Official Discussion Thread for "Developer Deep Dive—Season Zero’s Challenge Difficulty

Sentinel · March 27

disky wrote: »

Sentinel wrote: »

We have a few separate priorities for different groups
- Want to keep players together/ don’t instance everyone (ZOS)
- Want to ensure that extra rewards are appropriate for challenge level
- Want to ensure that extra rewards are not exploitable by design
- Want to let players choose their own difficulty, rather than choose where to find their difficulty (i.e choosing veteran mode over normal dungeons)

I think we can satisfy the first three stated priorities while relaxing the fourth and still get a system that is rewarding to those who participate in it 90% of the time.

My idea would be a tag system in which when an enemy is hit by a player, the enemy’s difficulty and rewards are set to the MINIMUM difficulty of the players who have currently tagged that enemy (or their group members). Here’s an example:

You are playing on Vestige. You are fighting a boss in a public delve, and you are alone. A random player comes in and attacks the boss but is on Master difficulty. Now the boss (and rewards) for the Vestige player are set to Master for this enemy only. If someone comes along with adventure difficulty, then the difficulty scales down further.

A point of frustration I can see with this is that you might spend X amount of time on a boss and then someone comes along and makes it easier right at the end, reducing the rewards. I concede that this sucks but it allows us to avoid the other problems.

This idea has been brought up in the main overland content feedback thread more than once. I think it's unnecessary and will create as many or more problems than it tries to solve. First of all, with the way things are now, most players in overland rarely encounter scenarios with large groups unless they're collectively and deliberately trying to do something as fast as possible, like dolmen farming in Alik'r. In this case, it doesn't particularly matter because they all share the same idea and they're probably not interested in using the challenge toggle anyway. In other cases like world bosses, where solo players often gather together, it might be that the fight is a little easier for those who have decided to enable the challenge mode, but so what? It's one encounter out of many, and this isn't all that different from the way things have been for many players of lower skill or off-meta build. Someone comes along and aides in ending the fight noticeably faster. Normal MMO stuff.

If you're looking for a challenge, you're most likely going to be with a group of like-minded players or on your own. And if you happen upon a group doing something at the standard difficulty, then you can still participate at the challenge level you set, and the fight may be a little easier for you. It's the nature of the beast, and trying to resolve this by making enemies harder for people that didn't ask for it is just going to annoy them and create an environment ripe for complaint. It's not worth it if we really want this, and I feel like 90% of the time it's not going to come up because players are either too spread out for it to matter or they're doing something like farming where it's not desirable to keep the feature enabled.

I don't see where our perspectives disagree based on what you said here. Make sure that if a player is on an easier difficulty, any encounter they get into has that difficulty (or easier). My idea is just piggybacking off of others' suggestions that if a player is on a harder difficulty, it is good enough for all involved to reduce their difficulty as soon as someone on an easier difficulty rolls in. Let me know if I've misinterpreted your point.

disky · March 28

Sentinel wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Sentinel wrote: »

We have a few separate priorities for different groups
- Want to keep players together/ don’t instance everyone (ZOS)
- Want to ensure that extra rewards are appropriate for challenge level
- Want to ensure that extra rewards are not exploitable by design
- Want to let players choose their own difficulty, rather than choose where to find their difficulty (i.e choosing veteran mode over normal dungeons)

I think we can satisfy the first three stated priorities while relaxing the fourth and still get a system that is rewarding to those who participate in it 90% of the time.

My idea would be a tag system in which when an enemy is hit by a player, the enemy’s difficulty and rewards are set to the MINIMUM difficulty of the players who have currently tagged that enemy (or their group members). Here’s an example:

You are playing on Vestige. You are fighting a boss in a public delve, and you are alone. A random player comes in and attacks the boss but is on Master difficulty. Now the boss (and rewards) for the Vestige player are set to Master for this enemy only. If someone comes along with adventure difficulty, then the difficulty scales down further.

A point of frustration I can see with this is that you might spend X amount of time on a boss and then someone comes along and makes it easier right at the end, reducing the rewards. I concede that this sucks but it allows us to avoid the other problems.

This idea has been brought up in the main overland content feedback thread more than once. I think it's unnecessary and will create as many or more problems than it tries to solve. First of all, with the way things are now, most players in overland rarely encounter scenarios with large groups unless they're collectively and deliberately trying to do something as fast as possible, like dolmen farming in Alik'r. In this case, it doesn't particularly matter because they all share the same idea and they're probably not interested in using the challenge toggle anyway. In other cases like world bosses, where solo players often gather together, it might be that the fight is a little easier for those who have decided to enable the challenge mode, but so what? It's one encounter out of many, and this isn't all that different from the way things have been for many players of lower skill or off-meta build. Someone comes along and aides in ending the fight noticeably faster. Normal MMO stuff.

If you're looking for a challenge, you're most likely going to be with a group of like-minded players or on your own. And if you happen upon a group doing something at the standard difficulty, then you can still participate at the challenge level you set, and the fight may be a little easier for you. It's the nature of the beast, and trying to resolve this by making enemies harder for people that didn't ask for it is just going to annoy them and create an environment ripe for complaint. It's not worth it if we really want this, and I feel like 90% of the time it's not going to come up because players are either too spread out for it to matter or they're doing something like farming where it's not desirable to keep the feature enabled.

I don't see where our perspectives disagree based on what you said here. Make sure that if a player is on an easier difficulty, any encounter they get into has that difficulty (or easier). My idea is just piggybacking off of others' suggestions that if a player is on a harder difficulty, it is good enough for all involved to reduce their difficulty as soon as someone on an easier difficulty rolls in. Let me know if I've misinterpreted your point.

My point is that any kind of tagging and adjusting for anyone who doesn't want that is totally unnecessary. Let players make their choices, with the understanding that they may encounter other players with different options enabled sometimes. This shouldn't be too much of an issue because players are rarely fighting the same monster most of the time, and when they are, they're usually of like mind (in a group) or they're trying to finish the fight as fast as possible anyway. My point is that there is no reason to overcomplicate this system with extra steps, and that it would only serve to annoy people.

Whizzinglane · March 31

We are currently in shards.

Possible solutions:

Realms: have visible realms per difficulty setting.

2. Matchmaking: Match players according to their difficulty setting. (BEST)

3. Have MAJOR CITIES where players could congregate or meet. Players who need help can ask for help there. If someone decides to help a player who asks for help, they can group together.

Otherwise, it will defeat the well-intentioned idea of giving players a choice to play to their skills level and ESO's motto: play your way. Also it will be exploited

shadoza · March 31

Whizzinglane wrote: »

We are currently in shards.

Possible solutions:

Realms: have visible realms per difficulty setting.

2. Matchmaking: Match players according to their difficulty setting. (BEST)

3. Have MAJOR CITIES where players could congregate or meet. Players who need help can ask for help there. If someone decides to help a player who asks for help, they can group together.

Otherwise, it will defeat the well-intentioned idea of giving players a choice to play to their skills level and ESO's motto: play your way. Also it will be exploited

There hasn't been a 'play your way' in several years. It is more play in groups or guilds or play something else.

I believe the difficulty setting is going to be exploited anyway. There will be guilds dragging lower levels through it to power level them. There, also, will be those who will offer to sell difficulty fights to players who are not at that point in their gear in order to get them better gear or more experience.

I believe there will be added traffic in general zone chat for people asking for groups in a difficulty setting. Players asking general questions or needing help with an overland fight will have their voice drowned out even more than it is.

Disclaimer: I think the idea of having difficulty settings is a poor one. It will add to the congestion and irritation for the majority of players and cater to a handful who will get bored and demand more after a month of exposure.
It is a personal opinion based on decades of experience. All one needs to see the future of this is to look at other content that is designed for cappers and groupies. PvP is off balance. New players try it and walk away because being out matched with gear is not fun or entertaining. Group dungeons and trials are being used to farm resources and power level. No one runs them for entertainment or fun. Difficulty settings will go down the same path because no one really wants to work harder for minimal returns but increasing the gear, pots, or level will only perpetuate the issue of being overpowered when wearing dungeon gear in overland.

Sentinel · April 1

disky wrote: »

Sentinel wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Sentinel wrote: »

We have a few separate priorities for different groups
- Want to keep players together/ don’t instance everyone (ZOS)
- Want to ensure that extra rewards are appropriate for challenge level
- Want to ensure that extra rewards are not exploitable by design
- Want to let players choose their own difficulty, rather than choose where to find their difficulty (i.e choosing veteran mode over normal dungeons)

I think we can satisfy the first three stated priorities while relaxing the fourth and still get a system that is rewarding to those who participate in it 90% of the time.

My idea would be a tag system in which when an enemy is hit by a player, the enemy’s difficulty and rewards are set to the MINIMUM difficulty of the players who have currently tagged that enemy (or their group members). Here’s an example:

You are playing on Vestige. You are fighting a boss in a public delve, and you are alone. A random player comes in and attacks the boss but is on Master difficulty. Now the boss (and rewards) for the Vestige player are set to Master for this enemy only. If someone comes along with adventure difficulty, then the difficulty scales down further.

A point of frustration I can see with this is that you might spend X amount of time on a boss and then someone comes along and makes it easier right at the end, reducing the rewards. I concede that this sucks but it allows us to avoid the other problems.

This idea has been brought up in the main overland content feedback thread more than once. I think it's unnecessary and will create as many or more problems than it tries to solve. First of all, with the way things are now, most players in overland rarely encounter scenarios with large groups unless they're collectively and deliberately trying to do something as fast as possible, like dolmen farming in Alik'r. In this case, it doesn't particularly matter because they all share the same idea and they're probably not interested in using the challenge toggle anyway. In other cases like world bosses, where solo players often gather together, it might be that the fight is a little easier for those who have decided to enable the challenge mode, but so what? It's one encounter out of many, and this isn't all that different from the way things have been for many players of lower skill or off-meta build. Someone comes along and aides in ending the fight noticeably faster. Normal MMO stuff.

If you're looking for a challenge, you're most likely going to be with a group of like-minded players or on your own. And if you happen upon a group doing something at the standard difficulty, then you can still participate at the challenge level you set, and the fight may be a little easier for you. It's the nature of the beast, and trying to resolve this by making enemies harder for people that didn't ask for it is just going to annoy them and create an environment ripe for complaint. It's not worth it if we really want this, and I feel like 90% of the time it's not going to come up because players are either too spread out for it to matter or they're doing something like farming where it's not desirable to keep the feature enabled.

I don't see where our perspectives disagree based on what you said here. Make sure that if a player is on an easier difficulty, any encounter they get into has that difficulty (or easier). My idea is just piggybacking off of others' suggestions that if a player is on a harder difficulty, it is good enough for all involved to reduce their difficulty as soon as someone on an easier difficulty rolls in. Let me know if I've misinterpreted your point.

My point is that any kind of tagging and adjusting for anyone who doesn't want that is totally unnecessary. Let players make their choices, with the understanding that they may encounter other players with different options enabled sometimes. This shouldn't be too much of an issue because players are rarely fighting the same monster most of the time, and when they are, they're usually of like mind (in a group) or they're trying to finish the fight as fast as possible anyway. My point is that there is no reason to overcomplicate this system with extra steps, and that it would only serve to annoy people.

Yeah, I mean the only reason I overcomplicated it is to avoid players exploiting any rewards structure provided by the difficulty settings. To the extent that this isn't going to be an issue with the player base, I agree that simpler is better. I guess a better way to phrase my point is that you cant at once have a non-exploitable difficulty setting with all players in the same instance that respects player choice, and so you must either choose 1) sending players to different instances, or 2) breaking player choice in some way. Now that I think about it, you could use my original suggestion for a tag system for just the rewards structure and nothing to do with the player debuff/mob buff and achieve the same result. Then the only time you would be breaking player choice would just be in reducing their expected rewards in some scenarios without taking away their choice of difficulty setting.

Sentinel · April 1

I will make a point for those in this thread that suppose that people won't use it unless there are proper rewards. The whole point of having difficulty options for people like me is not "maximizing" some in-game efficiency for getting gold, items, etc.

It is the difference between me playing and not.

I moved on to games with more engaging encounters, where I felt like combat had weight and danger because I simply didn't have fun playing PVE as a visual novel. Don't get me wrong, I love a good story, but I like the stakes of an encounter to reflect the narrative, otherwise it all just feels quite dissonant. I would rather play a game like Elden Ring or Dark Souls where I know that enemies can, in fact, kill me if I don't pay attention.

One way to think about this is that for the current playerbase this system will statistically be received with a shrug at best and demands to make it more interesting at worst. That is because of survivorship bias-- the people currently playing already have found their own reason to play, and this system needs to have marginal benefits to them to get them to engage whatsoever. But the real benefits for this system is not for the current playerbase, it is for those currently outside of this community. For people like me for which the largest reward is engagement, not exp or gold. Heck I am lurking here despite not having played consistently for years because a system like this would be roughly the only thing to draw me back into this game.

So if this system doesn't fit into how people currently like to play the game, maybe thats the point. Its success will be measured by its ability to make space for people like me who feel like ESO doesn't fit how I like to play games.

Sogreth · April 2

Sentinel wrote: »

I will make a point for those in this thread that suppose that people won't use it unless there are proper rewards. The whole point of having difficulty options for people like me is not "maximizing" some in-game efficiency for getting gold, items,

I don't even want extra rewards. I would choose a harder difficulty just because. In fact, I'm still hoping for an option for an Exp reduction, or Exp Locking

Sentinel wrote: »

Heck I am lurking here despite not having played consistently for years because a system like this would be roughly the only thing to draw me back into this game.

Same, honestly. I let my WoW sub run out once I heard about the difficulty changes here. I was playing Skyrim just killing time until it was released.