whitecrow wrote: »

Red_Feather wrote: »

I am really worried that doing less damage to enemies and taking more damage from enemies will just make overland enemies feel more tedious to fight.

Yes same. It's already annoying we can't just explore without running into hostiles everywhere.

I wish there was at least a chance that wild animals wouldn't be hostile as you ran past.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Faun's_Lark_Cladding

Honestly, I don't mind if a player runs up and melts my target faster than I can.

What I do mind is that... well, look, I'll level with you. Great games with different difficulty levels will mix up enemy swarms and groups to provide more challenge. Give you weird combinations that you wouldn't normally see. Change up the dynamics. Introduce some new abilities to bosses / champion henchmen. Get you back on your toes for a while.

Lazy games with different difficulty levels just make enemies bullet sponges and nerf your damage. They're only more difficult because they're more tedious. You're fighting the same groups of enemies in the same scenarios, but now the goblin takes 50 hits instead of 10 and you die from 2 hits instead of 20. WHOO!!!!!!!! SWEAT, BOI!

This is an MMO. It's 12 years old and, smartly, has no desire to split up its remaining playerbase into innumerable poorly-peopled zone instances. It also has no desire to break the bank in implementing this feature (VERY SMART). So lazy is all we're ever going to get on this front, and... bleh. I had enough of the difficulty tier system with Diablo 3, which was just tedious.

At least we don't have gear-grind treadmills tied to difficulty tier treadmills tied to still more skinner-boxes and currencies (yet), but I'm still non-plussed.

This is the right move for ZOS to make. 100%. I don't dispute that, but I roll my eyes at it all the same.

I like the current difficulty. If I want to pick flowers, overland mobs are not tedious. If I want a more serious fight then I go solo a WB or solo a normal group dungeon. I cling to the sentiment ZoS has shared that any difficulty level changing would be optional. If done reasonably well then I keep playing the way I do (and enjoying it) and those who have wished for more difficulty get that as well. This thread does raise some questions about mixing player tastes in the same fight but I will hope that ZoS figures that out. As far as how achievements/XP/loot might factor in, I could care less - I don't play for those things and won't in the future either.

The whole issue of split difficulty is a tricky one. Currently overland is open to everyone, no matter what their character's level, whether they have CP or not. Everyone can go for a world boss or any other target.

I'm not sure if things have changed but you used to need to have dealt 3% of the damage in order to get a reward. Given the reduction in damage that Vestige gives (takes?) this could mean that someone on Vestige level might not get any reward if they are fighting a WB with players at normal or any other level.

However splitting the player-base by skill level would reduce the population of the open world even if Zos keep towns as a mixed area. Imagine a new player starting out and seeing no-one as most other player's are on a higher difficulty level. Shouts of 'dead game' would abound.

One solution might be to group the difficulty levels. So keep Adventurer (current default) and Seasoned in one instance, Master and Vestige in another. yes you would reduce the apparent game population in the open world, but not as much as you would if every level had its own instance.

However this would cause issues with people wanting to play with friends but where the difficulty levels would result in different instances. I was not playing at the start, but One Tamriel was apparently implemented to solve this exact issue where friends could not group together as they were different levels or alliances.

Another suggestion would be to calculate the amount of damage someone on Seasoned/Master/Vestage would have done if they were just Adventurers. If they get passed 3%, or whatever, they get the reward based on their difficulty. I suspect this would still result in some missing out on rewards in large groups.

I suspect there is no perfect solution, Perhaps the above could be combined in some way? Anyway I'll be interested in seeing how this pans out.