Overland Content Feedback Thread

Ruthless · January 24

loveeso wrote: »

Excited to see ZOS finally working on overland difficulty options—especially with multiple levels. Great move.

If you’re aiming to avoid separate instances and leaning toward a system like LotRO’s landscape difficulty (which works well overall), I hope you’ll address one key issue:
Players on lower difficulty shouldn’t be able to undermine the experience for those on higher difficulty by one-shotting enemies already engaged in tougher combat.

Two potential solutions come to mind:

1. Enraged Tagging System
Once an enemy is attacked by someone on higher difficulty, it becomes visibly “enraged” or marked. Anyone who joins the fight is automatically pulled into that difficulty tier for that encounter. This keeps the challenge intact and avoids trivializing the fight.

2. Ghost Phase System
To players not on the higher difficulty, those enemies appear as ghostly, semi-transparent figures—like phantoms in Dark Souls. They’re untouchable and don’t interfere with normal spawns, which continue as usual for lower-difficulty players.
This could actually look stunning in-game: seeing others locked in intense battles with spectral foes while you engage your own tier.

Either approach would preserve immersion and prevent cross-tier interference. Just hoping ZOS nails the implementation so difficulty feels meaningful without fragmenting the world.

Importantly, this kind of system doesn’t just protect higher-difficulty players from having their challenge spoiled—it also prevents abuse.
Without safeguards, players could switch to high difficulty and let a friend on minimum difficulty tank and kill enemies for them, farming high-tier rewards without actually engaging with the challenge. That would undermine the whole point.

And let’s be honest: if higher difficulty doesn’t offer meaningful rewards, most players won’t bother. They’ll just switch to another game where challenge and reward go hand-in-hand.

this is a great idea

Tommy_The_Gun · January 24

The issue I see with increased difficulty is that it needs to be totally optional. It needs to be a choice that each individual player makes and not something that is forced upon. But, since there are going to be rewards for it, it means that it is not going to be totally optional, but rather another achievement / reward / fomo based system.

Increased gold will affect in-game economy & prices.
Increased EXP gain will affect not only how fast you progress but most importantly - will also affect how things will get balanced in the future. For example, if on average you will be able to level up skills & character too fast - devs will just increase base exp needed to progress skills & level etc. On top of that it will stack with ESO+.
And Golden Pursuits & time limited challenges that will require for example to beat that specific boss or group dungeon on "hardest & hardest difficulty" etc ? Don't even get me started. Sounds way too toxic.

I have seen this happened in pretty much every game so far. Stuff gets adjusted to what is considered "new norm". If in this game "new norm" will be what on average players do, then most likely majority of player base will use that harder difficulty, meaning that players who play on "normal" - will get penalised for it.

spartaxoxo · January 24

The amount of damage you lose is not covered by the exp/gold gain. It's in no way forced. There's a small modifier so people don't feel punished. You'll be able to use it to get a bit more in crowded spaces like dolmens.

But anyone who thinks they need to quest with it is actually losing out on exp efficiency overall.

AlexanderDeLarge · January 24

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

I've said it a million times already ITT but it's strange that people draw the line at veteran overland when we have veteran dungeons, trials and arenas. Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?

The whole game's reward structure is more challenge = more reward in every other activity, so drawing the line here is arbitrary at best.

"Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?"
==> Because providing increased armors, weapons, and posts, has caused players to be over geared for standard game play and now they are demanding more challenging content because they are bored with dungeons and refuse to take the group dungeon gear off to complete standard content. Higher gear perpetuates the problem.

People complained about the gap in difficulty because there was a gap and now they've addressed it with this system scaling all the way up to 600% dmg received/20% output. They're not exacerbating a problem because the problem has been addressed.

Depending on how this scaling actually works in practice, this overland content may be more challenging than most DLC dungeons on veteran.

In arenas, you have perfected gear. In trials and dungeons you have epic and legendary tier drops. I've gotten gold jewelry from trials. The average person is still able to refine their gear up to gold if they want. I don't see any reason to break that consistency, reward structures should be consistent and predictable without having to wiki everything and discover the odd exception to a general rule. Purples should drop.

Quoting myself because I'm still not seeing any logical reason to draw the line at overland for veteran rewards. It's such an arbitrary line being drawn.

ESO_player123 · January 24

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

I've said it a million times already ITT but it's strange that people draw the line at veteran overland when we have veteran dungeons, trials and arenas. Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?

The whole game's reward structure is more challenge = more reward in every other activity, so drawing the line here is arbitrary at best.

"Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?"
==> Because providing increased armors, weapons, and posts, has caused players to be over geared for standard game play and now they are demanding more challenging content because they are bored with dungeons and refuse to take the group dungeon gear off to complete standard content. Higher gear perpetuates the problem.

People complained about the gap in difficulty because there was a gap and now they've addressed it with this system scaling all the way up to 600% dmg received/20% output. They're not exacerbating a problem because the problem has been addressed.

Depending on how this scaling actually works in practice, this overland content may be more challenging than most DLC dungeons on veteran.

In arenas, you have perfected gear. In trials and dungeons you have epic and legendary tier drops. I've gotten gold jewelry from trials. The average person is still able to refine their gear up to gold if they want. I don't see any reason to break that consistency, reward structures should be consistent and predictable without having to wiki everything and discover the odd exception to a general rule. Purples should drop.

Quoting myself because I'm still not seeing any logical reason to draw the line at overland for veteran rewards. It's such an arbitrary line being drawn.

Arenas/trails/dungeons have limits on the number of people that participate in the activity. In overland we can have as many people pile up on the boss as the instance supports. So, dropping gold gear seems an overkill.

Cireous · January 24

Seriously considering starting from scratch.
Brand new account.
One character only.
Vestige difficulty, nothing else.
Entirely new gaming experience.
Could be a lot of fun!

marcbf · January 24

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

The issue I see with increased difficulty is that it needs to be totally optional. It needs to be a choice that each individual player makes and not something that is forced upon. But, since there are going to be rewards for it, it means that it is not going to be totally optional, but rather another achievement / reward / fomo based system.

Increased gold will affect in-game economy & prices.
Increased EXP gain will affect not only how fast you progress but most importantly - will also affect how things will get balanced in the future. For example, if on average you will be able to level up skills & character too fast - devs will just increase base exp needed to progress skills & level etc. On top of that it will stack with ESO+.
And Golden Pursuits & time limited challenges that will require for example to beat that specific boss or group dungeon on "hardest & hardest difficulty" etc ? Don't even get me started. Sounds way too toxic.

I have seen this happened in pretty much every game so far. Stuff gets adjusted to what is considered "new norm". If in this game "new norm" will be what on average players do, then most likely majority of player base will use that harder difficulty, meaning that players who play on "normal" - will get penalised for it.

I thought I was the only one concerned about the "Overland (or now, Challenge) Difficulty" feature coming to the game. In my very humble opinion choosing a higher difficulty should *not* result in any higher rewards whatsoever. If people choose to do it because they don't feel challenged, then by all means choose to increase the difficulty for yourself. But absolutely not at the cost of penalising regular players. The idea to eventually interface it with other reward systems like Golden Pursuits is even worse. Personally, I like the game the way it is. There's plenty of challenging content. But that's just my opinion.

Attorneyatlawl · January 24

marcbf wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

The issue I see with increased difficulty is that it needs to be totally optional. It needs to be a choice that each individual player makes and not something that is forced upon. But, since there are going to be rewards for it, it means that it is not going to be totally optional, but rather another achievement / reward / fomo based system.

Increased gold will affect in-game economy & prices.
Increased EXP gain will affect not only how fast you progress but most importantly - will also affect how things will get balanced in the future. For example, if on average you will be able to level up skills & character too fast - devs will just increase base exp needed to progress skills & level etc. On top of that it will stack with ESO+.
And Golden Pursuits & time limited challenges that will require for example to beat that specific boss or group dungeon on "hardest & hardest difficulty" etc ? Don't even get me started. Sounds way too toxic.

I have seen this happened in pretty much every game so far. Stuff gets adjusted to what is considered "new norm". If in this game "new norm" will be what on average players do, then most likely majority of player base will use that harder difficulty, meaning that players who play on "normal" - will get penalised for it.

I thought I was the only one concerned about the "Overland (or now, Challenge) Difficulty" feature coming to the game. In my very humble opinion choosing a higher difficulty should *not* result in any higher rewards whatsoever. If people choose to do it because they don't feel challenged, then by all means choose to increase the difficulty for yourself. But absolutely not at the cost of penalising regular players. The idea to eventually interface it with other reward systems like Golden Pursuits is even worse. Personally, I like the game the way it is. There's plenty of challenging content. But that's just my opinion.

Challenge modes are actually a penalty now, not increased rewards. Mobs hit for 600% damage, take 500% damage to kill (so 5x as slow to kill them), but you only get 200% of the xp as normal. They'd need to ramp it to at least 5-700% xp just to even it out, let alone make it be better xp than adventurer mode.

Even if they did 1000% xp, which would make perfect sense, it still isn't forcing anyone into anything. It would just be a slight reward boost for doing something that's harder. And frankly, xp isn't a big reward as many players are well past needing it

I'm in it for the "mobs don't die in 1 hit" aspect while questing, but since I still need champ ranks I'll be continuing to farm on normal after that. If they evened out the rewards or made them better than normal difficulty, I'd farm in the higher mode for the challenge. As-is it is a massive penalty on xp for those who want to play on vestige.

And yes, higher difficulty should have better rewards than just the challenge itself, just like everything else challenging in the game does. Realistically it should probably be 700%+ xp bonus and have chances to drop gold materials or whatnot. Again though, I'll use it for questing because I don't want the bosses to fall over before I can even hear a single voice line...

loveeso · January 25

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

marcbf wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

The issue I see with increased difficulty is that it needs to be totally optional. It needs to be a choice that each individual player makes and not something that is forced upon. But, since there are going to be rewards for it, it means that it is not going to be totally optional, but rather another achievement / reward / fomo based system.

Increased gold will affect in-game economy & prices.
Increased EXP gain will affect not only how fast you progress but most importantly - will also affect how things will get balanced in the future. For example, if on average you will be able to level up skills & character too fast - devs will just increase base exp needed to progress skills & level etc. On top of that it will stack with ESO+.
And Golden Pursuits & time limited challenges that will require for example to beat that specific boss or group dungeon on "hardest & hardest difficulty" etc ? Don't even get me started. Sounds way too toxic.

I have seen this happened in pretty much every game so far. Stuff gets adjusted to what is considered "new norm". If in this game "new norm" will be what on average players do, then most likely majority of player base will use that harder difficulty, meaning that players who play on "normal" - will get penalised for it.

I thought I was the only one concerned about the "Overland (or now, Challenge) Difficulty" feature coming to the game. In my very humble opinion choosing a higher difficulty should *not* result in any higher rewards whatsoever. If people choose to do it because they don't feel challenged, then by all means choose to increase the difficulty for yourself. But absolutely not at the cost of penalising regular players. The idea to eventually interface it with other reward systems like Golden Pursuits is even worse. Personally, I like the game the way it is. There's plenty of challenging content. But that's just my opinion.

Challenge modes are actually a penalty now, not increased rewards. Mobs hit for 600% damage, take 500% damage to kill (so 5x as slow to kill them), but you only get 200% of the xp as normal. They'd need to ramp it to at least 5-700% xp just to even it out, let alone make it be better xp than adventurer mode.

Even if they did 1000% xp, which would make perfect sense, it still isn't forcing anyone into anything. It would just be a slight reward boost for doing something that's harder. And frankly, xp isn't a big reward as many players are well past needing it

I'm in it for the "mobs don't die in 1 hit" aspect while questing, but since I still need champ ranks I'll be continuing to farm on normal after that. If they evened out the rewards or made them better than normal difficulty, I'd farm in the higher mode for the challenge. As-is it is a massive penalty on xp for those who want to play on vestige.

And yes, higher difficulty should have better rewards than just the challenge itself, just like everything else challenging in the game does. Realistically it should probably be 700%+ xp bonus and have chances to drop gold materials or whatnot. Again though, I'll use it for questing because I don't want the bosses to fall over before I can even hear a single voice line...

Exactly this. Even if they did bump XP to account for mobs taking over five times longer to kill—because they effectively have five times the health and can one‑shot you, forcing you to stop DPS, dodge, or run a lower‑DPS/high‑mitigation setup—anyone trying to level efficiently would still stick to Normal. Every fast‑leveling method (aside from writs) relies on pulling big packs and nuking them. That simply isn’t possible on Vestige.

And then there’s the cost. Longer fights mean burning through more potions, soul gems, food, ambrosia, repairs—everything. If Vestige is meant to be a viable leveling path, XP and rewards need to be dramatically higher than what’s currently on the table.

But even that comes second. The biggest issue still needs to be addressed before this can become the genuinely great feature it has the potential to be (see my previous post).

marcbf · January 25

Let me repeat my stance: Some players have been crying that the game isn't challenging enough for them. They desperately need a higher difficulty for the game to be "fun". Fair enough. ZOS accomodates them. But not by raising the rewards. No one, and I mean NO ONE, is forcing them to do stuff at a higher difficulty. It's for their own apparent pleasure. In no way, shape or form should this go hand in hand with higher rewards.

loveeso · January 25

To no one in particular: If optional rewards offend you that much, congratulations — you’ve made policing other people’s hobbies your hobby. Enjoy the badge.

tohopka_eso · January 25

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The amount of damage you lose is not covered by the exp/gold gain. It's in no way forced. There's a small modifier so people don't feel punished. You'll be able to use it to get a bit more in crowded spaces like dolmens.

But anyone who thinks they need to quest with it is actually losing out on exp efficiency overall.

Hey, wanted to get with you on the way LotRO has there's. not to long ago, I signed into that game after being away for quite some time and even though I'm not a person that likes to challenge themselves in a game I decided to take a look at it.

So, there is a quest NPC you hail and they have a series of of difficulty challenges you can turn on. The reward was some kind of currency you can only get from that. there is some kind of bonus if you start before level 10 though.

So I gave it a try, but the quests themselves are straight forward but it was hard to tell if anything was harder or if it was working correctly. I gave a /shout out and I got the same responses as here. Some were positive and others negative on the whole.

I tried it again on a new character and that was when I noticed the slight increase. Rewards, if you want to call them that in that game was same whether on normal or higher but it was the new currency you wanted. I never got to far in it (I missed my ESO characters) but I think it was the right path.

I don't know maybe something to consider.

BananaBender · January 25

The game already gives additional rewards for engaging in harder content and ZOS has been very consistent with that stance. There are achievements for completing veteran dungeons and trials, there are also extra achievements with additional challenges only for veteran and Hard Mode content. I don't see why would overland content be any different? I think extra achievements and titles would make vestige mode way more inviting for people without increasing the financial gain.

I don't personally really care about the gold or XP increase, I have enough of both, but there should definitely be a noticeable increase in rewards to make up for all the gold you are losing by using potions, foods, repairs etc. Again, for me the gold isn't the problem, but this system has be fair for newer players who are looking for a challenge. A player shouldn't be punished with a net negative gold gain just because they want a challenge. This doesn't apply just for vestige, but the other difficulties as well.

AlexanderDeLarge · January 25

ESO_player123 wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

I've said it a million times already ITT but it's strange that people draw the line at veteran overland when we have veteran dungeons, trials and arenas. Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?

The whole game's reward structure is more challenge = more reward in every other activity, so drawing the line here is arbitrary at best.

"Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?"
==> Because providing increased armors, weapons, and posts, has caused players to be over geared for standard game play and now they are demanding more challenging content because they are bored with dungeons and refuse to take the group dungeon gear off to complete standard content. Higher gear perpetuates the problem.

People complained about the gap in difficulty because there was a gap and now they've addressed it with this system scaling all the way up to 600% dmg received/20% output. They're not exacerbating a problem because the problem has been addressed.

Depending on how this scaling actually works in practice, this overland content may be more challenging than most DLC dungeons on veteran.

In arenas, you have perfected gear. In trials and dungeons you have epic and legendary tier drops. I've gotten gold jewelry from trials. The average person is still able to refine their gear up to gold if they want. I don't see any reason to break that consistency, reward structures should be consistent and predictable without having to wiki everything and discover the odd exception to a general rule. Purples should drop.

Quoting myself because I'm still not seeing any logical reason to draw the line at overland for veteran rewards. It's such an arbitrary line being drawn.

Arenas/trails/dungeons have limits on the number of people that participate in the activity. In overland we can have as many people pile up on the boss as the instance supports. So, dropping gold gear seems an overkill.

I understand that, but is that any worse than people paying for veteran DLC dungeon and trial clears? Gold gear would be an extremely rare drop just as it is in other modes, and any concern about this is easily resolved by having the first player "tag" an enemy with an attack, difficulty scaling applies. Dungeons throw purple gear at you already so I don't think purples are a concern.

Alternatively just give us a different overland layer for the different difficulties, after crossplay is implemented so no one loses any players.

spartaxoxo · January 25

tohopka_eso wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The amount of damage you lose is not covered by the exp/gold gain. It's in no way forced. There's a small modifier so people don't feel punished. You'll be able to use it to get a bit more in crowded spaces like dolmens.

But anyone who thinks they need to quest with it is actually losing out on exp efficiency overall.

Hey, wanted to get with you on the way LotRO has there's. not to long ago, I signed into that game after being away for quite some time and even though I'm not a person that likes to challenge themselves in a game I decided to take a look at it.

So, there is a quest NPC you hail and they have a series of of difficulty challenges you can turn on. The reward was some kind of currency you can only get from that. there is some kind of bonus if you start before level 10 though.

So I gave it a try, but the quests themselves are straight forward but it was hard to tell if anything was harder or if it was working correctly. I gave a /shout out and I got the same responses as here. Some were positive and others negative on the whole.

I tried it again on a new character and that was when I noticed the slight increase. Rewards, if you want to call them that in that game was same whether on normal or higher but it was the new currency you wanted. I never got to far in it (I missed my ESO characters) but I think it was the right path.

I don't know maybe something to consider.

Thanks for sharing! What was the currency able to be used on?

ESO_player123 · January 25

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

ESO_player123 wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

I've said it a million times already ITT but it's strange that people draw the line at veteran overland when we have veteran dungeons, trials and arenas. Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?

The whole game's reward structure is more challenge = more reward in every other activity, so drawing the line here is arbitrary at best.

"Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?"
==> Because providing increased armors, weapons, and posts, has caused players to be over geared for standard game play and now they are demanding more challenging content because they are bored with dungeons and refuse to take the group dungeon gear off to complete standard content. Higher gear perpetuates the problem.

People complained about the gap in difficulty because there was a gap and now they've addressed it with this system scaling all the way up to 600% dmg received/20% output. They're not exacerbating a problem because the problem has been addressed.

Depending on how this scaling actually works in practice, this overland content may be more challenging than most DLC dungeons on veteran.

In arenas, you have perfected gear. In trials and dungeons you have epic and legendary tier drops. I've gotten gold jewelry from trials. The average person is still able to refine their gear up to gold if they want. I don't see any reason to break that consistency, reward structures should be consistent and predictable without having to wiki everything and discover the odd exception to a general rule. Purples should drop.

Quoting myself because I'm still not seeing any logical reason to draw the line at overland for veteran rewards. It's such an arbitrary line being drawn.

Arenas/trails/dungeons have limits on the number of people that participate in the activity. In overland we can have as many people pile up on the boss as the instance supports. So, dropping gold gear seems an overkill.

I understand that, but is that any worse than people paying for veteran DLC dungeon and trial clears? Gold gear would be an extremely rare drop just as it is in other modes, and any concern about this is easily resolved by having the first player "tag" an enemy with an attack, difficulty scaling applies. Dungeons throw purple gear at you already so I don't think purples are a concern.

Alternatively just give us a different overland layer for the different difficulties, after crossplay is implemented so no one loses any players.

Hard NO to "tagging" determining the drops/difficulty of the enemies. "Tagging" opens up the possibility of two equally unpleasant scenarios:
1. "Vestige" player tags, "Adventurers" are forced to either fight the mob on "Vestige" difficulty or wait for the "Vestige" to finish.
2. "Adventurer" tags as many trash mobs with an AoE and nukes at their leisure leaving "Vestige" with nothing.

If they split the players into different instances according to difficulty levels, adding gold level/perfected gear like in dungeons would make more sense (it would be indeed more consistent with the current structure of the difficulty/reward). Since everyone will be fighting the same mobs, the cases where "Adventurers" will be nuking the bosses for the "Vestiges" and "Vestiges" getting the gold/perfected gear will definitely take place.

Bottom line: with the absence of instancing according to difficulty, comparing with trials/dungeons does not make much sense.

Edit: I'm talking about the regular overland here, not questlines, since the questlines are currently not repeatable.

Red_Feather · January 25

It is silly there are people asking that a 10 minute run through a public dungeon should yield more loot on a brain dead easy mode than a hard mode. So silly.

SugaComa · 12:00AM

The new Overland Challenge Difficulty system sounds great in principle, but the current description (deal less damage / take more damage) raises a major shared-world maths problem that needs clarification. In a shared open world, players of different difficulty settings will often hit the same boss at the same time. If the boss has one shared HP pool, then a Normal/Adventurer player’s full damage will still burn the boss down quickly, meaning the Vestige player won’t actually experience a harder fight — they’ll just receive higher rewards.
Using real numbers from my own characters:
Character 1 contributes ~40k boss DPS in mixed fights
Character 2 contributes ~120k boss DPS to bosses
If Character 2 is Adventurer and Character 1 is Vestige (80% less damage → 20% output), the combined boss DPS becomes 120k + 8k = 128k, so a 500k HP boss dies in ~3.9 seconds. That completely overrides the Vestige challenge experience.
This leads players to conclude one of two disappointing outcomes:
Hard mode can be “cheesed” by nearby normal players, or
Boss HP is increased globally to preserve challenge, which makes it harder for everyone (including players who didn’t opt in).
Two solutions that would mitigate this are:
A) A shared-world contribution system where Adventurer damage is weighted down toward the boss HP bar when a higher difficulty player is engaged (prevents easy-mode melting).

A personal progress/reward system where higher difficulty rewards only apply if the player personally completes enough of the fight under their chosen difficulty (prevents free hard rewards from easy carries).
Which of these systems (or equivalent anti-carry math) have you implemented for shared-world bosses?

SugaComa · 12:19AM

ESO_player123 wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

I've said it a million times already ITT but it's strange that people draw the line at veteran overland when we have veteran dungeons, trials and arenas. Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?

The whole game's reward structure is more challenge = more reward in every other activity, so drawing the line here is arbitrary at best.

"Why should difficulty be the only reward in challenge difficulty for overland and what makes that different from perfected drops in arenas and trials?"
==> Because providing increased armors, weapons, and posts, has caused players to be over geared for standard game play and now they are demanding more challenging content because they are bored with dungeons and refuse to take the group dungeon gear off to complete standard content. Higher gear perpetuates the problem.

People complained about the gap in difficulty because there was a gap and now they've addressed it with this system scaling all the way up to 600% dmg received/20% output. They're not exacerbating a problem because the problem has been addressed.

Depending on how this scaling actually works in practice, this overland content may be more challenging than most DLC dungeons on veteran.

In arenas, you have perfected gear. In trials and dungeons you have epic and legendary tier drops. I've gotten gold jewelry from trials. The average person is still able to refine their gear up to gold if they want. I don't see any reason to break that consistency, reward structures should be consistent and predictable without having to wiki everything and discover the odd exception to a general rule. Purples should drop.

Quoting myself because I'm still not seeing any logical reason to draw the line at overland for veteran rewards. It's such an arbitrary line being drawn.

Arenas/trails/dungeons have limits on the number of people that participate in the activity. In overland we can have as many people pile up on the boss as the instance supports. So, dropping gold gear seems an overkill.

You could drop gold gear if they implementing a weighted system by having a minimum damage number calculatable to a max potential and assessing TTK potential V actual you can determine if a player is op and therefore not really being challenged. Checking if the level 3600cp player whose running on vestige is mathmatically making lower contribution to the action when compared to other engaged players by level+difficulty choice and provide clear tiered reward if your contribution falls short no reward for you

SugaComa · 12:42AM

k, I think I have the perfect solution:
Gear Gates
Wear what you want? God mode.
Pick Vestige difficulty? You have a belt to hold your weapon… but nothing else.
No armour. No sets. Not even a weapon.
(Why do you even need the belt?)
Daily buffs? You can have them.
Potions? You can now carry a maximum of 5 health pots — that’s it.
Work backwards from those two extremes, and everyone will find their own level of challenge.
Because at the end of the day, it’s not really about the challenge.
If it was, we could already implement those rules ourselves. We don’t need ZOS for that.
The reason we need ZOS to add overland difficulty isn’t about engagement — it’s about bragging rights and meaningful achievement.
This is the same reason players rush to be first to complete trials and dungeons: for a few days, maybe even weeks, they get to strut their stuff with their sexy new outfit, a cool shimmering skin, or just sitting on a mount making it rear up for absolutely no reason.
The best solution would have been a new mode
Something like:
Cadwell’s Campfire Stories
Go see Cadwell sitting by his campfire, and let him tell you a story.
You queue into a dream sequence, and now you’re replaying those overland stories at a higher difficulty.
That gives:
true player engagement
a valid reward system
meaningful replayability
Because overland farming and average run-of-the-mill mobs in the world don’t really matter. They’re just environmental filler. You can make them harder or easier to bypass — but it doesn’t change much.
Nobody truly cares about running around Alik’r killing zombies in mass, especially if they’re now 80% harder.
What we do care about is this:
Now that I have a fully fleshed-out character, I’d love to go back and replay the story — and when I fight Molag Bal, I want it to feel like I’m actually fighting something that could destroy the world if I fail.
Last time I ran that quest, the “big bad boss” was basically put to bed with a teddy bear… and an apology from me for being mean to him.

Edited for poor grammar

tohopka_eso · 12:54AM

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tohopka_eso wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The amount of damage you lose is not covered by the exp/gold gain. It's in no way forced. There's a small modifier so people don't feel punished. You'll be able to use it to get a bit more in crowded spaces like dolmens.

But anyone who thinks they need to quest with it is actually losing out on exp efficiency overall.

Hey, wanted to get with you on the way LotRO has there's. not to long ago, I signed into that game after being away for quite some time and even though I'm not a person that likes to challenge themselves in a game I decided to take a look at it.

So, there is a quest NPC you hail and they have a series of of difficulty challenges you can turn on. The reward was some kind of currency you can only get from that. there is some kind of bonus if you start before level 10 though.

So I gave it a try, but the quests themselves are straight forward but it was hard to tell if anything was harder or if it was working correctly. I gave a /shout out and I got the same responses as here. Some were positive and others negative on the whole.

I tried it again on a new character and that was when I noticed the slight increase. Rewards, if you want to call them that in that game was same whether on normal or higher but it was the new currency you wanted. I never got to far in it (I missed my ESO characters) but I think it was the right path.

I don't know maybe something to consider.

Thanks for sharing! What was the currency able to be used on?

I'll have to check again. At the moment my Internet is down due to the winter storm that is hitting my area. When it is back up I'll check.

I found this link though https://lotro-wiki.com/wiki/Landscape_Difficulty

XomRhoK · 2:14AM

Good that it's finally addressed. But i think two separate sliders for damage dealt to monsters and damage received from monsters will be better, than set in stone difficulties, because if i play for tank build i don't want to increase HP of the monsters, it will only prolong fights to unfun level, i just want to receive more damage from monsters to feel the threat, and vice versa if i play for glass cannon build i don't want to increase damage of the monsters, i just want to increase their survavability to allow them to fight with me, and not melting in 1 second. I think higher rewards are not needed at all, but if you want to increase exp and gold, it can be emplimented by multiplier for each division of the slider, for example 10%.
Anyway it's better than nothing, but it took you so long, that i already don't play this game. Waiting for story mode for dungeons. I even thought to return for a moment but then you broke my character with changes in animation of DK skills and two-handed weapon, again, fourth time for past years or so

4.5 years have passed from my post about this topic:

XomRhoK wrote: »

I think difficulty levels for overland content must be implemented and they must not divide player base. The only cheap and fast option as i can see is placing debuff on player, who decided increase difficulty of overland content.
I think, that ZOS need make difficulty sliders in the game menu, which will place invisible debuff on player's character, similar to Vulnerability and Maim, debuff will be applied only in overland areas:
- normal -> x1.5 -> x2 -> x3 -> x5 -> x7 -> x10 more damage player receives from monsters except world bosses
- normal -> x1.5 -> x2 -> x3 -> x5 -> x7 -> x10 less damage player deals to monsters except world bosses
And, maybe, additionally (if it doesn't take long for the developers to mark all quest and delve bosses as a separate subclass):
- normal -> x1.5 -> x2 -> x3 -> x5 -> x7 -> x10 -> x15 -> x20 more damage player receives from delve bosses
- normal -> x1.5 -> x2 -> x3 -> x5 -> x7 -> x10 -> x15 -> x20 less damage player deals to delve bosses
- normal -> x1.5 -> x2 -> x3 -> x5 -> x7 -> x10 -> x15 -> x20 more damage player receives from quest bosses
- normal -> x1.5 -> x2 -> x3 -> x5 -> x7 -> x10 -> x15 -> x20 less damage player deals to quest bosses
Because quest and delve bosses have too low HP (so you often can't even see their mechanics) and need separate slider, it will also helps those players who don't want regular monsters to be stronger, but only quest or delve bosses.

Buff/Debuff system is already in game and will cost nothing to implement. Also i don't think that 6 more debuffs on character will drop performance in overland areas, especially that quest and delve debuffs could be applied only in specific areas.

No additional rewards or exp, because it will lead to exploits, feeling forced to do something and frustration. This sliders needed to adjust duration and lethality of the combat.

New players or those who enjoy game as it is now don't lose anything, they will just keep playing as it is. Farmers, chest runners, item hunters can also leave all as it is now, to not slow down their activities. But players who want more challenge in questing will be able to adjust difficulty according to their skill and role (Tank/Healer/DD). Tanks will increase damage taken, to feel more danger in fights, DDs will increase HP of monsters and bosses to have the opportunity at last see their skills and mechanics

In difficulty menu must be option to fast turn off and turn on previously set parameters, if player want to change activity.

This method of implementing difficulty levels for overland content has one flaw: some other player can just run in and kill all in a blink of an eye. So i think quest bosses must be in separate instances and there must be an option in menu to make first run of the delve in separate instance as well.

Also i am for story or solo mode for dungeons(without set items drop), but this is topic of another thread.

nb_rich · 5:10AM

The only thing it seems the overland difficulty will be good for based on what I heard is for leveling new characters. You may as well just sell us level 50 skip in the crown store if this is the case.

I didn’t see anything about what drops you get on higher difficulties (just gold and xp bonuses from what i hear), but gold gear on the highest difficulty is a start. Thing is then we can just have one character on higher difficulty and someone on the easiest difficulty to kill everything for the person to loot.

If its not a simple normal to vet swap, I think the idea should just be scratched/reworked to be honest since the only reason to play on a higher difficulty would be for leveling to 50 and to get achievements if any are associated with completing overland content on higher difficulties.

spartaxoxo · 5:13AM

tohopka_eso wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

tohopka_eso wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

The amount of damage you lose is not covered by the exp/gold gain. It's in no way forced. There's a small modifier so people don't feel punished. You'll be able to use it to get a bit more in crowded spaces like dolmens.

But anyone who thinks they need to quest with it is actually losing out on exp efficiency overall.

Hey, wanted to get with you on the way LotRO has there's. not to long ago, I signed into that game after being away for quite some time and even though I'm not a person that likes to challenge themselves in a game I decided to take a look at it.

So, there is a quest NPC you hail and they have a series of of difficulty challenges you can turn on. The reward was some kind of currency you can only get from that. there is some kind of bonus if you start before level 10 though.

So I gave it a try, but the quests themselves are straight forward but it was hard to tell if anything was harder or if it was working correctly. I gave a /shout out and I got the same responses as here. Some were positive and others negative on the whole.

I tried it again on a new character and that was when I noticed the slight increase. Rewards, if you want to call them that in that game was same whether on normal or higher but it was the new currency you wanted. I never got to far in it (I missed my ESO characters) but I think it was the right path.

I don't know maybe something to consider.

Thanks for sharing! What was the currency able to be used on?

I'll have to check again. At the moment my Internet is down due to the winter storm that is hitting my area. When it is back up I'll check.

I found this link though https://lotro-wiki.com/wiki/Landscape_Difficulty

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. I hope you're staying warm! That Blizzard hit here too and it's really cold outside.