I expect that this thread will be closed and referred to the pinned Overland Content Feedback thread, in which the idea of a slider, as well as the LotRO implementation, have been discussed for quite some time. That being said, the letter doesn't actually say how they're going to handle this so I don't think we should assume it will be a global change. I also think that many players want things to stay the way they are and I'm sure ZOS understands this, so they're probably considering an optional implementation.

Yeah if there is one single takeaway from the megathread on overland difficulty, it is that the population has widely diverging preferences regarding difficulty. So providing players with the ability to choose individually seems best.

Quest content in ESO could benefit from having some kind of story mode available as an accessibility feature. Simply maintaining difficulty, but making the player undefeatable and maybe boosting damage. So players who struggle can always complete quests and get quest rewards. Obviously that should disable earning performance rewards. Just got to make sure to avoid making it in such a way that bots and similar can exploit it.

Aside from pockets of challenge, current overland doesn't even feel like combat, and I don't even think it's the lack of difficulty itself that is primarily to blame, but mostly too few enemies at a time, who are doing too little. If the pulls were larger and more complex, that might go a long way toward making it feel like there is some kind of fight going on.

On this note, enemy placement could be done like it is in Cyrodiil, where they are concentrated around points of interest rather than being sprinkled everywhere throughout the zone. So players who want bigger fights can get that, and those who want to explore and harvest, can avoid fights if they don't want that.

Overland difficulty as such belongs in the megathread, but what I mainly want from the announced overland difficulty revision is mainly to get those (currently missing) fast paced; low-commitment fights where the outcome is uncertain. DLC world bosses and events provide some overland challenge already for those who seek it, but can be a bit of a slog. Would be nice with generic enemies that have a real chance to kill the player if the mechanics are not respected, like a hard world boss, but without the massive HP pool. Would do wonders for the questing experience IMO.

Desiato wrote: »

With that said, I hope they are unafraid to launch a modern day Craglorn (as it existed in 2014) as optional content that might not appeal to everyone.

I think the main problem with the original Craglorn launch was that there was no other veteran zone. You could sort of still romp around in either Bangkorai, Reaper's March or the Rift (depending on which alliance you played) but the rest of Tamriel (plus Coldharbor) was underleveled to the point where you would get no loot or xp. So it was really just either Craglorn or Cyrodiil once you hit max level.

And Craglorn of course was basically a zone-wide veteran dungeon, so quite a jump for most players. Basically a combination of too soon, and a lack of options.

I vividly recall walking off the road to mine a piece of ore and aggroing one enemy (at a longer distance than usual) and having a pull sized like a small army rapidly emerge from behind the hill and kill me.

I think ESO has sufficient variety that it could pull off a Craglorn style adventure zone today though.

If they want to just experiment, an idea I've played around with in my head is to just use the Infinite Archive as the vehicle for something like this. For example a library wing with apocrypha books you can get pulled into. Taking you to anything from smaller instances to entire zones. Old delves, world bosses, trials, questlines, all embellished and modernized.

Yeah I highly doubt they'll buff everything across the board. It'll likely be some kind of "veteran mode" mechanic.

Interested to see what they're cooking.