Honestly I don't understand the problem. You want it harder? Well, remove your fancy armor and just use what plain white armor you can scavange. Still to easy? Just use the skin/fur/scales that the gods/moons/hist gave you. Still to easy? Do the same with voidsteel daggers. No enchants.

There, a challange worthy of Ysgramor! ;-)

@Chadak Oh boy, this is a doozy! Apologies in advance.

Chadak wrote: »

And yet, I give you...the entirety of human history as accumulated evidence that, in overwhelmingly vast majority, people generally do things because they want the rewards, whatever those happen to be.

I have no idea what evidence you are talking about. There has, in fact, been research done on people’s motivations for playing MMOs specifically. I actually did my thesis on that topic. It is not nearly as clear cut as you’ve mentioned here. Some people are largely influenced by social factors, some people are very into immersion and exploration. And yes, some people are achievement-oriented.

Chadak wrote: »

You say you're different; that the only reward you want is the joy of harder content.

I never said this. When I’m not playing intentionally difficult games for entirely different reasons, that are fun in their own way, you can find me playing stuff like Animal Crossing on the regular.
 

Chadak wrote: »

I say...what are you doing here in this easytown MMO? This was never, on its most outrageous day, one of the difficult MMO's. Not ever. Not. Ever.

Ignoring the fact that I play games for all kinds of reasons because they can be fun in their own way, I actually don’t play ESO anymore. I quit not quite 2 years ago, for pretty much exactly the reasons I already stated. I just hang around the forums for fun, as an Elderscrolls fan. I'm interested in seeing if things change. Anyway, I ran out of endgame difficult content and the overland content, while it did entertain me while I was getting my feet wet, isn’t engaging enough difficulty wise, and wasn’t deep/layered/unpredictable enough to be immersive. I was never asking for overland combat to be Vma. You know what I’m re-playing right now after burning through MHW? Rune Factory 4 S… Is that game crazy difficult? No. Do I play it when I want really difficult gameplay that I struggle to learn? No! But the combat is challenging enough to make it not boring to fight monsters, and enough to make investing in crafting fun, and the story and the characters are super fun.

Chadak wrote: »

As it turns out, nobody makes MMO's because they wanted to savor the challenge, and MMO studios and their publishers/owners expect these things to be profitable endeavors. They both expect and require fairly substantial profits when it comes to whether or not a game eventually gets the axe or gets invested in further and expanded upon with more content.

I really do not appreciate these huge judgment sweeps you make about players with absolutely no concrete evidence. I also do not appreciate the amount of gatekeeping you’re doing. People can and do play MMOs for whatever reason they want.. and guess what? Our reasons for playing are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, I like challenging content. I grew up with a SNES and vivid memories of games like Lion King, which I’m pretty sure I still couldn’t beat, and Castlevania 4. Those games weren’t designed to be 20-40 hours of content. You can beat most of those games pretty quickly once you’ve mastered them; it’s the amount of time it takes to learn them and replayability that gives you gameplay. It’s just a style.

But I also like games that are story and character driven, where choices matter. I like Life is Strange, and the Sims and Harvest Moon. People aren’t one size fits all. And I have no problem with the balance ESO provides: I liked that dungeons were divided by difficulty and that optional endgame challenges were available. At the end of the day, I still felt like overland content was too easy to be engaging and too simple to make me feel satisfied playing it for long.

Chadak wrote: »

ESO has been getting regular content for years. There is no other indicator necessary to conclude that the game is comfortably profitable per the desires of its owners, as they keep authorizing continued investments into expanding its development.
Turns out, nobody does that unless they expect even greater returns on such investments. It's almost like this is a core motivator for pretty much all humans everywhere about almost everything or something.

I’m not really interested in getting into how product development works here, but neither of us have enough information to make any judgments about ESO’s lifespan, what’s impacted their profit margins or who their target customers are. For all I know, ESO’s expected customer journey per player could be targeted to last 3-6 months and rely heavily on a combination of player churn and the crown store. It’s just speculation. I mean, a nearly dead MMO I played a good 15 years back is still up and running with events because the ~100-150 people left still throw money at them. Who knows what they are thinking? Maybe it's worth keeping around and financially supported by other parts of their company.

Chadak wrote: »

What in all existence about any Elder Scrolls game led you to somehow believe that any of this was going to offer the kind of challenge you say you crave? I mean, I've played them all clear back to Arena when that was the new hotness and I can very confidently say that Elder Scrolls games are cheesetastic romps that anyone with two braincells can utterly break into unbalanced godmode-tier hilarity just by learning the systems and then abusing them.
No cheat codes or console commands required. Homey G-Funk, I can murder my way through Skyrim with an enchanted fork that deals thousands of damage per hit. No cheating required. Difficulty settings won't matter much when I render myself invincible with 20k health and a fork that can oneshot everything in the game, brought forth by learning the systems and figuring out how to loophole and generally abuse them.
This is part of the fun of an Elder Scrolls game though; breaking them terribly and doing absurd things. This goes clear back to at least Daggerfall, making your character absurdly overpowered and require the minimum XP to level by setting outrageous weaknesses that never actually get attacked, then farming your way to max rank in the mage's guild by repeatedly cheesing the guild quest and doing nothing but killing thieves in the basement so you never even have to leave the building, and THEN making enchanted items that cover for your outrageous weaknesses, rendering you an unkillable god with a few hours worth of effort.
And then you can farm Daedric gear by loitering in stores, stealing everything when the store is closed and selling it back to the same store while hopping and running around, thus skilling up several of your skills.
This is the legacy of Elder Scrolls. It's a whacky mix of Shedungent's password to skip the whole thing literally being 'Shut Up' and enchanted murderforks that deal 7k damage per hit wrapped in an unhealthy number of cliffracers and an unfortunate dearth of Patrick Stewart voicing more emperors.

I swear it’s like you didn’t read anything I posted earlier in this thread. I’m well aware of the fun of breaking things, but there has to be something to break in the first place for that to work as a satisfying gameplay loop. I am still regularly murdered by mudcrabs and bears in ES games in the early stages. ESO is hardly comparable to that.

Looping back around to this idea you seem to be stuck on, that people play games for one reason and one reason alone with no variation: yes, there are plenty of people who play MMOs and difficult games for achievement-oriented reasons, which most closely resembles the description you’re giving. What you are failing to recognize is that not all achievements are external.

You referenced that most players who want harder content want things like titles, prestige, better loot, etc. Those are external rewards. But many people who are achievement oriented do in fact have fun and find pleasure in things that are more intrinsic in nature: satisfaction, pride, a sense of personal accomplishment.

Some of the most fun times I had in ESO were when I beat difficult content with my former guild. I have very vivid memories of the first time I beat v DSA on my healer! Final round, we missed the dps check and fire was everywhere. That’s usually when we’d wipe and try again, but I healed everyone through it (and got a res off) and we beat it the first try. I was so excited!
Did I get anything special out of it? A title for an alt I didn’t care about, I guess. Any loot? I didn’t need anything. Did it really matter that we beat it without restarting? Nope. But it felt so awesome, and we all had a really great time. That’s why I play super-difficult content, when I’m in the mood for it. Again, this part of the discussion is unrelated to the conversations about specific overland difficulty. Nobody wants to turn it veteran.

Faulgor wrote: »

zelaminator wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

zelaminator wrote: »

Red_Feather wrote: »

The issue is that it is effortless and not engaging. It's walking from white arrow to white arrow. The only interaction being the interact button which triggers a inventory change or NPC conversation.

It IS engaging, to quite a lot of people.. TES fans usually come for a story, not a fight.. And since the game is still alive, there must be many many people that find this experience to be a nice one

Yet you can count on at least one thread bemoaning the low difficulty in overland and quest content being active at any given time. People are bringing this up 24/7, including die-hard TES fans like myself.

Yes, there will always be threads about it, but there will also always be just as many players against doing it.. and the forum users are only a very small percentage of the players.. that huge majority of players that don't use the forums, are very likely perfectly happy

They're not. They just leave the game for something more engaging. I know all my friends did.

There are, and always will be, players who don't care about the story, or lore, or npc characters or much of anything beyond "I ignored everything that wasn't rushing me to max level/cp points so I can rant about how nothing in the game is a challenge". The short attention span, fickle tastes, next greatest thing people will always quit and move on. I was here when ESO was going to be killed by Wildstar. And whichever Star Wars game it was. And the latest WoW. The fickle short attention span never satisfied always want more players moved on. The others who play for fun, for story, for lore, even to see what happens to npcs stayed. And ESO hasn't shut down yet. If large droves of players not on the forums left, it would be noticeable. So yeah, some left. Others came. Some come back for expansions and events. :shrug: It works out.

Viewsfrom6ix wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Next thing that all these guys begging for harder haven't realized....

It's an MMORpg Open World, you are in game with, what, several hundred per zone???

So you want it harder, you're at the same Dolmen/Boss/Mob Farm Spot....

How does ZOS make it harder for you, yet keep it easy for others??

You don't, your slider won't do diddly squat, as you're in the same instance as the other 100 players right next to you....

That's why there are "Hard & Vet Dungeons", Trials, and what ever else...

Want "Harder" go where it's HARDER....

LMFAO!

Simple really, you all just don't like that answer....

Most people here want optional harder story or overland content like normal and vet for dungeons and trials. So relax, you won't be affected.

It's all about them and what they want.

SilverBride wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

The problem with that, though is that it was forced progression - needed to get your vet ranks - and on each character... I see no problem at all with providing more difficult overland as an option.

But nobody knows what the cost is - it could be trivial.. Adjustments to character strength are already in-place since 1T to scale characters for the content. It may be as simple as tweaking that one calculation based on a user setting - it maybe a lot harder. It isn't for us to know, and therefore not a good reason to base a personal decision on of whether or not you want certain content.

I am a software developer and get soo frustrated when users don't ask for things because they think they may be hard to do - when in reality it could be a half-hour job - while they are asking me to spend months on something else.. So lets just ask and let Zos decide what not to do when they determine the effort (of course feedback from them would be nice so we don't keep asking for the impossible stuff!)

It isn't likely that the cost would be trivial when you consider that everything would have to be duplicated. And the servers most likely couldn't handle the extra load so would have to be replaced.

Yes ZoS has the final say on whether or not this would be worth the effort.

As I mentioned earlier, creating a different rule set for a instance doesn't incur server strain (look at literally every dungeon having a normal and vet instance), nothing is being duplicated, just different rules being applied to a particular instance when it's made, similar to how cyrodiil and IC work. And since ZOS uses this tech everywhere, including overland where there are multiple instances of overland zones already, giving people the option to join an instance with a different rule set is something they already do. It would be a lot less effort than adding companions, who needed new systems, gear, actual voice over work (because someone mentioned how making a vet overland would need VO work which makes no sense), revitalizing old zones so long time players would actually visit them would be worth the effort.

I like easy quests, i just wish quest bosses had more hp...

Faulgor wrote: »

Chadak wrote: »

That's just the thing though - how exactly would this even be implemented in a fashion that would matter?

Over the years there have been so many suggestions how to make this work. Not that it would be our job to do so, I'm perfectly confident in ZOS' ability to develop something appropriate if only they acknowledged the demand.

But, what the heck. Let's go through this.

Chadak wrote: »

Lets say they put in a difficulty toggle. Lets say you flip it on. What then?

Do you then do half damage and take 1.5x damage? How can overworld mobs have special mechanics for sophisticated difficulty without that affecting everyone else in the overworld as well?

Yes, a simple debuff like battle spirit would be the most sensible solution. Overworld mobs don't need special mechanics - they already have them. They are just easily ignored because they can be powered through. Doshia didn't have different mechanics back in the day, you just had to pay attention to them.

Chadak wrote: »

Lets say you're doing literally anything in the overworld areas with literally anyone that doesn't have Hard Mode toggled on. Do mobs get Hard Mode mechanics that can affect you but not them? Just how long would you feel super thrilled to be doing less damage against mobs that the Normal Moders are just burning through?

As said, mobs wouldn't have to change at all.
And don't worry how long I will be thrilled, I'll be just fine. Players of varying character level and ability have been playing together at least since One Tamriel, seeing someone stronger never bothered me one bit.

Chadak wrote: »

Logically, you'd have to be in your own layer of the area where everything is tuned for this Hard Mode Overworld business, and where only other people with Hard Mode turned on also zoned into instead of the regular Normal Mode maps.

No, logically you wouldn't. What logic? What's the premise here?

Chadak wrote: »

Very little of this game's story content is solo instanced. They could totally put difficulty options on that content in the storylines, sure, but that's a puny little smidge of content compared to all the quests and questlines there are throughout all the zones that are most definitely not exclusively instanced.

Which is why you shouldn't create different overland instances based on difficulty. It's too much effort for too little gain, and just separates people further.

Chadak wrote: »

What you and others sharing your outlook want isn't particularly feasible because it literally wouldn't help anything, or it would effectively double the load on the servers to have to run twice as many iterations of every zone and public instance.

It sounds more like you are arguing against your own assumptions than somebody else's suggestion.

Chadak wrote: »

All so you can feel like you were threatened by a Guar while you were walking to Balmorra.

Funny, but no.

ZOS just recently acknowledged again that many, many of their players are playing solo. So do I most of the time.
The problem is that outside of solo arenas, solo content in this game is so trivially easy that it makes all other game systems virtually superfluous. I'd love to hunt for gear, level my crafting skills and upgrade said gear, add better traits and enchantments, learn recipes, gain new skill lines, level my champion rank, deliberate good loadouts, etc. pp. But all of these progression systems are completely irrelevant when you can beat the new story boss with a few light attacks.

So, what we really ask for is for ZOS to improve the solo experience they acknowledge is a huge part of their players' preferd playstyle, by (optionally) elevating the difficulty from the level of a visual novel to something that incorporates other game systems, the way it used to do.

Chadak wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

Next thing that all these guys begging for harder haven't realized....

It's an MMORpg Open World, you are in game with, what, several hundred per zone???

So you want it harder, you're at the same Dolmen/Boss/Mob Farm Spot....

How does ZOS make it harder for you, yet keep it easy for others??

You don't, your slider won't do diddly squat, as you're in the same instance as the other 100 players right next to you....

That's why there are "Hard & Vet Dungeons", Trials, and what ever else...

Want "Harder" go where it's HARDER....

LMFAO!

Simple really, you all just don't like that answer....

Actually you are assuming the world must be made harder and ESO is actually backwards compared with other games. Mobs don't scale to you, you scale to them. You are the one that changes, they are the same difficulty at level 1, no CP that they are at level 50,3600 CP. And mobs are (mostly) the same everywhere in the game based on their class( normal, elite, etc.) You are the one that changed.

When you are new you are leveled up to the mobs level. You lose your "buffs" over time as you get closer to their level and after you reach their level you have no buffs. All of this is built in and the same system used to buff you from level 1 to CP 160 could be used to alter your difficulty. For example, the "slider" could be moved in the opposite direction so instead of getting a 20% buff to all stats you get a 20% penalty to all stats. This would make mobs more difficult for you but Ali might have his slider set on easy (OG difficulty), Ann might have hers set on Vet( 40% penalty) and Arnold might have his set on Elite (60% penalty and they might all be in the same group.

Ann might get a little better chance at more rare loot while Arnold might get an even better chance than Ann because they are playing at a higher difficulty.

And there it is. The whole point of all of this.

/thread

There's always someone in these threads who considers it some kind of "Gotcha!" when people point out that higher difficulty comes with better/different rewards. It's not the "whole point", it's just one point to good game design.
There's no hidden conspiracy to leech a few more coins of gold out of ZOS. That's just how games work.

I think better rewards should be part of harder difficulty. It's how games work as you pointed out. That is why i mentioned it. It is a motivator for people to try harder content than they are currently doing. People doing harder overland means that some of them will get better at playing and thus be able to do even harder content that would otherwise be much for them if they didn't "work" up to it.

This is actually a current problem with dungeons. There are such big leaps between dungeon difficulties it is hard to improve at them, especially when their is constant pressure by toxic players and accelerated paces set by speed runners. It makes "getting better" in a dungeon setting difficult for many casual players.

ZOS needs to improve the content difficulty curve and make sure its a smooth ride from easy to very difficult and they don't do that. Its all cliffs and canyons. Overland is the easiest content in the game. Even the elite and bosses are easy to solo and taking on a half dozen normal mobs at a time is not that difficult for most people( assuming players with a few hundred CP and blue/purple gear).

Allowing players to choose a difficulty level and encouraging them to play at a higher difficulty would improve the game. The rewards don't even have to be that much better either. 10% more gold per difficulty level and a better chance at more rare gear or items in drops per difficulty level or some such is really all you need.

i want some togglable option with no extra rewards bar maybe a title or something. casual players wouldn't have anything change if they didn't want it to. everyone would be happy.

Ken_Koerperich wrote: »

amm7sb14_ESO wrote: »

[Revitalizing old zones?

Really??

All I ever see while I play, when I do run across others in game is this:

Standing on Dolmen farming it in milliseconds....

Or speed past every mob to get to the "Quest" marker...

So how, when playing this way, would changing anything change the game?

Running past everything every time you play will still defeat making anything harder...

You're skipping at least 85% of it to begin with....

UGH!

Again, like we've all been saying. Want a challenge, take yourself on over to the Vet Dungeons, Trials, out to the PvPvE Zones and play there.

Those are harder...

Specially the PvPvE Zone, not only do you have to beat the mobs, you got to beat the yahoo's out to ruin your day....

[removed quote]

The main aset of the game is storyline. People don´t need to go to Vet content to have some fun. You can do ALL the quests in the game with light attacks. You think that´s ok? All other mmo around like gw2, swtor, ffIX, wow, archage, neverwinter, etc offer some accecible but still challenging questing. At least you can finish a [snip] rotation on your abbilities.

[Edit for censor bypass.]

Reepley wrote: »

All other mmo around like gw2, swtor, ffIX, wow, archage, neverwinter, etc offer some accecible but still challenging questing. At least you can finish a **** rotation on your abbilities.

I don't know about these other games, but WoW does not have challenging questing, the exception being the very end of an expansion's story where you fight the main antagonist in a raid. But their zones are no more challenging than ESO's. The only difference is their zones have level ranges, but they still are not hard.

SilverBride wrote: »

Reepley wrote: »

All other mmo around like gw2, swtor, ffIX, wow, archage, neverwinter, etc offer some accecible but still challenging questing. At least you can finish a **** rotation on your abbilities.

I don't know about these other games, but WoW does not have challenging questing, the exception being the very end of an expansion's story where you fight the main protagonist in a raid. But their zones are no more challenging than ESO's. The only difference is their zones have level ranges, but they still are not hard.

Antagonist. You are the protagonist. :-)

alberichtano wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Reepley wrote: »

All other mmo around like gw2, swtor, ffIX, wow, archage, neverwinter, etc offer some accecible but still challenging questing. At least you can finish a **** rotation on your abbilities.

I don't know about these other games, but WoW does not have challenging questing, the exception being the very end of an expansion's story where you fight the main protagonist in a raid. But their zones are no more challenging than ESO's. The only difference is their zones have level ranges, but they still are not hard.

Antagonist. You are the protagonist. :-)

Well if you're going to be picky! /makes correction