Where is the incentive to push Vestige?

Jeremy · June 13

Vestige makes the game more fun, which honestly is the best reward you can have IMHO. But the in-game rewards should mirror the difficulty. That is just common sense and consistent with game design across the board. If you can make more gold and experience from doing the game in adventurer mode killing weaker enemies faster with less repairs than you can in Vestige mode, then that is a design flaw regardless of the individual player's preferences.

Gabriel_H · June 13

Jeremy wrote: »

Vestige makes the game more fun, which honestly is the best reward you can have IMHO. But the in-game rewards should mirror the difficulty. That is just common sense and consistent with game design across the board. If you can make more gold and experience from doing the game in adventurer mode killing weaker enemies faster with less repairs than you can in Vestige mode, then that is a design flaw regardless of the individual player's preferences.

The game design is that in-game rewards reflect complexity. There is no difference in the complexity between Adventurer and Vestige.

Toanis · June 13

Once server technology (or rather sever budget) have improved to the point that the game can handle a novice and a veteran instance for every zone, I'm all for difficulty rewards to entice players to play in higher difficulty so there is enough population to do hard incursions and world bosses. But right now I see only two reasons why one would be asking for difficulty rewards:

- You want rewards. Difficulty is a means to that end, and the self-nerf isn't too bad when normies can carry you.
- You want the higher difficulty, but normies ruin the experience, so they need to be enticed to increase their difficulty.

Jeremy · June 13

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Vestige makes the game more fun, which honestly is the best reward you can have IMHO. But the in-game rewards should mirror the difficulty. That is just common sense and consistent with game design across the board. If you can make more gold and experience from doing the game in adventurer mode killing weaker enemies faster with less repairs than you can in Vestige mode, then that is a design flaw regardless of the individual player's preferences.

The game design is that in-game rewards reflect complexity. There is no difference in the complexity between Adventurer and Vestige.

Sure there is. On Vestige you need to play smarter and design a solid build to be successful. Those are "complexities". ON adventurer mode you can literally kill things naked and blindfolded.

Gabriel_H · June 13

Jeremy wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Vestige makes the game more fun, which honestly is the best reward you can have IMHO. But the in-game rewards should mirror the difficulty. That is just common sense and consistent with game design across the board. If you can make more gold and experience from doing the game in adventurer mode killing weaker enemies faster with less repairs than you can in Vestige mode, then that is a design flaw regardless of the individual player's preferences.

The game design is that in-game rewards reflect complexity. There is no difference in the complexity between Adventurer and Vestige.

Sure there is. On Vestige you need to play smarter and design a solid build to be successful. Those are "complexities". ON adventurer mode you can literally kill things naked and blindfolded.

A level 10 can't. Try taking one to a Chapter world boss, see how it goes. Should they get extra rewards for downing a world boss?

Playing smarter and having a solid build is nothing to do with the complexity of the fight.

There is a minimum level of skill, knowledge and gear required but that is not complexity, or even difficulty given that information can be easily googled.

Radiate77 · June 13

I can’t help but be amazed that even after bolding the word “instanced” in the OP, and elaborating that there would need to be changes made to prevent cheating the system… like forcing the group lead’s difficulty when entering the already private instances of these bosses… the specific area that I’m advocating for increased rewards… we still have people twisting the meaning of those words into something else entirely.

I don’t care if a mudcrab drops a basic white weapon on Vestige difficulty, but if I’m having to coordinate with my partner with callouts, working hard to handle the PRIVATE INSTANCE final pinnacle boss after completing both North and South Elsweyr, or the PRIVATE INSTANCE pinnacle boss only unlocked after Western Skyrim and Markarth are complete… there should be something cool waiting for you to show off your hard work.

Now; if people are struggling to read the OP, let me know, I’ll add a TLDR “How-To-Read for Dummys” section at the bottom of the thread. Respectfully, stop insulting me with the constant word twisting.

Jeremy · June 13

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Vestige makes the game more fun, which honestly is the best reward you can have IMHO. But the in-game rewards should mirror the difficulty. That is just common sense and consistent with game design across the board. If you can make more gold and experience from doing the game in adventurer mode killing weaker enemies faster with less repairs than you can in Vestige mode, then that is a design flaw regardless of the individual player's preferences.

The game design is that in-game rewards reflect complexity. There is no difference in the complexity between Adventurer and Vestige.

Sure there is. On Vestige you need to play smarter and design a solid build to be successful. Those are "complexities". ON adventurer mode you can literally kill things naked and blindfolded.

A level 10 can't. Try taking one to a Chapter world boss, see how it goes. Should they get extra rewards for downing a world boss?

Playing smarter and having a solid build is nothing to do with the complexity of the fight.

There is a minimum level of skill, knowledge and gear required but that is not complexity, or even difficulty given that information can be easily googled.

I wasn't talking about World Bosses. So there is no need for me to try it and see how it goes. But a level 10 can easily kill regular overland mobs naked and blindfolded. I know because I've done it at level 10. World Bosses I never had a problem with because those were some of the few fights in the game's world that actually felt like a fight instead of just mindlessly deleting pixels.

And yes; when a fight requires you to play smarter and build your character more effectively, that adds to the complexity of the fight. So we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.

Gabriel_H · June 13

Jeremy wrote: »

And yes; when a fight requires you to play smarter and build your character more effectively, that adds to the complexity of the fight. So we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.

You can disagree all you like, it doesn't change that the complexity is the same.

I noticed you dodged my question. Want to take another crack at it: A level 10 can't. Try taking one to a Chapter world boss, see how it goes. Should they get extra rewards for downing a world boss?

Gabriel_H · June 13

Radiate77 wrote: »

I can’t help but be amazed that even after bolding the word “instanced” in the OP, and elaborating that there would need to be changes made to prevent cheating the system… like forcing the group lead’s difficulty when entering the already private instances of these bosses… the specific area that I’m advocating for increased rewards… we still have people twisting the meaning of those words into something else entirely.

I don’t care if a mudcrab drops a basic white weapon on Vestige difficulty, but if I’m having to coordinate with my partner with callouts, working hard to handle the PRIVATE INSTANCE final pinnacle boss after completing both North and South Elsweyr, or the PRIVATE INSTANCE pinnacle boss only unlocked after Western Skyrim and Markarth are complete… there should be something cool waiting for you to show off your hard work.

Now; if people are struggling to read the OP, let me know, I’ll add a TLDR “How-To-Read for Dummys” section at the bottom of the thread. Respectfully, stop insulting me with the constant word twisting.

It doesn't matter if it is instanced or not. The complexity is the same.

Why should you in your private instance get better rewards on Vestige, but a level 10 downing a WB on Adventurer shouldn't. The thing about systems that make them systems is consistency.

omegatay_ESO · June 13

I would really like ZoS after 6 months to a year give us the results of this. I want to know how much of the player base plays on what difficulty. I bet most stick with default and this was not needed. But yea, just really courious.

Vaqual · June 13

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

Vaqual wrote: »

There is really no need to make this a controversial topic. Difficulty for the sake of difficulty is a simple enough concept. I even feel giving tiny rewards might have been a mistake, because people are already getting their expectations up.

I agree. It's completely inoffensive, in the opposite direction. Dungeons, arenas and trials get enhanced rewards in their difficulty modes. Why should overland breakaway from the reward structure/philosophy of more difficulty = more rewards? One side is asking for consistency in game design. The other is asking for a deviation.

Bit strange how the ones asking for consistency are labelled as whiners and beggars on these forums.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Funny, I was told for years that we were a vocal minority and ZOS had data that proved that I was just an idiot that didn't know what I was talking about. Very much a case of 'don't believe your lying eyes' when I'd scroll through steam reviews and comment sections on Facebook and YouTube and MassivelyOP comment sections directly attributing a lack of difficulty as to why they're not playing.

It seems I didn't express myself clearly. I wanted to express that the current rewards may have been too much already, if such discussions are brewing.

I just want to have some harmless fun with hard overland content without the accessibility crowd swooping in to rip it apart. The less incentives, the safer it should be.

If people can't motivate themselves to play with those settings, I don't see any problem.

I don't think this is comparable to harder group content. As long as it remains an individual player choice and swappable on demand, it lacks the structure for a really meaningful reward system.

I am also not strictly against any form of rewards, but I simply can't imagine what a Vestige player may even need that is fitting the bill. LotRo players can earn tokens for killing mobs on harder difficulties, which can be used to buy from an extremely limited selection of Emotes.

Double gold, XP and the associated dyes are already kind of fine.

Muizer · June 13

Radiate77 wrote: »

there should be something cool waiting for you to show off your hard work

You know, it is certainly true that that seems to drive a lot of players in the game and that ZOS is catering to it. I hope that Vengeance and Challenge difficulty show ZOS turning a corner, focusing on long term replayability. Having people chase rewards and badges through content they would otherwise not enjoy is fostering a very unhealthy mindset.

Attorneyatlawl · June 13

Jeremy wrote: »

Vestige makes the game more fun, which honestly is the best reward you can have IMHO. But the in-game rewards should mirror the difficulty. That is just common sense and consistent with game design across the board. If you can make more gold and experience from doing the game in adventurer mode killing weaker enemies faster with less repairs than you can in Vestige mode, then that is a design flaw regardless of the individual player's preferences.

Yep. The easier adventurer mode shouldn't be better xp/hr as it's... Easier. At least even it our between that and harder challenge difficulties by increasing the xp to a more reasonable reflection of the ttk and general difficulty itself. The builds and gameplay style change with them and it is indeed harder. If they fixed this, I would absolutely use the higher difficulties for grinding too, not just questing, as it's more fun.

Imagine a poor noobie coming to eso now that we have the difficulty settings only to find out that he's gimping himself by playing the difficulty he finds more fun...

SilverBride · June 13

Toanis wrote: »

Once server technology (or rather sever budget) have improved to the point that the game can handle a novice and a veteran instance for every zone, I'm all for difficulty rewards to entice players to play in higher difficulty so there is enough population to do hard incursions and world bosses. But right now I see only two reasons why one would be asking for difficulty rewards:
- You want rewards. Difficulty is a means to that end, and the self-nerf isn't too bad when normies can carry you.

- You want the higher difficulty, but normies ruin the experience, so they need to be enticed to increase their difficulty.

This is a concept that I completely disagree with. Players that do not choose difficulty do not need to be enticed to use it anyway. We aren't obligated to make sure there are enough Vestige players to complete incursions and world bosses with other Vestiges, and we aren't ruining anyone's experience by playing the way we enjoy. We can already help with these on Adventurer mode. Maybe that isn't the experience the Vestige is looking for but difficulty isn't the experience many of us are looking for either, and we don't need to be pushed into it.

SundarahFr3akinrican · June 13

Gabriel_H wrote: »

There is none. There isn't meant to be beyond personal preference.

Clarification: Vestige is the incentive and reward. It's entirely a sense of self-accomplishment.

This is not how many people look at it. I know this got a lot of thumbs ups, but many people see it to be pointless without some added reward structure attached.

The devs have also said this is the first iteration. People that accomplish something difficult should be rewarded for such. Tangible rewards.

SundarahFr3akinrican · June 13

code65536 wrote: »

The fun of Vestige is the reward.

Please ZoS care for the people that don't see it this way. I (and many others) want to tangibly be rewarded for doing difficult things. Doing said thing is not enough or a "reward".

A big part about MMOs is about flaunting. Flaunting your house, furniture, gear, mounts, fashion and very much so achievements.

wolfie1.0. · June 13

Radiate77 wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

Applying the logic that the difficulty is the reward, we should go ahead and remove all veteran and hard mode achievements in dungeons and trials, along with all of their respective rewards…

How many people would agree to this?

You can't compare the two, because the point of doing those activities IS to be rewarded. The rewards are incentives for engaging with that content.

Challenge Difficulty is NOT the same thing. The content itself is the incentive and the reward. That's how it was always meant to be from the start.

You can DIRECTLY compare the two because they are both increased difficulty variants of the same activities. Regardless of introduced mechanics.

You can seperate them out because the core content is different, and thats what players requested.

Go read the thousand page overland harder difficulty thread. The main sentiment in that mega thread is not about rewards for overland content not feeling rewarding. Its about the difficulty of the content not being rewarding.

Dungeons are designed to reward you for completing what is for many, a more difficult task.

There IS a difference. Even if it appears to be subjective.

One is about experiencing the journey, the other is about celebrating the destination.

Gabriel_H · June 13

SundarahFr3akinrican wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

There is none. There isn't meant to be beyond personal preference.

Clarification: Vestige is the incentive and reward. It's entirely a sense of self-accomplishment.

This is not how many people look at it. I know this got a lot of thumbs ups, but many people see it to be pointless without some added reward structure attached.

The devs have also said this is the first iteration. People that accomplish something difficult should be rewarded for such. Tangible rewards.

Then don't self-nerf and just enjoy the game as is.

wolfie1.0. · June 13

omegatay_ESO wrote: »

I would really like ZoS after 6 months to a year give us the results of this. I want to know how much of the player base plays on what difficulty. I bet most stick with default and this was not needed. But yea, just really courious.

I think you will be surprised.

I think the distribution will be a bit more even.

All but my most basic builds are atleast on seasoned with a few I feel more confident on are in the higher levels.

My only real complaint about the system is that you can cheese it... but if you really want to you can do the same for a lot of the difficult achievements out there too.

SilverBride · June 13

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

omegatay_ESO wrote: »

I would really like ZoS after 6 months to a year give us the results of this. I want to know how much of the player base plays on what difficulty. I bet most stick with default and this was not needed. But yea, just really courious.

I think you will be surprised.

I think the distribution will be a bit more even.

I agree with @omegatay_ESO. I don't see very many players using difficulty now and feel that the new will soon wear off and give way to efficiency and convenience.

I doubt they will give us any data though.

Arunei · June 13

@ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Finn
You guys really should make an actual sticky about why Challenge Difficulty doesn't have instancing, at this point. Having that information in an old PTS thread doesn't do much good now that the feature is live.

SundarahFr3akinrican wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

The fun of Vestige is the reward.

Please ZoS care for the people that don't see it this way. I (and many others) want to tangibly be rewarded for doing difficult things. Doing said thing is not enough or a "reward".

A big part about MMOs is about flaunting. Flaunting your house, furniture, gear, mounts, fashion and very much so achievements.

If you need rewards in order to be encouraged to do harder Overland then you aren't Challenge Difficulty's target audience. It wasn't made for people who feel like every single thing that's harder is meant to give rewards, it was made for people for whom the challenge IS the reward.

erickhwk · June 13

There's a concept called Intrinsic Motivation. It's the drive to engage with specific content just because it is personally enjoyable, satisfying, challenging, or meaningful. That's the same drive that created the soulsborne and monster-hunting game genres. You get no specific reward for being beaten for hours or even days by a boss or monster, except the dopamine hit of overcoming the challenge and the satisfaction of recognizing your own personal growth and skill improvement.

I fully understand that's not everyone's cup of tea. There are plenty of people who prefer Extrinsic Motivation, like a tangible reward or something similar, and that's a totally valid kind of motivation.

I also admit that Vestige Mode can feel a bit strange or out of place in a game that has incentivized casual play for more than a decade. But, personally, I'm living for it. Not surprisingly, I'm a veteran of both franchises known for their ruthless learning curves and difficulty.

Just like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter, Vestige Mode may not be to everyone's taste, but I see it as a wave from ZOS to the part of their player base that was starving for some challenge besides trials and group dungeons.

I've invested more time and effort into putting together builds for this new mode than I would like to admit, but it has given the game a breath of fresh air, especially for someone who has been playing it non-stop since beta.

But, ZOS, please, I beg you: make Vestige a separate instance. It's infuriating to spend half an hour in a dungeon, playing with strategy and caution, only to see a player on a lower difficulty storm ahead and just mop the ground with the mobs. People playing on Vestige are looking for a different kind of game, and you have all the tools to give us that with with very low effort.

EnochianWing · June 13

I just did a world boss, 59 gold for vestige and a dragon fight 0 gold. There definitely needs to be more incentive besides it just being a challenge. Like a treasure drop for 250-1k gold.

Foxtrot39 · June 13

Part of me expected to see tanks and maybe healers get a glow up as you need a small group for vestige difficulty content, having non DD role become relevant in overland again

But the fact its just a nerf applied to you only threw that out of the window

A random DD in adventurer difficulty can still just do a walk-by and nuke whatever you were fighting rendering tank and healer still a massively unenjoyable role in overland with little to no need for them

Arunei · June 14

Going to post this here for more visibility:

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

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

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

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

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

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

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

As for "random Adventurer can come and nuke the thing I was fighting", Overland does not belong to any specific player. No one has ""dibs"" on something just because they were fighting it first. Beyond that, as has been said over and over but gets ignored every time, this problem has already existed, just in reverse. People on low-level or otherwise weaker characters might be fighting something like a WB or a Dragon or something, enjoying the challenge, and then a min-maxed 2k+ CP player with BiS everything come by and nukes it in 0.2 seconds. But I guess it's only a problem now when it's the other way around?

Sentinel · June 14

My feedback here is that I haven't played consistently for years, but I just picked it up again and had a lot of fun playing on vestige mode. I could play with builds and mechanics all while engaging with story content, which is a lot more than can be said if I did the same thing naked with no skills/armor.

It's almost like the benefit of challenge difficulty is being able to utilize the full breadth character builds and mechanics in encounters that previously felt too easy for engagement. I couldn't care less about the rewards involved being just increased gold/experience. I think as long as I can keep up with repair costs I will be happy there. I also saw that there is an achievement for doing a ton of content in Vestige mode, so it's not like there aren't prestige rewards so you can show off how cool you are to other players.

It seems like eso players have a huge breadth of opinions and priorities that ZOS has to balance:

You have some players who think that gate-keeping rewards behind harder difficulties (even in designated group content like Trials/dungeons) is unfair and want the same rewards available through alternative means.
You have some players who think the exact opposite in which harder difficulties must always have some exclusive rewards you cannot achieve anywhere else.
You have other players who simply enjoy the challenge of being presented with harder encounters and testing their skills and in group content/trials the extra rewards are just fluff

Now, to stereotype slightly, the players with the first priority tend to be those who engage with the game casually. These folks will generally be miffed if they feel forced to engage in harder content when their goal is closer to strolling through a park (and nothing against this, either). For the longest time, this is the group for which overland content catered to.

The players with the second priority tend to be those who engage with the more hardcore elements of the game. They also tend to be the ones who want to show off the fruits of their glory, whether through bragging rights or exclusive rewards. This is the group for which Trials and Dungeons, especially the hardmode versions, are catered towards.

The players with the third priority might be playing endgame PVE or PVP content, but gain most of their motivation to play intrinsically. This is the group that generally felt the most alienated from overland content. I fall into this category and if others were like me and didn't get into the endgame content side nearly as much, they probably just moved on to other games. I would almost expect that if you surveyed the player base which of the opinions they fall into, this would be the least popular priority due to survivorship bias. But at the same time, that also means ZOS is leaving money on the table by leaving these players in the dust outside of endgame content.

So ZOS seems to have decided that players with motivation #1 and #2 are at odds-- changing the rewards structure for overland content is more likely to *** off the casual players who don't want to feel forced (or incentivized) to make the game harder, just the same as diluting the rewards for Trials and Dungeons would *** off players with priority #2 who would feel like their hard work is watered down.

Instead, the low hanging fruit is to just make overland content harder for players with motivation #3. These players have been vocal for years because simply taking all of their gear off would mean they would have to engage with game systems less in order to make the game more difficult, which defeats the purpose of why they want a challenge. Instead, the current approach of simply nerfing damage output and increasing incoming damage incentivizes these players to engage with content to the best of their abilities. Sure, it's a sledgehammer that just tweaks some equations, but there's enough mechanics in the game and enough skills that all these players need for better engagement is simply having the same encounters last longer with greater danger.

Even from a financial point of view, it makes sense that ZOS would want to make sure they can get players with priority #3 back in the game with as little impact to players with priorities #1 or #2 as possible. Just my two-cents.

Foxtrot39 · June 14

So this whole system only truly works outside the multiplayer component of an MMO for technical reasons and nobody thought it was structural flaw undermining the entire point of it existing in the first place?

Its the equivalent of turning a busy public hallway into a sterile surgery room but everyone can still walk through it mid surgery and touch everything if they want it

Secondary effect is also nullifying any skill with a damage scaling effect as the damage penalty completely gut their scaling effect relevancy thus making that skill unusable

Muizer · June 14

Foxtrot39 wrote: »

So this whole system only truly works outside the multiplayer component of an MMO for technical reasons and nobody thought it was structural flaw undermining the entire point of it existing in the first place?

It may not be perfect, but it does no harm and makes the game more fun for a lot of people. So why not?

I mean the alternative some have suggested of having normal and veteran difficulty doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. The normal/veteran system is for content you can master through repetition/training. That's not how overland is designed. It has few 'learnable' mechanics. That changes everything. It means whatever difficulty 'veteran' is pinned to it will only work for the players for whom that's 'just right', while it will forever be either too hard/unattainable or too easy/annoying for everybody else. Talking of a useless feature ........

wolfie1.0. · June 14

SilverBride wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

omegatay_ESO wrote: »

I would really like ZoS after 6 months to a year give us the results of this. I want to know how much of the player base plays on what difficulty. I bet most stick with default and this was not needed. But yea, just really courious.

I think you will be surprised.

I think the distribution will be a bit more even.

I agree with @omegatay_ESO. I don't see very many players using difficulty now and feel that the new will soon wear off and give way to efficiency and convenience.

I doubt they will give us any data though.

How can you tell if someone is? I mean you can probably tell if someone is running Vestige difficulty. But the lower ones?

I have been running around on seasoned a bit and honestly, i can barely tell that something has changed.

SeaGtGruff · June 14

Radiate77 wrote: »

@Arunei you’ve got a lot to quote, so I’ll just tag you… instanced overland content already exists.

Most, if not all, end-bosses of zone storylines end with an instanced boss fight where no other players than groupmates are present.

Those take place in small areas, though, not entire zones. I doubt they'd ever make a private-- or even a group-- instance of an entire zone.

Group dungeons can be pretty large, but their instances aren't intended to stay up for long periods of time. True, dungeon or trial runs could go on for many hours, but those are probably expected to be unusual cases, not the intended usual situation.

Making private or group instances of overland zones with the expectations that players might run around in those instances for hours at a time would probably never happen.