Jarl_Ironheart wrote: »

Maythor wrote: »

I am very conflicted every time I see people advocating for increased overland difficulty, and I wonder how they forsee this bringing value to gameplay? I suppose like everything else it will depend on the execution of the idea but I wonder if it will have a place in the game for many people. I'm slightly more calmer since I have seen some of the more measured responses in this thread that seem to align more to my own view of such a change.

How more difficult should it be, and if it is of veteran difficulty that will require gearsets, potions, and rotations to move about the world how will we be enticed to do this? Or is increased difficulty a reward in itself for people? I'd have a great many concerns about how the balancing of such a system might/could be managed considering how other changes have gone in the past. Doubtless we'd adapt and get used to things as we always do, but would it actually add to the fun of play?

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be doing increased difficulty unless I get some reward I find of value from doing it, since I have vet dungeons and trials for taxing content already.

Well I for one enjoy challenge. I want overland to make me need to block, dodge roll, heal, etc. Right now I 2 shots enemies and its rather boring.

I've defeated and thwarted gods and demi-gods. I've sent them crawling back into oblivion their plans and plots laid in waste before them. I should be able to just glance at a Skeever and have it fall over dead.

kargen27 wrote: »

Jarl_Ironheart wrote: »

Maythor wrote: »

I am very conflicted every time I see people advocating for increased overland difficulty, and I wonder how they forsee this bringing value to gameplay? I suppose like everything else it will depend on the execution of the idea but I wonder if it will have a place in the game for many people. I'm slightly more calmer since I have seen some of the more measured responses in this thread that seem to align more to my own view of such a change.

How more difficult should it be, and if it is of veteran difficulty that will require gearsets, potions, and rotations to move about the world how will we be enticed to do this? Or is increased difficulty a reward in itself for people? I'd have a great many concerns about how the balancing of such a system might/could be managed considering how other changes have gone in the past. Doubtless we'd adapt and get used to things as we always do, but would it actually add to the fun of play?

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be doing increased difficulty unless I get some reward I find of value from doing it, since I have vet dungeons and trials for taxing content already.

Well I for one enjoy challenge. I want overland to make me need to block, dodge roll, heal, etc. Right now I 2 shots enemies and its rather boring.

I've defeated and thwarted gods and demi-gods. I've sent them crawling back into oblivion their plans and plots laid in waste before them. I should be able to just glance at a Skeever and have it fall over dead.

That's the point for me, we made gods tremble as easily as just a skeever, which feels akin to some exploit run in sp game, nothing memorable or even remotely indicating that we've earned it. Kinda like buying content makes us a godlike figure and not our actions in said world. Kinda sad lmao.

Froil wrote: »

But the problem I have with anyone asking for "veteran overland" is missing the point. You, the person asking for vet overland, KNOW HOW TO PLAY THE GAME. You know how to roll dodge, to block and interrupt enemies, what gear to wear, what skills to use, what food to eat, what CP to have slotted... I don't think a single person asking for it is someone new.
What you want is to be like you were when you first started, ignorant of what to do, you want to see it through fresh eyes, to forget and experience it all again for the very first time, giddy with anticipation or perhaps cautious curiosity, back in the early days when ESO was first announced and people were crying about how the series was dying or whatever and the first few beta testings. Unfortunately, we just can't go back to that, as bittersweet as it was.

I don't think that is true for everyone. Speaking for myself, I mostly play the game solo, only grouping for dungeons and trials outside of events and overland quest sharing. I like to take on group dungeons solo for the added challenge, I just did a non-DLC vet HM earlier today, and my DPS is not even that good. I also mod the single-player games to basically have every encounter be a challenge; don't get me wrong, I do not expect an MMO to be able to deliver that sort of experience, but the overland enemies in ESO are so pathetically weak for a lot of people with any experience at all playing the game. Even when I first started, I was never at a point where I was ever at risk of dying to overland enemies.

I, for one, would find much more enjoyment out of tough overland enemies, akin to say, the strength of non-boss vet enemies, at least. (Or AT LEAST make the Zone Story content optionally harder; it's laughable when you come to this world ender and kill them before they finish their spiel - the lack of challenge makes it feel unfulfilling, lame, and unearned.) I know it wasn't everyone's cup of tea and it has issues, but I actually liked the intense level scaling that Oblivion had; the game stayed difficult the whole time due to that, if you cranked the meter up. When I first heard ESO had scaling, I thought it would be on the Oblivion side, not on the "non-group content is always easy" side.

When my older sister and I started playing the game together, we quickly stopped doing quests and overland since the enemies would all drop in a second, posing no challenge or offering any engagement whatsoever, just unsatisfying and unrewarding, so we started running dungeons, but it was sadly not the same as exploring the overworld together, which we really liked the idea of. She stopped playing altogether when Skyrim Together Reborn came out, and now we just play that for the fun overworld with enemies that don't die in 2 seconds, despite its issues.

The thing is, I prefer questing and roaming the overland, but sadly, the overland is unengaging and easy, so I have to solo content meant for more than one player to find something satisfying (and some dungeon bosses have mechanics that are pretty impossible to solo.) But you can only run the same dungeons so many times before it gets repetitive, whereas overland, barring the lack of difficulty, has a ton of stuff to offer: quests, delves, public dungeons, world bosses, actual open world to explore. So, it would be nice to actually want to partake in the overland, instead of running past all of the enemies. The only overland enemies that I want to interact with are World Bosses, which are fun to solo (except for ones like Walks-Like-Thunder and B'korgen lol) since if you have any amount of people, they all just melt. I think Dragons are the only overland content that feels like it was really meant for a group, though they are still soloable if you have time to kill and no one else shows up, which I have yet to have happen.

Your point only really shows how the overland is catered to the most casual players, those that do not know how to fully play the game (dodging, block, gear, cp, etc;) that is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it would be great if there was an option to be able to have harder overland for those that would want it. The overland itself is really good, just the enemies are pitiful. It's not that I want to relive the experience of being fresh and new, I just want enemies that actually put up a fight. Not everyone likes enemies that die in mere seconds.

And I am not saying that this "brand new thing" needs to be harder overland, but I would definitely appreciate it if it ever became an option. There are so many overland quests that I have not done, due to them lacking any challenge at all. Yeah, I could just stick to PVP and Trials, but I like exploring and questing more.

I really wish it would be it
but I'm affraid it wount.

Usualy chapter feature is something that is supposed to sell the chapter. I don't think that vet overland option can be a "closed behind a chapter" feature, more likely something for all players. So i doubt they will release it in Q2. However I really would like to be wrong about this.

Froil wrote: »

I really hope it isn't. It would be such a waste of time and resources.[...]

But the problem I have with anyone asking for "veteran overland" is missing the point. You, the person asking for vet overland, KNOW HOW TO PLAY THE GAME. [...]

So basicaly if I know how to play the game, the game shouldnt offer me any fun, any challange or progress in 90% of content? And it's a waste of time to produce something for me? Please check the 140+ pages of pinned topic, no one is asking for a obligatory vet overland, we just want an option for it. Just to feel anything during questing, any thread, any adventure.
From my point of view creating yet another trivial zone and quest line is a waste of time and resources, because they are to boring to play. The great villian always dies before he finishes his recorded dialogue. It is just too hard for me to get involved with the story the way it is now.

If they do make overland more difficult I think it will be in areas that can be instanced. Like delves, quests and so on.

colossalvoids wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Jarl_Ironheart wrote: »

Maythor wrote: »

I am very conflicted every time I see people advocating for increased overland difficulty, and I wonder how they forsee this bringing value to gameplay? I suppose like everything else it will depend on the execution of the idea but I wonder if it will have a place in the game for many people. I'm slightly more calmer since I have seen some of the more measured responses in this thread that seem to align more to my own view of such a change.

How more difficult should it be, and if it is of veteran difficulty that will require gearsets, potions, and rotations to move about the world how will we be enticed to do this? Or is increased difficulty a reward in itself for people? I'd have a great many concerns about how the balancing of such a system might/could be managed considering how other changes have gone in the past. Doubtless we'd adapt and get used to things as we always do, but would it actually add to the fun of play?

I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be doing increased difficulty unless I get some reward I find of value from doing it, since I have vet dungeons and trials for taxing content already.

Well I for one enjoy challenge. I want overland to make me need to block, dodge roll, heal, etc. Right now I 2 shots enemies and its rather boring.

I've defeated and thwarted gods and demi-gods. I've sent them crawling back into oblivion their plans and plots laid in waste before them. I should be able to just glance at a Skeever and have it fall over dead.

That's the point for me, we made gods tremble as easily as just a skeever, which feels akin to some exploit run in sp game, nothing memorable or even remotely indicating that we've earned it. Kinda like buying content makes us a godlike figure and not our actions in said world. Kinda sad lmao.

You know this struck a chord for me, and it might come down to how ZOS would actually envision such a system and how we might have lost faith in them doing it well. (re: like they did with account wide achieves).

Part of me hears people asking for increased overland difficulty and people imagining that ZOS would just increase the health and hitting power of everything, and in my head that means just longer to kill everything and using up resources just to wander the world without gaining much in the way of rewards. That's what didn't sound too fun for me, it just adds to the effort to do anything in game that might mean moving about.

What it probably should, and might mean for many others .. is a proportional balance of the overworld creatures and encounters so that things that /should/ pack a punch do and other things might still be left as just blast fodder for an aeo spell? This would take an awful lot more work though, and though it might make things more immersive for overland questers .. could it be managed effectively?

phileunderx2 wrote: »

If they do make overland more difficult I think it will be in areas that can be instanced. Like delves, quests and so on.

The zones are in separate instances too, that's why you have to go through a loading screen when transitioning into a new zone, even when you take the road going into them instead of porting into it through wayshrine. An optional vet zone toggle is absolutely doable.

Every "difficulty level" on a hypothetical slider requires a separate phase for all players at that difficulty level.

The base zones are already often underpopulated. Now imagine dividing that population by 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, or 1/5 depending on how many levels you add. That applies to zone chat as well.

Imagine trying to coordinate, say, world boss event or dolmen event in your guild.
Not only do you have to get everyone together as usual, you now have to choose a difficulty, and then get every single player in your group to choose the same difficulty, to keep them from being phased apart from you. This is manageable mostly if you have only two levels of difficulty. It is much, much less manageable with each extra difficulty setting that is added.

The management of all of these things is one reason most MMO's don't (can't) have a real-time difficulty slider for overland content. This is not a problem in Fallout or Skyrim, where you are the only player, but when you have other players in the world with you, things get rather more complicated in a hurry.

Arunei wrote: »

Lucozade85 wrote: »

I don't get why so many people are against more difficult overland. It's not exactly fun killing 20+ enemies at the same time with one or two skills.

IMO there should be dangerous areas that you want to think twice about going in to rather than a blanket 30k health (or whatever it is) per enemy, where their attacks do pretty much no damage to you. Where is the progression? Overland is a complete joke.

Anyway I doubt it will be a vet overland.

People are against it for numerous reasons.

1) Overland is meant to deliver story, not challenge or progress. Challenge and progress exist in other parts of the game such as arenas, vet/HM dungeons, trifectas, etc. Not all PvE content has to cater to casuals and not all of it needs to cater to endgame players.

2) Overland is meant to be accessible for everyone, and Rich I believe has said before that a lot of people don't actually pull very high DPS. Companions are said to do a little less than the average player I think it was? And how much have people complained over the years that "most people suck and only spam Light Attack and barely hit 5k DPS!". If you start making parts of the game harder, you're going to lock out a LOT of people who already aren't doing a whole bunch of damage.

3) Many people, myself included, don't want to have to fight a group of minibosses every time we pass by overland trash mobs. We don't want to deal with fighting mobs that take ten minutes to kill just to gather nodes or dig for Antiquities or while just exploring or while doing Surveys/Treasure Maps.

4) The simple fact that not everyone likes hard/challenging content. What you find fun many others won't, and what you find unfun many others will enjoy.

In the sticked Overland Difficulty thread, Kevin I think it was quoted something from an interview Rich had done (I don't remember when said interview was done but I think it was within the last year or two?) where harder overland was asked about. I'll try to dig it up and post it here, but the gist of it was they had no plans in the foreseeable future to do anything regarding making any overland content harder. That leads me to believe the big feature isn't that (tho admittedly ZOS has done things they said they wouldn't a number of times so who knows).

1) Part of the story is overcoming difficult and powerful foes. IMO it's not really a story if that foe dies within a few attacks as it shows the foe in question was extremely weak

2) I get about accessibility but the game should offer tutorials and mission challenges to show how the combat functions in the game, including LA weaving. Each mission should be repeatable and can either have a rating system on your performance and you need to hit a certain level of performance before advancing on to the next stage. How is it right that you expect to complete a game, or play it fully without understanding how it works?

3) Enemies can be avoided quite easily

4) The flip side of that is not everyone likes easy / unchallenging content, it makes the game boring, not immersive and makes the story seem silly

I'm not saying that the whole of overland should be more difficult. Starting areas for new players should be how it is now with increasing difficulty when going into the newer zones with increasing rewards as you progress.

I see someone commented about the overland difficulty being world bosses - 95% of the world bosses are easily done solo. I have a level 5 Nightblade on PS with no CP, I went straight into Deshaan to see if it could handle world bosses and it was done without a problem.

I see there are comments about One Tamriel - This is before my time on ESO so can't comment

I hope so.

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

These are the people who scoped out the precise requirements for AwA, and for U35's Vet and HM "accessibility" changes. Now you're asking them to do the same for something as vague as "Vet Overland"?

Madness

Believe it or not, there are a lot of people who cheer for AwA and U35. And I am one of them.

Oh, I do believe it.

If "Vet Overland" came complete with the introduction of Overland mob locking, I'm sure there are people who would like that too.

corrosivechains wrote: »

phileunderx2 wrote: »

If they do make overland more difficult I think it will be in areas that can be instanced. Like delves, quests and so on.

The zones are in separate instances too, that's why you have to go through a loading screen when transitioning into a new zone, even when you take the road going into them instead of porting into it through wayshrine. An optional vet zone toggle is absolutely doable.

They can do anything, with a sufficient amount of time and people.

However, the way it was explained made it sound like it would not be something ZOS would want to do unless they made some radical changes to the way the game is built. For one thing, the zones are apparently hand tuned. The only thing that is dynamic is the scaling done to the players to bring them up to the level of the world (CP 160). That means that a veteran zone would need to have every mob updated by hand, resulting in a completely separate zone that they have to maintain. That is double the maintenance unless they implement a scaling system. Again, not insurmountable, but something they would need to address before they do any "tentpole" things.

A second problem has to do with splitting the population. Right now, a player can encounter someone else across the entire spectrum of levels, which allows low and high level characters to mingle. If the high level characters are all in veteran zones, they are not in with the low level players, splitting the population by level. One comment from ZOS suggests that is not something they are excited about. Again, not insurmountable, but something that has to be reconciled.

A third problem has to do with rewards. ESO is already stingy with overland rewards and a harder veteran zone would require better rewards. That introduces a few issues, none of them insurmountable, but also none of them needing to be surmounted the way the game currently is.

Lots of discussion on all of this in the other thread.

Lucozade85 wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Lucozade85 wrote: »

I don't get why so many people are against more difficult overland. It's not exactly fun killing 20+ enemies at the same time with one or two skills.

IMO there should be dangerous areas that you want to think twice about going in to rather than a blanket 30k health (or whatever it is) per enemy, where their attacks do pretty much no damage to you. Where is the progression? Overland is a complete joke.

Anyway I doubt it will be a vet overland.

People are against it for numerous reasons.

1) Overland is meant to deliver story, not challenge or progress. Challenge and progress exist in other parts of the game such as arenas, vet/HM dungeons, trifectas, etc. Not all PvE content has to cater to casuals and not all of it needs to cater to endgame players.

2) Overland is meant to be accessible for everyone, and Rich I believe has said before that a lot of people don't actually pull very high DPS. Companions are said to do a little less than the average player I think it was? And how much have people complained over the years that "most people suck and only spam Light Attack and barely hit 5k DPS!". If you start making parts of the game harder, you're going to lock out a LOT of people who already aren't doing a whole bunch of damage.

3) Many people, myself included, don't want to have to fight a group of minibosses every time we pass by overland trash mobs. We don't want to deal with fighting mobs that take ten minutes to kill just to gather nodes or dig for Antiquities or while just exploring or while doing Surveys/Treasure Maps.

4) The simple fact that not everyone likes hard/challenging content. What you find fun many others won't, and what you find unfun many others will enjoy.

In the sticked Overland Difficulty thread, Kevin I think it was quoted something from an interview Rich had done (I don't remember when said interview was done but I think it was within the last year or two?) where harder overland was asked about. I'll try to dig it up and post it here, but the gist of it was they had no plans in the foreseeable future to do anything regarding making any overland content harder. That leads me to believe the big feature isn't that (tho admittedly ZOS has done things they said they wouldn't a number of times so who knows).

1) Part of the story is overcoming difficult and powerful foes. IMO it's not really a story if that foe dies within a few attacks as it shows the foe in question was extremely weak

2) I get about accessibility but the game should offer tutorials and mission challenges to show how the combat functions in the game, including LA weaving. Each mission should be repeatable and can either have a rating system on your performance and you need to hit a certain level of performance before advancing on to the next stage. How is it right that you expect to complete a game, or play it fully without understanding how it works?

3) Enemies can be avoided quite easily

4) The flip side of that is not everyone likes easy / unchallenging content, it makes the game boring, not immersive and makes the story seem silly

I'm not saying that the whole of overland should be more difficult. Starting areas for new players should be how it is now with increasing difficulty when going into the newer zones with increasing rewards as you progress.

I see someone commented about the overland difficulty being world bosses - 95% of the world bosses are easily done solo. I have a level 5 Nightblade on PS with no CP, I went straight into Deshaan to see if it could handle world bosses and it was done without a problem.

I see there are comments about One Tamriel - This is before my time on ESO so can't comment

1) This is one of those subjective things, really. There are people who like killing even big bads in just a few seconds because it's in line with their character, who has beaten all manner of terrible foes like Daedric Prince's, ancient Vampires, and powerful Dragons. The fact that their characters can steamroll the main villain makes sense to those people. And of course there are people who feel it makes the big bad seem weak and incompetent.

But at the end of the day, if the main bad guy of the story is too hard to beat, then people who can't do it are still going to miss part of the story. Rich had mentioned a lot of people seem to have a hard time with overland as it is now, and again we have years of people complaining how little damage a lot of people in random dungeons do. If these foes are made strong enough to give seasoned, experienced players a bit more of a challenge, then there's a whole slew of people who simply won't be able to beat them. That's why the devs have to cater to (not meant in a negative manner) the lowest common denominator for overland and quests.

2) Because it's not just people who "don't know how to play" who have problems. A lot of people simply don't care to make a game akin to a second job and learn rotations and farm for the best gear and learn a mechanic that started as a bug. There are also disabled and elderly people who play this game and simply don't have the physical ability to do all that stuff. People with bad internet also can't really do LA weaving and animation cancelling or have good rotations. Yes, we DO need better (and more in-depth) tutorials, especially on weaving since ZOS has had a tooltip about it for ages, but even with tutorials people aren't going to retain knowledge of or bother practicing things that they have no interest in doing either way. But we do need tutorials for the people who want to get better and learn more advanced combat stuff.

3) That doesn't mean anything when there are tons of nodes, Survey/Treasure Map chests, treasure chests in general, and Antiquity dig spots that either have mobs that spawn so close you can't avoid aggro'ing them, or areas where the mobs spawn across a wide area but also close together enough that you'll grab aggro when passing them to get the thing. People with low speed and/or low stamina mounts will get knocked off before they can get out of aggro range and now instead of being able to burn them within a few seconds, we'd have to spend minutes clearing the way. And if mobs are easy to avoid why does it matter if they're easy to kill? Most people tend to run by mobs to begin with, unless they're farming something or need to kill them for a quest.

4) That's true and is the point I was making that not everyone will enjoy the same things. Story stuff, though, needs to be easy enough that people can actually complete said story. I'm willing to bet one reason that led to them dropping two DLC dungeon releases is because a LOT of people were upset that part of the year-long Chapter's story was locked behind 4 dungeons the last several years. Yes, you could still get the main gist of the story without doing the dungeons, but their quests tended to tie in with the main plot and offer more insight/lore.

Your example of WBs is subjective. I've been playing since closed beta and my DPS characters before u35 could pull 30-40k, my healer/general content character could pull about 20k. Not sure about their numbers now since I haven't really done much since u35. I could solo a number of WBs, but a lot of them I can't at all, including the Angry Guar boss in Deshaan. You claim you didn't have CP but I wonder what gear you had because...I don't know, a level five character with next to no skills unlocked and starting gear having no trouble with that boss seems like quite a stretch. But even if that's the truth, you need to consider that difficulty is subjective and what you consider easy, a lot of other people will struggle with and be incapable of doing. Which is why they need to keep overland stuff on the easier side, because even if stuff is too easy you can at least still clear it. When stuff is too hard you don't have that ability.

Like I've said and has been said in the stickied thread about it, most people don't care if harder overland is implemented as long as it's completely optional. But when someone asks why people don't want harder overland, these (and probably others I didn't think of) are the reasons people don't want it imposed as a base game change that can't be turned off (like AwA's implementation). But given Rich's response to the question about overland difficulty, I don't think the new feature we'll be seeing is that.

Arunei wrote: »

...in the stickied thread about it, most people don't care if harder overland is implemented as long as it's completely optional...

I agree with everything you posted but would like to add this.

In the stickied thread most favor difficulty sliders, or debuffs, or challenge banners for quest bosses rather than a completely separate veteran overland.