I honestly don’t understand your argument here. What does overland difficulty have to do with meta builds, parsing culture, or high DPS?

If you care mostly about story, exploration, immersion, and RPG elements, why are you so focused on parsing culture and trial metas in the first place? If you’re not chasing veteran trial progression, nobody is forcing you into that playstyle.

You’re mixing completely different topics together and then attaching them to an overland difficulty poll. It feels contradictory.

Athory wrote: »

SANGUARI wrote: »

I honestly don’t understand your argument here. What does overland difficulty have to do with meta builds, parsing culture, or high DPS?

If you care mostly about story, exploration, immersion, and RPG elements, why are you so focused on parsing culture and trial metas in the first place? If you’re not chasing veteran trial progression, nobody is forcing you into that playstyle.

You’re mixing completely different topics together and then attaching them to an overland difficulty poll. It feels contradictory.

I wanna keep playing ESO, but I’m getting tired, really tired this time, of all the [snip] around builds, DPS checks, and everything tied to the MMO side of the game. So if I still want to keep playing ESO, what’s left? The story part, right?
That made me curious about how many players are actually excited about the upcoming overland difficulty changes and want to keep playing ESO outside of all the other [snip].

So where’s the contradictory part?

As has been shown to you, across multiple threads, there's a shed load of solo PvE content coming for the rest of the year.

Just because content is not aimed at your very specific playstyle, it does not mean it's [snip]
[edited for profanity bypass & to remove quote]

Tbh I perfectly get the OP's frustration with group content. I think for a long time ZOS have operated on the notion that solo questing was 'entry level' after which players would 'graduate' to group content. It's deeply entrenched in the reward structure, for one.
I think lately ZOS have realized the assumption is wrong for a great many players. Group content is just not the same genre game as the solo experience. It is like they've been assuming the natural progression for tennis players is to move on to volleyball.
They're trying to make amends now. Story mode dungeons and challenge difficulty, to some extent Infinite archive...
The question is whether it will be successful: will something like Challenge difficulty provide an alternative to group content that will keep solo players engaged? So IMHO in that context the poll makes sense.

Personally, I will just have to wait and see. I haven't been playing at all in quite a while now. But I can see a combination of Challenge difficulty overland and Vengeance PvP might bring me back, because basically for me it would shift the focus away from feeling forced into content I don't like, just for the rewards, to just jumping in and playing without feeling the pressure to grind for gear in content I just don't enjoy.

Muizer wrote: »

I think for a long time ZOS have operated on the notion that solo questing was 'entry level' after which players would 'graduate' to group content. It's deeply entrenched in the reward structure, for one.
I think lately ZOS have realized the assumption is wrong for a great many players. Group content is just not the same genre game as the solo experience. It is like they've been assuming the natural progression for tennis players is to move on to volleyball.

This is so true. And it's not only ZOS. Some players operate on that notion too. You can see it in threads when some people talk about questing and normal dungeons as training grounds for the "real stuff," and want to start changing those things with the aim of everyone learning how to do 200k dps. And they want all content adjusted for that, which would destroy the game for some of us.

For example, I only do normal dungeons. I'm seeing discussion of making the base game ones more difficult, which would essentially ruin that part of the game for me. They'll say, "git gud." But I'm good enough now for the content I like to do, unless it's moved out of my reach because other players want everything geared to their interests, i.e. builds, parsing, etc. I'm not interested in playing a glorified spreadsheet simulator, which is all that is to me.

They don't understand that for some players (quite a few), we don't quest and do normal dungeons in preparation for vet content and trials. We do it because that's what we enjoy, and we have no interest in moving on to someone else's idea of endgame or what matters. Right now I think there's a pretty good division, and enough content, for everyone. I'd hate to see the requirement to do high dps bleed into every area of the game. That's why I'm glad the overland difficulty is opt-in, and it needs to stay that way. I'm also glad it's there for players who want it.

As for rewards, yes, they're not great for solo activities like questing, and there's no incentive to repeat the story content (apart from personal satisfaction, but group content always has decent rewards for repeating it, so solo content should too). I'm encouraged by what I've heard so far about stuff that's coming. Hopefully the rewards for solo dungeons and other solo activities will demonstrate that ZOS is serious about retaining and attracting players who mainly solo.

I certainly do not want more challenging overland content. I'm typically too busy fishing or harvesting or looking for something or other. I actually wish I could turn the agro of some mobs off! I'm sure those tree-creatures would like me if they knew me, but attack right away! Same with the wild animals. There really should be a quest that makes everyone like you.

I will give the difficulty options a go, as for going back and replaying everything again, did the base game to level sub classing, honestly don't feel much interest in redoing everything, there are next to no options after the base game to make a different narrative choice to make redoing the story feel worth the time investment.

I'll give higher difficulties a shot. Might even see overland groups? Who knows.

The game will definitely be much better; it will make sense to fight a powerful villain, but to make it perfect I would instantiate the difficulty levels to avoid interference from players who play on easy mode.

A little bit of extra XP and tiny bit more gold isn't an incentive for me to increase the difficulty.