spartaxoxo wrote: »

Let's look at the content added, shall we?

For New Players
Delves
Public Dungeons
Overland Quests

For Mid Tier players
World Bosses
World Events
Normal Dungeons
Normal Trials
Housing
Vet dungeons (higher end of mid-tier)

For Elite players
Vet Dungeon HM and achievements
Vet Trials

For the top 1%
Vet Trial Achievements

For PVP players
.....

You just mentioned the types of content. Where's the percentages?

Take Blackwood chapter for example. [Delves + Public Dungeons + Overland Quests] are a lot more content than the few [world bosses + world events + one trial] in that chapter.

And I don't agree Housing is for players in mid tier and up. You don't have to spend millions to take part in housing and have fun. Not like every player wants to make the most outstanding house in Tamriel and win housing competitions. New players can do housing just fine with simple furnishing items you find and craft. A new player can start out with the free inn rooms and buy small houses from in-game gold without much issues. (house gold prices aren't affected by gold inflation after all, so it's easier to buy houses now. Talking about buying houses from the game directly, not via crown selling)

I just walked into an oblivion portal and had to only light attack the bosses and pretend to be afk because one singular full rotation of my skills would kill it and no one else would get to enjoy it. Don't tell me those are hard because I wont believe you. If you're a level 4, or a level 30 - I get it. If you're CP 900+ and complaining, then there's a problem with your gear or rotations.

thorwyn wrote: »

Well expansions have to (and do, in this and other games) have some content for newer players since a lot of new players come in specifically to play the dlc.

Playing MMO games for more than 20 years, I have to disagree. In other MMO games, the content of expansions is usually locked behind a level gate in form of something like (current max level + 10). New players usually can not even go there without being instantly killed by the first mob they bump into. ESO has taken a different route with level scaling but that does not change the fundamental idea of expansions providing new content for veteran players.
Also, I highly doubt that new players come in to specifically play a DLC. New players come in because they have heard of Elder Scrolls and may have played the single player games. They don't know what Blackwood is and they can not connect anything to Elsweyr or Summerset. They might have seen the trailers and teasers, but even if that has an influence on their decision to buy the game, they willl have to start with the base game instead of playing the DLC right away. A DLC without context is just meaningless.

I have also played MMO games for a couple of decades now. In fact, I wrote guides for one of them and moderated their website. Ic can't remember playing one that didn't have some kind of content for new players with the new expansion. They also often have level boosting events and such to get around exactly that in cases of level gated content. ESO is significantly more lenient than others in terms of allowing you to go zone to zone, but new content to attract new players is extremely common. And I can't think of any that don't try to attract new players with their expansions.

Expansions are important to MMOs for drawing in new players. ESO is more aggressive about it, but ALL mmos use them to draw in new players.

For example if you go to WoW's shop, you can see a section for new players and they recommend the free trial and the newest expansion. They also offer a character boost so you can instantly use it, or at least that's how it was advertised.

I feel like you're conflating the way MMOs worked in the early days with the way modern MMOs work now, because that's some seriously outdated way of doing things.

LashanW wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Let's look at the content added, shall we?

For New Players
Delves
Public Dungeons
Overland Quests

For Mid Tier players
World Bosses
World Events
Normal Dungeons
Normal Trials
Housing
Vet dungeons (higher end of mid-tier)

For Elite players
Vet Dungeon HM and achievements
Vet Trials

For the top 1%
Vet Trial Achievements

For PVP players
.....

You just mentioned the types of content. Where's the percentages?

Take Blackwood chapter for example. [Delves + Public Dungeons + Overland Quests] are a lot more content than the few [world bosses + world events + one trial] in that chapter.

And I don't agree Housing is for players in mid tier and up. You don't have to spend millions to take part in housing and have fun. Not like every player wants to make the most outstanding house in Tamriel and win housing competitions. New players can do housing just fine with simple furnishing items you find and craft. A new player can start out with the free inn rooms and buy small houses from in-game gold without much issues. (house gold prices aren't affected by gold inflation after all, so it's easier to buy houses now. Talking about buying houses from the game directly, not via crown selling)

The inn rooms with the furniture they can make is pretty intentionally sparse. Even the materials for crafting a chair is a lot of money for someone who struggles to afford a mount. They let them whet their appetite, but to make a nice house, not even competition worthy just a nice little place, can easily set you back a couple hundred thousand coins. And that's just not something new people easily part with.

In terms of gameplay hours, dungeons and trials provide way more content due to replayability. In terms of the number of new things to look at, questing provides more. So it's meaningless to provide percentages, because you're basically comparing apples to oranges. Questing has more new stuff to hear, but it's not designed to be replayed over and over. It's one and done. So the dungeons, trials, world bosses, etc tend to take up way more gameplay hours than the story.

"What contradictory posts? I don't see any. I was clarifying to that person the thread was always about that and even quoted it where I said it in the OP."

OP first line "And the game has been getting harder and harder."

Later in thread "The game itself though is harder now than it was before"

Then you typed "You are mistaken. It has always been from the beginning about how new content is harder than the older content."

In your opening post you tried to exclude the easier content as being old so it doesn't count any longer. I am saying that content is still there so must still be considered. It is easier than when the game went live and hasn't ever been made harder. The game is not harder than it used to be. The new content is other than overland harder than older content but it was later in the thread when it became clear this is what you were wanting to talk about. Your earlier messages were worded in a way that did not convey that idea.

To a different point. Early in the game the zone chat had all kinds of messages where players were asking for help with dolmen. This was especially true when certain bosses appeared as the final fight at those dolmen. We outgrew them though through experience and changes to the game. It is only fitting the game progressed as well.

Thannazzar wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

And the game has been getting harder and harder.

Let's look at the content added, shall we?

For New Players
Delves
Public Dungeons
Overland Quests

For Mid Tier players
World Bosses
World Events
Normal Dungeons
Normal Trials
Housing
Vet dungeons (higher end of mid-tier)


For Elite players
Vet Dungeon HM and achievements (lower end of elite, arguably mid-tier) <---[I am here, for the sake of transparency]
Vet Trials <---[I could probably do this if I found the right group, for the sake of transparency. I have beat vet DLC trial bosses before, but haven't cleared an entire vet dlc trial. The couple of times I tried the groups fell apart due to in-fighting or lack of ability to coordinate schedules, for the sake of full disclosure]

For the top 1%
Vet Trial Achievements

For PVP players
.....

And long may it continue!

Eh. I'd rather see the world events be made easier. I thought the portals in Blackwood being made easier was a step in the right direction. I don't think they work as harder content because the people doing Overland are mostly the casuals and newbies. The mid-tier players tend to use dungeons, trials, and arenas as their replayable content because the rewards are better. And I just don't see how you can have good rewards in World events. Because everyone can do them, and if everyone is pulling the rewards then they become less valuable. That's why motifs for example plummet in value after anniversary event. It's not scarce.

Instanced content protects value of items because of scarcity.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

LashanW wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Let's look at the content added, shall we?

For New Players
Delves
Public Dungeons
Overland Quests

For Mid Tier players
World Bosses
World Events
Normal Dungeons
Normal Trials
Housing
Vet dungeons (higher end of mid-tier)

For Elite players
Vet Dungeon HM and achievements
Vet Trials

For the top 1%
Vet Trial Achievements

For PVP players
.....

You just mentioned the types of content. Where's the percentages?

Take Blackwood chapter for example. [Delves + Public Dungeons + Overland Quests] are a lot more content than the few [world bosses + world events + one trial] in that chapter.

And I don't agree Housing is for players in mid tier and up. You don't have to spend millions to take part in housing and have fun. Not like every player wants to make the most outstanding house in Tamriel and win housing competitions. New players can do housing just fine with simple furnishing items you find and craft. A new player can start out with the free inn rooms and buy small houses from in-game gold without much issues. (house gold prices aren't affected by gold inflation after all, so it's easier to buy houses now. Talking about buying houses from the game directly, not via crown selling)

The inn rooms with the furniture they can make is pretty intentionally sparse. Even the materials for crafting a chair is a lot of money for someone who struggles to afford a mount. They let them whet their appetite, but to make a nice house, not even competition worthy just a nice little place, can easily set you back a couple hundred thousand coins. And that's just not something new people easily part with.

In terms of gameplay hours, dungeons and trials provide way more content due to replayability. In terms of the number of new things to look at, questing provides more. So it's meaningless to provide percentages, because you're basically comparing apples to oranges. Questing has more new stuff to hear, but it's not designed to be replayed over and over. It's one and done. So the dungeons, trials, world bosses, etc tend to take up way more gameplay hours than the story.

You get a free mount on level 10. A lot of players make the free house in Elsweyr or the antiquity mount their goal and spend many game hours to get those.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

NupidStoob wrote: »

All the things you list as being difficult now had similar things back in the day. Dolmens were hard to solo even for good players and you would usually want a group for them. Same as Dragons, the portals in Blackwood are actually a joke compared to it. Craglorn content wasn't something you could do solo easily either when it was reworked. Dungeons like WGT and ICP were complete endgame and incredibly hard to do and they went through multiple nerfs because too many people struggled.

The experience for a new player has not changed except that they now have way more things to chose to do and the vast majority of them not being very challenging.


"Where does this idea come from" it's quite simple really. Why would older players keep playing if new content was all catered to new players? A new player has tons of things they can do (some would say so many that it seems daunting), older players not really. If new content that is released is not engaging for veteran players they end up quitting the game.

We already had a bit of a content (trial) drought during Dark Heart of Skyrim as Kyne's Aegis wasn't all that challenging. Groups that already had Godslayer finished it really quickly and had nothing really left to do. More casual groups got Dawnbringer first and then went on a six or more months Sunspire progression to finally get Godslayer. People ended up either quitting (partly due to the terrible performance during Harrowstorm and the start of Markarth) or making challenges for themselves like stamina trifecta or higher scores in older trials.

Recent dungeons that have been released have also been easier comparatively to other DLC dungeon releases that we had in the past.

Yeah Blackwood is easier, so maybe they are stepping away from trying to make things harder. But the public dungeon in Blackwood is also harder than before, so who knows. I was here for early dolmens, they were never as hard as dragons and dolmens now. I soloed it the first time before I even hit level 50, before champion points existed. Maybe this has to do with something that happened prior to console launch, but I never experienced it. And the mechanics of the older bosses are very apparently more simple than the new ones.

Yeah but that doesn't detract from my point that the new player experience has not changed to back then difficulty wise. Some things were easy, others were challenging and required a group. Fights now are more engaging, but that's not a bad thing. Content wise though there is so much more to do nowadays that focusing on adding even more seems over the top. Alone due to antiquities, collectibles and housing (even a free house you unlock in stages). Seems to be a pretty common thing for new players to go after certain collectibles like the antiquities mount or the house and then looking for different furnishings.

In general the leveling experience has become nicer as well due to level up and daily login rewards. You get a free mount on level ten, you don't need to level alliance line to get vigor and getting major gallop is just a passive, doing normal dungeons below level 50 excludes DLC dungeons as well. The rewards give you food and potions, different currencies and other goodies that help new players. Making gold has also become a lot easier due to the inflation which makes it easier to afford anything that has fixed values set by the game.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Kredo wrote: »

Almost everything you listed used to be just as hard if not even harder and just got easy due to power creep and nerfs.

Here's a video of someone in 2014 soloing one ay level 21.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IUfAOW6ORPY

Dragons are hard to solo for even people doing vet content.

True Dolmens and Blackwood portals should be a lot harder as they are group content.

Aliyavana wrote: »

You are the type of player they cater to OP. The game is pretty easy now with only a small part catered to the elite. The newer DLC dungeons are not as hard as they used to be, and they nerfed older DLC dungeons.

I agree. I think it's a small part catered to new players/really casual players. A small part catered to elite players. And then like almost everything catered to more established mid tier players like me, who constitute the bulk of the playerbase.

The game does cater more to casuals and from a bussiness view point, they want to make it as new player-friendly as possible to attract more players (something which was emphasized in one of the recent quakecon streams during a discussion of how easy it is for new players to assimilate and instantly play with others, etc.), and they have been nerfing older content continuously (some dungeon nerfs were ninja nerfs, unannouncedand and only noticed by people running the content). In terms of diffuculty, some of the newer dungeons have been easier, some harder, and the new trial is definitely the most challenging currently, but I do agree that it's not much for the end-gamers, but I think in this regard PvPers have it worse, because they haven't had anything exciting since the hammer. Plus, the new chapter didn't have a lot of content in general, they did say they wanted to focus more on performance, though the only things I'm seeing is that they butcher skills (like the FG passive) so that they do less calculations, rather than actually fix things... and indeed the game has felt very empty since the initial weeks of Blackwood's release.

thorwyn wrote: »

Well expansions have to (and do, in this and other games) have some content for newer players since a lot of new players come in specifically to play the dlc.

Playing MMO games for more than 20 years, I have to disagree. In other MMO games, the content of expansions is usually locked behind a level gate in form of something like (current max level + 10). New players usually can not even go there without being instantly killed by the first mob they bump into. ESO has taken a different route with level scaling but that does not change the fundamental idea of expansions providing new content for veteran players.
Also, I highly doubt that new players come in to specifically play a DLC. New players come in because they have heard of Elder Scrolls and may have played the single player games. They don't know what Blackwood is and they can not connect anything to Elsweyr or Summerset. They might have seen the trailers and teasers, but even if that has an influence on their decision to buy the game, they willl have to start with the base game instead of playing the DLC right away. A DLC without context is just meaningless.

This^^

For those of us who've been playing pretty much since launch, we can tell you that it's a vastly different experience now, and in those days content was very much 'level-gated'. Entering somewhere like Craglorn, Orsinium or Imperial City was pretty much a death sentence simulator to anyone not in a group or hard into the Veteran ranks (play 'Unfinished Dolmen' in Orsinium for a taste of what pretty much all content in those zones felt like).

In those days, new content really was all but inaccessible to newer players whereas these days you can do all of the overland stuff at any level (including delves and Public Dungeons), and the only things which have actually gotten 'harder' is the dungeons and maybe a couple of the overland groups activities (although all of the latter are designed for large groups of ALL levels and aren't designed to be soloed by anyone, let alone a newbie).

I didn't manage to solo a dolmen until we'd dipped into the Champion Point era, and I think I was over CP 160 before I managed my first solo Public Dungeon clear. Even now there's a poll up in these very forums over which of the base game World Bosses is the hardest, and the one streaking ahead appears in zone 3 of one of the 5 alliance zones, and it's still kicking butt for people who can essentially roll over most of the more recent World Bosses

Compare that to the Stamplar I rolled during the Pan-Elsweyr event. Pretty much stomped anything it came across, stayed alive during the couple of dragon runs I took part in, and ran a full clear of Rimmen Necropolis before reaching level 40.
When I dipped into Blackwood to run the companion quests for them I cleared one of the portals in under 10 minutes.
That's not me acting all 'MLG', it's just a statement of how challenging it was for an essentially under levelled player.

TLDR: The vast majority of content hasn't gotten any harder (if anything, it's gotten easier) and those bits that have (Dungeons and World Group Events) are meant to be harder for everyone, not just newer players