Surgee wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

If a debuff or slider that increases the damage and health of the enemies while decreasing the damage and health of the player isn't acceptable for some, then what would be?

The odds that they will ever redo all the overland enemies to include interesting mechanics is pretty slim I'd think.

Yes, it's unacceptable and an idea that would fail on the larger scale. It never worked and it never will. We could just all go naked mode and it would be the same, right? All those ideas about debuffs, splitting the community and so on are full of problems that require a lot of work and will probably end up backfiring.
Can you provide examples of games where this idea failed? I'm sure there are plenty of people like myself who ESO is their first and only MMO, so we don't know of other games that have tried player debuffs and failed.

Solution? Just make the overland harder for everyone and see how it goes. I think many of you forgot how much harder the game was in its first years. I was a full time tank in overland content and it was fun as hell. I, my wife, and my friend finished the Aldmeri campaign together, because it was challenging enough to keep us engaged and have unique roles in our group. As the game "progressed" with next updates I had to go full DPS, because I was absolutely useless anywhere outside of DLC veteran dungeons and veteran trials. My playstyle died because of how easy the game became. The same with my wife. She went from full healer to DPS, because as a healer she's useless too anywhere outside veteran dlc dungeon. Everyone have their own powerful heals and DPS is the king. She felt forced to become a DPS to be relevant and quit instead. That's the reason activity finders can't ever find a real tank or a healer. We died off because no one needed us. This is not the case in other MMOs.
No. You yourself said your fun is not someone else's fun and vice versa, but you're still trying to impose your fun on others by asking for everyone to have to deal with harder Overland. You don't want to deal with easy Overland but want others to deal with harder Overland despite the fact that numerous people have said the game at it's current level is already too hard for whatever reason, and they would be locked out of Overland was made too much harder.

Many here want so badly to keep their overly easy playstyle without even thinking what it did to everyone else and to the game itself.
Because many people don't want Overland to be basically one massive dungeon when questing and doing other mundane things. Also, you're again forgetting the fact that just because it looks like a lot of people off the forum think Overland is too easy, that number only looks that big because of the trend of people talking about things thy DISLIKE, but not usually bringing up things they like or are neutral about without some sort of outside prompting.

The devs have the numbers. THEY know the actual number of players, the ones who are still active vs the ones who've quit. And speaking of quitting, because of the fact people tend not to say anything about things they aren't actively dissatisfied about, making Overland too much harder WILL result in a lot more people quitting than people realize. Because suddenly those happy or neutral people are being alienated and have something to complain about.


As someone said, probably more people quit because of how easy overland is, (which contributes to almost entire game, and is the main content) than how many would have problem with raising the difficulty level. All my veteran ESO player friends quit for mostly two reasons : 1. The game is too easy, it's boring, there's no need to become stronger. 2. PvP was completely abandoned, and Cyrodil was the very reason many of them even started playing this game.
And what happens when people get used to harder Overland? What happens when people theorycraft builds or just develop skills to handle stuff that's a bit harder? Are people going to keep asking for harder and harder and harder content? If you just want a blanket increase, that would eventually make the game too hard for too many people and there would STILL be people yelling it's too easy and to bump it up even more.

Myself and others have pointed out the fact that as many people gain experience, regardless of any given character's strength, they eventually gain enough experience that most stuff becomes easy. That's what happens with experience. You learn and get better. We've asked how ZOS is supposed to account for that and when difficulty needs to stop being increased because of it and literally no one that I've seen has answered that. When is difficult difficult enough?

Right now ESO is absolutely the easiest and most single-player mmo out there. I know some here want to complete all content and get all rewards with close to zero effort, but that's not what most players want in general, in any game. To survive, ESO must finally start shaping the game to fit the broader audience. You can't make everyone happy, but making majority happy is good for the game. Focusing on making minority happy and in essence making majority leave the game, will end up with the game ending up on life support, or shutting down.

You keep going on about people wanting rewards for no effort...who has said that? Not a single person here has said they want rewards for nothing. What people have been saying is they don't want things harder because they're either happy with how things are, they don't want to deal with harder stuff even if they could easily, or because the game being made harder overall would prevent them from playing. NOT ONE PERSON that I have seen posting here has said they don't want to put effort into things. They don't want to put MORE effort into things.

People like me don't want general questing, getting Skyshards, doing surveys or farming mats, and so on, taking longer because every single aspect of the game being treated like a normal dungeon. We don't want to put MORE effort into things.

People like SilverBride play the game to have fun and relax, not to have to come up with complex builds that allow them to just handle Overland mobs while doing simple things. And again to reiterate your own words, your fun is not someone else's, nor theirs yours. It's very dismissive to infer that someone's idea of fun is wrong, as there's no right or wrong over something subjective like fun. People like this just don't want to put MORE effort into things.

People like TaSheen literally have already been locked out of certain content because it was made harder, and have made it clear that other things being made harder would lock them out of that content like they have other things. They CAN'T put more effort into the game, for whatever reason.

Where are the hard numbers that people wanting harder Overland are the majority? Seeing stuff about it in other places is not hard proof, it's anecdotal and hearsay. It's not accounting for the fact that, again, people who are happy with or neutral towards things often DO NOT talk about them without being prompted to, whereas people unhappy with things will very much talk about them.

That's not to say there aren't a good number of people who do want it. I doubt ZOS would be looking into testing things for harder Overland if there wasn't enough people clamoring for it to make it worth dev time that could go to other things. But there's nothing that we as players have access to that tell us which camp is the majority.

Also, to make a novel even longer...debuffs don't have to only change player health and damage. They can impose weakness to certain things (say fire damage), they can slow or stop resource gain, they can slow how often you can use Skills or Light Attacks, they can do all sorts of things with them. ZOS can create entirely new, unique debuffs that people could apply to themselves maybe via a menu or with supplemental Gear that doesn't take the place of actual Sets. And these debuffs can all be things that make people need to approach various encounters more carefully and with more consideration than those who find the game too easy as it is currently do.

BananaBender wrote: »

disky wrote: »

BananaBender wrote: »

disky wrote: »

rrbreezy wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The problem with giving unique and good rewards to a hypothetical vet overland story is that it undermines a major purpose of overland.

One of the purposes it serves is to attract new players to the game by giving them fun and rewarding content they can do right away. They can go and explore anywhere and everywhere and get all the rewards for doing this content.

Story content is one and done content. This means if you do the quest, you will not be able to repeat it later.

So, now all of a sudden all these players that felt the new player experience was fun and rewarding will find it punishing because they are locked out of a bunch of cool things they had no way of knowing they were locking themselves out of.

That's not fun and fair. That sucks. It's an awful first impression.

If they could find a way to avoid that problem without just making every quest into a daily quest (which imo seriously harms immersion) than I don't particularly object to rewards.

I think it's important that different gameplay systems continue to serve different audiences. If you can create something that allows that still happen while drawing in new people, that's perfect! But care should be taken not to undermine the diversity in the gameplay systems by catering too much to any one group.

For me, the reward is the challenge. As long as I can still use quests as a fun and immersive way to level up my toons, I don't particularly care about the rest of it. I don't need unique shinies for tutorial content.

I don’t just do “overland” content in MMORPGs to advance the story, and I suspect that applies to others. I think it’d be a bit weird to implement a system where your “reward” for some opt-in increased difficulty is a debuff.

The reward is not a debuff, the debuff is the function by which the challenge is implemented.

One thing I would like to ask to anyone who thinks that a challenge system would be good, but that debuffs are bad - if the system is functionally identical aside from the fact that it uses debuffs, and doesn't manifest in some other form, why do you think it's worse? I've seen people decry this idea because they don't like debuffs, but it's just math. It's just a way to achieve the effect using a system the game already employs, which would save on additional unnecessary development time. So what's the problem?

Because just increasing the boss' HP and damage doesn't make it more difficult, it just makes the fight last longer.
If they make a boss hit like a truck even if all the mechanics are played correctly, this will force players to build tankier builds, which leads to lower damage and longer fight time. Now that you can comfortably take the hits, the fight is solved and now it just takes a long time for you to finish it.
There is nothing interesting nor fun about that. Instead if they actually made the fights good, similar to a dungeon boss fight but with numbers balanced around a single player, this could actually make the fight more interesting but still more difficult.

An example of why adding numbers doesn't make a fight difficult.
Out of all the dungeons in the game, which ones are the most difficult ones? Lady Thorn in Castle Thorn has the most HP and does a lot of damage in execute, but that's not what makes the fight difficult, nor is Lady Thorn even close to being the most difficult dungeon boss.
In fights like Coral Aerie 2nd and 3rd boss, the difficulty doesn't come from the fact that the boss just hits hard and takes ages to kill, but from the additional mechanics.

First, I'm not asking for an increase to enemy HP because that would affect players who don't choose to enable the challenge system. I would only expect to see a system which adjusts player damage taken and damage dealt. That being said, see my post above which includes a list of possibilities for challenge options should it ever be made modular.

I disagree that adjustments to damage dealt and received wouldn't make a fight more difficult, or to use a term I prefer, more fun. They can change quite a bit. You might have to adjust your build and how you approach the encounter. You might need to use certain tools you didn't need to use previously. You may need to group with people who have tools that you don't have. Or, you may just need to practice. Because the situation is more deadly and the fight longer, your skill, your build and who/what you bring with you are more valuable than they were previously. Even if it just means a greater degree of preparation, there is thought in it that didn't exist before and as far as I'm concerned, that's a win. You can say that a tankier build would simply be necessary, but everything in a build is a matter of give and take, and there are so many valid builds in the game because people make choices based on what suits their playstyle. I don't think that would change just because the fights get harder.

And by the way, when it comes to bosses that are already a huge challenge, I'm not really even thinking about them. You've provided dungeon content examples but we aren't talking about dungeon content. Overland is a fundamentally different animal because it's so trivially easy, but something that might make overland feel dramatically more fun to play might not actually need to be as dramatic as you think.

Just increasing the boss' damage will just push the problem we currently have a bit further but it wont actually solve it. It will make it more difficult to people who don't have access to all kinds of gear, but once you do the fight becomes very easy again. If you just put on Ring of the Pale Order, you will not struggle surviving no matter how much they increase the boss' damage. Again, this would only make a rift between players who have the gear and players who don't. How can you avoid this then? By putting the difficulty in the mechanics of the boss, not its stats.

I 100% agree that more interesting and dynamic enemies would be good for the game. I would love to see that happen just as much as you would and I think ZOS should consider it for the future. That being said, I disagree that new mechanics are necessary in order to create a better experience in overland, and I think that if we're going to make anything at all happen, it has to be an achievable solution which doesn't make paying customers angry. The people asking for a slider are presenting a change that can be done relatively easily through tweaking values and using some existing code, because it's the most practical solution and it's something that many non-MMO games do, which means it's a comfortable adjustment for a lot of people. It makes sense.

New mechanics which affect all players could easily end up creating more trouble and backlash from the wider playerbase because it's not optional for them. For all we know, something like that could end up getting rolled back, with all of the effort being wasted. The slider folks are trying to present an iron-clad system that won't be so controversial because we actually want it to happen. The wackier and more ambitious an idea is, the less likely we are to see it. For example, I want fishing to be like Stardew or something even more complex, but I know that's never going to happen so I'm not really asking for it. I just don't do fishing.

Huh, an optional fishing slider might be nice...

SilverBride wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

Just make the overland harder for everyone and see how it goes. I think many of you forgot how much harder the game was in its first years. I was a full time tank in overland content and it was fun as hell.

I started playing in beta and I remember very well how much harder it was back then. The difficulty is why I and many others quit. I didn't come back until after One Tamriel was introduced.

Forcing increased difficulty on everyone after 8 years of being very successful with overland as it is now would not be a good decision, in my opinion. Why risk losing the many players that are happy now to maybe gain some others, especially when those players don't even agree on what degree of difficulty they would find acceptable or how it would be implemented?

Agreed. To say "well it was great back then, let's completely ignore why it was changed and go back to the old days!" seems kind of...willfully short-sighted.

SilverBride wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

Just make the overland harder for everyone and see how it goes. I think many of you forgot how much harder the game was in its first years. I was a full time tank in overland content and it was fun as hell.

I started playing in beta and I remember very well how much harder it was back then. The difficulty is why I and many others quit. I didn't come back until after One Tamriel was introduced.

Forcing increased difficulty on everyone after 8 years of being very successful with overland as it is now would not be a good decision, in my opinion. Why risk losing the many players that are happy now to maybe gain some others, especially when those players don't even agree on what degree of difficulty they would find acceptable or how it would be implemented?

And current difficulty is why even more quit. On every mmo board, ESO has the awful reputation of being a walk in the park, single player game with other people being there just to show off your armour, because nobody interacts anymore. There's plenty of single player elder scrolls games. This one is multiplayer and must cater to the broader multiplayer audience to survive. Obviously the current setup doesn't work and numbers show it.

Surgee wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

rrbreezy wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The game grew in number every year until it cut the small zone dlcs. And it's been losing players ever since due to a lack of casual content (while simultaneously not giving vet players what they want).

I don't know why people are convinced that catering to people who don't play is a better strategy than keeping the customer base you cultivated for many years happy. But it seldom works out. This game almost died when it ignored the "Skyrim with Friends" players and exploded in popularity when the overland worked for them.

Sliders have worked in many other games. So, I don't understand the basis of saying they can't work in this one.

You keep saying this, but you also keep saying there can’t be a reward structure attached to it. LotRO has a decent enough implementation of this. In order to encourage you to do it, this of course includes some rewards.

I didn't say I was opposed to rewards, just unique ones tied to doing the quest on the harder difficulty.

I want the increased exp and gold gain that LOTRO has, for example.

I also don't care about green vs blue drops.

I also wouldn't be opposed if they could figure out a way to do it that did not involve give unique rewards tied to quest completion because then new players could do it at their convenience without permanently locking themselves out of stuff by playing the game without it.

My primary concern about rewards is that quests are one and done. So, tying things to quest rewards is not fair because it punishes someone for playing it at the lower difficulty permanently on that character.

Vet dungeons I have no issue with having unique stuff because you can comeback later and get it if you don't get it your first playthrough.

Everything you say keeps confirming that there should be no two overland difficulties, because it will bring tons of issues. The only and only viable and simple to implement solution is to just increase the difficulty of overland all together and that's it. Not to the point where you need a beefed up group to tackle it, but enough to make it challenging and engaging. Test it, see how it works, if the players will enjoy it and if the numbers will grow, and in worst case revert it. It's that simple.

They already did that at launch and nearly killed the entire game. They tried creeping up the difficulty and it made casuals quit.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

rrbreezy wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The game grew in number every year until it cut the small zone dlcs. And it's been losing players ever since due to a lack of casual content (while simultaneously not giving vet players what they want).

I don't know why people are convinced that catering to people who don't play is a better strategy than keeping the customer base you cultivated for many years happy. But it seldom works out. This game almost died when it ignored the "Skyrim with Friends" players and exploded in popularity when the overland worked for them.

Sliders have worked in many other games. So, I don't understand the basis of saying they can't work in this one.

You keep saying this, but you also keep saying there can’t be a reward structure attached to it. LotRO has a decent enough implementation of this. In order to encourage you to do it, this of course includes some rewards.

I didn't say I was opposed to rewards, just unique ones tied to doing the quest on the harder difficulty.

I want the increased exp and gold gain that LOTRO has, for example.

I also don't care about green vs blue drops.

I also wouldn't be opposed if they could figure out a way to do it that did not involve give unique rewards tied to quest completion because then new players could do it at their convenience without permanently locking themselves out of stuff by playing the game without it.

My primary concern about rewards is that quests are one and done. So, tying things to quest rewards is not fair because it punishes someone for playing it at the lower difficulty permanently on that character.

Vet dungeons I have no issue with having unique stuff because you can comeback later and get it if you don't get it your first playthrough.

Everything you say keeps confirming that there should be no two overland difficulties, because it will bring tons of issues. The only and only viable and simple to implement solution is to just increase the difficulty of overland all together and that's it. Not to the point where you need a beefed up group to tackle it, but enough to make it challenging and engaging. Test it, see how it works, if the players will enjoy it and if the numbers will grow, and in worst case revert it. It's that simple.

They already did that at launch and nearly killed the entire game. They tried creeping up the difficulty and it made casuals quit.

That's not what killed the game at launch. It was a total mess overall.

Surgee wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

rrbreezy wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The game grew in number every year until it cut the small zone dlcs. And it's been losing players ever since due to a lack of casual content (while simultaneously not giving vet players what they want).

I don't know why people are convinced that catering to people who don't play is a better strategy than keeping the customer base you cultivated for many years happy. But it seldom works out. This game almost died when it ignored the "Skyrim with Friends" players and exploded in popularity when the overland worked for them.

Sliders have worked in many other games. So, I don't understand the basis of saying they can't work in this one.

You keep saying this, but you also keep saying there can’t be a reward structure attached to it. LotRO has a decent enough implementation of this. In order to encourage you to do it, this of course includes some rewards.

I didn't say I was opposed to rewards, just unique ones tied to doing the quest on the harder difficulty.

I want the increased exp and gold gain that LOTRO has, for example.

I also don't care about green vs blue drops.

I also wouldn't be opposed if they could figure out a way to do it that did not involve give unique rewards tied to quest completion because then new players could do it at their convenience without permanently locking themselves out of stuff by playing the game without it.

My primary concern about rewards is that quests are one and done. So, tying things to quest rewards is not fair because it punishes someone for playing it at the lower difficulty permanently on that character.

Vet dungeons I have no issue with having unique stuff because you can comeback later and get it if you don't get it your first playthrough.

Everything you say keeps confirming that there should be no two overland difficulties, because it will bring tons of issues. The only and only viable and simple to implement solution is to just increase the difficulty of overland all together and that's it. Not to the point where you need a beefed up group to tackle it, but enough to make it challenging and engaging. Test it, see how it works, if the players will enjoy it and if the numbers will grow, and in worst case revert it. It's that simple.

If we are talking about making experiments/testing, why not implement two versions then (vet and normal) and see which one gets more people? Yes, it would split the player base, but at least one person's version of fun will not be imposed on another person's version of fun.

Surgee wrote: »

That's not what killed the game at launch. It was a total mess overall.

It was very explicitly cited by many players that the game was too hard and they didn't like the difficulty and the devs outright stated it was that the feedback that caused them to take the difficulty out. When they took the difficulty out the game grew every single year. They have tried to nudge the difficulty up the past couple of years and the game has been in a steady decline since. There's a group of players that come for the chapter story and then leaves and they left West Weald faster than other chapters before it that were easier.

They have already been trying to nudge the difficulty up for the past two years and it has done nothing.

Edited to add
You can't have a brand new player with no gear and a trial trifecta player using the same difficulty. There's no middle ground there. Anything that would challenge the trial player would be impossible for the new one. Anything a new player can overcome with a moderate challenge would be boring and trivial still to the trial player, as Necrom and West Weald have both demonstrated.

They have tried this twice and it has utterly failed both times.

SilverBride wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

I have never said for folks who love ESO to go away, but to try to adapt just like everyone else were adapting.

That goes for those that want more difficulty, too. There is a LOT of challenging content in this game, but only one overland, which has been successful as it is for 8 years now. Why should the ONLY relaxing part of the game be taken from us?

It was hardly successful looking at the numbers and whatever little success it had, it's baseless to assume it was thanks to easy difficulty and not due to generally the best questing design in MMOs. There's only one overland...which is like 95% of the actual game. Nobody is talking about taking anything away. Relax.

Surgee wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

I have never said for folks who love ESO to go away, but to try to adapt just like everyone else were adapting.

That goes for those that want more difficulty, too. There is a LOT of challenging content in this game, but only one overland, which has been successful as it is for 8 years now. Why should the ONLY relaxing part of the game be taken from us?

It was hardly successful looking at the numbers and whatever little success it had, it's baseless to assume it was thanks to easy difficulty and not due to generally the best questing design in MMOs. There's only one overland...which is like 95% of the actual game. Nobody is talking about taking anything away. Relax.

You would absolutely be taking overland away from many who enjoy it by making it mandatory.

Surgee wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Surgee wrote: »

That's not what killed the game at launch. It was a total mess overall.

It was very explicitly cited by many players that the game was too hard and they didn't like the difficulty and the devs outright stated it was that the feedback that caused them to take the difficulty out. When they took the difficulty out the game grew every single year. They have tried to nudge the difficulty up the past couple of years and the game has been in a steady decline since. There's a group of players that come for the chapter story and then leaves and they left West Weald faster than other chapters before it that were easier.

They have already been trying to nudge the difficulty up for the past two years and it has done nothing.

Edited to add
You can't have a brand new player with no gear and a trial trifecta player using the same difficulty. There's no middle ground there. Anything that would challenge the trial player would be impossible for the new one. Anything a new player can overcome with a moderate challenge would be boring and trivial still to the trial player, as Necrom and West Weald have both demonstrated.

They have tried this twice and it has utterly failed both times.

That's simply not true and you do not have any real data to support the claim that making things easier made any numbers go up.

The devs themselves have stated it and you can see the trend on Steam Charts.

Do you really think that the few vocal people on the forum represent the 24 million players that tried the game, or even the 1% that's left playing? There's like 10 people arguing over and over in this topic, while most quit and the rest are just playing.

Steam Charts being low does not mean there's only 1% still playing. The vast majority of the playerbase doesn't use Steam.

Here is a very important fact: Zenimax decided to up the difficulty level. This means they have collected DATA from player interactions in game to support that decision. They don't just wake up one day and say"hey let's make the game harder just for the heck of it". There must be a very good reason for it, and trust me, its never based on few opinions from the forums. This is not an indie game ran by 10 people. Decisions are data driven.

Decisions are driven by both feedback and data, every game dev will tell you that. They tried to a forced difficulty, it failed, and now they are most likely trying something different.

disky wrote: »

Hate to interject but public dungeons, WBs and all incursions are most definitely overland content. Those along with delves and the main overland zones are absolutely and by far the bulk of the game's content.

I think that's difficult to define because quests are meant to be one and done and the other content is meant to be repeated. I don't just mean because of drops but the encounters themselves are designed with constant repeatability in mind. I probably spent more of my time in Infinite Archive than I did in Necrom.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Hate to interject but public dungeons, WBs and all incursions are most definitely overland content. Those along with delves and the main overland zones are absolutely and by far the bulk of the game's content.

I think that's difficult to define because quests are meant to be one and done and the other content is meant to be repeated. I don't just mean because of drops but the encounters themselves are designed with constant repeatability in mind. I probably spent more of my time in Infinite Archive than I did in Necrom.

It's included in overland because it's not an instanced part of the game, which anyone exploring around overland can take part in. Also, this kind of content tends to remain in-line with the scaling of the rest of the overland content. If you go to a public dungeon, there is no vet mode available, and while certain bosses may be slightly beefed up in comparison to story or delve bosses, they're pretty much always easier than dungeon bosses.

Something like the big fight in Gorne comes to mind as an outlier but there the trend holds true for most of it.