DeathStalker wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

Since they refuse to say it won't be forced, then it must be forced.

They also haven't said that it will be forced, so does that mean by the process of deduction it will not be?

I'm worried about what they have planned, too, but it's almost April and we will have our answer soon.

they could have eased fears and concerns anytime and have chosen to let them run wild. When they "adjust" abilities, it's almost always way op or nerfed until nobody uses it. Pick any part of this game you want. It's almost always thermal nuclear bomb to kill a fly approach with adjustments. So, until they confirm otherwise, massive, forced difficulty increase

I agree that letting us know sooner rather than later would alleviate some of our fears... or make them worse... depending on what they have planned. But nothing leads me to believe it will be a massive forced difficulty increase.

They created Bastion Nymics as one solution to overland difficulty. That was not massive or forced. I seriously don't believe they will do anything that would drive away a HUGE portion of the playerbase.

But whatever it is... it is an EXPERIMENT that may not become permanent.

SilverBride wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

Since they refuse to say it won't be forced, then it must be forced.

They also haven't said that it will be forced, so does that mean by the process of deduction it will not be?

I'm worried about what they have planned, too, but it's almost April and we will have our answer soon.

they could have eased fears and concerns anytime and have chosen to let them run wild. When they "adjust" abilities, it's almost always way op or nerfed until nobody uses it. Pick any part of this game you want. It's almost always thermal nuclear bomb to kill a fly approach with adjustments. So, until they confirm otherwise, massive, forced difficulty increase

I agree that letting us know sooner rather than later would alleviate some of our fears... or make them worse... depending on what they have planned. But nothing leads me to believe it will be a massive forced difficulty increase.

They created Bastion Nymics as one solution to overland difficulty. That was not massive or forced. I seriously don't believe they will do anything that would drive away a HUGE portion of the playerbase.

But whatever it is... it is an EXPERIMENT that may not become permanent.

I guess in the end, @SilverBride, I have lost my faith in them, and you haven't.

sans-culottes wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

Since they refuse to say it won't be forced, then it must be forced.

They also haven't said that it will be forced, so does that mean by the process of deduction it will not be?

I'm worried about what they have planned, too, but it's almost April and we will have our answer soon.

they could have eased fears and concerns anytime and have chosen to let them run wild. When they "adjust" abilities, it's almost always way op or nerfed until nobody uses it. Pick any part of this game you want. It's almost always thermal nuclear bomb to kill a fly approach with adjustments. So, until they confirm otherwise, massive, forced difficulty increase

I agree that letting us know sooner rather than later would alleviate some of our fears... or make them worse... depending on what they have planned. But nothing leads me to believe it will be a massive forced difficulty increase.

They created Bastion Nymics as one solution to overland difficulty. That was not massive or forced. I seriously don't believe they will do anything that would drive away a HUGE portion of the playerbase.

But whatever it is... it is an EXPERIMENT that may not become permanent.

I guess in the end, @SilverBride, I have lost my faith in them, and you haven't.

If you don’t have faith in the developers, then why would you be supporting their product? This is just tilting at windmills.

I haven't logged in since the announcement of a difficulty increase. Besides that and giving voice to my displeasure with the direction here on the forums. What else exactly am I supposed to do?

DeathStalker wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

DeathStalker wrote: »

Since they refuse to say it won't be forced, then it must be forced.

They also haven't said that it will be forced, so does that mean by the process of deduction it will not be?

I'm worried about what they have planned, too, but it's almost April and we will have our answer soon.

they could have eased fears and concerns anytime and have chosen to let them run wild. When they "adjust" abilities, it's almost always way op or nerfed until nobody uses it. Pick any part of this game you want. It's almost always thermal nuclear bomb to kill a fly approach with adjustments. So, until they confirm otherwise, massive, forced difficulty increase

I agree that letting us know sooner rather than later would alleviate some of our fears... or make them worse... depending on what they have planned. But nothing leads me to believe it will be a massive forced difficulty increase.

They created Bastion Nymics as one solution to overland difficulty. That was not massive or forced. I seriously don't believe they will do anything that would drive away a HUGE portion of the playerbase.

But whatever it is... it is an EXPERIMENT that may not become permanent.

I guess in the end, @SilverBride, I have lost my faith in them, and you haven't.

If you don’t have faith in the developers, then why would you be supporting their product? This is just tilting at windmills.

I haven't logged in since the announcement of a difficulty increase. Besides that and giving voice to my displeasure with the direction here on the forums. What else exactly am I supposed to do?

Honestly, anything else?

If a game isn't bringing you joy anymore, you probably shouldn't play it.

Now, you certainly have a right to an opinion regarding the game. I'm not always entirely happy with ESO, including the current state of overland, and I've expressed my opinion. I also spend most of my gaming time playing other games that do bring me joy. There's far too many games in existence for me to get stuck on one particular game's design. If ESO is not going to offer me the experience I want, then I will find a game that does. In terms of MMO's, I have EverQuest in consistent rotation, which offers me a decent overland challenge. I've maxed out characters in New World and Fallout 76 which give me acceptable challenges. I have MMO-adjacent online games like Diablo 2 Resurrected and Diablo 4 which present me with a proper challenge. Then there's all the other games that aren't necessarily online that I like to rotate through as well - single player RPG's, 4x / RTS / strategy games, sports games, shooters, etc. And I can stick around in ESO when I want to do something with my guild and run a trial or some dungeons or something. I've long passed the time of ESO being my main full time game, and I don't think that even addressing overland difficulty will do much to change that for me, although it will move the needle a little bit. Appropriately enough, taking some time away from the game as I have has reduced much of the burnout, and I've been slightly more reinvigorated to join up on runs with my guild, and an overland adjustment is definitely enough to at least pique my interest to see how it turns out.

Although if I'm being honest, my gripe with overland is less about the difficulty and more about the overall design of questing to begin with, which I find to be rather mundane and tedious even at the best of times. However, because this particular topic addresses a concern I have with the game, I do partake at times.

I say all this to say - you are entitled to your opinion about overland, and you are even justified in your skepticism towards how you anticipate the devs will approach it. I also don't anticipate the solution being satisfactory for me, although for the opposite reasons (I don't think the changes will go far enough). I feel that the devs have taken the wrong lessons from the data they have access to, and I don't feel confident in their abilities to make changes that will be satisfactory for me. However, there isn't a reason to fear. If the changes aren't what I want them to be, I can simply stick to the parts of the game that I do enjoy, and I can go and play other games for the experience I'm looking for that ESO is lacking.

While I do want to see change made to this game's overland, and I am an advocate for it, there is one thing I agree with from those who haven't been as excited towards overland difficulty changes - not every game needs to be for every audience. As a player of ESO, I would of course want ESO to cater to my preferences, but if it doesn't... well, I have other options, and I will play them. I don't have all of my eggs in the ESO basket, and I already have Bethesda mainline titles like Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4, and Starfield to offer me the open world, free form type of experience I'm looking for. ESO has never been that game, and I don't think even adjusted difficulty will make it that game. In the MMO realm, I have EverQuest and New World that offer me experiences that I prefer, and in the MMO-adjacent online realm, I have Fallout 76, Diablo 2 Resurrected, and Diablo 4 that offer me an experience I enjoy. There are other games that offer me the experience I am looking for, and if ESO is determined to continue with the philosophy it has of very easy overland, and the challenge seeking is to come from group content like trials and dungeons, then ESO will remain a part time game that I just hop onto a couple times a month for guild events, and I won't be buying additional content that is completely unnecessary to my experience.

Dahveed wrote: »

I'm just throwing this out there, but I'm surprised nobody has mentioned xp rates. (Or if they have it's buried and I missed it.)

It would be nice to be able to slow down, or even pause, the gaining of xp for added challenge. Back when one of those golden pursuits was to level an alt to 50 (to get some cosmetic spell stuff I think) I messed with my first ever real "alt" and I was astonished at how fast I got to 50 just by doing writs and low level BGs, with a splash of side questing. I was 50 within a matter of a few days.

It would be nice to have an NPC "curse" you or something with a Curse of Stupidity where you can't learn, or learn very slowly. Or something else that could even be arbitrary.

Believe it or not, there are people out there who want slower leveling for greater challenge. I think an xp toggle would be pretty easy to implement, as they've done in WoW for example.

It has been brought up. It's a weird topic, because I modify games like Skyrim and Cyberpunk to slow experience gain to a quarter of normal, but the trouble with XP in ESO is that it's so closely tied to gear. Because gear doesn't actually become "real" until CP160, in ESO I want my characters to be over 50 as soon as possible so I can play with all of the gear I've collected, and also, so I don't have to worry about opening a bag by mistake and accidentally level-locking a piece of gear below CP160, permanently relegating it to a lower tier of usefulness. A lot of content depends on character level as well.

The only scenario I can think of in which this wouldn't become an issue is when you're playing the game without interacting with any other players for anything and you're not doing PvP, group dungeons or trials at all. As much as I prioritize overland, I also do this stuff from time to time, and so that doesn't really work for me. I'd imagine the percentage of the playerbase which plays that way is pretty limited.

I'd also like to make the point that progression in ESO is about more than just experience and level, and that reaching CP160 feels like the beginning of the road. Once you get there, there's still quite a bit to do.

VoxAdActa wrote: »

"Other games do it" is not evidence that this game can do it. Other games also have quicktime events, free flight, city-building, and are built of 100% destructible environment. Does that mean you honestly believe ESO could also do all of those things?

Ok, sure. In your hypothetical world that we have no evidence for the practicality of implementing in this game—and, in fact, no evidence for the possibility of implementing in this game—there's no reason for anyone to complain. Nobody is complaining about fully 100% optional content that doesn't give the people playing it an advantage (in resources, exp gain, loot, cosmetics, etc.) over the people who don't. In a world where making the whole game the same difficulty as Vat is enough of a reward/incentive to play it all by itself, and is totally optional, and doesn't suck too much dev time away from the actually important issues, and doesn't impact server performance at all, there is no reason to say no to it.

It's not even a matter of "other games can do it so TESO should do it too". TESO already does everything which is being discussed. It has difficulty modes, phasing and scaling. It already has debuffs and it even has phasing featuring scaling and debuffs and enhanced loot associated with the difficulty mode selected. Not quite sure why overland scaling with associated "veteran level rewards" is a step too far for some. Logically, it's something that should've been in the game to bridge the gap between normal difficulty and veteran difficulty content this whole time.

Someone that takes issue with the lack of overland difficulty likely isn't playing the game anyways so the whole "splitting up the community" narrative goes out the window.

and doesn't suck too much dev time away from the actually important issues

It was important enough of an issue to keep me out of the game since 2018. Take a look outside this forum. Players taking issue with a complete lack of difficulty is not a uncommon sentiment among lapsed players and as much as some would like to pretend it is just a vocal minority, it isn't. ZOS finally changing their tune proves that, since I've been told repeatedly that "they have the data" since this thread opened.

It's a damn shame it took the better part of a decade for something I identified as an issue back when One Tamriel released to play out to its logical conclusion (other players experiencing the power creep I did early on for themselves) and for that feedback to be widespread enough to warrant addressing.

They did change their tune though. They're making changes as stated in the director's letter for 2025, as opposed to the Cadwell Silver&Gold "you think you do but you don't" canned response on livestreams and in interviews we'd been getting for years. It's a complete reversal compared to all their communication previous to that letter.

Here are some of the ideas that we are working on, some of which you may see on the live servers as tests in 2025 and beyond. Some of these will be tests and some will be improvements based on player feedback:

Increasing the difficulty of standard overworld combat

Don't get me wrong, I agree it's preemptive to celebrate but things have changed.

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

. ZOS finally changing their tune proves that, since I've been told repeatedly that "they have the data" since this thread opened.

Yup. This has always been a big enough deal to warrant addressing. Just because it was a minority issue did not make it unimportant. And that they let it go on for so long just made the issue a bigger and bigger deal. I'm glad something is finally be done. I guess the data matches what has been fairly common feedback for a long time now.

Credible_Joe wrote: »

By and large the most typical response when a player isn't satisfied with a game for any given reason is they just stop playing.

Pretty much where I am right now. And it's NOT because I don't like the overland difficulty the way it is now; far from that, I prefer it the way it is now. But there's a lot of other stuff I'm not happy about, and whatever they do to overland, if it's NOT ABSOLUTELY OPTIONAL (in other words, if what I like isn't left alone as I like it the way it is) I will stop playing entirely and never sub or play again.

Wanting difficulty in overland is not a "vet" issue. I'm a vet and I don't want more difficulty, and I'm not the only one.

Wanting more difficulty is a personal preference, regardless of if the player is a vet or new to ESO. That's even been an argument for difficulty, that new players didn't stay because it was too easy.

Leaving overland as it's been for most of the life of the game was not neglecting veteran players. It was doing what worked.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

colossalvoids wrote: »

It is definitely not solely a veteran issue, for years that feedback is more prevalent from players who are new to the game and are surprised with their first troll or a giant after playing single player titles. Was the same shock for me years back, wasn't expecting that as MMOs in my mind would be more challenging because there are players around to help out, just felt strange. So imo a new nymic, repackaged dungeon etc. that's just a new shiny vet carrot on a stick would be a mistake as those types already exist and people need more of those, sure, but that's entirely separate thing.

I wasn't saying it's solely a vet issue. It's moreso that it predominantly effects vets and vets have been the main ones calling for the change. They aren't the only ones but they are the most vocal/likely most numerous.

It doesn't mean a vet can't like overland as it is. Or that a new player can't have left overland being too easy as a reason they decided not to play.

Devs themselves have mostly talked about it as a vet issue.

Wasn't opposing you there, just pitching a broader audience and that imo solution that's worked from a premise of a vet perspective would probably not be met positively overall as one not really helping other categories who are also affected by current system we have.

Will see pretty soon what it was all about as playerbase always feels strongly and seem to exaggerate how drastic the changes can be as usually everything happens to be pretty mild and tamed versus players expectations of something big and significant. Honestly fully expect to be just baited this time around.

SilverBride wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Wanting difficulty in overland is not a "vet" issue. I'm a vet and I don't want more difficulty, and I'm not the only one.

Wanting more difficulty is a personal preference, regardless of if the player is a vet or new to ESO. That's even been an argument for difficulty, that new players didn't stay because it was too easy.

Leaving overland as it's been for most of the life of the game was not neglecting veteran players. It was doing what worked.

Clearly it wasn’t working. That’s why they announced experimenting with this.

It was working, and for many it still is.

Obviously for their current subscribers, for those happy with the game, it's working. But people leave because of this and if there is a way that ZOS can retain those players by giving them what they want then it's sensible to do so. It's not enough to keep your hardcore fans happy if you want an MMO to be competitive long-term.

SilverBride wrote: »

Players come and go for a lot of reasons. This is just how MMOs work. A game doesn't fail because some players leave, as long as there are also new players joining.

We don't know why every player left and I very seriously doubt they all went just because overland was too easy. Most of the time when a player moves on it's because of burnout from doing the same thing for a long time. Just changing one thing the player doesn't like won't bring them back because the burnout is still there.

I seriously doubt that anything that is done to increase overland difficulty will result in a big influx of returning players.

"changing one thing" is pretty reductive. I'm sure there are plenty of people, and I include myself among them, who consider overland to be the actual TES experience that this game provides. It's the kind of content that a lot of people who have played TES games in the past expect when they come to this game. I have no doubt that many TES fans who turned up the difficulty in older games have felt that ESO's insignificant overland challenge isn't enough to keep them engaged, and so they leave unsatisfied. Even if some of them don't return, I'm betting that if word gets out that the game might actually be fun for them again, a lot of them could come back. MMOs are funny like that, they tend to stay in the back of an ex-player's mind, even years after they've stopped playing. There are definitely those who would be drawn back with some good news.

And we also have to consider prospective players who might otherwise leave if their interests aren't accounted for.