I wasn't surprised that this is being done with debuffs. I don't know how else they could have done it without splitting the players. But one of the biggest complaints was about quest bosses which are mostly done solo, so why not just give a hard mode option like veteran dungeon bosses have instead? I don't remember any that said they want hard flights with bears and wolves so how many will really be upping the difficulty just for quests?

As far as other players ruining someone's experience by fighting a mob they were fighting, well that already happens now. That isn't a difficulty issue. It's an MMO issue.

I'll still take this new system over what we have now for the overland, which is absolutely everything dying in half a second no matter who is around.

As others said, a fair amount of story content puts you into solo instances. And I also have run into long periods of time - especially in older zones - where I don't run into other players at all.

And when I do - well I'm no worse off than today even if they are playing on the easiest mode. And in the event they are on the same difficulty, I come out ahead.

Simple solution seems to be to give people who change difficulty their own instance of a delve for themselves and group members.

SilverBride wrote: »

Giving players their own instance of a delve or other content won't work because they don't want to separate the players.

"wont work" isn't true in the slightest, it's a choice due to them not wanting to. It will most definitely will work. However it's less work to use the guise of "not wanting to split the player base". Inherently the essence of MMOS outside of matchmaking is split already. Some solo, some group.

Rather then people who want to play harder having to put up with the jank, they should do a little more leg work on this system, rather than obfuscating with the excuse of "Not wanting to split the player base"

The OP is absolutely correct.

There is no point having landscape difficulty if there are people in the same instance on the default level who can just come by and one shot stuff.

You can get away with everyone in one instance In a game like LOTRO, (where I'd say about 30-35% of people play on some landscape difficulty) whilst still a problem, it is less of problem because they have traditional servers rather than megaservers, plus have less players overall & have a larger world.

All of which generally means you not only have fewer players, but they are more spread out, so whilst an annoyance, it is far more occasional than it would be in ESO. Plus LOTRO has the nicest, most considerate playerbase I've seen in an MMORPG, so it is not uncommon for someone to see the landscape difficulty debuff and go elsewhere to let you get on with it, the ESO playerbase on the other hand...

Their handling of landscape difficulty is just another example of how inept Zenimax are, they have good ideas for things, but then the implementation is just amateurish and poorly thought through. They added 2 team BGs, yet ignored the single most important thing for that to work - a proper MMR / matchmaking system, then rather than doing real sub-classing they added the abomination they did which just led to a new level of homogenization, etc. And now they are doing the same thing with landscape difficulty, good idea, but amateurish, poorly thought through implementation to the point it will be rendered useless.

And they wonder why their playerbase has declined so much and why many of us haven't played the game (or spent money on it) in any meaningful sense in years.

Unfortunately, they simply chose the easiest way to implement it.

There are multiple difficulty levels (not just two) because it would be difficult to decide which one is appropriate. This would require a lot of time spent on QA, and it might fail anyway because the difficulty of the overland is not uniform.

They don't want to split the player base, so everyone will use the same instance (let's not forget that more instances = higher costs ).

And as a result, the rewards for higher difficulty are crappy to prevent farming abuse.

/script JumpToHouse("@Hateful_Huske")

NoireJin the Witchking wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Not splitting the players is a requirement that they decided on and giving players their own instance of a delve goes against that. That is why I say it won't work because it doesn't meet that requirement.

It's an artificial requirement one subject to change as they also mentioned after analyzing feedback, it's not a infallible position. Saying it wont work infers a technical limitation. Its more accurate to say they don't want to. Using wont work plays into the idea of it not being feasible. Again, it is.

All I'm saying is it is not feasible with the current requirement in place.

Where did they say this requirement was subject to change? I know they mentioned expanding the system based on how it goes initially and the feedback they get, but I don't remember them saying they would remove the requirement of not splitting the players.

No matter what they do it won't be enough...but if that's the trade off to get Story Mode Dungeon & Trials....then so be it.

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

In theory they could make it so the difficulty of an enemy in overland is determined by who first engages it.

There are 2 reasons why this wouldn't be a solution.

1. Making the difficulty of the enemy be determined by who attacks it first completely takes away the option for those that choose not to increase their difficulty.
2. The enemies difficulty doesn't change with this system. It's the player that changes.

Didactiso wrote: »

I like having multiple levels of difficulties as it grants me increased freedom to adjust my playstyle in more nuanced ways!

If I find Vestige to be too demanding for me, I can switch down to Master or Seasoned. With this, I can still be immersed with the gameplay difficulty without it being too easy. This also gives players a stronger sense of progression as they work their way up from one tier to the next. Two difficulties is not enough; it shouldn’t be all or nothing.

Don’t know why some are against options that would greatly cater to far more players of different skill sets.

So, you are happily killing WBs on your custom difficulty and enjoying the challenge ... I rock up on my 1800+CP toon, on easy difficulty, and kill the boss in 1/10th of the time it will have taken you, as you stand there and can do nothing but watch, utterly obliterating any challenge you had. What was the point of being in challenge mode?

NoireJin the Witchking wrote: »

However if i want to play in an instance with like minded players on the same difficulty as me then that is MY choice.

Way to miss the point. You don't get to do that. As it stands people on Vestige difficulty and people on as is difficulty will be in the same instance.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

AScarlato wrote: »

As others said, a fair amount of story content puts you into solo instances.

It doesn't. The original main quest is solo instanced, and some of the Chapter stories have some solo instances, but the vast majority are shared instances.

The vast majority of bosses are solo instanced.

You can expect that you get to fight Dagon alone. You cannot expect that the wolves in the overland you have to pass by to get to that solo area will be exclusive to you.

Again, you can’t expect to have the whole game solo. If you do, you may want to play a solo game.

NoireJin the Witchking wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

Where did they say this requirement was subject to change? I know they mentioned expanding the system based on how it goes initially and the feedback they get, but I don't remember them saying they would remove the requirement of not splitting the players.

Again, i think its the importance of that particular language that's being used. Of course it's not feasible if that asinine requirement in place. It's like me standing in a doorway and saying to someone who wants to pass "You cant walk past me" yeah... but must i be blocking that doorway?

But that requirement is not an absolute and it doesn't have to be. and they said "subject to change based on feedback once the system reaches the Public Test Server." but regarding the numbers of the different levels but it's not hard to believe if a good number of people want a certain change it wouldn't be unreasonable to provide that feedback to ZOS.

Where does it say it would be subject to change? What I saw was it would be expandable in the future. They also stressed that players would not be divided.

First, we are making a choice to make sure players are not separated by difficulty. We want to ensure you can engage with any player you want regardless of difficulty. To do this, the choice to opt-in or change your difficulty is up to you. If you like Overland the way it is, great! No change is needed. If you want it to be far more punishing, then opt-in to Vestige Difficulty. You can still play with friends, all while having the bump in challenge.

That said, we are building Challenge Difficulty to be expandable in the future and layer with other existing systems to help reward players for taking on the challenge.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Which, as I said, is exactly what happens now. A low-skill player who has 15% of the DPS of a vet player is struggling for 20 minutes, before some DPS monster wipes the rest in a matter of seconds.

Is that just as infuriating? Or is that acceptable since the high skill player is the one who’s looking like a god instead of getting shown up?

And again, no single person has a monopoly on public enemies. If you want to solo a boss to show you can, there are instanced content (i.e. the story bosses, Archive, arenas, dungeons) that one can enter solo and show their stuff.

Sorry, but the differential is nowhere near that high at present. The power differential between 160CP and 1,800CP is only around 20% - 30% at most.

In addition, that's simply the nature of an MMO - but ZOS are changing that by adding increased difficulty and marketing it as a challenge and sense of accomplishment. That isn't how it is at present.

ZOS are creating the problem.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Which, as I said, is exactly what happens now. A low-skill player who has 15% of the DPS of a vet player is struggling for 20 minutes, before some DPS monster wipes the rest in a matter of seconds.

Is that just as infuriating? Or is that acceptable since the high skill player is the one who’s looking like a god instead of getting shown up?

And again, no single person has a monopoly on public enemies. If you want to solo a boss to show you can, there are instanced content (i.e. the story bosses, Archive, arenas, dungeons) that one can enter solo and show their stuff.

Sorry, but the differential is nowhere near that high at present. The power differential between 160CP and 1,800CP is only around 20% - 30% at most.

In addition, that's simply the nature of an MMO - but ZOS are changing that by adding increased difficulty and marketing it as a challenge and sense of accomplishment. That isn't how it is at present.

ZOS are creating the problem.

It's not about the differential between 160CP and 1,800CP. It's between a 1,800CP with a proper build and a level 35 who used to play Skyrim say, with attrib points stread out in all 3, random (probably non set) gear they've picked up and skills that just sound cool. For them, that's how it is at present