes time and has too less XP to make up for the time investment. So basically they haven't seen much of this content. And with cyro not working well they want to do something else "meanwhile" - not that I think it would ever be good in Cyro, but hope is their reason to stay and meanwhile they have to do something else.

Of course there will be some claiming to have done the questing - but how is that possible if they "reroll" a character and make it within a few days time into an endgame character. This cannot be done with questing - they are grinding in certain places to achieve that - so they haven't seen most of the overland content.

Elsonso · May 2020

Galwylin wrote: »

My biggest question is what's are so many advance players doing hanging out in overland zones? Like so much of current content, I've seen it and it was fun but I'm not all that interested in seeing it again.

Because we can, not to put too fine a point on it.

There may be quests that we skipped, and we can go back and do those quests and actually get XP for doing it.
We can farm for crafting materials everywhere, so why not do that?
We can do daily crafting writs all over the place, so why not?
Even advanced players can start new characters and level them up. This is actually the bulk of what I am doing in ESO right now.
Some zones are more pleasant to be in than others. Likewise, some are less pleasant. I can spend more time in the former and less time in the latter.
Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood dailies can take us anywhere.
Starting in Greymoor: antiquities!