companions are a bit too overpowered in challenge difficulty

SilverBride · June 11

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

It is supposed to increase immersion and make the world feel more dangerous, which in turn makes it less efficient to level.

No, it's supposed to make the game harder, not nerf your xp gains. They just need to amp up the xp bonus properly. They tried to do so but set it too low.

Immersion was the reason most often given in the pinned overland thread. Not wanting enemies to be defeated in 2 seconds. Making fights take longer does make it take longer to gain experience. Giving more experience just cancels that out.

CalamityCat · June 11

If you think a companion is too strong, just change their skills/gear down. Let's not have them nerfed when other players enjoy and get benefit from companions who are finally able to be useful!

All I'd be requesting here is the option to save multiple builds for each companion, so we could have a strong build to accompany our level 30 noob and a really basic one for our main who just wants a tiny bit of help. Or switch between tank, healer or DD for example. That would make sense and I think it'd be useful to more players.

joshisanonymous · June 11

Lekjih wrote: »

joshisanonymous wrote: »

For the people saying "don't use companions" or "the mode is no different than running around with no armor", you're all ignoring the fact that higher difficulties also give you bonuses to gold and experience. This isn't just about making your character weak purely for the sake of a challenge. Importantly, if the experience bonus applies to your companion's experience -- which I presume is does -- then you are very much incentivized to use a companion while playing on the harder difficulties.

I levelled werewolf yesterday on my youngest sorc. I thought seasoned difficulty having extra exp would be helpful. It is not. The extra exp is negated by mobs dying slower.

Eg
Adventurer I kill 45 mobs in a minute for 1700ish exp each 76500 exp a minute
Seasoned I kill 30 mobs a minute for 2000ish xp each 60000 exp a minute

If you're levelling and you want efficiency, difficulty mode is not useful

Whether it's as efficient as playing on adventurer is besides the point. You still get XP, and you still get bonus XP for the higher difficulty. Maybe I jenjoy fighting that's not 100% mindless and I also want to XP my companion. I shouldn't have to choose one or the other.

Besides, you're talking about killing 30 mobs a minute (i.e., 2 seconds per mob) on seasoned with a brand new character. People talking about the difference in XP rates like this are really overblowing things. The main difference I see with my character on vestige is that I can be killed by big attacks rather than that I have to spend a lot more time chunking down mobs' health. Kills are still relatively fast, just not risk-free.

GeneralGrundmann · June 11

Nothing that's optional can be overpowered.

joshisanonymous · June 11

spartaxoxo wrote: »

joshisanonymous wrote: »

For the people saying "don't use companions" or "the mode is no different than running around with no armor", you're all ignoring the fact that higher difficulties also give you bonuses to gold and experience. This isn't just about making your character weak purely for the sake of a challenge. Importantly, if the experience bonus applies to your companion's experience -- which I presume is does -- then you are very much incentivized to use a companion while playing on the harder difficulties.

The companions experience points are not impacted by the gear they wear or class you build them as. Their power level is modular. By default they are weak in overland.

They are also intended to be able to help with more than just overland, such as in the infinite archive. They are already fairly weak and niche use case. They do not need nerfs.

What? Challenge modes don't apply to infinite archive. We're also not talking about just making companions weaker at all times regardless of challenge mode settings. This is just about scaling them the same way your character is scaled, in which case, if you don't want your companion to be weaker, then don't use a higher difficulty setting.

wolfie1.0. · June 11

joshisanonymous wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

joshisanonymous wrote: »

For the people saying "don't use companions" or "the mode is no different than running around with no armor", you're all ignoring the fact that higher difficulties also give you bonuses to gold and experience. This isn't just about making your character weak purely for the sake of a challenge. Importantly, if the experience bonus applies to your companion's experience -- which I presume is does -- then you are very much incentivized to use a companion while playing on the harder difficulties.

The companions experience points are not impacted by the gear they wear or class you build them as. Their power level is modular. By default they are weak in overland.

They are also intended to be able to help with more than just overland, such as in the infinite archive. They are already fairly weak and niche use case. They do not need nerfs.

What? Challenge modes don't apply to infinite archive. We're also not talking about just making companions weaker at all times regardless of challenge mode settings. This is just about scaling them the same way your character is scaled, in which case, if you don't want your companion to be weaker, then don't use a higher difficulty setting.

Or, as was the point that was trying to be made. You can just manually make your companion weaker.

spartaxoxo · June 11

joshisanonymous wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

joshisanonymous wrote: »

For the people saying "don't use companions" or "the mode is no different than running around with no armor", you're all ignoring the fact that higher difficulties also give you bonuses to gold and experience. This isn't just about making your character weak purely for the sake of a challenge. Importantly, if the experience bonus applies to your companion's experience -- which I presume is does -- then you are very much incentivized to use a companion while playing on the harder difficulties.

The companions experience points are not impacted by the gear they wear or class you build them as. Their power level is modular. By default they are weak in overland.

They are also intended to be able to help with more than just overland, such as in the infinite archive. They are already fairly weak and niche use case. They do not need nerfs.

What? Challenge modes don't apply to infinite archive. We're also not talking about just making companions weaker at all times regardless of challenge mode settings. This is just about scaling them the same way your character is scaled, in which case, if you don't want your companion to be weaker, then don't use a higher difficulty setting.

The companions are already far too weak to have the same penalties as the player. And they would probably solve it by simply nerfing the at base because the core complaint is they are too strong at regular overland (even though they are not). Nerfing the companions would make them less than useless for the entirety of the game. They already struggle in a lot of content and could actually use buffs.

And you can already manually nerf them yourself if you have a problem with their strength.

CalamityCat · June 11

joshisanonymous wrote: »

What? Challenge modes don't apply to infinite archive. We're also not talking about just making companions weaker at all times regardless of challenge mode settings. This is just about scaling them the same way your character is scaled, in which case, if you don't want your companion to be weaker, then don't use a higher difficulty setting.

But you already have the choice to limit the strength of your companions by changing their build to be less powerful. Why not just do that and leave players who like stronger companions to enjoy them? It takes seconds to quickly change around a companion's skills.

Why nerf companions for everyone when you already have the tools to solve the "problem"?

Attorneyatlawl · June 11

SilverBride wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

It is supposed to increase immersion and make the world feel more dangerous, which in turn makes it less efficient to level.

No, it's supposed to make the game harder, not nerf your xp gains. They just need to amp up the xp bonus properly. They tried to do so but set it too low.

Immersion was the reason most often given in the pinned overland thread. Not wanting enemies to be defeated in 2 seconds. Making fights take longer does make it take longer to gain experience. Giving more experience just cancels that out.

Exactly. Why should we have to choose between better gameplay modes and xp though? Why not even it out so we don't get penalized on progression for simply wanting to not be bored?

spartaxoxo · June 11

SkillzMFG wrote: »

We're paying for the game, let us play with companions (a part of that game) who are scaled properly with the difficulty we selected - it's really not that deep.

Except many of us ARE playing properly with the companions on the difficulty setting. I remember in the single player games summons also didn't scale with difficulty so it was a common strategy to have them tank for you as an in-between difficulty setting where it was easier than doing it without but you still could be easily killed for mistakes unlike the base difficulty. They had their own levels and that capped out such that a novice summon wasn't good late game. But they weren't further hindered.

An archer or a mage getting a summon or companion to tank the heavy stuff because they hit hard but fell like tissue paper to certain enemies was a core part of bringing the player fantasy of having a travelling companion to life and further solidified gameplay of glass cannons.

If that's not your thing. Nothing wrong with that. You already have the tools to fix it. But nerfing them imposes the playstyle that they have to be super weak so that the player doesn't feel like the companion is better than them on everyone else.

BahometZ · June 11

People will complain about their own legs. Just get off the forum and play the game. The most non-issue of all non-issues.

katanagirl1 · June 12

I’m totally surprised anyone who uses the difficulty setting would even admit to using companions. Every comment I have seen on here about companions from those who thought the game was too easy before was that companions were a waste of dev resources. Now that increased difficulty is here they are too overpowered but necessary? This is why people can be against these “optional” additions to the game, it’s like once they are implemented, then there are a bunch of other things that are also added to the list of must-have features for this one thing. It’s never enough and no one is ever happy regardless of what they do.

Nerfing companions would be taking something away from us whether we use increased difficulty or not.

tomofhyrule · June 12

I will say, I didn’t really think I’d do Challenge Difficulty. I didn’t mind the faceroll overland, and I got my stories and challenge elsewhere and in group stuff. Overland was my brain-off mode. I also choose to play in overland with thematic sets rather than meta. And most importantly, I play a tank even in overland, and part of my personal RP is throwing everything into health because I like the idea.

But I find myself drawn to Master difficulty even with that. And part of it is that I use Garrus Sharp as my main buddy, so now he feels appropriately stronger than me while I protect him in return. It actually feels a lot better, honestly.

Companions are fine as is. You want harder, then unsummon them. But now playing a support with a DPS Companion actually feels really cool.

BardokRedSnow · June 12

This reminds me of the good ol elden ring and souls discussions about summons and spirit ashes etc.

The answer there we all used was simply dont use summons. If you're willing to roleplay you're already willing to gimp your playstyle for your immersion, so change their build. Make them healers or tanks, etc.

Kickimanjaro · June 12

I like it and have been running around as a Werewolf tank with DPS companions.

You can make them even better by wearing the Telvanni Efficiency crafted set which reduces the cooldown of their abilities by 50%! There's also the Shared Burden crafted set to revive them automatically after 12s, but this is less useful in my experience as I can just revive them myself and keep the other set for me.

spartaxoxo · June 12

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I’m totally surprised anyone who uses the difficulty setting would even admit to using companions. Every comment I have seen on here about companions from those who thought the game was too easy before was that companions were a waste of dev resources. Now that increased difficulty is here they are too overpowered but necessary? This is why people can be against these “optional” additions to the game, it’s like once they are implemented, then there are a bunch of other things that are also added to the list of must-have features for this one thing. It’s never enough and no one is ever happy regardless of what they do.

Nerfing companions would be taking something away from us whether we use increased difficulty or not.

I didn't see much discussion about companions at all in difficulty discussions until the feature dropped. I honestly think this part of things was overlooked until the feature dropped.

For myself, I've always liked the companions as a system and used them even when I was giving myself a challenge. Like I use them in IA and when soloing dungeons, for example.

I mostly wanted challenge difficulty to make the stories more immersive rather than difficulty for its own sake. I think wanting stories to be immersive was pretty commonly cited as a reason for wanting this setting.

Also when a feature drops there's always going to be more feedback on it because more people get to experience it.

cyberjanet · June 12

Companions were such a disappointment because they were nerfed before they could become worthwhile. They make lovely houseguests though.

Attorneyatlawl · June 13

Not sure what's so hard about this either, @SkillzMFG. The point of challenge difficulties is to make it so the game is harder while still being able to use your customized gear, skills, build, etc. Companions are just part of that and therefore should be debuffed like the player is on challenge modes.

CalamityCat · June 13

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Not sure what's so hard about this either, @SkillzMFG. The point of challenge difficulties is to make it so the game is harder while still being able to use your customized gear, skills, build, etc. Companions are just part of that and therefore should be debuffed like the player is on challenge modes.

The problem is, as has already been pointed out - if your character is playing as a support, you wouldn't want your companion doing less damage than they do. Players use companions while they're training characters, and challenge difficulty gives the option to get additional experience if you're okay with the increased difficulty. But if a character is only level 30, a weaker companion is just going to be annoying if you're trying to gain experience. For trained characters, I'm delighted that companions can kick rear at last! It makes up for all the years when they've died at the mere sight of a boss. There is no logical reason why I'd support a companion nerf when they can already be modified to weaken them.

Why not open the companion's menu and change their build? I'm still waiting for one of you to explain why you can't do this. Or use a different difficulty level while solo. You don't even have to use a companion. Or you can group with other players. But instead of doing any of these things, you're insisting that companions need to be nerfed for everyone else. 🤷‍♀️

Necrotech_Master · June 13

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

It is supposed to increase immersion and make the world feel more dangerous, which in turn makes it less efficient to level.

No, it's supposed to make the game harder, not nerf your xp gains. They just need to amp up the xp bonus properly. They tried to do so but set it too low.

the challenge difficulties dont nerf your xp, and in fact give you double (+100%) on vestige difficulty

the problem with, and likely reason they wont increase it, is because its too easy to game the system

if you have a 2 person group, one person could play on adventurer and faceroll everything, while the 2nd person plays on vestige and gets a +100% xp bonus for doing almost nothing

Necrotech_Master · June 13

BretonMage wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

BretonMage wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

if they had to take the penalties, they would be about as useful as a floor mat (example being the night market where companions go to die lol)

This. A thousand times this^^^ My companion tank is still dying to DLC WBs and dragons just on seasoned overland difficulty. I can't imagine how useless they'd be with the adjusted difficulty.

DrMedBorn wrote: »

the solution "don't use companions" is genius. How did I not think about this?

its NOT a solution. Its an rpg, I want to play with companions, but they should NOT be stronger than the player, ever.

Swap out all their DPS or healing skills with ONLY their self-healing skills. Change their gear to bolstered or vigorous. Give them white quality gear.

even if you gave a companion 0 skills or only buff/heal skills, they still do a fair amount of dmg from just light attacking constantly (i think their light attack on its own is around 3500-4500 dmg without crits and constitutes a good bit of their dps), you would have to functionally give them no weapon either, i dont know how much unarmed dmg they do but that would be about the smallest dmg possible they could do besides being dead or despawned lol

Yeah unarmed damage would be the least damage, I'd imagine.

I did try replacing my tank Azandar's weapons with a white quality sword and he did 2822 damage on light attack, and with a white quality lightning staff, it was 3190. He has no damage boosting passives or skills, being geared primarily for survival.

There was another thread moreover where someone mentioned that the quickened trait reduced their DPS even more by making their skills fire more often, so that's something else to consider.

yeah if you give them a lot of short cooldown skills and add a ton of quickened, they will be casting skills more often

if you have dps oriented skills this can overall increase their dmg, but if they had heal/buff oriented skills, it would likely reduce their dps since they wont be light attacking much

SkaiFaith · June 13

Going from "I have to get naked and unarmed to have fun" to "I have to strip my companion naked and unarmed to have fun" - I'll say it now: PLEASE LEAVE POOR BEARS IN PEACE stop stripping things naked! What's going on with people these days...

Oh... I just remembered a player wishing for a skeleton bear skin... We're doomed (jk jk)

spartaxoxo · June 13

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

It is supposed to increase immersion and make the world feel more dangerous, which in turn makes it less efficient to level.

No, it's supposed to make the game harder, not nerf your xp gains. They just need to amp up the xp bonus properly. They tried to do so but set it too low.

the challenge difficulties dont nerf your xp, and in fact give you double (+100%) on vestige difficulty

the problem with, and likely reason they wont increase it, is because its too easy to game the system

if you have a 2 person group, one person could play on adventurer and faceroll everything, while the 2nd person plays on vestige and gets a +100% xp bonus for doing almost nothing

They actually do nerf your exp. It's only a partial offset

Attorneyatlawl · June 14

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

It is supposed to increase immersion and make the world feel more dangerous, which in turn makes it less efficient to level.

No, it's supposed to make the game harder, not nerf your xp gains. They just need to amp up the xp bonus properly. They tried to do so but set it too low.

the challenge difficulties dont nerf your xp, and in fact give you double (+100%) on vestige difficulty

the problem with, and likely reason they wont increase it, is because its too easy to game the system

if you have a 2 person group, one person could play on adventurer and faceroll everything, while the 2nd person plays on vestige and gets a +100% xp bonus for doing almost nothing

It's nerfing your xp per hour as mobs take 5x+ as long to kill due to the reduced damage you deal to them and and the 7x damage they deal to you requiring you to kill even more slowly to boot. Only getting 2x xp for that is an obvious slowdown. Please stop being so disingenuous.

ZOS_Hadeostry · June 14

Greetings,

After removing some unnecessary back and forth from this thread, we would like everyone to keep posts on the subject at hand, civil, and constructive.

If there may be any questions in regards to the rules, please feel free to review them here

reazea · June 14

Why would someone looking for a challenge need a companion in the first place? Personally I think the game would be better without them all together anyway, but why would people wanting a challenge also want a companion?

spartaxoxo · June 14

reazea wrote: »

Why would someone looking for a challenge need a companion in the first place? Personally I think the game would be better without them all together anyway, but why would people wanting a challenge also want a companion?

Some of the bosses can shred even tanks so that's not a challenge, it just straight up doesn't work well for people in glass cannon builds. They could respec. Or they could travel with a tank companion.

Having a tank companion you still have to at least watch our for the aoes and other one shots. So there is still challenge. It just plays out more like a dungeon difficulty.

The other power fantasy it aides is the support role. The healers and tanks. They don't necessarily want to be destroying things but rather supporting someone else doing so. They can be the bulwark that dangerous enemies cannot pass while their allies sling arrows and cast spells.

In regular overland people can't really enjoy those support power fantasy roles because everyone is a DPS that can tear through everything. But on challenge difficulty, they can. Because their companion is the damage dealer and they're keeping them alive.

Not everyone wanted a challenge difficulty for challenge's sake. Some people wanted a more immersive experience and the companions are helping with that.

Necrotech_Master · June 14

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

It is supposed to increase immersion and make the world feel more dangerous, which in turn makes it less efficient to level.

No, it's supposed to make the game harder, not nerf your xp gains. They just need to amp up the xp bonus properly. They tried to do so but set it too low.

the challenge difficulties dont nerf your xp, and in fact give you double (+100%) on vestige difficulty

the problem with, and likely reason they wont increase it, is because its too easy to game the system

if you have a 2 person group, one person could play on adventurer and faceroll everything, while the 2nd person plays on vestige and gets a +100% xp bonus for doing almost nothing

It's nerfing your xp per hour as mobs take 5x+ as long to kill due to the reduced damage you deal to them and and the 7x damage they deal to you requiring you to kill even more slowly to boot. Only getting 2x xp for that is an obvious slowdown. Please stop being so disingenuous.

if you partner with someone who is on adventurer difficulty while your on vestige, they will still be mowing down the mobs like knife through butter while your raking in the xp as long as your grouped

so in that scenario you are getting +100% xp and still killing the mobs just as fast (or potentially faster if your on a tank and pulling mobs in while your adventurer difficulty partner does all the killing) as if you would just soloing on adventurer

thats not being disingenuous, thats basic math and knowing how the game works and using it to your advantage

spartaxoxo · June 14

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Attorneyatlawl wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

It is supposed to increase immersion and make the world feel more dangerous, which in turn makes it less efficient to level.

No, it's supposed to make the game harder, not nerf your xp gains. They just need to amp up the xp bonus properly. They tried to do so but set it too low.

the challenge difficulties dont nerf your xp, and in fact give you double (+100%) on vestige difficulty

the problem with, and likely reason they wont increase it, is because its too easy to game the system

if you have a 2 person group, one person could play on adventurer and faceroll everything, while the 2nd person plays on vestige and gets a +100% xp bonus for doing almost nothing

It's nerfing your xp per hour as mobs take 5x+ as long to kill due to the reduced damage you deal to them and and the 7x damage they deal to you requiring you to kill even more slowly to boot. Only getting 2x xp for that is an obvious slowdown. Please stop being so disingenuous.

if you partner with someone who is on adventurer difficulty while your on vestige, they will still be mowing down the mobs like knife through butter while your raking in the xp as long as your grouped

so in that scenario you are getting +100% xp and still killing the mobs just as fast (or potentially faster if your on a tank and pulling mobs in while your adventurer difficulty partner does all the killing) as if you would just soloing on adventurer

thats not being disingenuous, thats basic math and knowing how the game works and using it to your advantage

If you have to "game the system," to reach that outcome then it's not the way the system works. It's a workaround.

The way the challenge difficultly works is that offers a small offset that is not equal to the damage lost, so anyone using it will gain less exp and coin overtime than if the same person was set to adventurer. They can work around this by grouping with an adventurer and let them to do all the killing because groups share kills and exp.

Lekjih · June 15

joshisanonymous wrote: »

Lekjih wrote: »

joshisanonymous wrote: »

For the people saying "don't use companions" or "the mode is no different than running around with no armor", you're all ignoring the fact that higher difficulties also give you bonuses to gold and experience. This isn't just about making your character weak purely for the sake of a challenge. Importantly, if the experience bonus applies to your companion's experience -- which I presume is does -- then you are very much incentivized to use a companion while playing on the harder difficulties.

I levelled werewolf yesterday on my youngest sorc. I thought seasoned difficulty having extra exp would be helpful. It is not. The extra exp is negated by mobs dying slower.

Eg
Adventurer I kill 45 mobs in a minute for 1700ish exp each 76500 exp a minute
Seasoned I kill 30 mobs a minute for 2000ish xp each 60000 exp a minute

If you're levelling and you want efficiency, difficulty mode is not useful

Whether it's as efficient as playing on adventurer is besides the point. You still get XP, and you still get bonus XP for the higher difficulty. Maybe I jenjoy fighting that's not 100% mindless and I also want to XP my companion. I shouldn't have to choose one or the other.

Besides, you're talking about killing 30 mobs a minute (i.e., 2 seconds per mob) on seasoned with a brand new character. People talking about the difference in XP rates like this are really overblowing things. The main difference I see with my character on vestige is that I can be killed by big attacks rather than that I have to spend a lot more time chunking down mobs' health. Kills are still relatively fast, just not risk-free.

I said youngest sorc, not brand new character. The sorc in question is level 50 in gold gear. She's newly bitten.