Overland Content Feedback Thread

twisttop138 · April 13

YffresTrill wrote: »

disky wrote: »

I think it's worth noting that the devs have discussed the mutability of this feature. It's possible that you could get what you're looking for in the future.

Yes, which is great, and which is why I am offering feedback -- if I assumed there was no chance any of this may change in the future, I would not.

disky wrote: »

I also think that we need to try all of the settings they're implementing initially before we judge the impact of this change. You might find that there is a lower setting which provides the upgrade to bosses you want, and doesn't dramatically affect the rest of overland enemies.

Thank you, but I can tell from the description (all mobs affected equally) that this will not be the case. It might be a slight improvement over the current state, and I hope so, but it is not what I would like from a difficulty setting.

Others are welcome to disagree, and that is why a granular system would be most welcome.

Edit to add: I would prefer quest/delve bosses to be on one of the higher settings -- a lower setting will not meaningfully buff them imo.

Just change it as you see fit. Low level going past adds, more difficulty on bosses. This is the way I'm going to do it. I really only want more boss difficulty. But @disky for instance may want hard mobs that challenge him as he plots a way forward, thinking through every move. Sorry, disky. Idk if this is in fact what you want but used you as an example. I know you're excited for this feature. I think very much we should get our hands on it. Play with it. Let's see what it offers. Beyond challenge, a new type of theory crafting and more.

shadoza · April 13

spartaxoxo wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

The quest updating needs attention. I was completing a quest that had several stages to it. When one stage was complete, the quest information would shift to a quest I am NOT doing. I would rather the statement say 'no quest selected' then to auto show one I did not select.

There's a setting to prefer the quest you picked up.

Yes, but the game changes the quest regardless of the setting. I am saying it should not change while the quest is in progress and simply updating to a second part of the same quest.

mocap · April 13

Very quick test from PTS.

Master difficulty is ok. At 20k armor you get spike damage from trash mobs. Still can quick kill them even with PTS default gear.

Vestige difficulty: spike damage is... "spiky". Need close to resist cap, major/minor Protection etc etc. Manageable at least fighting against 3 mobs. Very good difficulty if not hurry. Reminds me of typical single-player game on very high difficulty level.

spartaxoxo · April 13

shadoza wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

The quest updating needs attention. I was completing a quest that had several stages to it. When one stage was complete, the quest information would shift to a quest I am NOT doing. I would rather the statement say 'no quest selected' then to auto show one I did not select.

There's a setting to prefer the quest you picked up.

Yes, but the game changes the quest regardless of the setting. I am saying it should not change while the quest is in progress and simply updating to a second part of the same quest.

.
That sounds like a bug, you may want to submit a bug report.

There are quests that chain multiple stages as different quests though. It can be difficult to tell if it's a new one or just an updated stage. If it's one of the quests that make a new stage also a new quest, that would explain that behavior. You complete the quest and while you're in dialogue, the quest tracker goes to your next quest in the list. When you pick up the "new" quest, which is realistically just a new stage of the same questline, then it won't make the next stage current if you have the setting on prefer to keep your quests rather than updating to new ones.

shadoza · April 14

I am not sure I understand your reference.
The quest says, talk to "so & so."
I go to that person and listen to them talk.
The quest updates from talk to "so & so" to go to location and find a that.
Only instead of my heads-up saying go to location and find that, it says to pick-pocket x number of citizens . . .
There was no reward for the talk to "so & so" so that quest was not completed.
If it is a bug, it is a long standing one. It has been going on long enough to become a 'point of pain' for me. I think it is more of the quest indicator trying to be intuitive.
I would rather it not advance to the next quest on the lists anyway if lands. I would rather the message tell me I need to pick another quest or state that no quest is selected.

disky · April 14

twisttop138 wrote: »

YffresTrill wrote: »

disky wrote: »

I think it's worth noting that the devs have discussed the mutability of this feature. It's possible that you could get what you're looking for in the future.

Yes, which is great, and which is why I am offering feedback -- if I assumed there was no chance any of this may change in the future, I would not.

disky wrote: »

I also think that we need to try all of the settings they're implementing initially before we judge the impact of this change. You might find that there is a lower setting which provides the upgrade to bosses you want, and doesn't dramatically affect the rest of overland enemies.

Thank you, but I can tell from the description (all mobs affected equally) that this will not be the case. It might be a slight improvement over the current state, and I hope so, but it is not what I would like from a difficulty setting.

Others are welcome to disagree, and that is why a granular system would be most welcome.

Edit to add: I would prefer quest/delve bosses to be on one of the higher settings -- a lower setting will not meaningfully buff them imo.

Just change it as you see fit. Low level going past adds, more difficulty on bosses. This is the way I'm going to do it. I really only want more boss difficulty. But @disky for instance may want hard mobs that challenge him as he plots a way forward, thinking through every move. Sorry, disky. Idk if this is in fact what you want but used you as an example. I know you're excited for this feature. I think very much we should get our hands on it. Play with it. Let's see what it offers. Beyond challenge, a new type of theory crafting and more.

Yeah, I absolutely do want that. I want the whole overland game to be more challenging, including normal overland enemies, because those fights are actually a large part of the game for me, and they factor significantly into the perception of ease.

That being said, I believe the devs said they have six different settings for difficulty planned, and so I think it's premature to make the kind of judgements this person is making before we have had time to test anything.

YffresTrill · April 15

disky wrote: »

That being said, I believe the devs said they have six different settings for difficulty planned, and so I think it's premature to make the kind of judgements this person is making before we have had time to test anything.

Where did they say there would be six? I have only heard of four. I am curious about this if there is any additional information.

BHoth_ · April 17

Shouldn't this megathread be closed soon, now that we're about to have overland difficulty options?

spartaxoxo · April 17

BHoth_ wrote: »

Shouldn't this megathread be closed soon, now that we're about to have overland difficulty options?

It's the official feedback thread for overland difficulty, so not yet. Give people a change to actually test it and give feedback on if it worked to solve the issues in thread. Give it enough time for a fair shot and not just knee jerk first impressions. Once it's solidified, then yeah, it should be closed imo. But not before that imo. The topic isn't over until the playerbase is largely satisfied by the difficulty options imo.

Deserrick · April 17

BHoth_ wrote: »

Shouldn't this megathread be closed soon, now that we're about to have overland difficulty options?

No. This thread is for more overland content feedback than just difficulty.

shadoza · April 17

BHoth_ wrote: »

Shouldn't this megathread be closed soon, now that we're about to have overland difficulty options?

This tread is entitled: "Overland Content Feedback Thread." I still use it to report feedback for overland content.

spartaxoxo · April 18

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

[*] Separating Players by Challenge Difficulty Setting [Feedback]: We have seen your questions and feedback about separating players by Challenge Difficulty setting, so the only players you’d see are those on the same Challenge Difficulty setting as you. Much of this feedback is grounded in concerns that players on lower difficulty will affect players on higher difficulty in overland content. There are two main reasons why this is not possible.
Reason 1: Our game is an MMO and we want players to play together, see others, interact with the world, soft group, etc. Separating players would run counter to that ethos.

Reason 2: We cannot do this from a technical standpoint. Creating instances of each zone would be hugely detrimental to the game's technical health and adversely affect the entire game, not just the zones with instances.

We are still looking at feedback, and this was identified when the system was developed but one thing to remember is this is not fundamentally different from the experience currently on the live servers. Players opting in to Challenge Difficulty will have a better experience most of the time, but in high traffic areas you may see a greater mix of lower- and higher-difficulty players.

This was on the pts forum. I feel like reason 2's information should have been given to those of us in this thread years ago. But here's the answer finally.

disky · April 19

spartaxoxo wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

[*] Separating Players by Challenge Difficulty Setting [Feedback]: We have seen your questions and feedback about separating players by Challenge Difficulty setting, so the only players you’d see are those on the same Challenge Difficulty setting as you. Much of this feedback is grounded in concerns that players on lower difficulty will affect players on higher difficulty in overland content. There are two main reasons why this is not possible.
Reason 1: Our game is an MMO and we want players to play together, see others, interact with the world, soft group, etc. Separating players would run counter to that ethos.

Reason 2: We cannot do this from a technical standpoint. Creating instances of each zone would be hugely detrimental to the game's technical health and adversely affect the entire game, not just the zones with instances.

We are still looking at feedback, and this was identified when the system was developed but one thing to remember is this is not fundamentally different from the experience currently on the live servers. Players opting in to Challenge Difficulty will have a better experience most of the time, but in high traffic areas you may see a greater mix of lower- and higher-difficulty players.

This was on the pts forum. I feel like reason 2's information should have been given to those of us in this thread years ago. But here's the answer finally.

It's one of the reasons I've been trying to relay whenever this topic appears here, in addition to the overall cost in money and time that it would probably take to make it happen. I get that there are people who want this, but I also think it's important to be reasonable and practical when you make an ask for a feature like this. And so I don't think it should be necessary to make clear the reasons why it didn't play out that way. People should be more understanding and have appropriate expectations.

Not everyone here is a game developer and so we don't all have a perfect understanding of how this works, but I expect that most of us are adults, and most of us have the capacity to grasp that the overall challenges and complexities of one thing are likely far greater than another thing.

spartaxoxo · April 26

How does the slider feel on pts?

spartaxoxo · April 26

Saw this in the challenge difficulty thread

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

So, to answer some questions on Challenge Difficulty and instancing combat. This is going to be a little bit technical to hopefully explain the limitations from that perspective.

Everything in the game has a "weight" to it. This includes monsters (very weight heavy), interactable objects (these very but can be weight heavy), etc. Weight is determined by how much information is stored in a given object. I mention this because we have formulas for how much "weight" we can attribute to a given zone or instance of a zone and that is based on the intended player cap. So, for instance, Overland zones generally have no weight restrictions because we expect a lot of players in those zones so the weight attributed to the zone is justified and won't adversely affect the server. It gets much more tricky in situations where we expect reduced players in a given zone. The most restrictive are solo instances or fight spaces. We have a lot of development tools we use to make sure we do not exceed weight capacities in these spaces so it should feel seamless to players.

Each zone is controlled on the backend by something that determines which of our servers will spin up which zones when new copies are needed. In Greymoor, we saw the effects of the zones being spun up were not correctly attributing weight. Trials would spin up on weight heavy controllers which would result in adverse conditions in any zone connected to that controller. Our engineers took great pains to reorganize the code in these controllers to make sure the zones were even and weight was correctly distributed.

I bring this up to highlight the technical aspects of how the game operates from a monster and zone perspective to further illustrate that spinning up new zones based on difficulty without weight concerns and attribution would be extremely detrimental to the entire game. Needing to essentially double all of the available zones in the game without regard to population and weight would mean the entire server would have some pretty major issues regardless of where you would be playing. Even in Delves and Public Dungeons, locations that were not created with these concerns in mind, would potentially be breaking for the server.

We want Challenge Difficulty to be a fun experience for players and, while most of the feedback is regarding the desire for us not to split players from a design standpoint, the technical concerns are most likely bigger than that. This is not said to dismiss feedback but more provide context.

Please DO keep providing feedback. We have some fixes in the works coming for CD. Mainly around the calculations we are making on the backend so that player damage is more in line with expectations but that is not exhaustive and we continue to monitor things. We are taking a look at the Master difficulty in particular as thats where I think most folks will find their groove and we want to make that as smooth as possible.

This was in response to having special attacks directed towards players with the debuff

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

A bit beyond the scope for this initial implementation but it is something we can look at in the future, especially for things like story boss fights where we know it is limited to you and your group.

shadoza · April 29

I think it would be useful if bookshelves had an indicator of having been checked for fresh reading material.

Along with the clearing of certain things account wide, I would like to have a character list as well. When a character goes into a map for the first time, the dolmens are not marked but the list is marked as completed already. The same for the dangerous fights (mini bosses) in public dungeons.

BagOfBadgers · April 30

shadoza wrote: »

I think it would be useful if bookshelves had an indicator of having been checked for fresh reading material.

Along with the clearing of certain things account wide, I would like to have a character list as well. When a character goes into a map for the first time, the dolmens are not marked but the list is marked as completed already. The same for the dangerous fights (mini bosses) in public dungeons.

What has this got to do with overland difficulty? I think you have misunderstood the reason for this thread, as in, it's for “Overland” difficulty, e.g. mobs, bosses and the like, not what you find difficult.

The second part is due to Account Wide Achievements, that ZOS implemented even though many said it was a good idea, but done terribly, again, what you find difficult, not “overland” difficulty.

If you have issues that are not connected to the topic, you could start another thread.

shadoza · April 30

BagOfBadgers wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

I think it would be useful if bookshelves had an indicator of having been checked for fresh reading material.

Along with the clearing of certain things account wide, I would like to have a character list as well. When a character goes into a map for the first time, the dolmens are not marked but the list is marked as completed already. The same for the dangerous fights (mini bosses) in public dungeons.

What has this got to do with overland difficulty? I think you have misunderstood the reason for this thread, as in, it's for “Overland” difficulty, e.g. mobs, bosses and the like, not what you find difficult.

The second part is due to Account Wide Achievements, that ZOS implemented even though many said it was a good idea, but done terribly, again, what you find difficult, not “overland” difficulty.

If you have issues that are not connected to the topic, you could start another thread.

This is Overland feedback thread created by Community Manager. My feedback references activities within the Overland. It is a simple feedback that does not need a thread of its own.

BagOfBadgers · April 30

shadoza wrote: »

BagOfBadgers wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

I think it would be useful if bookshelves had an indicator of having been checked for fresh reading material.

Along with the clearing of certain things account wide, I would like to have a character list as well. When a character goes into a map for the first time, the dolmens are not marked but the list is marked as completed already. The same for the dangerous fights (mini bosses) in public dungeons.

What has this got to do with overland difficulty? I think you have misunderstood the reason for this thread, as in, it's for “Overland” difficulty, e.g. mobs, bosses and the like, not what you find difficult.

The second part is due to Account Wide Achievements, that ZOS implemented even though many said it was a good idea, but done terribly, again, what you find difficult, not “overland” difficulty.

If you have issues that are not connected to the topic, you could start another thread.

This is Overland feedback thread created by Community Manager. My feedback references activities within the Overland. It is a simple feedback that does not need a thread of its own.

I can see why that makes sense to you.

ZOS_Kevin · April 30

Hi Folks, wanted to update here. As many know, this thread was created several years ago to discuss overland difficulty. With Challenge Difficulty on the way to solve the core overland difficulty issue, we plan to close this thread down once the current PTS Cycle is over. Given the length and multitude of conversations here, we want to give folks time to wrap up any loose ends to any conversations had here before closing the thread happens.

Thank you for all of the feedback and conversations here.

spartaxoxo · April 30

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi Folks, wanted to update here. As many know, this thread was created several years ago to discuss overland difficulty. With Challenge Difficulty on the way to solve the core overland difficulty issue, we plan to close this thread down once the current PTS Cycle is over. Given the length and multitude of conversations here, we want to give folks time to wrap up any loose ends to any conversations had here before closing the thread happens.

Thank you for all of the feedback and conversations here.

Why wouldn't it be closed until a little after the challenge difficulty was released so we actually get a chance to leave feedback if it worked out or not? Will there be another thread for that? Not all of us even have access to the pts.

colossalvoids · April 30

Doest that mean we will be yet again free to discuss the difficulty issues and potential wants in separate threads as previously? Or that's a "case closed" thing for the company no matter if that's what some of us were asking for or not even close to that and still being an issue? @ZOS_Kevin

Destai · April 30

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi Folks, wanted to update here. As many know, this thread was created several years ago to discuss overland difficulty. With Challenge Difficulty on the way to solve the core overland difficulty issue, we plan to close this thread down once the current PTS Cycle is over. Given the length and multitude of conversations here, we want to give folks time to wrap up any loose ends to any conversations had here before closing the thread happens.

Thank you for all of the feedback and conversations here.

Kevin, I'm not sure if you've seen this suggestion before, but why not have an overland subforum? Clearly there's a lot of discussion so far, and will probably continue going forward. Where's all of that supposed to go? Will finally be allowed to discuss Overland without them being funneled here? What problem are you solving by closing this thread?

SilverBride · April 30

@ZOS_Kevin

Thank you for creating this thread to give players a place to discuss overland difficulty. I am glad that we were allowed to give our feedback and many of us met in the middle and agreed to an optional system being put into place. Even though we may not use it ourselves, it goes a long way to create an environment where more players can enjoy the overland experience.

We now have a new system and I am more than ready to put this thread to rest and move forward with an Overland for all the players. We all need closure at this point so I look forward to putting a long and productive debate to rest.

Thank you.

disky · April 30

I'm not gonna lie, I was really hoping to round this thing out at 10k posts, but I'll take getting pretty much exactly what I wanted, and the satisfaction of knowing that the devs listened and worked to create something that helped many of us enjoy the game in a whole new way, as a pleasant consolation. Thanks guys.

Credible_Joe · April 30

So long, and thanks for all the fish

Techwolf_Lupindo · April 30

disky wrote: »

I'm not gonna lie, I was really hoping to round this thing out at 10k posts

Let gooooo..we can do it. aaarrroooOOOoooo

shadoza · May 1

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi Folks, wanted to update here. As many know, this thread was created several years ago to discuss overland difficulty. With Challenge Difficulty on the way to solve the core overland difficulty issue, we plan to close this thread down once the current PTS Cycle is over. Given the length and multitude of conversations here, we want to give folks time to wrap up any loose ends to any conversations had here before closing the thread happens.

Thank you for all of the feedback and conversations here.

Well then, I just wasted all my efforts once again.
Why do I even bother with feedback?

twisttop138 · May 1

shadoza wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi Folks, wanted to update here. As many know, this thread was created several years ago to discuss overland difficulty. With Challenge Difficulty on the way to solve the core overland difficulty issue, we plan to close this thread down once the current PTS Cycle is over. Given the length and multitude of conversations here, we want to give folks time to wrap up any loose ends to any conversations had here before closing the thread happens.

Thank you for all of the feedback and conversations here.

Well then, I just wasted all my efforts once again.
Why do I even bother with feedback?

Because again, even if you can discuss overland here, this thread was made years ago with the express purpose of discussion of overland difficulty. The forum was clogged with tons of threads about it sometimes and the mods took all the discussions and put them all in this thread. If you have overland issues or suggestions, you should probably start your own thread.

Arunei · May 3

shadoza wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi Folks, wanted to update here. As many know, this thread was created several years ago to discuss overland difficulty. With Challenge Difficulty on the way to solve the core overland difficulty issue, we plan to close this thread down once the current PTS Cycle is over. Given the length and multitude of conversations here, we want to give folks time to wrap up any loose ends to any conversations had here before closing the thread happens.

Thank you for all of the feedback and conversations here.

Well then, I just wasted all my efforts once again.
Why do I even bother with feedback?

Because once CD is released they'll probably make a new thread for it. This one is years old with hundreds of posts. It would be a nightmare for people coming to offer their own after release to try to read through all this.

Feedback on other Overlansld topics can be made at anyone's leisure and don't/won't need to be posted here. Which is a good thing considering how much Overland difficulty dominated the discussion.