Suggestion: When difficulty tiers go live, world bosses should be nerfed on the lowest tier

zetavivern · April 14

I'll say right away that I don't suggest nerfing world bosses on every difficulty tier - indeed, they should and will be much harder on the higher ones.

Right now you can hardly ever find anyone fighting most world bosses in the game outside of the latest expansion, and completing the map becomes rather tedious or outright impossible. Base game bosses are very easy to defeat alone, but the further you go into DLCs, the harder they become, to the point that just today I was one-shotted by one in the West Weald. And my character is pretty well-build and allowed me to solo many DLC bosses before, there are lots of players who'd have way more trouble with this than I.

And when casual players do get help from veterans - well, being carried by a stranger who outputs 20 times more damage than you doesn't really feel like you beat the boss, does it? It just feels like you're watching someone else do it.

So, on the lowest difficulty tier specifically, make world bosses more accessible to casual players who want to complete the map and get their achievements without having to spam the zone or guild chat for help. By this I don't mean nerfing their mechanics, only the damage numbers. Obviously this isn't going to resonate with everyone, but now that we can choose how difficult we want the game to be, making this part of the game more accessible to the casual audience shouldn't come at anyone's detriment.

To address some possible rebuttals to this suggestion right away:

"Just find a group / write in zone chat / call your guild" - Some people just like playing solo. Not everyone has friends who play the game and can hop on at the first request, and asking strangers for help and just hoping someone shows up eventually can feel tedious. And, again, some people just like the feeling of completing an encounter on their own.
"It's an MMO, it's supposed to be about social interactions" - ESO is very supportive of solo players, has been from the beginning. Even for the dungeons and trials you could always just hop onto the activity finder, and the game would find a party for you, you were never forced to look for other players on your own. And the devs understand their audience, that's why they've added companions and are working on solo dungeons. If dungeons can be solo'ed, then why not world bosses?
"This content isn't meant to be done solo, just skip it" - Achievements aren't gonna complete themselves. Personally I don't care much about achievements, but I have friends who obsess over them while preferring to play alone.
"I can solo every world boss in the game, you just need better gear / skill" - That's the point, some people play casually and don't want to dedicate hours of their precious time to making a meta build and practicing with it.
"If they start making the game easier, soon everything will be casual" - That's the entire point of difficulty tiers, so that both casual and hardcore players get what they like.

DeathStalker · April 14

I second this. I think it's a great idea

ESO_player123 · April 14

No, thank you. I do not want the trash packs to be a nuisance when I go from A to B, so I'm going to stay on the normal difficulty. However, I like the DLC bosses exactly where they are.

zetavivern · April 14

ESO_player123 wrote: »

No, thank you. I do not want the trash packs to be a nuisance when I go from A to B, so I'm going to stay on the normal difficulty. However, I like the DLC bosses exactly where they are.

I wanted to post another suggestion for a setting to make trash packs just ignore the player (Lord of the Rings Online does this when the player's level is significantly higher than the mobs', for example). Would be great to have delve and public dungeon bosses hit harder without regular mobs getting in the way. But I don't think this would ever get implemented. Overall I agree, regular mobs are more of a nuisance or an obstacle than a challenge, I mostly run through them while invisible.

It does present a problem of players wanting different content to present different challenge (or none at all). The ideal solution would be to let players customize their own difficulty tiers, but this isn't likely to happen either. Maybe if we could change difficulty on the fly, it could substitute for this (I don't remember at the moment if that's how it works, or if we have to go to a specific place to change it) - I checked, and we actually can do that, so there's that.

BretonMage · April 14

The problem with that is that the WBs vary so much in difficulty. For me personally, while a handful of DLC WBs could be a bit more forgiving, an across-the-board nerf will make too many WBs really trivial. I can also imagine that there are a number of players who like the difficulty just as it is.

zetavivern wrote: »

I wanted to post another suggestion for a setting to make trash packs just ignore the player (Lord of the Rings Online does this when the player's level is significantly higher than the mobs', for example).

I've always wanted a green champion perk that allows various trash mobs like wolves, skeevers or nix-hounds to be neutral/friendly towards the player.

Silaf · April 14

The problem i see is that the difficulty system at the moment offer no reward so even tough i find the difficulty way too low i still don't have a reason to engage with it.

I guess someone may argue that the added challenge is reward enough but i disagree.

Making the base difficulty even more easy will only make the problem worse.

World bosses were initially tought to be challenged by 4 players... only the dlc areas maybe stand by it.

zetavivern · April 14

Silaf wrote: »

Making the base difficulty even more easy will only make the problem worse.

The base difficulty is now supposed to be the lowest of the four, as casual as you can get. The fact that you can still sometimes get one-shot on it even with a balanced build is, in my opinion, concerning. There shouldn't be a situation where you die the moment you enter the boss arena because the 4 boss enemies there all concentrated fire on you as the only player present.

Silaf wrote: »

World bosses were initially tought to be challenged by 4 players... only the dlc areas maybe stand by it.

They were initially challenging enough for several players - before One Tamriel, when the game overall was harder. Then everything became much more forgiving, but new WBs continued to rise in difficulty. And, like I said, you very rarely can find even one other player near the boss, nevermind the 4.

BretonMage wrote: »

The problem with that is that the WBs vary so much in difficulty.

And that's where I think the core of the problem lies. Maybe the ideal solution would be to manually adjust every single world boss in the game, but that sounds like way too much work. I do agree that my proposed solution isn't perfect for everyone, but it would make some of the hardest bosses at least survivable for casual players that don't have anyone to carry them through the fight, while not requiring too much of the devs' time and effort.

AlterBlika · April 14

zetavivern wrote: »

"I can solo every world boss in the game, you just need better gear / skill" - That's the point, some people play casually and don't want to dedicate hours of their precious time to making a meta build and practicing with it.

Not everything should be served on a silver platter to you if you're unwilling to work for it.

Besides, if even casual players can easily defeat world bosses, then what's the point of them being "world" ones anyway? How would they be any different from delves/public dungeons bosses? You're supposed to group up with other players to defeat them or at least try your best to solo them. Not just come and one shot them without any effort just because you want achievements or whatever.

People sure do forget that this isn't a singleplayer game.

Umbracat449 · April 14

ESO_player123 wrote: »

No, thank you. I do not want the trash packs to be a nuisance when I go from A to B, so I'm going to stay on the normal difficulty. However, I like the DLC bosses exactly where they are.

They need to really reduce the numbers of these, and have many more neutral ones and just a few mean ones. It's nuts how you can hardly move in some zones for aggressive mobs.

LunaFlora · April 14

that would be awesome yes.

a lot of things should be lower difficulty for Adventurer difficulty, like Dragons and other incursions

zetavivern · April 14

AlterBlika wrote: »

Not everything should be served on a silver platter to you if you're unwilling to work for it.

Besides, if even casual players can easily defeat world bosses, then what's the point of them being "world" ones anyway?

I never said it should be easy, I said it should be possible at all.

Tell a (hypothetical) father of three who spent 10 hours on shift and has only 30 minutes to play per day that he needs to put in more work in the game he bought to unwind in, or spend half of his available time trying to find a party. Suddenly it doesn't sound as fair.

AlterBlika wrote: »

People sure do forget that this isn't a singleplayer game.

People like ZOS who go out of their way to make the game as accessible to solo players as possible, because that's what a significant chunk of the audience wants. ESO was never a hardcore MMO, it was always casual, even before One Tamriel when it was a tad harder. Old school MMOs were all about raids and hardcore group content and "you're nothing without a guild", new school MMOs allow people to play however the hell they want, and it's a good thing. If you want this content to be less accessible you can still have this by setting your own difficulty higher.

MaraxusTheOrc · April 14

World boss difficulty is fine as is. It’s the only over world scenario where I feel a need to group up. That grouping is a big driver of quest sharing. If they are all solo friendly, I think there would be a big knock on effect with people no longer sharing daily quests as they just do theirs and move on.

This is still an extraordinarily accessible and solo friendly game. It’s also still an MMO. There is the activity finder, there are guilds, there is zone chat. They’ve given solo players every tool to tackle group activities. They do events in past DLC zones. We now have weekly tome challenges that bring us to DLC zones.

Deserrick · April 14

A lot of this could be helped by making the difficulty slider go both ways so players can correct some of the overtuning.

twisttop138 · April 14

BretonMage wrote: »

The problem with that is that the WBs vary so much in difficulty. For me personally, while a handful of DLC WBs could be a bit more forgiving, an across-the-board nerf will make too many WBs really trivial. I can also imagine that there are a number of players who like the difficulty just as it is.

zetavivern wrote: »

I wanted to post another suggestion for a setting to make trash packs just ignore the player (Lord of the Rings Online does this when the player's level is significantly higher than the mobs', for example).

I've always wanted a green champion perk that allows various trash mobs like wolves, skeevers or nix-hounds to be neutral/friendly towards the player.

We could call it...animal companions.

I can't solo every world boss though I can do a vast majority. I wouldn't stand in the way if most people feel this is important but I would tell you what I told my wife. She's very casual, very low dps quester. Ask for help.

Toanis · April 14

There aren't really difficulty tiers coming, just voluntary debuffs for those who chose to be challenged. Nothing in the world changes, it's just the players that chose high difficulty who get nerfed far below even newbie levels of damage and resistance.

Even if it affected the bosses, how would that work when another player joins the fight? Should difficulty be chosen by the player that starts the fight, or should it switch dynamically to the lowest/highest difficulty of the involved players?

And what difficulty are we talking about? Sustaining your resources until the boss is dead? Learning to dodge/block at the right time, and priorize adds if need be? Or figuring out a build that can beat the mechanics of bosses like the Hunger in Vvardenfell, that will stunlock you and heal itself by draining your health?

SkaiFaith · April 14

I recently made a point that I can solo DLC bosses today but even before Challenge Difficulty they are on another level compared to base game bosses, and if I'll put Challenge Difficulty on level 2 to raise the bar for base game bosses that I find boring, said level 2 will likely make DLC bosses impossible to solo, and I'll have to swap between Challenge Difficulty 1 and 2 any time I travel to different zones - this would be annoying. So: either raise base game bosses to DLC difficulty (which many seem to disagree with) or lower DLC bosses to base game difficulty BEFORE implementing Challenge Difficulty.

katanagirl1 · April 15

This is a good idea. I can’t imagine anyone who would have a problem with the lower difficulty dlc world bosses being nerfed a little if it doesn’t affect them, right?

I mean, isn’t that the argument used to justify the harder overland difficulty - it’s optional and won’t affect you?

Yeah, that was a little sarcasm. Some people want their cake and eat it too.

I’m running vet trials and I am not able to solo the later dlc world bosses. Maybe you can do it on a specific class with a specific build but not everyone can. It’s unfortunate that the harder difficulty crowd has been successful at getting these bosses made more difficult in the last few years because it really affects the rest of us now that the population of the zones has died off. It would only be fair for the devs to reevaluate them and scale them back with the new difficulty update.

Attorneyatlawl · April 15

zetavivern wrote: »

]

They were initially challenging enough for several players - before One Tamriel, when the game overall was harder. Then everything became much more forgiving, but new WBs continued to rise in difficulty. And, like I said, you very rarely can find even one other player near the boss, nevermind the 4.

Nah, many of us solod and duod them just fine including Wrothgar world bosses and all the Craglorn ones pre one Tamriel.

The game doesn't need to be any easier than it is now. It does new players a disservice by not making them socialize or learn how to play well.

zetavivern · April 15

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Nah, many of us solod and duod them just fine including Wrothgar world bosses and all the Craglorn ones pre one Tamriel. The game doesn't need to be any easier than it is now. It does new players a disservice by not making them socialize or learn how to play well.

Saying that the game doesn't need to be easier right after boasting about how skilled you are illustrates the issue perfectly. If you're so good at the game, you're perfectly capable of raising your own difficulty to get the challenge you crave. It doesn't mean that other players have to endure the same level of challenge you personally find enjoyable. Just because it's the norm for you doesn't mean that it should be forced on everyone else.
I've already addressed topics of socializing and spending time on learning above.

SeaGtGruff · April 15

I'm on the fence about this.

While I do feel that some of the more difficult WBs could stand to be toned down a bit, I also recognize that WBs are intended to be tackled by groups of two or more players.

Being able to solo a WB for the first time is like a rite of passage for players, just like being able to solo a dolmen for the first time, solo a group dungeon on Normal for the first time, and being able to solo a group dungeon on Veteran for the first time. While I personally can solo many of the WBs, I'm not able to solo all of them, which gives me something to work towards.

But some of the WBs-- especially many of the DLC WBs-- seem to be designed to be unfairly difficult, such as having a deadly one-shot attack that seems to come out of the blue without any warning. Part of learning how to deal with powerful bosses-- be they WBs or dungeon/trial bosses-- hinges on being able to tell when they're about to fire off an attack, recognize which of their attacks they're about to fire off, and figure out whether it can be interrupted or blocked or whether trying to roll-dodge out of the way is the only option. Older WBs usually give ample telegraphing to help players get ready for an attack, but some of the newer WBs seem to have either no telegraphing at all or very short telegraphing that doesn't leave much time to react. At least, that's how some of them seem to me. It's like the game teaches you how to block, how to interrupt, how to dodge-- and then starts throwing you into situations where all of those lessons seem pretty worthless because interrupting doesn't work on a boss, or attacks are too deadly to block, or they come so unexpectedly that dodging isn't feasible.

Attorneyatlawl · April 15

zetavivern wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Nah, many of us solod and duod them just fine including Wrothgar world bosses and all the Craglorn ones pre one Tamriel. The game doesn't need to be any easier than it is now. It does new players a disservice by not making them socialize or learn how to play well.

Saying that the game doesn't need to be easier right after boasting about how skilled you are illustrates the issue perfectly. If you're so good at the game, you're perfectly capable of raising your own difficulty to get the challenge you crave. It doesn't mean that other players have to endure the same level of challenge you personally find enjoyable. Just because it's the norm for you doesn't mean that it should be forced on everyone else.
I've already addressed topics of socializing and spending time on learning above.

I wasn't boasting. Many people did it, like I said. The average player was more skilled back then as the game taught you a bit better through experience by being more difficult, which was the thrust of my post.