Official Discussion Thread for "Developer Deep Dive—Season Zero’s Challenge Difficulty

Rev Rielle · January 22

Naftal wrote: »

If different difficulties don't have different instances, this system should not be released at all.

I agree. This is fundamental for it's success. The system will not work as intended otherwise.

The concern by development that "we are making a choice to make sure players are not separated by difficulty." needs fresh consideration. If friends want to play together they'll easily find common ground on a similar difficulty level, it won't be a problem at all. If, however, Challenge Difficulty level is something that becomes a sticking point and they can't find common ground, well, let's be honest here, they are absolutely not friends in any shape or semblance of the word.

When we get together in groups of friends and want to enjoy a dungeon or trial, we don't individually get to choose our difficutlies. We make a collective choice which difficulty to all enjoy together, and it has not been a problem in the slightest for over 10 years. It should be the same with this develping Challenge Difficulty system.

*****

Other than the above obvious shortfall, I think the system shows great promise. I just hope Challenge Difficulty is not something we have to go and speak to someone about altering. Fundamentally that would be nice, and the little immersion voice on my shoulder would love an NPC to chat to, with them giving some explanation for the change (maybe this can happen once, the first time, like an intro quest). But practically, we'll need to have a very simple option somewhere in a menu we can change easily anywhere when out of combat.

Varana · January 22

And that is totally fine, imho.

I don't mind being able to quickly mow down random groups of mobs while just running around. There's so many dotting the landscape that everything else (be it with this solution, or any else) would become very tedious.

I do miss a higher difficulty for story missions and esp. bosses. And I'm fine with turning the difficulty up while playing through a zone quest, and back down when I'm done with it. I want it for "immersion" or whatever you want to call it, not for the rewards. I don't see any reason to turn this on while farming, for instance. And imho, that's fine.

And I think that option to move in and out of higher difficulty levels is how it should be.

So I generally like the proposed system, even without more rewards. (Pending actually seeing it in action, talking just from the written description.)

Will I use it often?
No.
Will it matter to me when I do use it?
Yes.

What I would like to suggest is to give the zone stories (and maybe some major stories in zones) a pass to have more solo/group instances. Random people playing together, is not really a thing in story content. Whenever I encounter another player in such a situation, it inevitably disrupts my enjoyment of the story location.
If they're faster than me, I run behind them through empty corridors, and story bosses are dead before I get to them, or the game thinks that I'm already there (so they start their dialogue) when I'm actually not.
If I am faster than them, I fear I'm the one disrupting their story.
Not to mention different speeds of going through dialogue.
It's just not a fun experience.

If I want to play story content with others, I should be able to do so when grouped up. (So not strictly solo instances; just instances where I'm either solo or in a premade group.)
But random other players are detrimental to story content.

Cooperharley · January 22

BloodstainedFay wrote: »

Personally, I see no need for this system to even have rewards. I am happy that I'll be able to do story content without one shotting Multiversal Level Threats with a single light attack as before.

The real painpoint for me is the fact that somehow we're sharing the world with people in other difficulty levels? This on paper has a few issues
Imagine you're on Vestige difficulty, fighting mobs. A group of players on Adventure difficulty show up and just steamroll everything for you. Fun killer right there.

This is exploitable. You can have 1 person on Vestige difficulty working with lower difficulty people to essentially quickly EXP & Gold Farm (and whatever other rewards you have later down the line)

I genuinely do not see a way this'll work -without- splitting the playerbase into shards, and honestly with this being an Overworld/Quest content only feature I don't see why you're so against sharding here.

I agree - this is the primary issue I see with the system, but do want to say that adding achievements and things to re-experience content would be cool.

They definitely need to have sharding once you leave a town or city to ensure consistency and quality for this system.

spartaxoxo · January 22

BloodstainedFay wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

I know the article mentions that rewards are minimal at launch and it's built with expansion in mind but I think parity with veteran dungeons and trials and arenas (purple/gold gear) would make sense. The precedent is there.

I hope one day we can "NG+" the game and reset our progression to experience all of this on our established characters.

I will be using it regardless of rewards, but it just feels odd for this to be the one exception to the general design of more challenge = more reward. I'm glad this is finally happening. Thank you ZOS team.

The main reason people are against Dungeon-level rewards being put in higher difficulty is because the increased difficulty is supposed to be its own reward. Making the game more immersive for people who are bored or frustrated by how quickly they can mow things down. Overland isn't meant to give you high end rewards like Dungeons and Trials and the like. It's meant for delivering the majority of story content.

Now having there be Pursuits tied to it would be fine imo, and also adding it to Tomes when those come out. Individual Pursuits can be skipped and the Tomes can be reset freely, so people who can't or don't want to engage in that can skip it without losing anything. But because Overworld content is the majority of what people play, putting high-end rewards can make them feel like they're being locked out of stuff.

As for people worried about exploitation with a group of people running on the hardest setting working with someone on the lowest to farm exp and gold...I don't really see how either is a problem to be honest 'n__n. You might be able to power level new characters at light speed or grind out CP faster but is that honestly gamebreaking? I mean everyone already says you can level a fresh character in a day as it is, is doing it a bit faster reeeeaaaaally that big of a deal? And CP itself also has a hard cap, but after a certain point they're useless anyway because no build requires maxed CP. As for the gold, you get so little from Overland that even boosting the amount by like 200% only means instead of 200 gold for killing a pack of trash, you're getting 400 instead. Nooooot really lottery level amounts of gold, heh.

Admittedly, the EXP & Gold "abuse" annoys me less than Adventurer Difficulty steamrolling whatever mobs a random Vestige difficulty person is fighting by themselves. Just a fun killer if you're solo overworlding on high difficulty only for others to interrupt and one shot everything

FYI a lot of the big story set piece stuff is already in solo instances. So, you already won't be doing this big build up to fight The Ascendant Lord, only for someone to kill him instantly. His little cultist minions may get blown up by others but you'd be surprised the number of story bosses that are already instanced. Well, at least in dlc.

Uristqwerty · January 22

Hm, sounds tough to design.

You'd want to handle mixed groups where a veteran player gives themselves a handicap to let their newbie friend meaningfully contribute and learn, so mixed-challenge strangers aren't a major concern nor reward penalties for it, but isolating by difficulty really isn't desirable.

Then there would be players seeking challenge for the sake of challenge, for whom a wandering stranger trivializing a fight would be unwelcome, but impacting rewards a relatively minor concern. If everyone set their challenge level to match their skill/gear, a newcomer on an easier setting wouldn't be much of a problem though. Then again, this already happens without challenge settings, whether because any additional participant tips what would have been a precarious thrilling battle, other builds are better-suited to a given fight, or the one seeking challenge is far enough from the skill cap that a random stranger's likely to substantially out-DPS them.

Those specifically looking to farm the greater rewards wouldn't much mind a stranger making the fights easier, unless it also affected their loot. Yet if it didn't, there's clear room for exploitation as others have pointed out. There's no obvious solution without downsides; even instancing the world by difficulty would make zones with few players even more barren. Maybe it just won't be a big enough deal to matter in practice, that the logistics of setting up such a group deliberately isn't worth the payoff; maybe it would be easy enough to detect when someone's not at least trying to pull their weight despite being set on a high challenge level, so those genuinely putting in the work can get the full reward even with the occasional mixed-group interaction or even despite pairing with a newbie on an easier setting.

Muizer · January 22

@ZOS_Finn, @ZOS_Kevin

Hi, I just wanted to throw something in here based on my experience with difficulty in Oblivion Remastered. It uses the same 2 parameters (outgoing and incoming damage). Initially they were combined in difficulty levels, like you are proposing for ESO now. However, in mods, and nowadays in the game itself, those two things are separate settings.

IMHO this separation worked much better. It allows for much more granularity not just for fine tuning overall difficulty, but also to fine tune role-specific settings (a tank might want to have jack up incoming damage without touching outgoing damage, and a dd might want the reverse).

As long as your rewards are scalar (gold and xp) the two can easily be combined regardless of the large variety of difficulty settings this produces. Seems like an easy win. One that I can attest to from personal experience in OR.

If you decide to go with a handful combined settings, a lot of players are going to find themselves in a new no-mans land where going up one level means going from a bit too easy to a bit too hard, missing the sweet spot.

And that's the thing: for those who want greater difficulty, it's not "every bit helps'. No, if fights remain easily won, just taking a little longer, that will be experienced as more tedious than being able to swat aside the enemy with no effort.

rothan117 · January 22

All I can say at this point is that rewards are no incentive at all to even try it. Gold is one thing I am not short of at all and by the time it goes live I will be at CP 2200 (presently at 2142) or above, with nothing of interest to really spend additional CP points on.

BagOfBadgers · January 22

First thank you for acknowledging that difficulty levels are wanted I'm just not convinced that 1 instance is the best for players of different difficulty levels.

I think 3 levels each with their own instances is a better start.

Story (just a name) is Boss/Mobs have 50% less health & 50% less damage to player with 25% less rewards, Gold, XP and gear colour.

Adventure (Normal, if you like) is the same as now.

Vestige (Vet) Boss/Mobs 250% more health and hit 100% harder with rewards being 25% better.

The figurers were pick from my magical MMO arse, maybe the scaling from normal – vet Dungeons/Trials would be better?

I'm not a fan of my Character being nerffed to make something harder, it cheapens the effort and thought I have put into them, if that makes sense. Where as up until now, you, ZOS have used a more difficult instances for challenge, normal/vet and with that there felt progression. With the suggested system, progression is lost, it feel like U35, in that the players DPS is reduced and made weaker, rather than making adjustments to the environment, so that it's harder. Give us a challenge, but not by tying one hand behind our backs (or an extra hand for “Story”).

In most zones you rarely see people out and about except for cities/towns, so it won't feel different having 3 instances. I do feel that giving extra rewards for doing a Golden Pursuit on “Vet” will build resentment and FOMO and should be avoided.

Most asking for Vet overland want it for the challenge, not rewards. For me, doing most things in overland is not impactful and doesn't need me to use my character and skill in any meaning full way.

Djiku · January 22

Having mixed difficulties in the same worldspace will be even more problematic come season one. As of the roadmap, then we will get new dynamic world events.
So everybody will be trying those out. So there will defintely be a lot of players with mixed difficulties playing this new content. adventurer-level players will probably steamroll those events while players looking for a challenge will just have to deal with that. That does not sound like fun to me and I am very much looking forward to these new dynamic events.
I don't care for rewards. Exploit and grind as much exp and gold as you want. I just don't want an unbalanced system where some players can just spoil my fun by onshotting content I intend to take my time for.
Therefore the only solution is separating the playerbase. I know you don't want that, we don't want that but it is curently the only way to not make this system frustrating.
I wouldn't mind just having the standard difficulty and a hardmode. I don't need 4 levels of difficulty. Make the hardmode difficult, a challenge. That way you would split the overland just into 2 groups of players and not 4.
Have the player hubs and towns be a place where players of all difficulties come together. Once you leave town, you get layered, sharded or whatever you want to call that technology.

Dark_Lord_Kuro · January 22

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

This is the official discussion thread for, "Developer Deep Dive—Season Zero’s Challenge Difficulty"

"Learn about the new Challenge Difficulty system, coming later this year, via this developer deep dive."

We'll move this to the news section next week.

Could zos consider adding a character slot or 2 for those of us with maxed out slot so we could revisit older quest on higher difficulty?
This system wiil bring a new experiance to the game that player that are at 20/20 character slot wont be able to fully experiance.

DenverRalphy · January 22

I'm really really curious how exploitation will be prevented.

Because the way it looks now, Tanky toon dials up the difficulty Vestige, Arcanist toon leaves it at Adventurer and mows them down with beam. You can't percentage base the dps to determine the loot drop because low difficulty players would be blocking high difficulty via kill stealing (even unintentionally). You can't "tag for ownership", because that would create an uproar when fatecarvers are just whipping around tagging everything in a race for ownership. Both of which would open the floodgates for griefing.

ESO_player123 · January 22

DenverRalphy wrote: »

I'm really really curious how exploitation will be prevented.

Because the way it looks now, Tanky toon dials up the difficulty Vestige, Arcanist toon leaves it at Adventurer and mows them down with beam. You can't percentage base the dps to determine the loot drop because low difficulty players would be blocking high difficulty via kill stealing (even unintentionally). You can't "tag for ownership", because that would create an uproar when fatecarvers are just whipping around tagging everything in a race for ownership. Both of which would open the floodgates for griefing.

That is what I would like to know too.

Yudo · January 22

I guess you need a baseline to test from, but this leaves many concerning open questions in the areas of undermining teamwork and potential exploits. Right now, this feels like an EXP buff that you can toggle at will. Initial thoughts:

Can I turn it off until execute, and turn it on for max rewards somehow?
I want to play on hardmode, but someone came along and beamed everything to Oblivion.
I am interesting in max exp, so I will let others pull the weight. Dolmens just got an upgrade.
+100% gold of 5gold is 10 gold. Stonks!

The crux for me is nesting this in an environment where everyone can be on different difficulty:

When you achieve something hard by yourself, you feel good about it.
When you achieve something hard with others, there is validation.
When you play with a handicap, right now with questionable rewards, and others have it easy, you wont feel good nor get any validation.

shadyjane62 · January 22

Will wait and see what is done about the toxicity and harassment some of us endure.

Not "encouraged" by what I have seen already. Seems way too complicated and open to interpretation.

coop500 · January 22

shadyjane62 wrote: »

Will wait and see what is done about the toxicity and harassment some of us endure.

Not "encouraged" by what I have seen already. Seems way too complicated and open to interpretation.

It really is way too complicated, IDK why they're going this route, I actually have difficulty thinking of a worse way to do it lol.

I really think it would be best to just have two modes, normal and vet. Yes, this will split the playerbase, and it's not ideal, but the alternatives feel worse.

Galagladi Dragonblood · January 22

@ZOS_Kevin i dont know but maybe an idea for testing. What about change the following ...

Revert the "do less damage" part so that "Adventurer" will have the 80% and "Vestige" will have 0%
Increase the health of normal NPCs and Delve Boss about 100% and other Bosses about 50%
Add another option where your Damage taken decreases to 50%

Why Im suggesting this is maybe so the Bosses can be as they are but it wont be a hard exploit anymore.
And Something for the Future Rewards to Include:

Tradebars (I did see it on the Night Market and it would be an overall great idea to implement)
Rare Treasure Drops which can include transmutation crystals (Low amount, not guarenteed and can maybe only drop from seasoned, Master and Vestige)
Different Item qualities based on Difficulty like in Raids. Example( Cloudrest or Asylum)
Perfected Mythic Leads? (Not really sure about this one but could be an idea)
New Upgrade materials for your armor (Ignore this one if its not really an option because auf Balancing and Ressources)

DenverRalphy · January 22

shadyjane62 wrote: »

Will wait and see what is done about the toxicity and harassment some of us endure.

Not "encouraged" by what I have seen already. Seems way too complicated and open to interpretation.

coop500 wrote: »

shadyjane62 wrote: »

Will wait and see what is done about the toxicity and harassment some of us endure.

Not "encouraged" by what I have seen already. Seems way too complicated and open to interpretation.

It really is way too complicated, IDK why they're going this route, I actually have difficulty thinking of a worse way to do it lol.

I really think it would be best to just have two modes, normal and vet. Yes, this will split the playerbase, and it's not ideal, but the alternatives feel worse.

All I wanted was for Overland to get an upgrade so that it's not so trivial anymore. Why they made it so complicated... ah well.

Dark_Lord_Kuro · January 22

Galagladi Dragonblood wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin i dont know but maybe an idea for testing. What about change the following ...
Revert the "do less damage" part so that "Adventurer" will have the 80% and "Vestige" will have 0%

Increase the health of normal NPCs and Delve Boss about 100% and other Bosses about 50%

Add another option where your Damage taken decreases to 50%

Why Im suggesting this is maybe so the Bosses can be as they are but it wont be a hard exploit anymore.
And Something for the Future Rewards to Include:
Tradebars (I did see it on the Night Market and it would be an overall great idea to implement)

Rare Treasure Drops which can include transmutation crystals (Low amount, not guarenteed and can maybe only drop from seasoned, Master and Vestige)

Different Item qualities based on Difficulty like in Raids. Example( Cloudrest or Asylum)

Perfected Mythic Leads? (Not really sure about this one but could be an idea)

New Upgrade materials for your armor (Ignore this one if its not really an option because auf Balancing and Ressources)

So you would want lower dificulty player to do 80% less damage but boss to have 100% more health? How does it even make sense? Fight will be a slog! Or did i understood you wrong?

In my opinion lower difficulty player shoulnt be affected by this change at all as they are not the one requesting this change

AScarlato · January 22

DenverRalphy wrote: »

shadyjane62 wrote: »

Will wait and see what is done about the toxicity and harassment some of us endure.

Not "encouraged" by what I have seen already. Seems way too complicated and open to interpretation.

coop500 wrote: »

shadyjane62 wrote: »

Will wait and see what is done about the toxicity and harassment some of us endure.

Not "encouraged" by what I have seen already. Seems way too complicated and open to interpretation.

It really is way too complicated, IDK why they're going this route, I actually have difficulty thinking of a worse way to do it lol.

I really think it would be best to just have two modes, normal and vet. Yes, this will split the playerbase, and it's not ideal, but the alternatives feel worse.

All I wanted was for Overland to get an upgrade so that it's not so trivial anymore. Why they made it so complicated... ah well.

I view the present state as Story Mode and that also has an audience. I’m sure some won’t change their settings at all.

Arunei · January 22

Destai wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

The idea is to add more rewards down the line. Right now, we want to make sure we see how folks use the system while we work to refine and build out the system. I think the core takeaway from us is, this is a starting point, not the final update to the system.

But again, totally understand your point here and will make sure folks on the team see this. Just so they know thoughts on rewards.

If you guys want content to be successful, it needs to be rewarding from the start. You're already adjusting Night Market based on that notion. It seems like you guys prefer to have lacking rewards until you either get feedback or declining engagement. I understand it's a starting point, just trying to give you guys perspective for a better start. I'm not confident this solution is cognizant of how people actually play the game. I'm not confident you'll get sufficient participation.

I can't imagine many new players will participate in higher difficulties, compared to vets looking for a challenge. I would think that gold and experience matter less to the people attracted to this system, they're more so looking for a challenge and a "look at me" reward for doing that.

As it stands right now, this isn't a system I would participate in. As a long-time player, if I want gold or experience, I'm going to do crafting dailies, or equip experience boosting gear and consumables. I just don't personally see the value in this.

The thing is, it's not meant to encourage new players to try harder stuff, not right off the bat. This was done as a response to a lot of people wanting things to be harder because the game is too boring and not immersive enough with Overland being how it is currently. And a majority of those people seem to be people who've been around for a while; yes, there are and were people talking about not being really hooked even as new players thanks to the current difficulty, but a lot of people wanting this were folks who wanted a challenge and to feel like they needed to put in some effort.

The point ISN'T to try and get people to play it for the sake of playing it. That's one main reason there aren't high end rewards, at least not to start. The reward is the challenge itself, not whatever you can get from doing it, because so many people have said they want Overland to actually FEEL dangerous and exciting. High end rewards still have their places. They don't need to be added to everything, especially not when something wasn't added because people wanted more sources for rewards but mostly wanted the game to be more engaging.

Plus, a lot of people are already expressing concern over exploiting the rewards that ARE available. Personally I don't think it's that big of a deal to get exp a bit faster since leveling is supposedly so fast and easy already, and it's not like the increase in gold is going to go wrecking the economy given how little gold you already get as a base. If they start adding actual high end rewards like Mounts, Houses, Titles, etc...that would be a lot worse imo, without separating players based on their difficulty setting it's a lot harder to prevent said exploitation. They can do like someone else mentioned, yeah, and make it so you have to group with someone and the leader's setting is the one used for the encounters regardless of everyone elses', but even then if you have a full group of 12 players...is even Vestige difficulty going to be hard enough to not just get zerged down? Even if the groups are smaller like 8, 6, even the standard 4 for Dungeons, is it enough of a challenge? Because it seems to me this stuff is being balanced for individual players and not coordinated groups.

Finally, people worried about other players on a different difficulty option coming and stealing your kills; thaaaaat already can happen on live as it is. Higher skilled people can roll up on Dolmens or Geysers or WBs or in Public Dungeons or whatever that someone might be chipping away at, sneeze at it to make it explode, and then walk away. In most cases where it matters,(aka big story/plot things) stuff is already instanced, so your Big Bad for any given story won't be getting zerged and mowed down. In instances like WBs or Incursions and such tho...it's Overland, it's MEANT for people to come beat up, no one has dibs on trash mobs or stuff in the open world.

Besides, haven't people been claiming for years that the average person does next to no DPS and doesn't know how to avoid red or do basic mechanics? If we listen to the Dungeon folks they seem to think most people are incapable of hitting like 5k DPS lol. I genuinely don't think people playing on higher difficulty need to stress too much about those on lower yoinking their face-murdering from them. Of course we won't know for sure until it hits the PTS and even then that's got a limited playerbase so it probably won't be the best gauge of things like live will be.

Edit: I don't know WHY I thought PvE group limit was still 24, please forgive me my brain is smooth.

Tandor · January 22

I always doubted a lot of players when they argued for this just for the sake of the challenge, and denied they were were motivated by improved loot. Now it's clear that at least to start with the loot will be trivial in terms of just more gold and experience, a significant number of comments on this and other discussion threads are proving my doubts right.

spartaxoxo · January 22

Tandor wrote: »

I always doubted a lot of players when they argued for this just for the sake of the challenge, and denied they were were motivated by improved loot. Now it's clear that at least to start with the loot will be trivial in terms of just more gold and experience, a significant number of comments on this and other discussion threads are proving my doubts right.

Doesn't appear to be the same commentators that I saw in the Overland Thread. Different people will have different opinions. I think they should also have the gear drop a better color but I don't personally need unique rewards. The only thing I actually cared about though was the exp/coin and I'm pleased to see it included.

BloodstainedFay · January 22

Thinking more on this, I really do not see how this'll work without playerbase splitting.

I am going to put the topic of more rewards away in this feedback. I do not care for more rewards (I think this shouldn't even have bonus rewards, EXP and Gold is negligible, but I don't agree with "punishing" more casual players in story/overworld content)
What really bothers me is we're sharing a worldspace with all the different difficulties. I believe the reason ZOS doesn't want to split us is so the world doesn't feel emptier, however this I think isn't as big a deal as it seems.

A lot of players who are questing and exploring either want to do it alone or with friends. Randoms tend to "interfere" with the experience more than anything.
Most people will likely play on lower difficulties I assume. With a shared worldspace, this will clash with higher difficulty players, who might spend a while doing a boss fight or killing mobs, only to be interrupted by lower difficulty players essentially one shotting the content they're doing. This might also be dissatisfying the other way around, where low difficulty players have to deal with heavily nerfed players doing -way less- damage than them in world bosses for example- which might lead to a feeling of "having to carry" challenge mode players.
ZOS can do "on the fly" instancing. This is shown in basegame quest areas where depending on quest progression, someone right next to you might be instantly thrown into a different instance without a loading screen when in proximity of a quest area. ZOS could implement this for towns & hubs, so that regardless of difficulty players are funneled into the same shards in town/hub areas, and then into difficulty shards when leaving these areas. This would keep the world feeling alive player-count wise in areas players tend to congregate at, whilst leaving exploring undisturbed by clashing difficulty levels.

I hope this feedback is taken to heart (and considering ZOS' recent behavior i'm inclined to believe it will be!) however I'd truly appreciate a reply on why ZOS is so against sharding/instancing.

Tannus15 · January 22

Tandor wrote: »

I always doubted a lot of players when they argued for this just for the sake of the challenge, and denied they were were motivated by improved loot. Now it's clear that at least to start with the loot will be trivial in terms of just more gold and experience, a significant number of comments on this and other discussion threads are proving my doubts right.

I'll be cranking it up to vestige and doing the zones i haven't done. as in, necrom onwards. overland questing is boring AF. currently it's a walking simulator.

I don't know if this is enough to make the game fun for me again, but anything is better than the status quo which sucks.

Silufadumar · January 22

I am rather perplexed by the design choice here.

You already have a system in place for this ready to go, all you have to do is implement it.

When we decide to do a dungeon or trial, we choose what difficulty to play that content on, whether that's the standard normal difficulty or the harder veteran difficulty or for an even greater challenge the vet hard mode.

The most pertinent and crucial part of this choice is.... EVERYONE IS ON THE SAME DIFFICULTY!

We don't run through dungeons or trials with half the players doing vet hard mode while the others take easy street on normal. And for reasons that should be obvious, reasons the devs concluded were needed for fair and balanced play when they designed the system in the first place.

The same goes for the rewards structure, its already there, you do a normal dungeon or trial - get normal loot, do vet - get better loot and special rewards like monster helm, title or mount etc etc. It would be the same for zone difficulty.

Splitting difficulty in the same instance is a recipe for disaster. It would be monumentally unfair to force players who want a greater challenge and/or greater rewards to play alongside those on an easier difficulty. I believe this would breed resentment between players not cooperation, the same way it would if dungeons and trial worked that way.

No one wants to take away the normal overland experience for those who enjoy it as is, what has been asked for over the years is an overland experience akin to the choices we have with dungeons and trials, the option to choose a more difficult instance, whether for greater rewards or just the challenge.

Just give us the same choice we already have with dungeon content, let us set the zone difficulty we wish to load into. But everyone MUST be on the same difficulty in the same instance or it just won't work.

Tannus15 · January 22

they are still living in 2011 when no one was doing vet overland. it didn't work then, so it can't work now when the game is completely different.

ultimately the overland difficulty thread was started in 2021 and has almost 10000 comments. they have ignored this glaring issue for 5 years.
i'll take any movement in this space right now

do something, anything. see if it works, see if there are problems, and then iterate, keep moving forward. don't just stare at the wall for another 5 years going "but it's haaaaard and no one will plaaaaaay it"

Cominfordatoothbrush · January 22

I have a few thoughts about this, most of which I've already seen voiced here by others, but I'd like to shortly reinforce those points.

First of all this has been a huge ask of mine since first playing the game, so I'm very excited to see it addressed. The rewards could be better, but being able to be challenged is a reward in itself. A lot of quests are played like they had very high stakes, but you can effortlessly swat away the final boss, and this makes it feel like the quest wasn't really that serious. So this is a good change. One huge thing I would like to be added here is the ability to reset quests so they can be repeated at this higher difficulty on my original characters.

Another is that the difficulty scales are a little odd imo. 6x damage is enough that a dps build will simply be one shot by a lot of things like world bosses or dragons. I'm sure you plan to tinker with things a little bit, but over time some specific difficulty adjustments being added to the flat percentage adjustments would be cool.

But most importantly, I agree that I don't really want to play with people on different difficulties. It's really not fun to be playing on a new character and have someone in a full dd build blow through the quest content you're working on, and it won't be fun to have this happen the other way around either. The way I see it is that there are already multiple instances based on population, so how much worse would it be to make them based on difficulty? Most likely the majority of players will be on the easiest difficulty for zone chat/grouping/farming/events, while the people on higher difficulty instances are the ones that won't be interested in interacting with other players anyways! Unless they've grouped up with friends that is, in which case btw vestige now looks like a fun option for.

Regardless, I'm very happy to see this being worked on, so thankyou

spartaxoxo · January 22

One thing that I think has been a really good point brought up several times in this thread is that world bosses/world events might be a bit too hard with the difficulty enabled.

So I want to back the following solutions I saw proposed

Let us adjust damage dealt and received separately.

Let us adjust our toggle on the fly like with the respec.

I think those were really solid ideas that would make this feature go over better.

CP5 · January 22

BloodstainedFay wrote: »

Thinking more on this, I really do not see how this'll work without playerbase splitting.

I am going to put the topic of more rewards away in this feedback. I do not care for more rewards (I think this shouldn't even have bonus rewards, EXP and Gold is negligible, but I don't agree with "punishing" more casual players in story/overworld content)
What really bothers me is we're sharing a worldspace with all the different difficulties. I believe the reason ZOS doesn't want to split us is so the world doesn't feel emptier, however this I think isn't as big a deal as it seems.
A lot of players who are questing and exploring either want to do it alone or with friends. Randoms tend to "interfere" with the experience more than anything.

Most people will likely play on lower difficulties I assume. With a shared worldspace, this will clash with higher difficulty players, who might spend a while doing a boss fight or killing mobs, only to be interrupted by lower difficulty players essentially one shotting the content they're doing. This might also be dissatisfying the other way around, where low difficulty players have to deal with heavily nerfed players doing -way less- damage than them in world bosses for example- which might lead to a feeling of "having to carry" challenge mode players.

ZOS can do "on the fly" instancing. This is shown in basegame quest areas where depending on quest progression, someone right next to you might be instantly thrown into a different instance without a loading screen when in proximity of a quest area. ZOS could implement this for towns & hubs, so that regardless of difficulty players are funneled into the same shards in town/hub areas, and then into difficulty shards when leaving these areas. This would keep the world feeling alive player-count wise in areas players tend to congregate at, whilst leaving exploring undisturbed by clashing difficulty levels.

I hope this feedback is taken to heart (and considering ZOS' recent behavior i'm inclined to believe it will be!) however I'd truly appreciate a reply on why ZOS is so against sharding/instancing.

I saw this thread and was glad to see what ZOS was cooking, and this exact feedback was what I mentioned in the ancient "Overland Content Feedback Thread" several years ago. When I was new, nothing was worse than mid-quest having a high level player erase everything, and having to stand around waiting for things to respawn. Given the nature of overland, most people will want to play it alone or with friends, and most friend groups will share an intent, all wanting something casual to do or have something more challenging to dig into. That's reason 1 why I was so 'pro instances' in the past.

My second point, unrelated to the quoted post, is the enemies in this game are fairly basic. Other games I've played had basic enemies that could still pose a threat, some even coming together to make for far more interesting fights. But in ESO, so many enemies just, do nothing. Now nerfing the players damage will make NPC healers not as worthless, but when some archer will spend an age charging up taking aim, or a mage will cast a dramatic spell that'll hit nothing, it doesn't matter if the 1m wide fire aoe in the corner of the room would one shot me, it was never a variable to consider. The biggest things to me that would make me pay attention to the fights, rather than watching videos on my other monitor, would be for enemies to act more frequently, and for different enemies to behave differently.

It was ages ago, but at one point ZOS did a massive change to overland mobs, "increased the damage but reduced the health of tank mobs" and "reduced the damage but increase the health of damage dealing mobs" was done there, and now enemies are mostly a gray sludge in overland. Are they ranged, melee, or an elite version of either of those? I normally don't need to think any further than that, and while taking more damage will help me need to pay attention, they're still the same slow enemies who fail to stand out from one another, encounters will be more attention demanding, but no less gray, if that makes any sense.

Skorro · January 22

I appreciate it is just a starting point - but this just sounds tedious 😅

Higher health/damage done isn't more engaging in my opinion - it's just adding time sink into questing. Willing to see how it plays out though