My take on Challenge Difficulty

Schiffy · June 10

Okay so I know it hasn't even been 48 hours but I figured I'd give some of my own feedback after testing the waters with the new harder overland zones. The TLDR of this is "great idea, needs some work".

Right now, as it stands, there's not a whole lot of real incentive to do Challenge Difficulty. The big reason for this is the numbers just don't work out in the player's favor as a proper reward for getting abused and murdered by every skeleton in Glenumbra.

Let's look at Vestige difficulty as the extreme example. In this highest difficulty, you are taking seven times as much damage as normal, dealing a fifth of your usual outgoing damage, and as a reward? Twice as much XP, three times as much gold, and some dyes and titles. Even with Seasoned, twice as much incoming damage, half as much outgoing, and your reward is a measly 1.2x experience and 1.5x gold... and some dyes and a title. The risk far outweighs the reward, and there becomes little reason to do anything on these difficulties other than achievement farm. And once you've gotten those achievements, no reason at all other than extended masochism. There's also no real reason whatsoever, if your goal is to get those cosmetics, to play on Master. One achievement covers Vestige difficulty, all the rest are obtainable on Seasoned.

This isn't too much of a surprise, unfortunately. Games in the Bethesda/ZeniMax sphere have often had problems with difficulty sliders that players would later fix with mods. See the Nexus sites for Oblivion (7 different mods with "difficulty" in the title alone, 9 for Remastered), Skyrim (38 mods), Fallout 3 (15 mods), 4 (31 mods), and New Vegas (28 mods). Obviously, this can't be done in an MMO, but it speaks to the root problem.

But it's not a lost cause. There are things that ZOS can do to incentivize people to want to utilize this new feature and cut down on the potential for a trichotillomania epidemic among the playerbase. I had a couple of ideas, and I'm also hoping this sparks discussion for other ideas.

The first idea I had are improved rewards. As already pointed out, the gold and experience boosts are nothing compared to the change in damage. Problem is, I'm not even sure a 7x gold and experience boost would be much better or much more of a justification to play on Vestige regularly. So why not spice things up a bit? I'm talking more set items per boss (maybe 2-4 set items depending on difficulty), higher quality (e.g. legendary on Vestige), chance of more ideal traits, up to and including Nirnhoned, higher change of monster trophies (yeah remember those?), maybe some new Challenge Difficulty-specific sets (maybe even bind-on-equip so they can work their way into the guild market economy).

My other idea is steadily increasing buffs based on how well you do in a given difficulty. This can be done in one (or both) of two ways. The most basic way to do this would be the more enemies you kill in a given difficulty, the more of a buff you get for the future. This one's just a hypothetical idea, but maybe some small percentage increase (respective to difficulty) per enemy killed with a preset cap, and the bonus only applies when on the difficulty you killed those enemies on. Alternatively (or concurrently), a bonus that only persists as long as you don't change difficulty. Just gonna toss out some loose math here as an example, don't take it as gospel.

Let's say that when you're on Vestige difficulty, every enemy you kill grants you a permanent 0.05% damage bonus, up to a maximum of 30%, but the bonus is only active when on Vestige. On top of that, there could also be a 1% damage reduction per enemy killed, up to a maximum of 350%, but this buff not only is only active on Vestige, but also resets back to zero if you change difficulty to something else and then back to Vestige. These bonuses would vary dependant on the difficulty and the base outgoing/incoming damage change that difficulty has.

This is just my musings for ideas, maybe other people have ideas I didn't think of, but the long and short of it is while we definitely needed a refreshing change to old content, and this was certainly a step in the right direction, it could be better.

Necrotech_Master · June 10

i think part of the reason they didnt go super heavy on the reward scaling is because of the fact that you being in challenge difficulty does not affect other players

so for example you can basically "cheese" stuff by grouping with someone on adventurer difficulty and rake in the xp and gold for doing basically nothing

for sure that is something that could happen in craglorn with the spellscar farming, if it worked in arenas can guarantee thats how BRP farmers would request you do it too lol

spartaxoxo · June 10

I love the challenge difficulty. I wanted it because I knew it would be fun! And it is! The game feels way better now that stuff is a threat.

I'm not too fussed about rewards. I don't need an anything big personally because that wasn't the point of it. I think it needed a little something to reward players for taking on the challenge but nothing major. And that's exactly what we got. Feels pretty in line with hard modes on many other games out there.

Stuff is not a slog for me. I could theoretically beat Nocturnal's champion in less than 30 seconds on Vestige. I think what difficulty level the game won't feel like a slog will depend on individual builds and probably most might not like Vestige.🤷🏾

Usureki · June 10

I don't really mind that there are no biggie rewards for Vestige for it makes the game itself more enjoyable for me - the evil scary beasts and cunning brigands are actually demanding a degree of attention to defeat, quests and plots receive some meaning, power has some weight. Before Vestige difficulty, mobs were so easy to kill that they took lest effort to delete from the map than an icon from your PC desktop

I think it would make sense to have instance realms dedicated to the difficulty setting that every player should share, so if somebody challenges themselves by taking on a WB on Vestige their motivation won't be ruined by another player playing on the easiest difficulty and oneshotting their prey ><"

Cardhwion · June 10

Schiffy wrote: »

Okay so I know it hasn't even been 48 hours but I figured I'd give some of my own feedback after testing the waters with the new harder overland zones. The TLDR of this is "great idea, needs some work".

Right now, as it stands, there's not a whole lot of real incentive to do Challenge Difficulty. The big reason for this is the numbers just don't work out in the player's favor as a proper reward for getting abused and murdered by every skeleton in Glenumbra.

Let's look at Vestige difficulty as the extreme example. In this highest difficulty, you are taking seven times as much damage as normal, dealing a fifth of your usual outgoing damage, and as a reward? Twice as much XP, three times as much gold, and some dyes and titles. Even with Seasoned, twice as much incoming damage, half as much outgoing, and your reward is a measly 1.2x experience and 1.5x gold... and some dyes and a title. The risk far outweighs the reward, and there becomes little reason to do anything on these difficulties other than achievement farm. And once you've gotten those achievements, no reason at all other than extended masochism. There's also no real reason whatsoever, if your goal is to get those cosmetics, to play on Master. One achievement covers Vestige difficulty, all the rest are obtainable on Seasoned.

This isn't too much of a surprise, unfortunately. Games in the Bethesda/ZeniMax sphere have often had problems with difficulty sliders that players would later fix with mods. See the Nexus sites for Oblivion (7 different mods with "difficulty" in the title alone, 9 for Remastered), Skyrim (38 mods), Fallout 3 (15 mods), 4 (31 mods), and New Vegas (28 mods). Obviously, this can't be done in an MMO, but it speaks to the root problem.

But it's not a lost cause. There are things that ZOS can do to incentivize people to want to utilize this new feature and cut down on the potential for a trichotillomania epidemic among the playerbase. I had a couple of ideas, and I'm also hoping this sparks discussion for other ideas.

The first idea I had are improved rewards. As already pointed out, the gold and experience boosts are nothing compared to the change in damage. Problem is, I'm not even sure a 7x gold and experience boost would be much better or much more of a justification to play on Vestige regularly. So why not spice things up a bit? I'm talking more set items per boss (maybe 2-4 set items depending on difficulty), higher quality (e.g. legendary on Vestige), chance of more ideal traits, up to and including Nirnhoned, higher change of monster trophies (yeah remember those?), maybe some new Challenge Difficulty-specific sets (maybe even bind-on-equip so they can work their way into the guild market economy).

My other idea is steadily increasing buffs based on how well you do in a given difficulty. This can be done in one (or both) of two ways. The most basic way to do this would be the more enemies you kill in a given difficulty, the more of a buff you get for the future. This one's just a hypothetical idea, but maybe some small percentage increase (respective to difficulty) per enemy killed with a preset cap, and the bonus only applies when on the difficulty you killed those enemies on. Alternatively (or concurrently), a bonus that only persists as long as you don't change difficulty. Just gonna toss out some loose math here as an example, don't take it as gospel.

Let's say that when you're on Vestige difficulty, every enemy you kill grants you a permanent 0.05% damage bonus, up to a maximum of 30%, but the bonus is only active when on Vestige. On top of that, there could also be a 1% damage reduction per enemy killed, up to a maximum of 350%, but this buff not only is only active on Vestige, but also resets back to zero if you change difficulty to something else and then back to Vestige. These bonuses would vary dependant on the difficulty and the base outgoing/incoming damage change that difficulty has.

This is just my musings for ideas, maybe other people have ideas I didn't think of, but the long and short of it is while we definitely needed a refreshing change to old content, and this was certainly a step in the right direction, it could be better.

If I recall this right, Challenge Difficulty was introduced, because people did not enjoy overland content because it was too easy. They wanted engaging gameplay.It was never about getting anything extra in term of rewards. Everyone claimed it was about having fun and engaging gameplay.

Which means: there should be no extra rewards needed, as this is a mode for people to *have fun* not to farm more gold.

lillybit · June 10

Cardhwion wrote: »

Schiffy wrote: »

Okay so I know it hasn't even been 48 hours but I figured I'd give some of my own feedback after testing the waters with the new harder overland zones. The TLDR of this is "great idea, needs some work".

Right now, as it stands, there's not a whole lot of real incentive to do Challenge Difficulty. The big reason for this is the numbers just don't work out in the player's favor as a proper reward for getting abused and murdered by every skeleton in Glenumbra.

Let's look at Vestige difficulty as the extreme example. In this highest difficulty, you are taking seven times as much damage as normal, dealing a fifth of your usual outgoing damage, and as a reward? Twice as much XP, three times as much gold, and some dyes and titles. Even with Seasoned, twice as much incoming damage, half as much outgoing, and your reward is a measly 1.2x experience and 1.5x gold... and some dyes and a title. The risk far outweighs the reward, and there becomes little reason to do anything on these difficulties other than achievement farm. And once you've gotten those achievements, no reason at all other than extended masochism. There's also no real reason whatsoever, if your goal is to get those cosmetics, to play on Master. One achievement covers Vestige difficulty, all the rest are obtainable on Seasoned.

This isn't too much of a surprise, unfortunately. Games in the Bethesda/ZeniMax sphere have often had problems with difficulty sliders that players would later fix with mods. See the Nexus sites for Oblivion (7 different mods with "difficulty" in the title alone, 9 for Remastered), Skyrim (38 mods), Fallout 3 (15 mods), 4 (31 mods), and New Vegas (28 mods). Obviously, this can't be done in an MMO, but it speaks to the root problem.

But it's not a lost cause. There are things that ZOS can do to incentivize people to want to utilize this new feature and cut down on the potential for a trichotillomania epidemic among the playerbase. I had a couple of ideas, and I'm also hoping this sparks discussion for other ideas.

The first idea I had are improved rewards. As already pointed out, the gold and experience boosts are nothing compared to the change in damage. Problem is, I'm not even sure a 7x gold and experience boost would be much better or much more of a justification to play on Vestige regularly. So why not spice things up a bit? I'm talking more set items per boss (maybe 2-4 set items depending on difficulty), higher quality (e.g. legendary on Vestige), chance of more ideal traits, up to and including Nirnhoned, higher change of monster trophies (yeah remember those?), maybe some new Challenge Difficulty-specific sets (maybe even bind-on-equip so they can work their way into the guild market economy).

My other idea is steadily increasing buffs based on how well you do in a given difficulty. This can be done in one (or both) of two ways. The most basic way to do this would be the more enemies you kill in a given difficulty, the more of a buff you get for the future. This one's just a hypothetical idea, but maybe some small percentage increase (respective to difficulty) per enemy killed with a preset cap, and the bonus only applies when on the difficulty you killed those enemies on. Alternatively (or concurrently), a bonus that only persists as long as you don't change difficulty. Just gonna toss out some loose math here as an example, don't take it as gospel.

Let's say that when you're on Vestige difficulty, every enemy you kill grants you a permanent 0.05% damage bonus, up to a maximum of 30%, but the bonus is only active when on Vestige. On top of that, there could also be a 1% damage reduction per enemy killed, up to a maximum of 350%, but this buff not only is only active on Vestige, but also resets back to zero if you change difficulty to something else and then back to Vestige. These bonuses would vary dependant on the difficulty and the base outgoing/incoming damage change that difficulty has.

This is just my musings for ideas, maybe other people have ideas I didn't think of, but the long and short of it is while we definitely needed a refreshing change to old content, and this was certainly a step in the right direction, it could be better.

If I recall this right, Challenge Difficulty was introduced, because people did not enjoy overland content because it was too easy. They wanted engaging gameplay.It was never about getting anything extra in term of rewards. Everyone claimed it was about having fun and engaging gameplay.

Which means: there should be no extra rewards needed, as this is a mode for people to *have fun* not to farm more gold.

Agreed. The point was supposed to just be adding an optional difficulty setting. Nobody should feel like they have to use it or they’re missing out.

I hadn't planned on using it (I do dungeons/arenas for the challenge, I'm happy with having an easy time questing) but I've turned it on to earn the dyes, so it's already feeling a little less optional for me.

OsUfi · June 10

Cardhwion wrote: »

Schiffy wrote: »

Okay so I know it hasn't even been 48 hours but I figured I'd give some of my own feedback after testing the waters with the new harder overland zones. The TLDR of this is "great idea, needs some work".

Right now, as it stands, there's not a whole lot of real incentive to do Challenge Difficulty. The big reason for this is the numbers just don't work out in the player's favor as a proper reward for getting abused and murdered by every skeleton in Glenumbra.

Let's look at Vestige difficulty as the extreme example. In this highest difficulty, you are taking seven times as much damage as normal, dealing a fifth of your usual outgoing damage, and as a reward? Twice as much XP, three times as much gold, and some dyes and titles. Even with Seasoned, twice as much incoming damage, half as much outgoing, and your reward is a measly 1.2x experience and 1.5x gold... and some dyes and a title. The risk far outweighs the reward, and there becomes little reason to do anything on these difficulties other than achievement farm. And once you've gotten those achievements, no reason at all other than extended masochism. There's also no real reason whatsoever, if your goal is to get those cosmetics, to play on Master. One achievement covers Vestige difficulty, all the rest are obtainable on Seasoned.

This isn't too much of a surprise, unfortunately. Games in the Bethesda/ZeniMax sphere have often had problems with difficulty sliders that players would later fix with mods. See the Nexus sites for Oblivion (7 different mods with "difficulty" in the title alone, 9 for Remastered), Skyrim (38 mods), Fallout 3 (15 mods), 4 (31 mods), and New Vegas (28 mods). Obviously, this can't be done in an MMO, but it speaks to the root problem.

But it's not a lost cause. There are things that ZOS can do to incentivize people to want to utilize this new feature and cut down on the potential for a trichotillomania epidemic among the playerbase. I had a couple of ideas, and I'm also hoping this sparks discussion for other ideas.

The first idea I had are improved rewards. As already pointed out, the gold and experience boosts are nothing compared to the change in damage. Problem is, I'm not even sure a 7x gold and experience boost would be much better or much more of a justification to play on Vestige regularly. So why not spice things up a bit? I'm talking more set items per boss (maybe 2-4 set items depending on difficulty), higher quality (e.g. legendary on Vestige), chance of more ideal traits, up to and including Nirnhoned, higher change of monster trophies (yeah remember those?), maybe some new Challenge Difficulty-specific sets (maybe even bind-on-equip so they can work their way into the guild market economy).

My other idea is steadily increasing buffs based on how well you do in a given difficulty. This can be done in one (or both) of two ways. The most basic way to do this would be the more enemies you kill in a given difficulty, the more of a buff you get for the future. This one's just a hypothetical idea, but maybe some small percentage increase (respective to difficulty) per enemy killed with a preset cap, and the bonus only applies when on the difficulty you killed those enemies on. Alternatively (or concurrently), a bonus that only persists as long as you don't change difficulty. Just gonna toss out some loose math here as an example, don't take it as gospel.

Let's say that when you're on Vestige difficulty, every enemy you kill grants you a permanent 0.05% damage bonus, up to a maximum of 30%, but the bonus is only active when on Vestige. On top of that, there could also be a 1% damage reduction per enemy killed, up to a maximum of 350%, but this buff not only is only active on Vestige, but also resets back to zero if you change difficulty to something else and then back to Vestige. These bonuses would vary dependant on the difficulty and the base outgoing/incoming damage change that difficulty has.

This is just my musings for ideas, maybe other people have ideas I didn't think of, but the long and short of it is while we definitely needed a refreshing change to old content, and this was certainly a step in the right direction, it could be better.

If I recall this right, Challenge Difficulty was introduced, because people did not enjoy overland content because it was too easy. They wanted engaging gameplay.It was never about getting anything extra in term of rewards. Everyone claimed it was about having fun and engaging gameplay.

Many of us feel it's about having fun and engaging gameplay. "Everyone" is unfortunately never happy, whatever the context, game, sporting event, cup of tea, or badger hole.

Fwiw, I love the difficulty. Master is good for me. The rewards, dyes and titles, are fine as is. Everyone can manage seasoned difficulty if they want the rewards, and only one reward is set behind vestige.

I also hope the upcoming overland difficulty Golden Pursuit remains accessible for players who only pop up to seasoned. That'd be awesome and super accessible.

All that said, what's the difference between rewards for hard mode overland and vet content? We've had mounts, skins, and other fancy stuff behind trifectas for years. I've never gotten any of them, and also never felt I was missing out as I cannot stand PUGs, parsing, or hard group PvE.

Gabriel_H · June 10

OsUfi wrote: »

Cardhwion wrote: »

Schiffy wrote: »

Okay so I know it hasn't even been 48 hours but I figured I'd give some of my own feedback after testing the waters with the new harder overland zones. The TLDR of this is "great idea, needs some work".

Right now, as it stands, there's not a whole lot of real incentive to do Challenge Difficulty. The big reason for this is the numbers just don't work out in the player's favor as a proper reward for getting abused and murdered by every skeleton in Glenumbra.

Let's look at Vestige difficulty as the extreme example. In this highest difficulty, you are taking seven times as much damage as normal, dealing a fifth of your usual outgoing damage, and as a reward? Twice as much XP, three times as much gold, and some dyes and titles. Even with Seasoned, twice as much incoming damage, half as much outgoing, and your reward is a measly 1.2x experience and 1.5x gold... and some dyes and a title. The risk far outweighs the reward, and there becomes little reason to do anything on these difficulties other than achievement farm. And once you've gotten those achievements, no reason at all other than extended masochism. There's also no real reason whatsoever, if your goal is to get those cosmetics, to play on Master. One achievement covers Vestige difficulty, all the rest are obtainable on Seasoned.

This isn't too much of a surprise, unfortunately. Games in the Bethesda/ZeniMax sphere have often had problems with difficulty sliders that players would later fix with mods. See the Nexus sites for Oblivion (7 different mods with "difficulty" in the title alone, 9 for Remastered), Skyrim (38 mods), Fallout 3 (15 mods), 4 (31 mods), and New Vegas (28 mods). Obviously, this can't be done in an MMO, but it speaks to the root problem.

But it's not a lost cause. There are things that ZOS can do to incentivize people to want to utilize this new feature and cut down on the potential for a trichotillomania epidemic among the playerbase. I had a couple of ideas, and I'm also hoping this sparks discussion for other ideas.

The first idea I had are improved rewards. As already pointed out, the gold and experience boosts are nothing compared to the change in damage. Problem is, I'm not even sure a 7x gold and experience boost would be much better or much more of a justification to play on Vestige regularly. So why not spice things up a bit? I'm talking more set items per boss (maybe 2-4 set items depending on difficulty), higher quality (e.g. legendary on Vestige), chance of more ideal traits, up to and including Nirnhoned, higher change of monster trophies (yeah remember those?), maybe some new Challenge Difficulty-specific sets (maybe even bind-on-equip so they can work their way into the guild market economy).

My other idea is steadily increasing buffs based on how well you do in a given difficulty. This can be done in one (or both) of two ways. The most basic way to do this would be the more enemies you kill in a given difficulty, the more of a buff you get for the future. This one's just a hypothetical idea, but maybe some small percentage increase (respective to difficulty) per enemy killed with a preset cap, and the bonus only applies when on the difficulty you killed those enemies on. Alternatively (or concurrently), a bonus that only persists as long as you don't change difficulty. Just gonna toss out some loose math here as an example, don't take it as gospel.

Let's say that when you're on Vestige difficulty, every enemy you kill grants you a permanent 0.05% damage bonus, up to a maximum of 30%, but the bonus is only active when on Vestige. On top of that, there could also be a 1% damage reduction per enemy killed, up to a maximum of 350%, but this buff not only is only active on Vestige, but also resets back to zero if you change difficulty to something else and then back to Vestige. These bonuses would vary dependant on the difficulty and the base outgoing/incoming damage change that difficulty has.

This is just my musings for ideas, maybe other people have ideas I didn't think of, but the long and short of it is while we definitely needed a refreshing change to old content, and this was certainly a step in the right direction, it could be better.

If I recall this right, Challenge Difficulty was introduced, because people did not enjoy overland content because it was too easy. They wanted engaging gameplay.It was never about getting anything extra in term of rewards. Everyone claimed it was about having fun and engaging gameplay.

Many of us feel it's about having fun and engaging gameplay. "Everyone" is unfortunately never happy, whatever the context, game, sporting event, cup of tea, or badger hole.

Fwiw, I love the difficulty. Master is good for me. The rewards, dyes and titles, are fine as is. Everyone can manage seasoned difficulty if they want the rewards, and only one reward is set behind vestige.

I also hope the upcoming overland difficulty Golden Pursuit remains accessible for players who only pop up to seasoned. That'd be awesome and super accessible.

All that said, what's the difference between rewards for hard mode overland and vet content? We've had mounts, skins, and other fancy stuff behind trifectas for years. I've never gotten any of them, and also never felt I was missing out as I cannot stand PUGs, parsing, or hard group PvE.

Agreed. Seasoned is well balanced. Master is for those who want to spend 10 minutes killing a boss they've already killed 10,000 times, and Vestige ... honestly ... Vestige feels like ZOS got p***ed about the constant complaining and said: "Oh you want difficult, we'll give you [expletive] difficult. Die, and be happy. ZOS out!"

As I said in another thread, Vestige does not work on a fundamental level, because the whole debuff is a sledgehammer. There are overland bosses who have attacks designed to be blocked, and cannot be dodged. Those attacks on Vestige cut through a fully trial specced tank's block and one-shot. I've pushed my health up to the available max of 60K (without gimping my other stats that I also need). I don't think it's going to be enough for some bosses. And good luck doing a Vestige WE without a tank. Bring healers, lots of healers.

Cambionn · June 10

Cardhwion wrote: »

If I recall this right, Challenge Difficulty was introduced, because people did not enjoy overland content because it was too easy. They wanted engaging gameplay. It was never about getting anything extra in term of rewards. Everyone claimed it was about having fun and engaging gameplay.

Exactly this. People even said they didn't need rewards repeatedly when requesting this feature. Getting a few extra dyes and titles is a nice touch worth getting if you like, but nothing that can't be missed if you don't as there are similar alternatives gained with other types of gameplay. Much better than skins etc. which can make it feel like you're forced to play something you don't enjoy much or missing out, as they tend to be much more unique and rare to archieve.

Personally, I'm surprisedly happy with the system. I'm one of the more casual players, who was worried about gathering materials and quests requiring travel becoming a slog due to continuously being stopped by mobs (altrough I never contested the option, as long as it was optional). But I must say, I ended up playing master for most of the (rather casual) playtime so far. It doesn't feel unnecessarily heavy for me at all, even on yolo rule of cool builds.

I also would not like different instances. Even if we assume ESO has endless players so maps never feel empty (which obviously isn't the case but I want to focus on gameplay more than stuff like playercount, as the later is more easily fluctuated if the previous is done well). The combination of "change whenever" and "play with friends even if they play different" would get lost. The first one because you'll need a reload to the different instance, which will kill some progress in quests and dungeons making the whole option less optional and more frustrating. And the second because even tho I'm a friendless solo player myself, I know many others who would hate the later as it'll block them from friends or forces them to play different. I myself would have some consequences too, because those few times I have a fun zone chat (which I do enjoy) that would be killed by switching instances.

Sure, there are downsides too. In the current system, busy maps will make the difficulty matter less, especially if other players play easier than you. On the other hand, I also think it'll will balance itself a bit.

If we take the Alik'r Dessert run for example, it's so busy with players doing Dolmens that no matter the difficulty it's all done and gone in no time. Because of this, even less experienced players could put their difficulty up and reap the rewards. Less busy places will be harder impacted, as the setting of a player or two would have more impact. So let's take another example: world bosses. Most players never oneshotted world bosses. Before difficulty options people had to ask other players to join too, mostly requiring about 3 minimum, and finding enough players to kill them is actually hard at times. The people doing those on high difficulties now likely are the same of those who did solo them before, and those who don't are those who already struggled (and therefor won't cause much trouble).

The main impact will be on mobs in bussily populated areas I expect. Generally that includes new story content (which slow down later, so people who don't like 500 others doing the same thing already wait a bit at release) and "popular" quests like the main story (especially at, but not limited to, moments of influx in new players). But at the same time, no system would mean easy mode everywhere, and I do think the amount of time you'll end up with really "bothersome" players is quite minimal. Minimal enough to be acceptable, and preferable over the downsides of seperate instances.

AlienSlof · June 10

Cardhwion wrote: »

If I recall this right, Challenge Difficulty was introduced, because people did not enjoy overland content because it was too easy. They wanted engaging gameplay.It was never about getting anything extra in term of rewards. Everyone claimed it was about having fun and engaging gameplay.

Which means: there should be no extra rewards needed, as this is a mode for people to *have fun* not to farm more gold.

This. So much this. ^

While the extras are nice, that wasn't my reason for upping the difficulty. I only had to look at enemies in a funny way and they keeled over! I've been trying 'seasoned' but I'm finding that still a bit too easy, so going to try it on 'master' today.

The dye rewards for the achievements are also rather nice (and iridescent). I didn't even know about those until my hubby pointed them out. Nice plus right there!

joshisanonymous · June 10

Gabriel_H wrote: »

As I said in another thread, Vestige does not work on a fundamental level, because the whole debuff is a sledgehammer. There are overland bosses who have attacks designed to be blocked, and cannot be dodged. Those attacks on Vestige cut through a fully trial specced tank's block and one-shot. I've pushed my health up to the available max of 60K (without gimping my other stats that I also need). I don't think it's going to be enough for some bosses. And good luck doing a Vestige WE without a tank. Bring healers, lots of healers.

In terms of some boss mechanics being impossible in vestige mode, that to me just says that things need to be tweaked in light of the new challenge settings. In terms of not being able to do some bosses without a tank or needing to group with healers, etc, that's a fantastic situation, IMO. This is an MMO that has always played like a single player game, but this sort of thinig leans more towards the MMO feeling where you actually have a reason to play with others.

Personally, the new challenge difficulties are awesome for me. I immediately chose vestige, and then died because I didn't interrupt a regular mob's special attack. I now pay attention to what mobs are doing and my own defense. I have to actually fight things rather than just run over everything like some kind of mobile nuclear explosion. The world feels alive and matches the level of concern that NPCs talk to me about. And on top of that, I get a little extra cold and XP. Wins all around as far as I'm concerned.

Jeremy · June 10

Schiffy wrote: »

Okay so I know it hasn't even been 48 hours but I figured I'd give some of my own feedback after testing the waters with the new harder overland zones. The TLDR of this is "great idea, needs some work".

Right now, as it stands, there's not a whole lot of real incentive to do Challenge Difficulty. The big reason for this is the numbers just don't work out in the player's favor as a proper reward for getting abused and murdered by every skeleton in Glenumbra.

Let's look at Vestige difficulty as the extreme example. In this highest difficulty, you are taking seven times as much damage as normal, dealing a fifth of your usual outgoing damage, and as a reward? Twice as much XP, three times as much gold, and some dyes and titles. Even with Seasoned, twice as much incoming damage, half as much outgoing, and your reward is a measly 1.2x experience and 1.5x gold... and some dyes and a title. The risk far outweighs the reward, and there becomes little reason to do anything on these difficulties other than achievement farm. And once you've gotten those achievements, no reason at all other than extended masochism. There's also no real reason whatsoever, if your goal is to get those cosmetics, to play on Master. One achievement covers Vestige difficulty, all the rest are obtainable on Seasoned.

This isn't too much of a surprise, unfortunately. Games in the Bethesda/ZeniMax sphere have often had problems with difficulty sliders that players would later fix with mods. See the Nexus sites for Oblivion (7 different mods with "difficulty" in the title alone, 9 for Remastered), Skyrim (38 mods), Fallout 3 (15 mods), 4 (31 mods), and New Vegas (28 mods). Obviously, this can't be done in an MMO, but it speaks to the root problem.

But it's not a lost cause. There are things that ZOS can do to incentivize people to want to utilize this new feature and cut down on the potential for a trichotillomania epidemic among the playerbase. I had a couple of ideas, and I'm also hoping this sparks discussion for other ideas.

The first idea I had are improved rewards. As already pointed out, the gold and experience boosts are nothing compared to the change in damage. Problem is, I'm not even sure a 7x gold and experience boost would be much better or much more of a justification to play on Vestige regularly. So why not spice things up a bit? I'm talking more set items per boss (maybe 2-4 set items depending on difficulty), higher quality (e.g. legendary on Vestige), chance of more ideal traits, up to and including Nirnhoned, higher change of monster trophies (yeah remember those?), maybe some new Challenge Difficulty-specific sets (maybe even bind-on-equip so they can work their way into the guild market economy).

My other idea is steadily increasing buffs based on how well you do in a given difficulty. This can be done in one (or both) of two ways. The most basic way to do this would be the more enemies you kill in a given difficulty, the more of a buff you get for the future. This one's just a hypothetical idea, but maybe some small percentage increase (respective to difficulty) per enemy killed with a preset cap, and the bonus only applies when on the difficulty you killed those enemies on. Alternatively (or concurrently), a bonus that only persists as long as you don't change difficulty. Just gonna toss out some loose math here as an example, don't take it as gospel.

Let's say that when you're on Vestige difficulty, every enemy you kill grants you a permanent 0.05% damage bonus, up to a maximum of 30%, but the bonus is only active when on Vestige. On top of that, there could also be a 1% damage reduction per enemy killed, up to a maximum of 350%, but this buff not only is only active on Vestige, but also resets back to zero if you change difficulty to something else and then back to Vestige. These bonuses would vary dependant on the difficulty and the base outgoing/incoming damage change that difficulty has.

This is just my musings for ideas, maybe other people have ideas I didn't think of, but the long and short of it is while we definitely needed a refreshing change to old content, and this was certainly a step in the right direction, it could be better.

They should increase the rewards. Extra gold and exp is nice, but you're right, it's not enough incentive for someone who is just after efficiency. But the real reward is just being able to have fun while questing on the overland. The challenge is significant enough now that it's actually interesting and doesn't feel like a boring chore. This is probably the single best change ESO has ever implemented since Tamriel One.

Recent · June 10

People getting exactly what they asked for ' overland difficulty', then asking to get rewarded for getting it?

We have tomes now with rewards, we have night market with rewards why does everything have to have rewards.

You enjoying the difficulty should be its own reward.

Pepegrillos · June 10

I thought the meager rewards were designed that way so that no one feels they must engage with higher difficulties (a sort of reverse FOMO move).

Esha76 · June 10

I'm fairly certain when they announced this, they said there wouldn't be anything more than XP and gold at first to see how things go. There might be plans down the line, maybe? Who knows. Personally, I find myself rolling at master and can still solo Dolmens. But I have to really pay attention and work at it, as intended.

I enjoy it, feels like a fight. Can go through a whole rotation and then some. But I'm glad I can turn it on and off too. Because sometimes I just want to burn through stuff and get to where I need to be.

I'd like to see maybe a dye or two added as some kind of incentive. Maybe a snazzy outfit, or drops for outfit pieces. I'd be real happy with payoffs like those. I never felt the need for gear or anything impactful to drop from it. If they don't add anything later on, I won't cry or complain either.

spartaxoxo · June 10

Esha76 wrote: »

I'm fairly certain when they announced this, they said there wouldn't be anything more than XP and gold at first to see how things go. There might be plans down the line, maybe? Who knows. Personally, I find myself rolling at master and can still solo Dolmens. But I have to really pay attention and work at it, as intended.

I enjoy it, feels like a fight. Can go through a whole rotation and then some. But I'm glad I can turn it on and off too. Because sometimes I just want to burn through stuff and get to where I need to be.

I'd like to see maybe a dye or two added as some kind of incentive. Maybe a snazzy outfit, or drops for outfit pieces. I'd be real happy with payoffs like those. I never felt the need for gear or anything impactful to drop from it. If they don't add anything later on, I won't cry or complain either.

They do have dyes attached which was unexpected.

https://eso-hub.com/en/achievements/category/recent-seasons/challenge-difficulty

Schiffy · June 10

Usureki wrote: »

I think it would make sense to have instance realms dedicated to the difficulty setting that every player should share, so if somebody challenges themselves by taking on a WB on Vestige their motivation won't be ruined by another player playing on the easiest difficulty and oneshotting their prey ><"

This is what I originally thought Challenge Difficulty was going to be, until the guildmaster of one of the guilds I'm in pointed out that that's basically just Cadwell's Almanac instancing pre-1T all over again.

Rkindaleft · June 10

Recent wrote: »

People getting exactly what they asked for ' overland difficulty', then asking to get rewarded for getting it?

We have tomes now with rewards, we have night market with rewards why does everything have to have rewards.

You enjoying the difficulty should be its own reward.

If there was no increase in rewards, people who are playing solo on Vestige would then be essentially punished when it comes to gold looting and XP gains. If the mob/boss takes 5x longer to kill, then they would be essentially getting 5x less the "reward" over time for no reason at all just because they decided to give themselves a challenge.

Rkindaleft · June 10

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Recent wrote: »

People getting exactly what they asked for ' overland difficulty', then asking to get rewarded for getting it?

We have tomes now with rewards, we have night market with rewards why does everything have to have rewards.

You enjoying the difficulty should be its own reward.

If there was no increase in rewards, people who are playing solo on Vestige would then be essentially punished when it comes to gold looting and XP gains. If the mob/boss takes 5x longer to kill, then they would be essentially getting 5x less the "reward" over time for no reason at all just because they decided to give themselves a challenge.

Quoting myself since I can't edit my comment for some reason.
Just wanted to add that I don't really care about getting better quality gear or whatever buff in rewards they would give higher difficulties in the future. I just see the extra XP and gold as a way to make the playing field more even for the effort required when comparing people on high difficulties to people on the regular one.

Necrotech_Master · June 11

Gabriel_H wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

Cardhwion wrote: »

Schiffy wrote: »

Okay so I know it hasn't even been 48 hours but I figured I'd give some of my own feedback after testing the waters with the new harder overland zones. The TLDR of this is "great idea, needs some work".

Right now, as it stands, there's not a whole lot of real incentive to do Challenge Difficulty. The big reason for this is the numbers just don't work out in the player's favor as a proper reward for getting abused and murdered by every skeleton in Glenumbra.

Let's look at Vestige difficulty as the extreme example. In this highest difficulty, you are taking seven times as much damage as normal, dealing a fifth of your usual outgoing damage, and as a reward? Twice as much XP, three times as much gold, and some dyes and titles. Even with Seasoned, twice as much incoming damage, half as much outgoing, and your reward is a measly 1.2x experience and 1.5x gold... and some dyes and a title. The risk far outweighs the reward, and there becomes little reason to do anything on these difficulties other than achievement farm. And once you've gotten those achievements, no reason at all other than extended masochism. There's also no real reason whatsoever, if your goal is to get those cosmetics, to play on Master. One achievement covers Vestige difficulty, all the rest are obtainable on Seasoned.

This isn't too much of a surprise, unfortunately. Games in the Bethesda/ZeniMax sphere have often had problems with difficulty sliders that players would later fix with mods. See the Nexus sites for Oblivion (7 different mods with "difficulty" in the title alone, 9 for Remastered), Skyrim (38 mods), Fallout 3 (15 mods), 4 (31 mods), and New Vegas (28 mods). Obviously, this can't be done in an MMO, but it speaks to the root problem.

But it's not a lost cause. There are things that ZOS can do to incentivize people to want to utilize this new feature and cut down on the potential for a trichotillomania epidemic among the playerbase. I had a couple of ideas, and I'm also hoping this sparks discussion for other ideas.

The first idea I had are improved rewards. As already pointed out, the gold and experience boosts are nothing compared to the change in damage. Problem is, I'm not even sure a 7x gold and experience boost would be much better or much more of a justification to play on Vestige regularly. So why not spice things up a bit? I'm talking more set items per boss (maybe 2-4 set items depending on difficulty), higher quality (e.g. legendary on Vestige), chance of more ideal traits, up to and including Nirnhoned, higher change of monster trophies (yeah remember those?), maybe some new Challenge Difficulty-specific sets (maybe even bind-on-equip so they can work their way into the guild market economy).

My other idea is steadily increasing buffs based on how well you do in a given difficulty. This can be done in one (or both) of two ways. The most basic way to do this would be the more enemies you kill in a given difficulty, the more of a buff you get for the future. This one's just a hypothetical idea, but maybe some small percentage increase (respective to difficulty) per enemy killed with a preset cap, and the bonus only applies when on the difficulty you killed those enemies on. Alternatively (or concurrently), a bonus that only persists as long as you don't change difficulty. Just gonna toss out some loose math here as an example, don't take it as gospel.

Let's say that when you're on Vestige difficulty, every enemy you kill grants you a permanent 0.05% damage bonus, up to a maximum of 30%, but the bonus is only active when on Vestige. On top of that, there could also be a 1% damage reduction per enemy killed, up to a maximum of 350%, but this buff not only is only active on Vestige, but also resets back to zero if you change difficulty to something else and then back to Vestige. These bonuses would vary dependant on the difficulty and the base outgoing/incoming damage change that difficulty has.

This is just my musings for ideas, maybe other people have ideas I didn't think of, but the long and short of it is while we definitely needed a refreshing change to old content, and this was certainly a step in the right direction, it could be better.

If I recall this right, Challenge Difficulty was introduced, because people did not enjoy overland content because it was too easy. They wanted engaging gameplay.It was never about getting anything extra in term of rewards. Everyone claimed it was about having fun and engaging gameplay.

Many of us feel it's about having fun and engaging gameplay. "Everyone" is unfortunately never happy, whatever the context, game, sporting event, cup of tea, or badger hole.

Fwiw, I love the difficulty. Master is good for me. The rewards, dyes and titles, are fine as is. Everyone can manage seasoned difficulty if they want the rewards, and only one reward is set behind vestige.

I also hope the upcoming overland difficulty Golden Pursuit remains accessible for players who only pop up to seasoned. That'd be awesome and super accessible.

All that said, what's the difference between rewards for hard mode overland and vet content? We've had mounts, skins, and other fancy stuff behind trifectas for years. I've never gotten any of them, and also never felt I was missing out as I cannot stand PUGs, parsing, or hard group PvE.

Agreed. Seasoned is well balanced. Master is for those who want to spend 10 minutes killing a boss they've already killed 10,000 times, and Vestige ... honestly ... Vestige feels like ZOS got p***ed about the constant complaining and said: "Oh you want difficult, we'll give you [expletive] difficult. Die, and be happy. ZOS out!"

As I said in another thread, Vestige does not work on a fundamental level, because the whole debuff is a sledgehammer. There are overland bosses who have attacks designed to be blocked, and cannot be dodged. Those attacks on Vestige cut through a fully trial specced tank's block and one-shot. I've pushed my health up to the available max of 60K (without gimping my other stats that I also need). I don't think it's going to be enough for some bosses. And good luck doing a Vestige WE without a tank. Bring healers, lots of healers.

doing incursions on vestige was quite a challenge in some cases (the 2 most difficult i recall was harrowstorms and volcanic vents), other incursions like standard dolmens and even geysers was fine, i did not really feel like i had too many issues on those (or even mirrormoor incursions werent even that bad)

on my MT spec trial tank with about 40k max hp capped resistances and block mitigations and whatnot, there were many things that would still frankly 1 or 2 shot me during these events

i participated in these events with 3 total players + companions

on the volcanic vent, i straight up could not tank the last boss, the heavy attacks would hit about 45k dmg through block, and some other hits could do upwards 75k dmg if i didnt block

other ones like the harrowstorm, the crows were the worst of the big adds to deal with, that one big add doing its carrion storm, could easily 2 shot my tank with little warning i was taking dmg (dealing the dmg in 2 ticks in under 2 seconds)

to be honest this really goes to show just how difficult content is compared to each other when run with these massive dmg modifiers

CatalinaWineMixer2 · June 11

Overland should be to the benefit of everyone. Overland difficulty is a good way to entice some of the vet players to engage in Overland again. Im alright with some rewards but the goal should not be to punish casual players, new players, solo players ect. Or have them made to feel inferior or kept away from something in Overland. Too many rewards of this difficulty can result in a bad thing. At least as it pertains to Overland. Trials, Dungeons, other things, thats different.

The new difficulty settings are a welcome and positive change. I have already seen more excitement in Overland since it's release.

Taarente · June 11

It’s funny how quickly “make my character meaningful” turns into “now give me better rewards because i chose to be useless to anyone around me”. hmm, no.

Lekjih · June 11

It's not supposed to be rewarding. The difficulty itself is the reward. Especially as you can group and cheese it.

Gabriel_H · June 11

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

Cardhwion wrote: »

Schiffy wrote: »

Okay so I know it hasn't even been 48 hours but I figured I'd give some of my own feedback after testing the waters with the new harder overland zones. The TLDR of this is "great idea, needs some work".

Right now, as it stands, there's not a whole lot of real incentive to do Challenge Difficulty. The big reason for this is the numbers just don't work out in the player's favor as a proper reward for getting abused and murdered by every skeleton in Glenumbra.

Let's look at Vestige difficulty as the extreme example. In this highest difficulty, you are taking seven times as much damage as normal, dealing a fifth of your usual outgoing damage, and as a reward? Twice as much XP, three times as much gold, and some dyes and titles. Even with Seasoned, twice as much incoming damage, half as much outgoing, and your reward is a measly 1.2x experience and 1.5x gold... and some dyes and a title. The risk far outweighs the reward, and there becomes little reason to do anything on these difficulties other than achievement farm. And once you've gotten those achievements, no reason at all other than extended masochism. There's also no real reason whatsoever, if your goal is to get those cosmetics, to play on Master. One achievement covers Vestige difficulty, all the rest are obtainable on Seasoned.

This isn't too much of a surprise, unfortunately. Games in the Bethesda/ZeniMax sphere have often had problems with difficulty sliders that players would later fix with mods. See the Nexus sites for Oblivion (7 different mods with "difficulty" in the title alone, 9 for Remastered), Skyrim (38 mods), Fallout 3 (15 mods), 4 (31 mods), and New Vegas (28 mods). Obviously, this can't be done in an MMO, but it speaks to the root problem.

But it's not a lost cause. There are things that ZOS can do to incentivize people to want to utilize this new feature and cut down on the potential for a trichotillomania epidemic among the playerbase. I had a couple of ideas, and I'm also hoping this sparks discussion for other ideas.

The first idea I had are improved rewards. As already pointed out, the gold and experience boosts are nothing compared to the change in damage. Problem is, I'm not even sure a 7x gold and experience boost would be much better or much more of a justification to play on Vestige regularly. So why not spice things up a bit? I'm talking more set items per boss (maybe 2-4 set items depending on difficulty), higher quality (e.g. legendary on Vestige), chance of more ideal traits, up to and including Nirnhoned, higher change of monster trophies (yeah remember those?), maybe some new Challenge Difficulty-specific sets (maybe even bind-on-equip so they can work their way into the guild market economy).

My other idea is steadily increasing buffs based on how well you do in a given difficulty. This can be done in one (or both) of two ways. The most basic way to do this would be the more enemies you kill in a given difficulty, the more of a buff you get for the future. This one's just a hypothetical idea, but maybe some small percentage increase (respective to difficulty) per enemy killed with a preset cap, and the bonus only applies when on the difficulty you killed those enemies on. Alternatively (or concurrently), a bonus that only persists as long as you don't change difficulty. Just gonna toss out some loose math here as an example, don't take it as gospel.

Let's say that when you're on Vestige difficulty, every enemy you kill grants you a permanent 0.05% damage bonus, up to a maximum of 30%, but the bonus is only active when on Vestige. On top of that, there could also be a 1% damage reduction per enemy killed, up to a maximum of 350%, but this buff not only is only active on Vestige, but also resets back to zero if you change difficulty to something else and then back to Vestige. These bonuses would vary dependant on the difficulty and the base outgoing/incoming damage change that difficulty has.

This is just my musings for ideas, maybe other people have ideas I didn't think of, but the long and short of it is while we definitely needed a refreshing change to old content, and this was certainly a step in the right direction, it could be better.

If I recall this right, Challenge Difficulty was introduced, because people did not enjoy overland content because it was too easy. They wanted engaging gameplay.It was never about getting anything extra in term of rewards. Everyone claimed it was about having fun and engaging gameplay.

Many of us feel it's about having fun and engaging gameplay. "Everyone" is unfortunately never happy, whatever the context, game, sporting event, cup of tea, or badger hole.

Fwiw, I love the difficulty. Master is good for me. The rewards, dyes and titles, are fine as is. Everyone can manage seasoned difficulty if they want the rewards, and only one reward is set behind vestige.

I also hope the upcoming overland difficulty Golden Pursuit remains accessible for players who only pop up to seasoned. That'd be awesome and super accessible.

All that said, what's the difference between rewards for hard mode overland and vet content? We've had mounts, skins, and other fancy stuff behind trifectas for years. I've never gotten any of them, and also never felt I was missing out as I cannot stand PUGs, parsing, or hard group PvE.

Agreed. Seasoned is well balanced. Master is for those who want to spend 10 minutes killing a boss they've already killed 10,000 times, and Vestige ... honestly ... Vestige feels like ZOS got p***ed about the constant complaining and said: "Oh you want difficult, we'll give you [expletive] difficult. Die, and be happy. ZOS out!"

As I said in another thread, Vestige does not work on a fundamental level, because the whole debuff is a sledgehammer. There are overland bosses who have attacks designed to be blocked, and cannot be dodged. Those attacks on Vestige cut through a fully trial specced tank's block and one-shot. I've pushed my health up to the available max of 60K (without gimping my other stats that I also need). I don't think it's going to be enough for some bosses. And good luck doing a Vestige WE without a tank. Bring healers, lots of healers.

doing incursions on vestige was quite a challenge in some cases (the 2 most difficult i recall was harrowstorms and volcanic vents), other incursions like standard dolmens and even geysers was fine, i did not really feel like i had too many issues on those (or even mirrormoor incursions werent even that bad)

on my MT spec trial tank with about 40k max hp capped resistances and block mitigations and whatnot, there were many things that would still frankly 1 or 2 shot me during these events

i participated in these events with 3 total players + companions

on the volcanic vent, i straight up could not tank the last boss, the heavy attacks would hit about 45k dmg through block, and some other hits could do upwards 75k dmg if i didnt block

other ones like the harrowstorm, the crows were the worst of the big adds to deal with, that one big add doing its carrion storm, could easily 2 shot my tank with little warning i was taking dmg (dealing the dmg in 2 ticks in under 2 seconds)

to be honest this really goes to show just how difficult content is compared to each other when run with these massive dmg modifiers

Dragons are the ones that really stand out for me. You cannot roll dodge their breath without eating a tick, and on Vestige that ticks hard. You also can't survive with block, it hits so hard and you are already taking massive damage from curses and ground AoEs, that you now can't roll dodge out of as they are there at the same time as the breath.

Oblivion portals I have found a way to tank with some consistency. Stay at max ranged taunt range and keep running away from the boss.

Edit: Honestly, to me Vestige is 10% challenge and 90% meme.

Razmirra · June 11

My take on altering Challenge difficulties:

Seasoned is fine, *maybe* up damage you can being 33% less?
Master difficulty enemy output can remain the same, damage you do is is 50% less.
Vestige difficulty could just be 400% more damage, and you do 33% of current amount.

600% more damage is insane, as is doing a quarter of your current output.

CalamityCat · June 11

I don't need any reward incentives to get satisfaction from a higher difficulty kill. I think if we had a big incentive, there would just be even more competition between players and inevitable drama if some unwitting newbie inadvertently destroyed a boss while someone tried to solo it in Vestige.

I'm sure the devs literally said they were thinking about better rewards for later but had modest ones for now until they see that everything is working as intended. Which is a caution I'm happy to support.

For me it means I can tune up the difficulty to be a nice challenge for all my alts and add some extra excitement to questing and zone exploration.

There's also the comedy option of finding lowly beasties overland and cranking then up to Vestige. Zenith has mentioned how dangerous mudcrabs are, so I feel obliged to explore this.

Taarente · June 11

CalamityCat wrote: »

I don't need any reward incentives to get satisfaction from a higher difficulty kill. I think if we had a big incentive, there would just be even more competition between players and inevitable drama if some unwitting newbie inadvertently destroyed a boss while someone tried to solo it in Vestige.

I'm sure the devs literally said they were thinking about better rewards for later but had modest ones for now until they see that everything is working as intended. Which is a caution I'm happy to support.

For me it means I can tune up the difficulty to be a nice challenge for all my alts and add some extra excitement to questing and zone exploration.

There's also the comedy option of finding lowly beasties overland and cranking then up to Vestige. Zenith has mentioned how dangerous mudcrabs are, so I feel obliged to explore this.

You’ll be able to tell who the overpowered characters are, they will be the ones running from mudcrabs and skeevers.

thedocbwarren · June 11

Taarente wrote: »

CalamityCat wrote: »

I don't need any reward incentives to get satisfaction from a higher difficulty kill. I think if we had a big incentive, there would just be even more competition between players and inevitable drama if some unwitting newbie inadvertently destroyed a boss while someone tried to solo it in Vestige.

I'm sure the devs literally said they were thinking about better rewards for later but had modest ones for now until they see that everything is working as intended. Which is a caution I'm happy to support.

For me it means I can tune up the difficulty to be a nice challenge for all my alts and add some extra excitement to questing and zone exploration.

There's also the comedy option of finding lowly beasties overland and cranking then up to Vestige. Zenith has mentioned how dangerous mudcrabs are, so I feel obliged to explore this.

You’ll be able to tell who the overpowered characters are, they will be the ones running from mudcrabs and skeevers.

I saw someone die from a mudcrab a few times today. I never saw him beat it after quite a few tries.

Gabriel_H · June 11

CalamityCat wrote: »

There's also the comedy option of finding lowly beasties overland and cranking then up to Vestige. Zenith has mentioned how dangerous mudcrabs are, so I feel obliged to explore this.

Group of Vestige mudcrabs = vDLC Dungeon Mob Pack

CalamityCat · June 11

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Group of Vestige mudcrabs = vDLC Dungeon Mob Pack

LOL. That sounds genuinely hilarious!

Gabriel_H · June 11

CalamityCat wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Group of Vestige mudcrabs = vDLC Dungeon Mob Pack

LOL. That sounds genuinely hilarious!

Oh it is!. Vestige is a meme mode. There is no challenge, because challenge implies chance of success. It's great fun with friends, but any serious players are going to drive themselves nuts trying not to die.