tomofhyrule wrote: »

Should I get mad that other people are in my game? Or should I just come back in a few minutes once that person is gone, since the mobs will respawn over time, by which point the other guy is long gone?

Yes, absolutely be upset. They would not be able to blow past your mobs if the mobs are statistically past perpetual training wheels stage. If the mobs are veteran group dungeon difficulty and 2/3 other high dps players come by and melt them, so be it. They are still a threat untaunted, and you need alot of dps to melt group dungeon packs that are often held together by the tank no one cares to have any consideration for anyway.

It's funny seeing all this concern over potentially splitting the community when the reality is, the people wanting this feature probably aren't playing the game without this feature so you're not really losing anything. Those players wouldn't be engaging with you regardless. Something to consider in this discussion.

Also I'm not worried about normal difficulty players melting my mobs but we'll see how much of a problem it is in practice.

That being said, I do think the idea of separate instances should be revisited once crossplay happens. If everyone's concerned about splitting up the community, well soon you're gonna have 3 platforms playing together. You'll probably want to split them up after that.

robwolf666 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I get that a lot of people want sharded instances, but that would completely ruin the experience of new players in the basic difficulty.

The way zones work, you only see /zone chat in your specific instance. That means that if someone in the basic 'shard' is struggling to kill a 10m HP world boss like Ghishzor and calls for help, nobody in the "sweaty no noobs allowed" shard would be able to hear it.

Which is exactly how it was in the early days of ESO when we were all newbies learning the game. Why rob the new newbies of that experience?

Yes, and it was [snip], and it almost killed the game.

Until they found a way - first with Wrothgar, then with One Tamriel - to have as many players as technically possible together in one zone: all kinds of experience, alliance, quests state, whatever.

Nostalgia shouldn't ignore the fact that this is literally what saved the game.
[edited for profanity bypass]

Finally got to try out Night Market on pts. It's literally... veteran overland. Maybe ramped up a teeny bit more difficult than what I would accept as veteran overland instancing anyway. Duoing mob packs with a buddy, and various bosses and having to come up with different strats and kites with the wandering boss of a district was intense and so much fun. And now I feel sad realizing it's only going to be present a few months out of a year and people are already asking for the content to be nerfed... This is what every single dlc and expansion should have been like. New zones with unique buffs to uncover, vertical progression for the dedicated player base. New players should not be enticed to join a game to play the "new" dlc. They should be starting at the bottom like all the vets, and work their way up to the dlc content.


I realize this is slightly off-topic but it was fresh on my mind and it's relevant to this discussion. Each and every dlc and expansion could have been handled epicly as the Night Market in principle. Difficult zones you need proper gear and thought-out builds for. Zones that actually encourage players to congregate to get through difficult bosses. But instead, it's just about making sure a new player doesn't feel lost or intimidated joining. The only encouragement is finding a group to roll over world bosses and hope they did enough damage to get credit for it as it dies in 4 seconds so they can rush back to the next chore on their list.

robwolf666 wrote: »

Varana wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I get that a lot of people want sharded instances, but that would completely ruin the experience of new players in the basic difficulty.

The way zones work, you only see /zone chat in your specific instance. That means that if someone in the basic 'shard' is struggling to kill a 10m HP world boss like Ghishzor and calls for help, nobody in the "sweaty no noobs allowed" shard would be able to hear it.

Which is exactly how it was in the early days of ESO when we were all newbies learning the game. Why rob the new newbies of that experience?

Yes, and it was [snip], and it almost killed the game.

Until they found a way - first with Wrothgar, then with One Tamriel - to have as many players as technically possible together in one zone: all kinds of experience, alliance, quests state, whatever.

Nostalgia shouldn't ignore the fact that this is literally what saved the game.

Well I enjoyed it... back then you actually did have to learn the game and "get good" in order to earn your XP to level up and progress. You had to - if not, go straight from Stonefalls to The Rift for example, and the likely outcome would be getting your butt handed to you because the enemy was so much harder. OT basically put baby proofing on levels 1 thru 50 especially.

Apart from the fact that you could not go from Stonefalls to the Rift because the zones were level-gated, making the game the exact opposite of what an Elder Scrolls game is about, I found it terrible.
So, yeah.
[edited to remove quote]

Lord_Hev wrote: »

.

Varana wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I get that a lot of people want sharded instances, but that would completely ruin the experience of new players in the basic difficulty.

The way zones work, you only see /zone chat in your specific instance. That means that if someone in the basic 'shard' is struggling to kill a 10m HP world boss like Ghishzor and calls for help, nobody in the "sweaty no noobs allowed" shard would be able to hear it.

Which is exactly how it was in the early days of ESO when we were all newbies learning the game. Why rob the new newbies of that experience?

Yes, and it was [snip], and it almost killed the game.

Until they found a way - first with Wrothgar, then with One Tamriel - to have as many players as technically possible together in one zone: all kinds of experience, alliance, quests state, whatever.

Nostalgia shouldn't ignore the fact that this is literally what saved the game.

No it did not. I see this referenced all the time. The game's population was the most vibrant and booming during the first two years. What saved this game was covid. No surprise now we see the true fruits of all the "new player experience" a stagnant and dieing population.

...

...

uhh... that is factually incorrect.

I know SteamCharts is not the be all and end all, but we can definitely get ideas of trends. And the trend here shows that the game is pretty low on the pop charts (in the single-digit thousands) at the beginning. ESO was not doing incredibly well for the first two years.

But the first spike is October 2016, jumping up from an average around 5k to 29k. So what happened in October 2016 that massively boomed the population? It wasn't COVID. One Tamriel came out in October 2016.

The population was staying consistent after that (at about 4x the population pre-2016, I might add) until COVID did hit, which you can also see in March 2020. And since then, the game has been on a steady decline... and it's still not even at its pre-One Tamriel levels.

I expect you're actually referencing player sentiment, in that the people who were playing at that time were extremely hardcore into the game. But in no universe was a massive population there. There are currently more players than there were back then, they're just not as hardcore.
[edited to remove quote]

Lord_Hev wrote: »

.

Varana wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I get that a lot of people want sharded instances, but that would completely ruin the experience of new players in the basic difficulty.

The way zones work, you only see /zone chat in your specific instance. That means that if someone in the basic 'shard' is struggling to kill a 10m HP world boss like Ghishzor and calls for help, nobody in the "sweaty no noobs allowed" shard would be able to hear it.

Which is exactly how it was in the early days of ESO when we were all newbies learning the game. Why rob the new newbies of that experience?

Yes, and it was [snip], and it almost killed the game.

Until they found a way - first with Wrothgar, then with One Tamriel - to have as many players as technically possible together in one zone: all kinds of experience, alliance, quests state, whatever.

Nostalgia shouldn't ignore the fact that this is literally what saved the game.

No it did not. I see this referenced all the time. The game's population was the most vibrant and booming during the first two years. What saved this game was covid. No surprise now we see the true fruits of all the "new player experience" a stagnant and dieing population.

I fundamentally do not think you are correct about this. One Tamriel opened up the game & did save it. Covid was an additional bonus.

And you may experience a stagnant and dieing (sic) population but on PS EU our guild keeps growing with new players.
[edited to remove quote]

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

I have said elsewhere I would love to be able to see the figures of how many players actually do play in harder mode.

I say this because on PS there are Trophies associated with ESO, and if you look at these, it routinely shows that only about 4-5% of players complete normal dungeons, and only 1-2% max play vet dungeons.

I would assume this is similar to PC and Xbox.

If players are loathe to try the harder stuff already in the game, will they bother with harder overland?

Group content & solo content have more differences than just difficulty

Playstyle is one, some people just want to quest. Some people want to quest on harder difficulties (much like singleplayer rpgs often have difficulty settings too)
Other people might have busy schedules that complicate finding a steady organized group for group play. Others might just have too much anxiety or other social complications for it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting a majority of the playerbase to turn on hard overworld. But there's a lot more that goes into it than "why don't you just do vet trials/dungeons/arenas for challenge"

Following up on the discussion about sharding for the new Challenge Difficulty, I wanted to move away from the math for a moment and talk about the social health of ESO. I see a few players being concerned about the social interaction in the game. I think with Sharding instances it will actually make the community come together and bring players together.

Right now, the overland is essentially a solo game for 90% of players. If you play a Tank or a Healer, your role is practically non-existent outside of Trials and Veteran Dungeons. You are told to "respec to DPS" just to finish a zone quest because nothing hits hard enough to require a block or a burst heal.

1. Bringing proper teamwork Back to Tamriel

If ZOS implements separate instances for the higher difficulty tiers (Master/Vestige), they aren't just making the game harder; they are making teamwork relevant again.
A) The Necessity of Tanks: With players taking 600% more damage, a world boss, roaming boss or even a large delve pull becomes a death sentence without someone to hold aggro and mitigate damage.
B)Healers as Lifelines: In a dedicated Vestige shard, a healer isn't just for "extra DPS", they are the reason the group doesn't wipe in 5 seconds.

2. A Rise of "Support Guilds"

In a sharded system, we would see a massive shift in how players interact. I would personally love to see, and even help lead a guild/guilds dedicated specifically to providing Support for Adventurers. Imagine a guild of veteran tanks and healers who sit in the "Vestige Instances," ready to assist players through difficult story beats or world bosses. Or advertise their services or willingness to help in a shared zone chat for both instances.
This creates a "mentor" environment where new, mid-level, and veteran players come together to face a genuine threat. It turns a "time-sink grind" into a cooperative adventure where growth and coordination are the focus.

3. Rewarding the Community, Not the Solo "Carrier"

The current "shared world" plan encourages the worst kind of social interaction: carrying. A low-difficulty player "nuking" a boss for a high-difficulty player is not teamwork; it’s an exploit.
If we have difficulty-based shards, ZOS can finally give us the rewards we want (rare materials, style pages, motifs) because they know everyone in that instance is actually working together and facing the same risk.

4.Incentivizing Teamwork Through Better Rewards.

Without separate instances, the game is trapped in a loop of "boring rewards" because they have to prevent low-difficulty players from "carrying" high-difficulty players for rare loot. Sharding breaks this cycle:
A)Higher Tier Drops: If everyone in an instance is playing on the highest level, ZOS can safely offer rare materials, motifs, and style pages as drops.

Adjusted Drop Rates: Higher difficulty should naturally mean higher chances for the best items in the loot table, making the "teamwork" required to clear the content feel like a genuine investment rather than a "meaningless time sink".

C) Social Growth: When the world requires teamwork to explore, players of all skill levels have a reason to learn mechanics and grow together, rather than just racing to the finish line alone.

I think we should use Season Zero (or whichever season) to make ESO feel like a true Massively Multiplayer game again. Let’s create a world where exploring and questing require a synergy of different roles. By moving the Challenge Difficulty to its own instance, The game can incentivize teamwork, increase the value of support roles, and turn questing into a premier group activity. This system could save Tanks and Healers from being "overland-useless".

Would you guys join a "Support Guild" for high-difficulty questing? Or if you don’t want to play support, would you like direct sources of support roles?

twistedodean14 wrote: »

Following up on the discussion about sharding for the new Challenge Difficulty, I wanted to move away from the math for a moment and talk about the social health of ESO. I see a few players being concerned about the social interaction in the game. I think with Sharding instances it will actually make the community come together and bring players together.

Right now, the overland is essentially a solo game for 90% of players. If you play a Tank or a Healer, your role is practically non-existent outside of Trials and Veteran Dungeons. You are told to "respec to DPS" just to finish a zone quest because nothing hits hard enough to require a block or a burst heal.

1. Bringing proper teamwork Back to Tamriel

If ZOS implements separate instances for the higher difficulty tiers (Master/Vestige), they aren't just making the game harder; they are making teamwork relevant again.
A) The Necessity of Tanks: With players taking 600% more damage, a world boss, roaming boss or even a large delve pull becomes a death sentence without someone to hold aggro and mitigate damage.
B)Healers as Lifelines: In a dedicated Vestige shard, a healer isn't just for "extra DPS", they are the reason the group doesn't wipe in 5 seconds.

2. A Rise of "Support Guilds"

In a sharded system, we would see a massive shift in how players interact. I would personally love to see, and even help lead a guild/guilds dedicated specifically to providing Support for Adventurers. Imagine a guild of veteran tanks and healers who sit in the "Vestige Instances," ready to assist players through difficult story beats or world bosses. Or advertise their services or willingness to help in a shared zone chat for both instances.
This creates a "mentor" environment where new, mid-level, and veteran players come together to face a genuine threat. It turns a "time-sink grind" into a cooperative adventure where growth and coordination are the focus.

3. Rewarding the Community, Not the Solo "Carrier"

The current "shared world" plan encourages the worst kind of social interaction: carrying. A low-difficulty player "nuking" a boss for a high-difficulty player is not teamwork; it’s an exploit.
If we have difficulty-based shards, ZOS can finally give us the rewards we want (rare materials, style pages, motifs) because they know everyone in that instance is actually working together and facing the same risk.

4.Incentivizing Teamwork Through Better Rewards.

Without separate instances, the game is trapped in a loop of "boring rewards" because they have to prevent low-difficulty players from "carrying" high-difficulty players for rare loot. Sharding breaks this cycle:
A)Higher Tier Drops: If everyone in an instance is playing on the highest level, ZOS can safely offer rare materials, motifs, and style pages as drops.

Adjusted Drop Rates: Higher difficulty should naturally mean higher chances for the best items in the loot table, making the "teamwork" required to clear the content feel like a genuine investment rather than a "meaningless time sink".

C) Social Growth: When the world requires teamwork to explore, players of all skill levels have a reason to learn mechanics and grow together, rather than just racing to the finish line alone.

I think we should use Season Zero (or whichever season) to make ESO feel like a true Massively Multiplayer game again. Let’s create a world where exploring and questing require a synergy of different roles. By moving the Challenge Difficulty to its own instance, The game can incentivize teamwork, increase the value of support roles, and turn questing into a premier group activity. This system could save Tanks and Healers from being "overland-useless".

Would you guys join a "Support Guild" for high-difficulty questing? Or if you don’t want to play support, would you like direct sources of support roles?

No offense, but this all sounds awful. Many players enjoy playing the game solo and don't want to group or be pushed into joining a "Support Guild" in order to progress through overland content. I like questing on my own at my own pace and getting an occasional quick assist from a more skilled player if I need it for a public dungeon quest or something. I don't want to devote a ton of gameplay time to developing a team dynamic.

Why are you insistent that the devs push people into group content? Is it just the typical argument that "ESO is an MMO and that means group content," or is it because you yourself enjoy teaming up? I would argue (as others have) that an MMO doesn't require forced groups, but it does equate to a shared world in which you sometimes bump into other players, even strangers, even players who annoy you. It kind of feels like you're talking out of both sides of your mouth if you argue pushing for group content while also arguing for splitting the player base.

Lord_Hev wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It's not the job of any individual player to help another. But it is the job of an MMO to provide enough players in a shared world that help is more likely to be offered by some kind individual.

It's not your failing if you choose not to help. But it is ZOS's failing if they do not keep new player experience in mind. An MMO must take all sides interests into account when designing the game.

Zos have already done way more than enough for the new player experience. Enough is enough, it's been such a detriment to the game's growth. A new player will decide early on if they are going to invest or not, all these capitulations ultimately mean nothing for actual player retention. There has been nothing but a constant neglect for all the dedicated veteran players. Overland is the vast majority of the game's content and its ALL tailored to these mythical "lets not make a new player feel lost" that still play the game for a few days then move on to something else because they were never going to invest in this game to begin with. Why does the entire game, and thus the entire dedicated player-base have to be held hostage so that the new players don't feel lost?

First, overland is not just meant for new players. I have been playing the game since before One Tamriel, and overland is basically the only content I play regularly.

Second, I don't understand your vitriol toward new players or the "new player experience." ZOS has to appeal to new players, or the game will die out as old players leave. That doesn't mean they don't also care about veteran players. In my estimation, they have attempted to add a variety of content every year to appeal to various player levels. Yes, there are large overland zones, but two out of four yearly releases for most of the game's history were group dungeon DLCs not intended for solo players, and they added a new trial every year with the zone. I don't think that content was meant for newbies, and it certainly wasn't meant to appeal to players like me. If it wasn't meant for experienced players, what was the point?

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Lord_Hev wrote: »

.

Varana wrote: »

robwolf666 wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I get that a lot of people want sharded instances, but that would completely ruin the experience of new players in the basic difficulty.

The way zones work, you only see /zone chat in your specific instance. That means that if someone in the basic 'shard' is struggling to kill a 10m HP world boss like Ghishzor and calls for help, nobody in the "sweaty no noobs allowed" shard would be able to hear it.

Which is exactly how it was in the early days of ESO when we were all newbies learning the game. Why rob the new newbies of that experience?

Yes, and it was [snip], and it almost killed the game.

Until they found a way - first with Wrothgar, then with One Tamriel - to have as many players as technically possible together in one zone: all kinds of experience, alliance, quests state, whatever.

Nostalgia shouldn't ignore the fact that this is literally what saved the game.

No it did not. I see this referenced all the time. The game's population was the most vibrant and booming during the first two years. What saved this game was covid. No surprise now we see the true fruits of all the "new player experience" a stagnant and dieing population.

...

...

uhh... that is factually incorrect.

I know SteamCharts is not the be all and end all, but we can definitely get ideas of trends. And the trend here shows that the game is pretty low on the pop charts (in the single-digit thousands) at the beginning. ESO was not doing incredibly well for the first two years.

But the first spike is October 2016, jumping up from an average around 5k to 29k. So what happened in October 2016 that massively boomed the population? It wasn't COVID. One Tamriel came out in October 2016.

The population was staying consistent after that (at about 4x the population pre-2016, I might add) until COVID did hit, which you can also see in March 2020. And since then, the game has been on a steady decline... and it's still not even at its pre-One Tamriel levels.

I expect you're actually referencing player sentiment, in that the people who were playing at that time were extremely hardcore into the game. But in no universe was a massive population there. There are currently more players than there were back then, they're just not as hardcore.

No one.... used... steam... in the first 4 years of the game. I was actually HERE in those years. And the first year of the game, which steam did not even exist for it nor did consoles; pvp population caps were much higher and fielded multiple locked campaigns. Each campaign had its own stories and experiences written into legends. All lost to time because the vast majority of the hardcore old vets quit the game the second zos started the casualization process.
[edited to remove quote]

And also yea, about the hardcore sentiment. 100% true. So, Zos decided to shelve the hardcore dedicated players in exchange for chasing new players that buy an account then never log back in... Great for bursts of profits, I guess? They keep citing a decade of experiences. When in reality it's a decade of perpetual training wheels and safety rails.

Kallykat wrote: »

Lord_Hev wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It's not the job of any individual player to help another. But it is the job of an MMO to provide enough players in a shared world that help is more likely to be offered by some kind individual.

It's not your failing if you choose not to help. But it is ZOS's failing if they do not keep new player experience in mind. An MMO must take all sides interests into account when designing the game.

Zos have already done way more than enough for the new player experience. Enough is enough, it's been such a detriment to the game's growth. A new player will decide early on if they are going to invest or not, all these capitulations ultimately mean nothing for actual player retention. There has been nothing but a constant neglect for all the dedicated veteran players. Overland is the vast majority of the game's content and its ALL tailored to these mythical "lets not make a new player feel lost" that still play the game for a few days then move on to something else because they were never going to invest in this game to begin with. Why does the entire game, and thus the entire dedicated player-base have to be held hostage so that the new players don't feel lost?

First, overland is not just meant for new players. I have been playing the game since before One Tamriel, and overland is basically the only content I play regularly.

Second, I don't understand your vitriol toward new players or the "new player experience." ZOS has to appeal to new players, or the game will die out as old players leave. That doesn't mean they don't also care about veteran players. In my estimation, they have attempted to add a variety of content every year to appeal to various player levels. Yes, there are large overland zones, but two out of four yearly releases for most of the game's history were group dungeon DLCs not intended for solo players, and they added a new trial every year with the zone. I don't think that content was meant for newbies, and it certainly wasn't meant to appeal to players like me. If it wasn't meant for experienced players, what was the point?

It comes off as vitriol due to bitterness of being self-imposed not to be able to engage in any of the overland expansions and dlcs to date. I was actually optimistic of one Tamriel when it first released because I liked the idea of being able to do group dungeons with my cross-faction frenemies that I met over the years in Cyrodiil, and I also liked that the base game overland were going to be single leveled and thus... more "difficult" or standard; meaning I could go back and do quests in the old zones on characters I skipped on for just power-leveling.(to get into cyrodiil) Then... months and years later power creep does its work... I look back now and I can't believe how naive I was. Really made me appreciate the old vision of the game.

New players should have to do the base game. They won't feel lost in veteran dlcs and expansions if they are able to get through cadwell silver and gold. This is the proper organic way of introducing new players and having them stick around and invest into the game. But instead, it has been all about getting new players immediately into a new expansion. Which I get from a marketing point, but all it has done was impact the hardcore players. And now features aimed at us are already being scrutinized and compromised because "we can't let new players feel lost." It has become exhausting.

Kallykat wrote: »

twistedodean14 wrote: »

Non taken. However, nothing I posted suggest players are forced to do anything. If a player wants to quest around as is. They can do so. If a player wants to quest solo on a harder difficulty they can do so. My post is addressing the social implications of sharding instances difficulty if implemented. I like Both solo and group challenges. Also, the player base is already split up on many levels. My post is talking about making other roles more useful outside trials and dungeons. And players questing and exploring together with some challenge and rewards that fit the challenge. I don't so how incentivizing players to play together "splitting the player base" or "talking out of both sides of my mouth". To each his own. Having options that allow for the game to be engaging is not a bad thing.

I hope I didn't sound sarcastic or rude in my previous post. It was a little more reactionary than usual. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't creating "separate instances for higher difficulty tiers" splitting the player base in a very tangible way that is different from any other way overland content splits players currently?

You're good. That's a good question. Not really, because the zone chat will be shared. Communication will also remain the same. The game already does this by default during questing in certain parts of the stories. Also a simple toggle to switch instances would make it so people can go back and forth. What's interesting is that some times me and my friends are in different instances in the open world. And one of us would have join the group and reload to be in the same instance. The main reason why I think this approach is better is because of a host of issues and exploitation that will take place. And the rewards issue will result in it just being a dead feature. Which is a waste of time, money and data. One of the reason most players don't quest is because it's too easy and is not engaging. it's even easier and less engaging in a group. I love questing and a lot of the stories and lore in game. But honestly... I and most players I know do not play them because of the two reasons I mentioned as an example. I don't want take away the normal option. I just wanna have the option to adjust the difficulty.