My solution to game difficulty

seipher09 · May 2020

Myself and other players have complained that the questing and overall game outside of dungeons is way to easy. Things die way too fast and don't do any damage.

Most replies are don't wear armor, don't use cp and so on. That defeats the purpose of progression in a game and does not resolve the issue.

My solution is as follows.

Reenable cadwell silver or gold for every map. Not just the base game but for all zones in the game. You can have a toggle you can enable when logging in for bronze, silver or gold. That way people can play to there preferred difficulty.

Now this will of course come with the con that players are more spread out. Considering you don't need other players outside of some world bosses this should not be divided enough to hurt that.

Also an easy solution to bring players together is a new "town map". This would be a large city that everyone can go to and is shared regardless of what difficulty you are on.

The city would contain very large crafting stations, a large bank and large everything to fit people in. There could be game rooms where they add darts, or connect 4 or other mini games players can join in and have fun. Add a large arena where people can do duels. This would be true gathering hub for people.

I think by doing this we can still keep players connected and social while being able to enjoy more of a challenge when we go back to the zones.

What would be all your thoughts on something similar?

Also instead of bronze, silver and gold maybe to separate less just have standard and hard (which would be just like base and cadwell gold).

Knightpanther · May 2020

That big city of yours would lag like hell.

I still fail to understand why folks want to make the overland content hard mode? How often are you doing overland content? Maybe you should do more hard PVE stuff - trials dungeons or whatever (im not PVE so don't know).

I can only call on past experience, they made a hard overland zone, Craglorn and look what happened to that place.

Be Safe

A_Silverius · May 2020

Knightpanther wrote: »

That big city of yours would lag like hell.

I still fail to understand why folks want to make the overland content hard mode? How often are you doing overland content? Maybe you should do more hard PVE stuff - trials dungeons or whatever (im not PVE so don't know).

No one is saying* that trials and dungeons are easy. Elder Scrolls franchise has always been about exploration and questing majority of which happens to be in overland.

seipher09 · May 2020

A_Silverius wrote: »

Knightpanther wrote: »

That big city of yours would lag like hell.

I still fail to understand why folks want to make the overland content hard mode? How often are you doing overland content? Maybe you should do more hard PVE stuff - trials dungeons or whatever (im not PVE so don't know).

No one is saying* that trials and dungeons are easy. Elder Scrolls franchise has always been about exploration and questing majority of which happens to be in overland.

Right, I spend 95% of my time questing and doing things outside of dungeons.

Yes dungeons and trials can be hard but I don't want that to be the only thing I am doing with a bunch of random people. I simply want to be slightly challenged in what i enjoy doing which is questing and exploring.

Knightpanther · May 2020

Point taken but bare this in mind for a second, i spend most of my time in Cyrodiil, when i need a break i do overland to pick flowers and generally chill out.

Your idea of multiple instances is fine for folks to have a choice BUT then new players are going to miss out on the interaction with experienced players they currently get just by people like me and you wandering around giving advice.

I would guess that the 'Hard mode' instance would rarely get used due to most people in overland either leveling alts, farming materials, speed killing dragons or doing daily's (which lets face it you want over with as fast as possible).

All i see is the Craglorn failure, people just didn't want it.

Be Safe

SirLeeMinion · May 2020

seipher09 wrote: »

Myself and other players have complained that the questing and overall game outside of dungeons is way to easy. Things die way too fast and don't do any damage.

Most replies are don't wear armor, don't use cp and so on. That defeats the purpose of progression in a game and does not resolve the issue.

My solution is as follows...

I'm not opposed to your ideas, but realistically, it is a lot easier to change your behavior than it is to change the game world. For every person that wants more challenge, there are likely a hundred who are satisfied as it is (and who would complain loudly if bugs were introduced in adding difficulty settings).

As you play and stay longer, you either convert ESO into a sandbox or get bored as you wait for new content. RP, housing, soloing group content, doing open-world open handed... these are all sandbox activities. There's a real sense of achievement in soloing a dungeon or even finishing a quest line with no weapons, and you can do it right now, without waiting for ZOS to make in-game changes that may never come.

kylewwefan · May 2020

Let me try to explain this.

We already had difficult overland content once. It was a huge miserable failure fixed by Tamriel Unlimited when all zone finally got scaled instead of leveled.

You can’t go back. No one wants to go back to that except a small few.

Tamriel Unlimited was a massive smashing success in game popularity; further reinforcing the don’t go back sentiment.

Look, public dungeons and some quests used to require a group to go through. It was terrible. All anyone did was wait til they were higher level, then go back through and smash all the low level stuff. Because it was too tuff to do at low level with your makeshift gear and build.

You couldn’t really enjoy questing with someone that was a few levels ahead or below you. It didn’t work.

I don’t get why you want it to go back to that? You want it to be harder, make it harder on yourself by yourself.

I saw a Rich Lambert quote saying only %30 of the players actually uses food buff. That’s a lot of people making the game quite harder on themselves than needs be.

Linaleah · May 2020

so we are talking about separate hardmode instances? all for it. as for experienced players being able to help newbies... the way I'd solve it would be to keep unified zone chat across all instances. that way people can still as questions and have them answered. if I'm understanding it correctly - those instances are optional and normal instances would still exists (which is what would make it different from veteran zones and craglorn of old. there were NO other options. there was just one craglorn rather then normal craglorn, vet craglorn, etc)

P.S. I almost never use food buffs in overworld, personaly. only exceptions are world bosses, dragons and some of the time - public dungeons.

TropicsDelight · May 2020

Knightpanther wrote: »

I still fail to understand why folks want to make the overland content hard mode? How often are you doing overland content? Maybe you should do more hard PVE stuff - trials dungeons or whatever (im not PVE so don't know).

But seriously you could tape the mouse buttons to a baby's fingers and shake a rattle in front of them and they would curb stomp the mobs in their random spasms of excitement. Does it really need to be THAT easy??? Who exactly did they balance this content for? If a turnip had fingers and the ability to move it could solo overland content in this game.

Noone is asking for hard mode, just the slight hint of the chance to die if you fall asleep at the keyboard in the middle of a pull, instead of waking up, wiping the drool from your face, and looting the mobs.

Isarii · May 2020

Knightpanther wrote: »

I still fail to understand why folks want to make the overland content hard mode?

Because it's currently excruciatingly boring, hope that helps.

Klad · May 2020

Difficulty is subjective your easy isn't everyone's easy.

It's not going to happen just because someone whines about it on the forums.....the industry learned it's lesson from Blizzards fiascos.

Spamming the same whine daily will not get you what you want.

Isarii · May 2020

Klad wrote: »

Difficulty is subjective your easy isn't everyone's easy.

Which is why the thread we're in is suggesting an opt-in higher difficulty mode with incentives.

Sosderosii · May 2020

I can't say I wouldn't like to set difficulty but in the meantime I adapt how I can and it's fun.
I also don't like the idea of using lower level gear so I use what I find but I found some ways that might inspire you.

For quest dificulty, I disable all in-game and compass quest pins and leave the ones on the map only.
If I open the map in a place that is not either a town, wayshrine or other known place, my character loses 100 gold(placed in the bank but I might donate to a guild or other players in the future).
I use first a person camera lock mod, also on horseback.
I don't run for long distances, must be riding and on road to run, otherwise my character gets tired and has to walk.

For combat, I use a mod that disables all UI(with a key press to toggle), including my health bar, it might be easy to defeat the mobs but I don't know how much magicka/stamina/health they have or I have.
I put a penalty for death to my character, like losing all gear or 1000 gold, this kept me alive until level 17 or so.
If not enough or I get used to the mobs, then no healing until I see red or no healing at all for normal enemies in the open world.

I know all of this stuff is exaggerated but maybe you'll like parts of it.

Something that would be fund and not affect other players would be to be able to increase the difficulty for yourself only and not affecting others by adjusting some bars in the menu, that go from normal to very hard, for example a bar that nerfs your character's survivability and another for damage.
Not sure if that can be implemented though.

Taleof2Cities · May 2020

Isarii wrote: »

Klad wrote: »

Difficulty is subjective your easy isn't everyone's easy.

Which is why the thread we're in is suggesting an opt-in higher difficulty mode with incentives.

That higher difficulty mode with incentives already exists ... it's called group dungeons.

A_Silverius wrote: »

Elder Scrolls franchise has always been about exploration and questing majority of which happens to be in overland.

ESO is an MMO.

Players know going in that there's grouping involved ... before they download and click the "play" button.

daim · May 2020

The only "easy" way to do it would be same sort of buff that the levels 1-50 have, but instead of buff it would be debuff. Now there should be some sort of catch to have people to enable it of course, something like in Borderlands 3. You get better loot or something the higher the debuff is, otherwise it would be pointless and only a small portion of people would use it.

Then again, if you would give too good rewards everyone would use the "hardest mode" and it would make it basically an overal nerf.

It could make the early CP levels more fluent though as now that's the hardest "overland content mode" available as you will lose the buff and don't yet have CP's.

There's no options here that would please everyone, like in most things.

seipher09 · May 2020

Isarii wrote: »

Knightpanther wrote: »

I still fail to understand why folks want to make the overland content hard mode?

Because it's currently excruciatingly boring, hope that helps.

Exactly. Am only asking for an option that would make a lot of players happy. It truly would not affect those who do not want to do it. The normal difficulty would always be a thing still.

kylewwefan · May 2020

Ok. One last thing, Mr game is too easy. We used to be able to go into a delve; tap steel tornado ; one time; and that killed everything around. Now you have to spam it 3,4,5 times maybe do half a rotation to kill all the baddies.

It’s already 10 times harder than it was. But better.

And the stuff that was hard. Was really hard. Craglorn was like walking around through a vet dungeon. By yourself. On a max level toon. Low levels had no chance to do anything there. You just can’t grasp the concept of how bad it was?

You mention feeling some kind of progression. I’m irritated that I have to do more than one spin to win to kill everything. That’s not how this was or should be. Where’s my easy button?

But in all seriousness, progression in this game is not upward for very long. It’s Sideways. And subject to change every single patch. The devs make some change that completely wrecks your build. You start all over again.

I don’t want the whole game open world to feel like walking through VMA. I don’t even need the devs to spend any resources on this.

In all seriousness, just get nekkid, don’t use food, grab a Resto stave, put all attributes in stam, and play for fun. There you go. Open World Hard Mode.

max_only · May 2020

Zos has the numbers on how many are struggling with overland content. They know who’s dying and what people avoid doing. That’s why they changed Craglorn.

seipher09 · May 2020

kylewwefan wrote: »

Ok. One last thing, Mr game is too easy. We used to be able to go into a delve; tap steel tornado ; one time; and that killed everything around. Now you have to spam it 3,4,5 times maybe do half a rotation to kill all the baddies.

It’s already 10 times harder than it was. But better.

And the stuff that was hard. Was really hard. Craglorn was like walking around through a vet dungeon. By yourself. On a max level toon. Low levels had no chance to do anything there. You just can’t grasp the concept of how bad it was?

You mention feeling some kind of progression. I’m irritated that I have to do more than one spin to win to kill everything. That’s not how this was or should be. Where’s my easy button?

But in all seriousness, progression in this game is not upward for very long. It’s Sideways. And subject to change every single patch. The devs make some change that completely wrecks your build. You start all over again.

I don’t want the whole game open world to feel like walking through VMA. I don’t even need the devs to spend any resources on this.

In all seriousness, just get nekkid, don’t use food, grab a Resto stave, put all attributes in stam, and play for fun. There you go. Open World Hard Mode.

I am curious if you read my post. If you don't want the difficulty changed you don't have to change it. This would not affect your gameplay in any way. It would be for people like myself who do want things to be a bit of a challenge.

The delves are extremely easy and the same difficulty as the rest of overland as well. Enemies inside just melt to everything.

SirLeeMinion · May 2020

seipher09 wrote: »

I am curious if you read my post. If you don't want the difficulty changed you don't have to change it. This would not affect your gameplay in any way. It would be for people like myself who do want things to be a bit of a challenge.

The delves are extremely easy and the same difficulty as the rest of overland as well. Enemies inside just melt to everything.

In a time when the game is plagued by bugs that make some parts nearly unplayable, I would hate to see developer resources spent on implementing something you can already do on your own. Help me understand why a new game mode should be created when options to increase personal difficulty already exist. Why the resistance to simply making things harder for yourself?

kylewwefan · May 2020

I went back and read your post. Again.

Look. We had extreme overland difficulty before.

It was highly unpopular.

The devs took a massive swing in the One Tamriel update.

It was a smashing success!

There is no reason to spend any resources on this kind of development.

What is this nonsense about? Uhm...

1.) Everyone has a toggle to choose their own difficulty.
2.)We’re all separated by different instances.
3.) We have Cool new Towns to meet back up in so you can like see each other and stuff.
4.)Create some other cool mini games for players to join in on
5.) Open world PvP
6.) Rob other players
7.) Blade of Woe other players
8.) Marry and Have Children
9.) Do cool things

I’m done Billie. Go head and shut it down.

Katahdin · May 2020

They arent going to split the playerbase into two seperate instances. We used to have 3 seperate instances (faction based) and vet difficulty zones that got harder the further you went along. The vast majority of the player base HATED it, complained on the forums constantly. You were lucky to see one other person in any of those vet zones because no one played them.
We had Craglorn where most of the quests required a group, overland mobs in that zone were dangerous and hard to deal with. Again, people hated it. The only people that were there were nircrux farmers that ran around, avoiding as many of the mobs as possible and farmed nirncrux. Good luck if you ever wanted to complete the story. You couldnt find anyone to do it. Many people stopped playing because of vet zones and vet leveling.

ZoS changed it with One Tamriel. They elimiated faction based zones in PVE and allowed people to group cross faction for PVE things. All factions could be in the vet zones and they scaled everything to CP 160 with battle leveling for those below 50. They changed Craglorn so the majority of the story can be done solo. Some delves and mini dungeons still need a group most of the time. People loved the changes. Many of the people that left over vet leveling came back to the game.

The over land is easy for people that have max CP, are geared, use food and potions and know mechanics, know how to play. That happens in every MMO in existence.

On my main account, I mow down everything in overland, particularly on my max geared, optimized character. I can solo many normal dungeons on him. VMA which was excruciatingly hard when I did it the first time is fairly easy now because I know the mechanics and I learned how to play it.

I have a second account that is low CP. Ive been leveling a lowbie on that. Its not so easy when you dont have access to full sets of gear, can only use green or blue dropped gear, dont have food, dont have potions and dont have CP. I see lowbies struggle and die all the time to overland mobs.

I enjoy challenging content, but I get that challenge from dungeons and trials and PVP. When I do questing, I do it for a break from the vet content and I do it to enjoy the story. Yes there are some people in this game that actually enjoy the story. I dont want to have to beat on overland mobs for 10 minutes just to get to the next story step.

The vast majority of the player base is fine with it as it is and find other ways to challenge themselves when and if they want that. So I highly doubt ZoS is going to make other server instances and need even more servers which cant handle the game as it is now much of the time.

.

ElliottXO · May 2020

I think power creep is the main problem here.

Two years ago a good DPS pulled 40k. What is a good DPS number now? 80k?

Grumblestiltskin · May 2020

I'd just like to see the ability to remove CP at the touch of a button so I can turn off CP whilst questing. This would be especially appreciated whilst I'm going through a zone for the first time.

I know I can remove my CP if I like but to spend 3000 gold just to go questing then again spending 3000 gold when I need to jump into a dungeon or trial seems a bit much.

OneForSorrow · May 2020

We need some tricky max level zones. More Craglorns. A few of them so we're not all bottlenecked into one place. Different zones could become more accessible at different CP levels.

Isarii · May 2020

Grumblestiltskin wrote: »

I'd just like to see the ability to remove CP at the touch of a button

I think this, along with people just wanting a way to handicap themselves directly, is not a great idea. Systems like this undermine the game's progression that's a big part of what keeps players engaged - if the solution is the allow players to unprogress their characters easily to make the game fun again, that's... not great.

That's why I've been in favor of ideas that give players more reasons to progress instead - incentivized world tiers in silver and gold like we used to have (but for the whole world) would be great because they'd both make the combat more fun and give players more reasons to progress, rather than nullifying any reason to do so.

idk · May 2020

Reenabling Cadwell's Silver and Gold does absolutely nothing to change how easy overland is. That is an utterly pointless suggestion. Even before 1T it was pointless because we quickly out leveled the zones making them even easier than they are now.

MrGhosty · May 2020

Rather than focus on something that will require balancing, I'd rather they just implement the option to choose less populated instances and then give players the option to turn on a debuff similar to the battle spirit buff that Cyro has. The rewards shouldn't be changed though, they should stay the same as they exist since the "reward" is supposed to be the challenge that now awaits people.

Lotus781 · May 2020

I think it's perfect the way it is, in fact i would like to thank zenimax for allowing me to get MA weapons in normal thats gonna be awesome.

Iccotak · June 2020

Most replies are don't wear armor, don't use cp and so on. That defeats the purpose of progression in a game and does not resolve the issue.

Exactly - nerfing or debuffing yourself in order to make the game harder doesn't resolve the issue. Who wants to get so strong that they have to make themselves weaker to have fun?
It would completely discourage the idea of progressing in the game.