Kallykat wrote: »

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disky wrote: »

Kallykat wrote: »

Also, questing is not for leveling. Questing is for advancing a story. Leveling is a byproduct of that.

Fundamentally disagree with this. To say that questing is "not for leveling" devalues questing in a material way, and it makes me think that some players have just played this game for long enough to believe that overland cannot possibly be more than it is now. Like, it isn't even supposed to be better. It's not the first time I've heard this kind of opinion and it really bums me out.

Yes, depending on the kind of quest you're doing, questing advances a story, but it also provides experience and rewards for completion, and it could certainly become a primary way of advancing a character. There are games which eschew combat experience entirely in favor of experience gain upon quest completion, and I think that's totally valid. Not to say that ESO should do that, but questing could become a more important part of leveling if ZOS changed their minds about it, and I actually think it could be a good way to get a greater number of players engaged with overland.

My point is that story-telling is what is fundamental to questing, what sets it apart from other leveling or experience-gaining activities such as pvp, crafting, or pure combat. Just because you or others use it with the intent to benefit from the byproduct is irrelevant to its primary identity as a system in a game with many systems that also provide similar rewards. Whether or not you think the xp rewards from questing should be greater is also irrelevant. I think questing can be used for leveling if that is an individual's goal, but my initial point was really to counter what seemed to me to be an assumption about the primary function of questing on a universal (or at least widespread) scale. I think if we are going to assign any universal purpose to a system like questing, it should be based on the feature which sets it apart from other systems.

As a side note that does not change my argument in the least, I also wouldn't mind if questing had better rewards since that is the system in which I most commonly choose to engage.

It's nice that we agree that rewards from questing could be improved. I have a couple of thoughts, though - first, "quest" is a broad term that is used for a lot of different kinds of content. Even daily crafting writs are considered by the game to be quests, so I have trouble fully accepting the notion that questing is exclusively for advancing a story. But also, what portion of the game would you consider to be purely designed for leveling? There are places in the game which are frequently exploited for that purpose but I don't think any one part of the game in particular is designed for it. Like, I tend to go to Spellscar if I want to grind out some levels, but that area has a reason to exist which doesn't explicitly include leveling. I don't think any activity in the game is made for it, it's just that players find the most efficient ways to do it and those become the standard methods. Leveling could happen in a more organic way if questing were made a more viable form of experience gain. After all, major story quests are generally one and done. You're not going to be able to go back and grind them. So where's the harm in giving players a somewhat more attractive goody bag for a job well done?

Now personally, I don't really care about gaining tons of experience. In games like Skyrim and Cyberpunk, I install mods which slow down leveling to a quarter of the original speed in order to give me more time to max out during an experience that I know will take me hundreds of hours to progress through, and as a veteran player who has methods of leveling efficiently I'm mostly okay with things as they are now. I'm just saying that the concept of questing is diminished if we consider it to be exclusively for story purposes, and that players might become more engaged if they received better rewards.

I'm against harder overland if it's not optional. Anyone who wants a challenge, can just do vet dungeons, fight world bosses. For me, this is not gonna create a challenge or make overland more rewarding it's just gonna make all forms of exploration very tedious. I don't want to be dragged into 5' fights constantly whenever I'm going anywhere.

If it's optional no problem ofcourse!

CahirMawrDyffryn wrote: »

I'm against harder overland if it's not optional. Anyone who wants a challenge, can just do vet dungeons, fight world bosses. For me, this is not gonna create a challenge or make overland more rewarding it's just gonna make all forms of exploration very tedious. I don't want to be dragged into 5' fights constantly whenever I'm going anywhere.

If it's optional no problem ofcourse!

TOTALLY off-topic: I LOVE your forum ID! It's Welsh?

TaSheen wrote: »

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CahirMawrDyffryn wrote: »

I'm against harder overland if it's not optional. Anyone who wants a challenge, can just do vet dungeons, fight world bosses. For me, this is not gonna create a chall

TaSheen wrote: »

CahirMawrDyffryn wrote: »

I'm against harder overland if it's not optional. Anyone who wants a challenge, can just do vet dungeons, fight world bosses. For me, this is not gonna create a challenge or make overland more rewarding it's just gonna make all forms of exploration very tedious. I don't want to be dragged into 5' fights constantly whenever I'm going anywhere.

If it's optional no problem ofcourse!

TOTALLY off-topic: I LOVE your forum ID! It's Welsh?

He is a Nilfgaardian Knight from the Witcher books. Probably a Polish persons take on Welsh.

Overland being too easy drove me away from ESO. I'm curious to see how they improve it. I may just come back to play if they make the challenge enough to make sure I don't fall asleep playing the game! I'm a casual player with limited time and I just want to enusre the games I play are actually engaging, immersive and of course fun.

The story and world of ESO always seemed fantastic. Combat system was always fun with the exception that all your abilities didn't matter since you could tap all creatures on the shoulder with a feather and they die with no CP points and being almost naked with a level 1 weapon (including the big big bad ultra powerful boss) just made me go "ZzzZzzzZzzz". Obviously I'm exaggeration a bit but the last attempt at this game I never used any combat CP points and i never focused on upgrading my gear. I had hopped it would make the game more difficult and it never did.

The gear grind and hunt is a serious part of a RPG and I found it meaningless in ESO for the vast majority of the game.

I primarily play solo and hoped that one day the overland (aka 80% of the game) would be more engaging.

Hopeful that the devs have finally listened to feedback on this year's long issue... now to see if they actual improve the current state of the game. Might start putting money down again if it can actually keep me engaged.

I wonder how many other players will come back if they actually improve this problem.

CahirMawrDyffryn wrote: »

I'm against harder overland if it's not optional. Anyone who wants a challenge, can just do vet dungeons, fight world bosses. For me, this is not gonna create a challenge or make overland more rewarding it's just gonna make all forms of exploration very tedious. I don't want to be dragged into 5' fights constantly whenever I'm going anywhere.

If it's optional no problem ofcourse!

My disagreement with this is that everything that has a "challenge" in this game is group content, and one solo arena.

There is no option for players who want a challenge and want to be able to engage with the story.

Most people are in agreement in wanting it to be optional. How that option is implemented is where the disagreement comes in. I want vet instanced overland the same way we have normal and vet dungeons, or separate instances of Cyrodiil and Imperial City for different rulesets. Some want sliders or debuffs.

I have gone on record as saying that I would prefer non-option difficulty increase over nothing being done at all, and I stand by that. I would still prefer an optional difficulty choice over forced.

I don't think that saying "there's difficult content in the game" is an appropriate response to overland difficulty increase requests, because all the options for that are nearly exclusively group content.

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

There are currently 3 solo arenas in the game if you count IA, and it's not like a solo person can't do a lot of the group content. Only a couple dungeons actually require multiple people. Saying there is already difficult content in the game for a solo player is accurate even if you don't think it is appropriate.

I agree. I'd also add that overland is actually the ONLY piece of content in this game that doesn't offer a challenge. All other content has optional ways to modify difficulty or is challenging as a baseline (PvP).

So, as far as appropriate goes, in my personal opinion, the idea difficulty should be forced is more inappropriate than the status quo should be maintained. Maintaining the status quo just means keeping the audience we already have. Meanwhile, forced difficulty would force out a lot of people who can't or don't want to do the harder stuff. There's quite a lot of players that don't do challenging content by choice.

That there is content for solo players seeking a challenge is simply an accurate assessment of the game. And I don't personally find true statements to be inappropriate just because they go against my personal opinion. I can acknowledge there are pros and cons to all solutions offered in this thread. It doesn't mean I find every possible counter argument someone could come up with to be a fair one. But, that alternatives for challenging solo play already exists is just simply a factual statement.

VoxAdActa wrote: »

If it takes me any longer to collect my surveys and dig up my treasure maps because it takes much longer to fight the same mobs, I will absolutely quit.

If I can no longer speedrun skillpoint-granting quests on my alts because it takes much longer to fight the same mobs, I will absolutely quit.

There is nothing that will drive me away from this game faster than wasting my time by making overland content harder without an opt-out.

Nothing.

Even going to a central auction house, which I despise for a host of reasons and which will push me out of engaging with the trading endgame altogether, wouldn't push me away as fast as turning my daily relaxing flower-picking session into an artificial grind because some people can't be happy unless everything is extra hard.

Especially considering the "make it challenging" crowd tend to be experienced players with optimized (or at least somewhat optimized) builds and deep knowledge of the game's system. Which means their "challenging" will be "insurmountable" for people without all that (like my dad, who finds keeping up with making/eating food to be too complicated, and who quit GW2 because there was a story boss on the main questline he just couldn't beat).

I'm skeptical of the claim that ESO will gain more players than it loses if it implements a non-optional harder overland. Didn't they try that already, in the days back before One Tamriel? If it was that successful, I feel like Zenimax would have kept it rather than overhauling the entire game to make level scaling a thing. Or they would have at least reverted if One Tamriel proved to be pushing away more people than it attracted.

Well said.

VoxAdActa wrote: »

If it takes me any longer to collect my surveys and dig up my treasure maps because it takes much longer to fight the same mobs, I will absolutely quit.

If I can no longer speedrun skillpoint-granting quests on my alts because it takes much longer to fight the same mobs, I will absolutely quit.

There is nothing that will drive me away from this game faster than wasting my time by making overland content harder without an opt-out.

Nothing.

Even going to a central auction house, which I despise for a host of reasons and which will push me out of engaging with the trading endgame altogether, wouldn't push me away as fast as turning my daily relaxing flower-picking session into an artificial grind because some people can't be happy unless everything is extra hard.

Especially considering the "make it challenging" crowd tend to be experienced players with optimized (or at least somewhat optimized) builds and deep knowledge of the game's system. Which means their "challenging" will be "insurmountable" for people without all that (like my dad, who finds keeping up with making/eating food to be too complicated, and who quit GW2 because there was a story boss on the main questline he just couldn't beat).

I'm skeptical of the claim that ESO will gain more players than it loses if it implements a non-optional harder overland. Didn't they try that already, in the days back before One Tamriel? If it was that successful, I feel like Zenimax would have kept it rather than overhauling the entire game to make level scaling a thing. Or they would have at least reverted if One Tamriel proved to be pushing away more people than it attracted.

I get where you’re coming from—nobody wants their relaxing session to feel like a chore. But let’s not pretend that making overland content more challenging automatically means an “insurmountable” wall for anyone lacking the perfect setup. A bit of difficulty doesn’t have to mean you need a maxed-out build or hours of spreadsheet-level planning. It just means there’s some actual risk to wandering around, instead of every wolf and bandit folding in half because you sneezed in their direction.

The game didn’t die pre–One Tamriel when we actually had zones that could push back a little. In fact, I remember feeling more attached to my character’s progress because I had to think on my feet. Sure, fast-tracking skill points on alts and breezing through maps is convenient, but convenience gets stale. If everything always folds at a glance, we might as well be flicking through a visual novel rather than playing an Elder Scrolls game.

And let’s be honest: Adding some teeth to the open world doesn’t have to mean punishing folks who’d rather farm flowers than fight trolls. There are plenty of ways ZOS could scale difficulty levels or give an opt-in “hard mode” overland setting. But even if it were baked in for everyone, the notion that a slight bump in challenge will automatically scare off every casual player feels overblown. The real risk is turning the game into a mindless treadmill where engagement boils down to skipping every mob because they never threaten you anyway.

I’m all for letting people enjoy their quiet gathering runs or leveling alts in peace—those playstyles matter. But a balanced difficulty can give meaning to the world and make you feel like your choices (gear, skills, food, etc.) have some weight. That sense of achievement is what keeps a lot of us around. If the game was truly dying back in the old days, ZOS wouldn’t have tried to find a middle ground; they would have just locked in “easy mode” from the start. So no, I don’t think they’ll lose more players than they gain by making overland a bit tougher. Some friction can actually be fun—if it’s handled right.

Muizer wrote: »

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VoxAdActa wrote: »

If it takes me any longer to collect my surveys and dig up my treasure maps because it takes much longer to fight the same mobs, I will absolutely quit.

If I can no longer speedrun skillpoint-granting quests on my alts because it takes much longer to fight the same mobs, I will absolutely quit.

There is nothing that will drive me away from this game faster than wasting my time by making overland content harder without an opt-out.

Sounds rather like you don't like overland at all. Yes I mean you like to collect things from it, but any obstacle in the way is measured as a nuisance. And I mean, that's a fair and all. To each their own and all that.

Coming into overland with no gear, no crafting alt, no gold, and no clue how the systems interact with each other to make a build, is very challenging. I did that. Exactly once. It was fun. It also took me months to finish the main quest and the first alliance questline with a half-tank/half-DPS in Night's Silence and Beekeeper.

That was a fantastic experience, sure. But it's an experience that can only happen once. Overland is only the core challenge of the game once, for a few months. After that, the core challenge of the game moves beyond overland questing into other things. Making overland questing "challenging" is making it take longer to get to and gear for the parts of the game that are actually enjoyable challenges, and denying me the choice to spend my limited gaming time relaxing if I wish.

It's not that I dislike overland. It's that I dislike having my time wasted by some artificial difficulty increase. Overland is the part of the game I move through to get to the things I want to do, be that exploring the story of the zone through side quests, harvesting materials, collecting skyshards/lorebooks, or just trying to get my alts ready for trials/PvP.

If I have to spend extra time slowly grinding my alts up in a "challenging" overland when my actual goal is to get them into PvP or trials, I will not make any more alts. Period. If I have to deal with extra stress watching out for wolves when all I want to do is fish and hunt for treasure chests, I will stop fishing and hunting for treasure chests.

Overland being "challenging" will discourage me from doing any of the parts of the game that are actually enjoyable, and it will gate out people like my dad, who runs around questing in Night's Silence and Beekeeper not because he doesn't know any better, but because that's how he likes to do things.

The advice of "just play another game then, casual!" will be taken and acted upon, by me and thousands of other people. Your ideal overland experience will be very lonely.

But the implication for game design are evidently problematic. How can one develop an engaging piece of content while at the same time catering to an audience who do not want it to be engaging?

They did that already. It almost sunk the whole game. So the answer to your question is "we DON'T cater to the audience who wants the only non-skippable, non-optional part of the game to be hard, too."

sans-culottes wrote: »

The game didn’t die pre–One Tamriel when we actually had zones that could push back a little. In fact, I remember feeling more attached to my character’s progress because I had to think on my feet.

Every single article I read about this game before I decided to pick it up (2016 or so) emphasized how it nearly failed in the first few years after launch, then they did a huge redesign of how everything worked (One Tamriel), and now the game is popular and fun.

Every. Single. One.

Most of them compared it to the Final Fantasy MMO.

I mean, if one segment of the gaming population just needs to go play a different game, the "we want it harder" section is the one that will have the lesser impact on ZOS's numbers if they leave.

In addition, that crowd has more alternative options. Games that are always on hard mode still exist. EverQuest is still live. You can get your hard overland there, where it's not feasible to solo even overland trash mobs after about level 20 (of 60). Meanwhile, there's no such thing as a relaxing, casual MMO outside of ESO that's not a flashy shovelware cash grab, especially one that has a combat system more engaging than playing piano while skill bars with cooldown timers take up more of the screen than the gameplay does.

Sure, fast-tracking skill points on alts and breezing through maps is convenient, but convenience gets stale.

I guess, assuming the only thing someone wants to do is play on the overland. Some of us want to do other things, and have to go through the overland to get there. Overland being harder, with no opt-out, means people have to spend extra time doing the filler content in order to get the content they want to play. Do you honestly think that a majority of people don't want to do dungeons, trials, PvP, story questing, or even crafting/fishing more than they want to do overland mob-grinding?

If everything always folds at a glance, we might as well be flicking through a visual novel rather than playing an Elder Scrolls game .

That's a significant exaggeration, given the amount of options for enjoyably difficult content that exists in this game (and that does not exist in a "visual novel"). That comparison only makes sense if the only thing you want to do is grind mobs in the overland. In which case, WoW Classic, EverQuest, and Elden Ring are right there.

Franchise408 wrote: »

I'd argue that it's not entirely accurate, because while "overland is the only thing without a challenge", overland is also the vast majority of the content. Some dungeons may be soloable, but far less than the full run of dungeons, limiting the content even further. Absolutely no trials can by solo'd, reducing the content even further.

Snipped for brevity

There are like two dungeons that are not soloable. It's nearly the full run. I believe normal Asylum Sanctorum was soloable at some point but I never tried. Anyway, I don't want things to stay the same. And they're thankfully not going to.

But, even though some players have left. I think it's generally better for a successful game to keep the audience they have happy. Rather than abandoning an audience in the hopes of attracting a new one. And that's especially true if the game is old and the graphics are outdated, IMO. Like I wouldn't support Elden Ring abandoning it's audience to chase the ESO casual crowd either. You're are totally within your rights to disagree. Just as I'm entitled to believe that it would not be an appropriate business decision to abandon the audience that has supported the game for 10 years for new players and lapsed players who already decided to not to support it. We just fundamentally disagree about forced gameplay.

Thankfully, we do agree about optional difficulty. And thankfully, changes are confirmed to be upcoming in the studio letter. At least that's something we can both celebrate.

VoxAdActa wrote: »

I'm not sure how we expect ZOS to find the balance between "hard enough to keep me engaged, but still easy enough that I don't have to interact with anyone to complete it."

The same way they do it with the solo arenas and Infinite Archive.

VoxAdActa wrote: »

You want overland to be like IA or Vateshran??

That'll be a no from me, dawg. I will straight insta-cancel and uninstall.

Or you could just not use the slider? Or whatever option they add.

VoxAdActa wrote: »

They're not going to add a "slider." They will never add a "slider." We have no indication that their engine can even do a "slider" for difficulty. Nobody can agree on what the "slider" should even change.

They already have zone specific buffs and debuffs, and can already apply these to individuals. So, I'm unsure why you think a slider would be so impossible.

We don't know what they'll do. But the last time they discussed they were working on their own thing, they specifically cited sliders as the example request. Meanwhile, all the times they said no, they cited a separate instance as having previously nearly killed the game and continued to talk about how they've learned that player separation isn't a good thing during gold road promo.

So, I think something none of us have even thought of is likely. But, I also think a slider is possible too.

VoxAdActa wrote: »

They don't exist, and even if they can exist (which is a dubious claim to start with), they won't exist.

They exist in all of their single player games. And in another MMO (LOTRO). I'm not sure why a standard game design feature is being painted as mythical.