Overland difficulty issue discussion and alternatives

ChaoticWings3 · January 24

Wanted to create something discuss the potential issue of the current implementation that is planned for overland difficulty and possibly to discuss alternatives to help alleviate what may occur.

The main issue with how it's being implemented is that those that are on adventurer difficulty will swoop in and defeat the enemy your fighting if you are on a higher difficulty. Because this is technically a purposeful debuff set on the character.

An alternative though can be an effect applied to the monster when it damages the player or the player damages the enemy which gives the enemy the buff instead of the player having a debuff. I'm not sure how feasible that is but that would solve the problem of adventurer difficulty players accidentally rushing through the area someone on a higher difficulty would be exploring while also eliminating exploiting from trying to get better rewards with an easy difficulty ally since the better rewards would be locked to whatever the higher difficulty is for that monster (don't care about rewards but that would be the way to do it, probably should only link certain boss enemies with unique rewards if that really needs to happen.).

Biggest drawback to this is that others would have to deal with tougher enemies when they don't want to so things like world bosses and dolmens could be a pain. I would say if something like this were to be implemented then difficulty values would probably need to be adjusted. OR the dmg values for the adventurer player would be the only thing affected while their dmg mitigation remains unaffected.

Would like to discuss any other ideas or is the current set up planned sound good. Personally, I don't mind it too much but you will occasionally run in to someone on lower difficulties that may blast away the enemies you were enjoying a battle with which is why I'm curious what everyone is thinking on this.

spartaxoxo · January 24

That's already the case in overland. It's an expected part of an MMO that sometimes people will kill things faster than you. But this has already worked well in other MMOs like LOTRO. A lot of the major moments in the quests are instanced. And you really don't run into people crazy often because this game already keeps zones from being congested through instancing anyway. The only time it will really be an issue is during events and when content first drops.

It's a valid concern but I think it's out when more people get to actually play it outside of the initial rush, they'll see that this game is already pretty good about minimizing this in the background. But, time will tell.

JeroenB · January 24

ChaoticWings3 wrote: »

The main issue with how it's being implemented is that those that are on adventurer difficulty will swoop in and defeat the enemy your fighting if you are on a higher difficulty.

Seems only fair. After all, this is the current experience of non-PvE-endgame players. You're carefully taking out the individual mob groups in a base game public dungeon boss room to create space for an attempt at the boss, when a PvE-endgame player sprints in, melts the boss before you have a chance to rush over and get a single hit in, and sprints off again leaving you to wait for the boss respawn timer.

BradTheNord · January 24

Conspiracy tinfoil hat activated ….

OR

Maybe this was deliberate and they know full well what’s going to occur? Hoping to inflate consoles with lots of gold which in turn effects economy prices for everything which in turn gets console to a more inflated economy like PC which will make the eventual leap to Crossplay a lot less difficult

A lot of things are adding up ..:

Console addons ✅
All Updates day and date everywhere ✅
Economy ???

Katahdin · January 24

I just hope that the server having to make all these different calculations for every player doesnt cause a meltdown

tomofhyrule · January 24

BradTheNord wrote: »

Conspiracy tinfoil hat activated ….

OR

Maybe this was deliberate and they know full well what’s going to occur? Hoping to inflate consoles with lots of gold which in turn effects economy prices for everything which in turn gets console to a more inflated economy like PC which will make the eventual leap to Crossplay a lot less difficult

A lot of things are adding up ..:

Console addons ✅
All Updates day and date everywhere ✅
Economy ???

You... don't need a tinfoil hat to know that Crossplay is coming. They've said it. Multiple times.

It is going to take a while (which they also said multiple times) because the server architecture was not built for it so they do need to do a decent retrofit on it. It's like moving a house - it can be done, but you can't expect it'll be done in three seconds.

And this difficulty change/extra gold that only a few players are going to go for is not factoring into those decisions. After all, its not like PC players won't also get more gold from it.

Desiato · January 24

The supposed feature they have proposed is extremely low effort as it is merely a debuff on the character. Honestly, it couldn't be more low-effort than this.

What strikes me the most is the low effort part. It shows they are unprepared to make a serious effort. They are just checking a box and moving on.

I am someone who has been asking for more challenging overland content since the initial vet nerf in 2014 and the proposed feature misses the mark in every way.

There is already a solution that's really easy to implement because the game launched with this feature: Vet overland instances. We don't need 20 difficulty levels. I just want combat to be at least mildly interesting.

I'm being 100% serious: I don't understand how *anyone* enjoys default overland content. It's so absurdly easy, it cannot actually even be considered a game.

Cooperharley · January 24

Desiato wrote: »

The supposed feature they have proposed is extremely low effort as it is merely a debuff on the character. Honestly, it couldn't be more low-effort than this.

What strikes me the most is the low effort part. It shows they are unprepared to make a serious effort. They are just checking a box and moving on.

I am someone who has been asking for more challenging overland content since the initial vet nerf in 2014 and the proposed feature misses the mark in every way.

There is already a solution that's really easy to implement because the game launched with this feature: Vet overland instances. We don't need 20 difficulty levels. I just want combat to be at least mildly interesting.

I'm being 100% serious: I don't understand how *anyone* enjoys default overland content. It's so absurdly easy, it cannot actually even be considered a game.

+1

The fix is sharding. It’d be cool to see a debuff on each player in towns to know what people are playing on difficulty wise, but once you leave town, you should be in a shard with like minded players 100%

GloatingSwine · January 24

The issue is that most enemies don't have interesting mechanics. They have maybe one fairly basic trick that isn't terribly interesting to deal with.

What the game really needed wasn't overland enemies with more HP, what it needed was some new difficult solo content (pitched around the level of the second half of a vet arena) that takes about fifteen minutes to do so you can dip in and out of it whenever you feel like getting sweaty. (The problem with arenas and IA is that they're too long).

Attorneyatlawl · January 24

Desiato wrote: »

The supposed feature they have proposed is extremely low effort as it is merely a debuff on the character. Honestly, it couldn't be more low-effort than this.

What strikes me the most is the low effort part. It shows they are unprepared to make a serious effort. They are just checking a box and moving on.

I am someone who has been asking for more challenging overland content since the initial vet nerf in 2014 and the proposed feature misses the mark in every way.

There is already a solution that's really easy to implement because the game launched with this feature: Vet overland instances. We don't need 20 difficulty levels. I just want combat to be at least mildly interesting.

I'm being 100% serious: I don't understand how *anyone* enjoys default overland content. It's so absurdly easy, it cannot actually even be considered a game.

Yeah, I don't get it either. I agree with your points all around, unfortunately

. I'd really like to see the return of vet overland, tuned for today's damage outputs and mitigation.

I've recommended the game to friends and had them bounce off because overland, the content they must engage in to start with was so obscenely tiring due to how easy it is. They just couldn't enjoy it.

ZOS_Hadeostry · January 25

Greetings,

Because there is a thread already open on this topic, we're going to close this one down so that all feedback can be consolidated in one place.

You may continue the discussion here