Every Character Set to Master Difficulty and Unable to Change

UrQuan · June 8

As the thread title says, every character I've logged on to so far since the patch (24 characters on 2 accounts so far, all max-level) is set to master difficulty and I'm unable to change the difficulty. Is this happening to everyone? Just to max-level characters? Or just my accounts? Does anyone have a workaround?

ZOS_GinaBruno · June 8

Could you try zoning somewhere else first, or try swapping to Vestige first?

UrQuan · June 8

OK, after a bunch of tries I found out that I can change it, I just can't change it from Master to Adventurer. I have to change it to Seasoned or Vestige first, and then after that (and waiting for the cooldown) I can change it to Adventurer. That's messed up.

Toanis · June 8

Did you click on "change difficulty" after changing the difficulty?

You need to relog or travel somewhere else before difficulty actually works as expected. Otherwise Normal is -65% damage, and anything higher is -100% damage.

Lavellan · June 8

For me it was a visual bug when I logged in, when I went into the character's screen I was able to change it

Balibe · June 8

Known Issue from Patch Notes …….

Challenge Difficulty (added after initial Patch Note publishing): Some characters when logging in will be set to Master difficulty by default. You can select a new difficulty on the character screen. This bug will be resolved in the future.

UrQuan · June 8

Toanis wrote: »

Did you click on "change difficulty" after changing the difficulty?

Yes I did.

Balibe wrote: »

Known Issue from Patch Notes …….

Challenge Difficulty (added after initial Patch Note publishing): Some characters when logging in will be set to Master difficulty by default. You can select a new difficulty on the character screen. This bug will be resolved in the future.

That bug doesn't cover the not being able to change it to Adventurer part. To change it to Adventurer I had to change it to a different difficulty first.

freespirit · June 8

UrQuan wrote: »

Toanis wrote: »

Did you click on "change difficulty" after changing the difficulty?

Yes I did.

Balibe wrote: »

Known Issue from Patch Notes …….

Challenge Difficulty (added after initial Patch Note publishing): Some characters when logging in will be set to Master difficulty by default. You can select a new difficulty on the character screen. This bug will be resolved in the future.

That bug doesn't cover the not being able to change it to Adventurer part. To change it to Adventurer I had to change it to a different difficulty first.

Same here couldn't change from Master > Adventurer, had to do the extra Seasoned then Adventurer. Plus then wait out the cooldown before Seasoned > Adventurer would work.

majulook · June 8

Why is Master the new Default for all characters???

ZOS_GinaBruno · June 8

majulook wrote: »

Why is Master the new Default for all characters???

This wasn't intentional and is a bug, and it also doesn't affect all characters every time. The intended functionality is everyone should be set to Adventurer or whichever difficulty was last selected upon logging in.

exiars10 · June 8

All my 4 main characters were on Master level by default, and I can only change to Vestige. Only after reading here to go change Zone, I managed to change to Adventure.

Can somebody tell why I have those constant chat notifications about difficulty when I did nothing about it. It just spams. Is this normal or it's some Add-on issue so I can report to author?
Update
It's Lui Extended issue.

BretonMage · June 8

When I logged in I had "Master" in a corner of my screen, but when I went to the character screen, the Adventurer difficulty was highlighted. So I assumed it was just mislabelled on the main screen.

ivaylo.krumoveb17_ESO · June 8

UrQuan wrote: »

As the thread title says, every character I've logged on to so far since the patch (24 characters on 2 accounts so far, all max-level) is set to master difficulty and I'm unable to change the difficulty. Is this happening to everyone? Just to max-level characters? Or just my accounts? Does anyone have a workaround?

Why am i not surprised? It is physically impossible for ZOS to change even a single line of dialogue without introducing a massive ripple effect that renders the game unplayable.

ApoAlaia · June 8

I have to laugh to preserve the few non-grey hairs I have left

20 times I had to do the rigmarole of: port to another zone > select any difficulty other than 'adventurer' or the one the game chose for me for reasons, wait for cooldown, choose 'adventurer'

20 times so far, this was just one account.

Thanks for putting so many pebbles in my shoes I guess

KalevaLaine · June 8

Yes, my setting is also changing to another diffyculty on it's own.

Sordidfairytale · June 8

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

majulook wrote: »

Why is Master the new Default for all characters???

This wasn't intentional and is a bug, and it also doesn't affect all characters every time. The intended functionality is everyone should be set to Adventurer or whichever difficulty was last selected upon logging in.

Zoning automatically changes it to Adventurer for me. Though when traveling, splash screen still says "Master".

katanagirl1 · June 8

So I guess it’s not optional after all, lol.

AzuraFan · June 8

I was able to change to Adventurer once I changed zones. That worked for others in one of my guilds too.

But on loading screens, it still says "Master," even though I'm definitely not set to that. So yeah, there's a UI glitch.

Quethrosar · June 8

this seems like a rather huge screw up they should hot patch. maybe 5% bother reading notes?

tomofhyrule · June 8

I’m surprised this is an issue. We saw that (and reported it!) on the first week of PTS.

It is really likely to scare people off if their “opt-in” difficulty is actually set up as an opt-out thing - not many people will know how to (or even that they’ll need to!) opt back out of it.

This may have a workaround, but the message needs to go out. This may be something worth an emergency minor patch.

freespirit · June 8

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I’m surprised this is an issue. We saw that (and reported it!) on the first week of PTS.

It is really likely to scare people off if their “opt-in” difficulty is actually set up as an opt-out thing - not many people will know how to (or even that they’ll need to!) opt back out of it.

This may have a workaround, but the message needs to go out. This may be something worth an emergency minor patch.

Totally agree, I have seen numerous posts in Zone Chat's where people either don't follow new update changes or don't belong to guilds etc and they are freaking out thinking their character's are suddenly broken.

It's too important of a change to be broken!!

Sachsen71 · June 8

I think it's unclear that you have to click on the level you want, and THEN click Change Difficulty. I was expecting to click Change Difficulty multiple times, and the indicator would just progress one step at a time until it got to Vestige, then clicking Change Difficulty again would move it back to Adventurer. I figured it out, but it wasn't intuitive for me initially.

Hapexamendios · June 8

So there's a chance my characters will be set to a feature I don't want and it's a pain to get it set properly? Lovely.

LalMirchi · June 9

The lack of Quality Control or testing releases before going live is rather pathetic for such a big game studio.

Olanero · June 9

From what I have observed this setting was done based on your accumulated champion points and not random at all.
Alt - Account of a friend (sub 1000) : Stage 1 (Adventurer)
Console Transfer (between 1000 and 2000) : Stage 2
CP 2500+ (Raid Members) : Stage 3 (Master)

Obviously too small a sample size, but seems like it was tied to cp and/or achievements.

Destai · June 9

I was able to finally change it last night. If you change it too quickly, there's some message that pops up suggesting you wait. The problem is there's lag in the difficulty updating on the Character Menu itself, so it's easy to run into that.

I'm really disappointed that issues like this are still making it live.

Destai · June 9

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I’m surprised this is an issue. We saw that (and reported it!) on the first week of PTS.

It is really likely to scare people off if their “opt-in” difficulty is actually set up as an opt-out thing - not many people will know how to (or even that they’ll need to!) opt back out of it.

This may have a workaround, but the message needs to go out. This may be something worth an emergency minor patch.

It's sad to see that PTS feedback still isn't getting us to higher quality releases. For all their improvements this year, still seems like there's issues there.

I had to google how to fix it, and even then, the option to select difficulty didn't show up in the character until I relogged twice.

I logged back off after dealing with this. I simply have no patience for struggling with basic menus. I don't blame anyone getting scared off from this.

Danikat · June 9

For me it only seems to affect certain characters. My crafter, who I logged into first, was on Adventurer as expected, but my main character was on Master and it wouldn't let me change to Adventurer. (I was eventually able to change it following the instructions in this thread.)

I came here thinking I'd missed something about how and why the game chooses a difficulty for you. I'm glad it's just a bug but I really hope it gets fixed soon because it's going to cause problems for a lot of people, especially the type of infrequent players who don't follow all the news about upcoming changes and are unlikely to know why they're suddenly doing so much less damage.

It's also discouraging to know it had been reported on the PTS and was ignored. I thought ZOS said they were going to start actually using the feedback so it would be less of a waste of time to use the PTS.

WalkingBomb · June 11

All of my 15 characters were affected, I couldn't change a single one from Master > Adventurer straight away, but after changing it to either Vestige or Seasoned I could change to Adventurer afterwards; so Master > Seasoned > Adventurer. Do note that there is a cooldown so you have to wait a bit before doing the final step. After this change I could freely change even from Master > Adventurer, if I went back to Master. So the first Master > Seasoned or Master > Vestige will un-stuck your choices entirely, but do mind the cooldown.