I thought eso was an extention of TES, so why all the complaining about content being too easy?

wishlist14 · September 2021

I loved my TES games which ultimately lead me to eso which i adore, it's a beautiful game. I have always experienced TES games as very immersive rpg games rich in lore. Infact, most TES fans were all about the lore and RP and even before eso's launch some of my wow friends were nerding about what characters they were going to play and how they were going to rp them.

It was never about the difficulty of the content or how challenging hm could be nor was it about speed mode. That's not what most players coming from TES expected nor wanted from eso.

Lately there seems to be a group of players that want the devs to push this game to a level where they get that hardcore satisfaction from beating the impossible but i really dont think the majority of eso players desire that.

Eso offers a bit of everything to many players but it cant be pushed towards the extremes other games perform at cos those other games are only capable of offering some intense challenges but not as big a variety of content or story as eso does so well.

This post is not here to upset anyone im just expressing that i want eso to stay as it is and not become some other games. There are enough competitive and challenging games out there if that's the level you play at..😊😊😊

Jeirno · September 2021

TES games have a difficulty slider, ESO does not, eso is simply Skyrim on the easiest difficulty in overland...

Xuhora · September 2021

But not all players came to ESO via the single player games. I have played around 15 hours of Skyrim, and that was after I joined ESO.
At the time ESO was released I grew tired of hyper fantasy MMOs on the market like WoW, Warhammer Online (there where many more, but this are the ones I was playing)
That’s why I joined ESO and that’s why I stick to ESO ever since with some breaks inbetween.
But why should my desires of an MMO that caters to my needs be less valuable than yours?

In fact I think ESO does the split in difficulties very well: there is the really casual difficulty like overland and normal Dungeons and Trials. For advanced players there is veteran difficulty and for the guys that want to progress there are the HMs and trifectas.
I am not part of the crowd that demands harder overland content, but I can understand where this desire is coming from.

PS: if you tell me another MMO that is not hyper fantasy and has action combat, enlighten me about the name of it so I can give it a try. I jumped on the FFXIV bandwagon about 2 weeks ago, and after 5 hours of playtime I couldn’t stand anymore cat ears and schoolgirl outfits.

ixthUA · September 2021

I completed Oblivion and Skyrim many times on normal difficulty. Playing as a healer, overland is more difficult than i would like it to be in ESO, at least until i farm enough CP to be able to swap active stars.

hcbigdogdoghc · September 2021

Found someone that didn't play TES 1-3

Oblivion and skyrim are not good TES games. Waaaaay too dumbed down. (Ex. Quest markers, *vomits*)I think I installed like 500 mods to make skyrim fun.

In the good old days even a rat can rekt you, asking for hm to require some brain activity is not asking for much

moo_2021 · September 2021

There are already reasonably difficult contents. Craglorn, certain public dungeons and quests in DLC, etc.

If someone wants impossible challenges, why not solo ball groups in Cyro or IC? Just pretend those are AI not players.

fred4 · September 2021

Because it's an MMO that people play for years. You become fluid with the combat system to an extent that does not happen in single-player games. Getting into PvP or doing something like vMA has trained me to a level of proficiency that I never thought possible. Single-player games neither provided the incentive nor did they have the longevity of an MMO. I played Oblivion and Skyrim a lot. I went through most of Oblivion twice. I modded the games. I played Dragon Age Origins 5 times, I think. That all pales in comparison to ESO.

Single-player games do not have the competitive aspect of playing with or against other players. This sharpens you to no end. A player at the helm of the opposing character in PvP is an entirely different proposition to the pitiful AI of NPCs. The longer you play ESO - if you stick with it - the more the game world fades into the background and player interactions come to the fore. At least that's how it went for me. Then, when PvE is too easy, this (a) makes grouping with other players unnecessary, defeating a core gameplay feature, and (b) makes it unbelievably boring. I frequently feel like Q from Star Trek. My overpoweredness has bred the same disdain in me, towards NPCs, that he feels towards humans. Being overpowered is immersion-breaking.

Single-player games are also finite. They work by withholding information and pacing the combat in such a way that you always have something new to learn. This is perhaps more true of linear adventure games, but I think it's true in general. ZOS have largely gone the same way with ESO. THEY don't explain everything, however the nature of an MMO is that you do learn (almost) everything (combat-related) eventually and yet you still keep playing. At that point you need the challenge of PvP, of playing against a superior AI (I know of no MMO that has this) or of challenging and fast-paced mechanics.

fred4 · September 2021

moo_2021 wrote: »

There are already reasonably difficult contents. Craglorn, certain public dungeons and quests in DLC, etc.

Errr, what??? You're at least talking about pre-nerf Craglorn, right?

mickeyx · September 2021

Most of the content thay requires group such as Harrowstorms and World Bosses and Craglorn zone is consistently ignored by players. I wish players would tackle that content first before they demand more difficult content in game.

zelaminator · September 2021

fred4 wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

There are already reasonably difficult contents. Craglorn, certain public dungeons and quests in DLC, etc.

Errr, what??? You're at least talking about pre-nerf Craglorn, right?

Not every player is playing on the same level.. you'll finde plenty of people who'll have trouble completing Craglorn

fred4 · September 2021

mickeyx wrote: »

Most of the content thay requires group such as Harrowstorms and World Bosses and Craglorn zone is consistently ignored by players. I wish players would tackle that content first before they demand more difficult content in game.

That content does not require groups nor is it being ignored. If something is being ignored, it's mostly because it's not part of an event and because the game is actually quite large for the player base. Try making a video of soloing a world boss. You can't. Not on your first attempt anyway. Not because you can't do it, but because someone else turns up. Talking about PC EU here. I guess this may be different on servers with smaller populations. Just about the only world boss I know where you have to have just the right build for soloing is the Unfinished Dolmen. There are a few others that self-heal, which maybe can't be soloed, although I bet someone with more DPS than me has done it. One in Murkmire comes to mind. Outside of those, world bosses are a piece of cake.

Callosum · September 2021

Again, we who wants harder overland content is not asking for changes that will effect your game experience.

With every zone having the same difficulty level I would say it is necessary with just a bit more challenge progression in one zone and this could be implemented without affecting how the overland is working now. Several suggestions have been presented: nerf scrolls, vet option in intanced content or just one single quest in every new zone that have a veteran difficulty option.

Of course I would like the more challenging content to come with better rewards and I know a lot of you are scared that this will mean that these rewards will only be available for players who like and wants this kind of content. I think this could easily be overcome just by making this type of content an alterative way to farm eg. mythic item (it's just an example). Imaging puplic dungeons had a Vet SOLO option and killing all bosses gave you a small chance to collect a random mythic item from that zone. In that way the harder content could be implemented without affecting everyone, the devs would't have to make new content (just a vet option) and the rewards that comes with this content would still be available through casual content but still be worth the effort.

fred4 · September 2021

zelaminator wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

There are already reasonably difficult contents. Craglorn, certain public dungeons and quests in DLC, etc.

Errr, what??? You're at least talking about pre-nerf Craglorn, right?

Not every player is playing on the same level.. you'll finde plenty of people who'll have trouble completing Craglorn

Yeah, after 6 years in this game I'm probably more OP than most. However, I joined in the summer of the console release and by the time Orsinium came around I was already at the immersion-breaking point. There either has to be superior writing or challenging gameplay and there wasn't enough of either. In those days Craglorn kept me engaged, but this was pre-nerf Craglorn. There were more bosses and more mobs and they were dangerous. Venturing into Elinhir was a challenge for me as a solo player and getting ever deeper into it was satisfying. At the same time I was kind of stuck in my development. I kept doing the same bosses over and over with the same average result. If there's ever been a problem in ESO, it's the lack of smooth progression. Then, one day, you decide to tackle a dungeon that gives you real problems or you cut your teeth on vMA. After that things change. You now know more. You perhaps learned to bash and interrupt NPCs. You learned to block-cast. You eventually got to know what's truly OP in solo PvE in terms of builds. Pale Order is no big secret, but Brawler and the Master's 2H perhaps flies under the radar a bit. You think a magplar is OP and easy to play, wait till you try this. It's not that I'm looking for a nerf of these things. Sometimes you want to farm in comfort and they have their place. They're great tools for intermediate players who can get them too.

As always, the problem is the large gap between easy and hard content. One of the big problems is that this gap is reinforced by the lack of a smooth difficulty progression in ESO. If you only do overland, you are never challenged. Your combat prowess doesn't improve, because you're hardly even aware of what you CAN do. That you can bash, block, roll dodge, weave, bar swap cancel skills. Trying to solo a world boss, when you're at that level, isn't all that enticing, because with all group content there usually comes a level of tedium when your DPS is low. Some people parse 10K on a trial dummy, some 100K. The latter may nuke a world boss, for the former it's just tedious when, say, they are tanky enough to complete the boss. There is a lack of content that transitions you to a higher combat level. This may be an impossible ask of ZOS, but there is probably no question that this has been a drawback of One Tamriel. vMA is probably the best there is. It's brand of pace, the hard-hitting but easily killed mobs, the gradual escalation of the rounds, it certainly does a lot of things right. World bosses suffer from being tedious until you reach very high levels of proficiency. I think what I'd be looking for from overland is more something like a scaled-down vMA experience, which is kind of what the original Craglorn and IC were. I also enjoy Blackwood for it's lesser concentration of mobs, much like single-player games actually are. Rather than constantly being assaulted by nuisance mobs, it might be better to have fewer, but more hard-hitting mobs when you do engage them.

Realistically, this won't happen. You can't square One Tamriel - the freedom to go anywhere as a beginner - with this. You're in a linen shirt with a white 2H sword and no stamina, heavy-attacking to your place of glory. It won't work.

hands0medevil · September 2021

wishlist14 wrote: »

I loved my TES games which ultimately lead me to eso which i adore, it's a beautiful game. I have always experienced TES games as very immersive rpg games rich in lore. Infact, most TES fans were all about the lore and RP and even before eso's launch some of my wow friends were nerding about what characters they were going to play and how they were going to rp them.

It was never about the difficulty of the content or how challenging hm could be nor was it about speed mode. That's not what most players coming from TES expected nor wanted from eso.

Lately there seems to be a group of players that want the devs to push this game to a level where they get that hardcore satisfaction from beating the impossible but i really dont think the majority of eso players desire that.

Eso offers a bit of everything to many players but it cant be pushed towards the extremes other games perform at cos those other games are only capable of offering some intense challenges but not as big a variety of content or story as eso does so well.

This post is not here to upset anyone im just expressing that i want eso to stay as it is and not become some other games. There are enough competitive and challenging games out there if that's the level you play at..😊😊😊

because ESO is a MMO game PLACED in TES universe and MMO games tend to challenge players. If I want play housing, resources farming, or any other simulator, I will play the sims or something

Azariiel_Lunataris · September 2021

wishlist14 wrote: »

I loved my TES games which ultimately lead me to eso which i adore, it's a beautiful game. I have always experienced TES games as very immersive rpg games rich in lore. Infact, most TES fans were all about the lore and RP and even before eso's launch some of my wow friends were nerding about what characters they were going to play and how they were going to rp them.

It was never about the difficulty of the content or how challenging hm could be nor was it about speed mode. That's not what most players coming from TES expected nor wanted from eso.

Lately there seems to be a group of players that want the devs to push this game to a level where they get that hardcore satisfaction from beating the impossible but i really dont think the majority of eso players desire that.

Eso offers a bit of everything to many players but it cant be pushed towards the extremes other games perform at cos those other games are only capable of offering some intense challenges but not as big a variety of content or story as eso does so well.

This post is not here to upset anyone im just expressing that i want eso to stay as it is and not become some other games. There are enough competitive and challenging games out there if that's the level you play at..😊😊😊

No ESO was initially an extension of the MMO Dark Age of Camelot (same Devs) and then it wasn't successful, people cried, and then the game catered to the single-player crowd, and that's the game we have now.

zelaminator · September 2021

fred4 wrote: »

zelaminator wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

There are already reasonably difficult contents. Craglorn, certain public dungeons and quests in DLC, etc.

Errr, what??? You're at least talking about pre-nerf Craglorn, right?

Not every player is playing on the same level.. you'll finde plenty of people who'll have trouble completing Craglorn

Yeah, after 6 years in this game I'm probably more OP than most. However, I joined in the summer of the console release and by the time Orsinium came around I was already at the immersion-breaking point. There either has to be superior writing or challenging gameplay and there wasn't enough of either. In those days Craglorn kept me engaged, but this was pre-nerf Craglorn. There were more bosses and more mobs and they were dangerous. Venturing into Elinhir was a challenge for me as a solo player and getting ever deeper into it was satisfying. At the same time I was kind of stuck in my development. I kept doing the same bosses over and over with the same average result. If there's ever been a problem in ESO, it's the lack of smooth progression. Then, one day, you decide to tackle a dungeon that gives you real problems or you cut your teeth on vMA. After that things change. You now know more. You perhaps learned to bash and interrupt NPCs. You learned to block-cast. You eventually got to know what's truly OP in solo PvE in terms of builds. Pale Order is no big secret, but Brawler and the Master's 2H perhaps flies under the radar a bit. You think a magplar is OP and easy to play, wait till you try this. It's not that I'm looking for a nerf of these things. Sometimes you want to farm in comfort and they have their place. They're great tools for intermediate players who can get them too.

As always, the problem is the large gap between easy and hard content. One of the big problems is that this gap is reinforced by the lack of a smooth difficulty progression in ESO. If you only do overland, you are never challenged. Your combat prowess doesn't improve, because you're hardly even aware of what you CAN do. That you can bash, block, roll dodge, weave, bar swap cancel skills. Trying to solo a world boss, when you're at that level, isn't all that enticing, because with all group content there usually comes a level of tedium when your DPS is low. Some people parse 10K on a trial dummy, some 100K. The latter may nuke a world boss, for the former it's just tedious when, say, they are tanky enough to complete the boss. There is a lack of content that transitions you to a higher combat level. This may be an impossible ask of ZOS, but there is probably no question that this has been a drawback of One Tamriel. vMA is probably the best there is. It's brand of pace, the hard-hitting but easily killed mobs, the gradual escalation of the rounds, it certainly does a lot of things right. World bosses suffer from being tedious until you reach very high levels of proficiency. I think what I'd be looking for from overland is more something like a scaled-down vMA experience, which is kind of what the original Craglorn and IC were. I also enjoy Blackwood for it's lesser concentration of mobs, much like single-player games actually are. Rather than constantly being assaulted by nuisance mobs, it might be better to have fewer, but more hard-hitting mobs when you do engage them.

Realistically, this won't happen. You can't square One Tamriel - the freedom to go anywhere as a beginner - with this. You're in a linen shirt with a white 2H sword and no stamina, heavy-attacking to your place of glory. It won't work.

Who says that challenge are related to how skillful you are.. There are a thousand reasons to why people see it as a difficult area, as to why any content may be difficult.. Everyone has their own reason for playing this game.. You can't use the same ruleset and baseline for everybody.. Many of you seem to not understand this..

Parasaurolophus · September 2021

Because overland and questing are completely different from RPGs or MMOs. Remember how you played Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind. Remember how you had to explore this world, how you immersed yourself in questing, how you had a variety of actions. There were also difficulty settings. Questing, fighting, looting all together create a deep experience for the player. Teso is more like a visual novel, as if you are not playing or participating in the story, but just flipping through the comic. Endless dialogues, go to the marker, again dialogue, marker, dialogue and so on ad infinitum.
But teso is a mmo and can't give the same solo experience as the numbered parts of the game. No matter how hard ZoS tries. None of the locations can match the level of study and immersion as in Skyrim or even Oblivion. This means that the game has to set other tasks to entertain the player, reward efforts and give players interesting tasks.
But there are almost no interesting tasks and good rewards in the game. Yes, we have raids, but you will not be in trials all your playing time, because they are on schedule. Even in dungeons, people hardly go anymore because there are not enough incentives. In total, we have dead locations and constant events from which a large number of players are just tired. ZoS events are just trying to create a great artificial online.

Long_Distance · September 2021

fred4 wrote: »

Because it's an MMO that people play for years. You become fluid with the combat system to an extent that does not happen in single-player games. Getting into PvP or doing something like vMA has trained me to a level of proficiency that I never thought possible. Single-player games neither provided the incentive nor did they have the longevity of an MMO. I played Oblivion and Skyrim a lot. I went through most of Oblivion twice. I modded the games. I played Dragon Age Origins 5 times, I think. That all pales in comparison to ESO.

Single-player games do not have the competitive aspect of playing with or against other players. This sharpens you to no end. A player at the helm of the opposing character in PvP is an entirely different proposition to the pitiful AI of NPCs. The longer you play ESO - if you stick with it - the more the game world fades into the background and player interactions come to the fore. At least that's how it went for me. Then, when PvE is too easy, this (a) makes grouping with other players unnecessary, defeating a core gameplay feature, and (b) makes it unbelievably boring. I frequently feel like Q from Star Trek. My overpoweredness has bred the same disdain in me, towards NPCs, that he feels towards humans. Being overpowered is immersion-breaking.

Single-player games are also finite. They work by withholding information and pacing the combat in such a way that you always have something new to learn. This is perhaps more true of linear adventure games, but I think it's true in general. ZOS have largely gone the same way with ESO. THEY don't explain everything, however the nature of an MMO is that you do learn (almost) everything (combat-related) eventually and yet you still keep playing. At that point you need the challenge of PvP, of playing against a superior AI (I know of no MMO that has this) or of challenging and fast-paced mechanics.

That sums up my experience nicely.

In the beginning of ESO in 2014 I pretty much played it as a single player RPG and it had some challenges back then. I remember i wiped several times at a overland boss from the main quest in Tanzelwil, only to be able to defeat him after I have gained some more levels and skills. And it felt like an accomplishment after I finally did it.

I later on did most of the quests in the base game including Cadwell's gold, but nowadays I don't even buy new chapters or DLCs any more. I have unsubscribed and haven't spent any real life money on ESO for about 1,5 years. The only thing that keeps me in the game is PvP. The last thing I bought was Greymoor, I think. Because to stay competitive you needed mythics. I though got bored from the quests in Western Skyrim within 10 minutes, quit them after a while and never came back.

Whenever they introduce some new OP sets or rework old ones, I buy crowns with gold to purchase a DLC, and farm the sets that I want (or buy them with gold from vendors if they happens to be an overland). I couldn't be arsed to quest through yet another zone, because I know from experience it's gonna be the same old same old and it will provide way less of a challenge than at launch.

I respect that people like different aspects of the game and that some people still enjoy overland stories and questing after all these years. Also I see that the game needs an influx of new players who need to learn the game and don't get frustrated by content that is too hard to master. Yet, I wished they'd make the game more interesting for veteran players that primarily seek for content that provides a challenge. The arenas aren't bad in that regard, but there's only 2 solo ones and 2 4-man ones compared to how many overland zones? I guess that tells a tale where the game is heading.

Paulytnz · September 2021

Xuhora wrote: »

But not all players came to ESO via the single player games. I have played around 15 hours of Skyrim, and that was after I joined ESO.
At the time ESO was released I grew tired of hyper fantasy MMOs on the market like WoW, Warhammer Online (there where many more, but this are the ones I was playing)
That’s why I joined ESO and that’s why I stick to ESO ever since with some breaks inbetween.
But why should my desires of an MMO that caters to my needs be less valuable than yours?

In fact I think ESO does the split in difficulties very well: there is the really casual difficulty like overland and normal Dungeons and Trials. For advanced players there is veteran difficulty and for the guys that want to progress there are the HMs and trifectas.
I am not part of the crowd that demands harder overland content, but I can understand where this desire is coming from.

PS: if you tell me another MMO that is not hyper fantasy and has action combat, enlighten me about the name of it so I can give it a try. I jumped on the FFXIV bandwagon about 2 weeks ago, and after 5 hours of playtime I couldn’t stand anymore cat ears and schoolgirl outfits.

Give Guildwars 2 a look. It's similar to ESO and some some ways better, others not. But it is a good game.

Nisekev · September 2021

Are you post-Oblivion TES admirer? Because Morrowind and Daggerfall were pretty hard at the beginning.

ZOS_Ragnar · September 2021

We have closed this thread as there is a similar active discussion in this other thread here.