DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Iccotak wrote: »

DaveMoeDee wrote: »

Play as a tank. We don't need overland content to even further funnel people to all be DPS builds.

I'm not opposed to any added features. I just don't care if they implement this and developers are a limited resource.

I play a tank and it doesn’t make the fights engaging- just tedious.

Story Bosses are designed only for new players. Pure and Simple.

Which hurts the overall player base because we already see a response of people who don’t do Story mainly as consequence of the lack of engaging combat. - Doesn’t matter if the writing is good if the gameplay doesn’t support the narrative.

Yeah, that was my point about being a tank. Even the easy overland is a grind with a tank.

I question the idea that people would do more questing if the combat was better. Either they are into narrative or they aren't. Doing the narrative to get to battles makes the narrative kinda pointless. Even when the game was new and things felt more challenging due to less power creep, there were a lot of people who preferred to just grind mobs to level.

It is not about one thing or the other. It is not a matter of story versus gameplay.

It is a matter of the story and the gameplay supporting each other.

For me, I simply do not understand this mentality that gameplay and story should be completely separate. It does not make sense. If I just wanted to experience a story and that was it that I would watch a movie or TV show. For a video game I want both and engaging story and engaging gameplay.

As many other people here including myself have said, if the story builds up this main antagonist to be super dangerous and super powerful then that is what we are going to expect and when the gameplay does not live up to what they hype up then that story becomes underwhelming and unmemorable.

You just can’t take a story at all seriously when the main antagonist is killed in two seconds or is so incredibly basic.

And I’m not comparing it to other games, we don’t have to, when the developers have already shown that you could have a story with engaging combat in their dungeons and trials.

Developers have shown that they can make really good combat content, for solo and group. And that content doesn’t have any problems with the bosses living up to the narrative.

So again, I want to go to bosses to have the same treatment as dungeons and trials.

SilverBride wrote: »

Iccotak wrote: »

And like other people have already said in this thread and others, the hard story bosses made those experiences memorable and encourage them to learn the gameplay.

It was a small minority that saw it that way. A huge portion of the playerbase was completely frustrated by having their progress impeded and spending days at a standstill.

This is why they changed it. They are not going to change it back.

Well never say never. Don’t agree with an absolutist mindset - and I don’t care for telling people to just be happy with what they got when there is a legitimate criticism.
That’s just trying to shut down the conversation.

It is a topic that is frequent on various online platforms from the Forums, Reddit, YouTube, Podcasts, etc even the developers themselves have acknowledged that it is a problem and it is something that they were looking into.

So maybe have a conversation instead of belittling them and saying they basically don’t matter.

SilverBride wrote: »

Iccotak wrote: »

As many other people here including myself have said, if the story builds up this main antagonist to be super dangerous and super powerful then that is what we are going to expect and when the gameplay does not live up to what they hype up then that story becomes underwhelming and unmemorable.

The story also builds the player up to be the hero who is able to defeat the main antagonist solo... no matter what their level or experience.

Same can be said for dungeons and trials, but those still have a challenge.

Just because the narrative says the player can beat that villain doesn’t mean that fight has to be easy.

it’s not exactly great for the health of the player base when only one demographic is being catered to when it comes to the story.

Like I have said in the past, if the game is going to market the story for all players then they should try and make it enjoyable for more than just one type of player.

SilverBride wrote: »

First of all, where are the links to the developers saying this is a problem? Because I have my doubts.

what the developers had to say
From Reddit over 1 year ago
Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/bwdb0r/comment/epwrb9x
Text of answer

ZOS_MattF
Hello! We have no plans on implementing spears, but we have talked off and on about cool ways to do the one hand magic/one hand weapon thing. That's not on our roadmap anywhere, but we have been brainstorming.

There are so many cool things we could do! Seriously, we love these ideas too, but it all comes down to a matter of time and priorities.

EDIT: to respond to your edit. Yes, we've talked about this, in fact we tried to get that into the game as part of One Tamriel, but we just couldn't get it done. So we have ideas on how to have difficulty settings for overland content, but it's not currently planned. It's a great idea.

---

SilverBride wrote: »

Second, I think this conversation does need to be shut down. It is a minority of players trying to take over the base game and turn it into end game content. That is completely unreasonable.

1. Shutting down a conversation because you simply disagree is really never ok.
2. No one is trying to take over anything. This is the "Veteran Elitist" arguments all over again. Asking for an optional difficulty to actually make overland and/or story bosses engaging fights worth looking into is not taking anything away from anyone - if anything it adds more to do for more players.

SilverBride wrote: »

Third, they are not going to risk losing the majority of their player base to appease a few. They are smarter than that, which is why they made the changes they did to fix what was then the real problem... that story bosses were too hard for most of the players.

They wouldn't lose anyone by giving more players more options. That's just silly

SilverBride wrote: »

They do that now. They have overland for everyone... veteran dungeons and trials for end game players.

And Endgame players (or casual players who sometimes dabble in endgame) have expressed disappointment in story bosses and overland. because that content is the majority of the experience and telling people to just be happy with their little corner is not actually listening to them.
In fact you've resorted to basically belittling them or making them out to be evil elitists with secret agendas.

Yeah I made a proposal for a game mode that works like the rest of the game. You get a reward dependent on the difficulty setting you chose. At the time I even restricted it to cosmetic - but at this point with a sticker book I don't think it matters.

But God Almighty Forbid that I propose a game mode that offers something for more than one type of player.
Some are going to just want the challenge and some are going to just want reward, and some are going to want both.
That is the case for the game already - so making a game mode that works just like the rest of the game is not dubious despite the many attempts you have made to frame this conversation as such.

SilverBride wrote: »

I question the motives of this request and feel it is really more loot oriented than anything else. Otherwise why would you suggest as you did in a thread you started on basically the same subject, that the bosses be repeatable? And drop vet level gear?

If it was really about the story and immersion, doing the boss more than once would completely break immersion. It seems the motive here is to have an easy source of vet gear without having to actually run the established vet content.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/549560/harder-main-story-bosses/p1

Sure, because Content that is Challenging & Endgame difficulty is an easy source of loot. Said No One.

Way to exclude important details in order to support your argument.

Why would I say make it repeatable?
Because ZOS only makes repeatable content hard or with difficulty options as that justifies the effort & resources put into those activities. There are no exceptions - so why would I go against that design philosophy?

And I view the way story bosses are now WAY more immersion breaking than it being repeatable. I still find dungeons and trials more engaging in the gameplay & story than the story bosses even though I have done them more than once on the same character.

The entire game is centered around loot, that is literally the case for every activity made by the devs - so you say I should make an activity that offers No Loot otherwise I am just scheming for loot (even when I originally made it only cosmetic)? That's foolish.

I proposed an activity that I tried to design in such a way that it would be seamless with what is there - and your overwhelming response was a knee-jerk "It's Fine the way it is" and proceeded to go about 15 pages of ignoring people, shaming them, trying to shut down the conversation, and making out anyone who disagreed with you as veteran elitists with a secret agenda.

Anyone can read that thread and see for themselves.

exeeter702 wrote: »

Nothing is more damning to the video game medium of story telling than having an antagonist of a given narrative posses zero capabilities of producing a failure condition to a player. And pre 1t quest bosses being an issue is an entirely different point. You can have a middle ground that at the very least the game asks of its players to give some effort for a final encounter instead of smothering them with visual spectacle so it can superficially feel grandiose where the win condition requires nothing more than stepping out of a ground effect and left clicking every 1 second.

ZOS_MattF
to respond to your edit. Yes, we've talked about this, in fact we tried to get that into the game as part of One Tamriel, but we just couldn't get it done. So we have ideas on how to have difficulty settings for overland content, but it's not currently planned. It's a great idea.

What I took away.

SilverBride wrote: »

As far as "It's a great idea.", they always say things like that... it's called being diplomatic.

Ah yes, you once again went about the reductionist, belittling, and dismissive route. 👌

SilverBride wrote: »

You have to take into consideration they were just coming from a setup that had separate zones with separate difficulties so they probably did discuss how to implement some aspects of their current system into the new one. They didn't find a way to do it.

ESO changed into "One Tamriel" mode in October 2016. If they haven't prioritized that in the past 5 years I very much doubt they ever will.

1. That does not mean that it is impossible or could never happen.
2. Just because you find it unlikely, or disagree with it, is not a reason to go about trying to shut down the conversation