My take on Challenge Difficulty

Necrotech_Master · June 11

Gabriel_H wrote: »

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.

i figured that was probably the case, when i went to do a dragon, by the time i got there it was 70% dead already and there were enough other players nearby that it went down quickly

though i did get 1 shot by a random lightning strike aoe from the thunder dragon variant (44-46k dmg taken on a 40k hp tank)

i think vestige makes more sense for normal overland stuff, maybe even delves as those enemies are pretty weak as is, so 600% dmg taken would mean you would have to actually tank them a bit

and had no problems with say delve and public dungeons on vestige, though definitely needed to be a tank spec to handle them

for "harder" group content like the incursions, it heavily varies by the incursion, as some of them seemed to be fine on vestige (solo'd a dolmen on vestige without issue, but significant challenges on volcanic vents, harrows, and dragons)

some of the enemies at harrows can hit fairly hard even on the adventurer difficulty like the carrion swarm of the crow minibosses

barney2525 · June 12

I admit I have not been paying much attention to this. But I went looking for the toggle to change the settings and did not find anything.

Where is this toggle to set difficulty located?

Arunei · June 12

Jeremy 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.

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.

Challenge Difficulty wasn't introduced to give people incentive to play at higher levels, nor people who want to power level their characters even faster than people already can. It was introduced because a lot of people didn't feel Overland was engaging enough for them and they wanted to actually have to be smart about things. It wasn't meant for people who just want more rewards, because the main reward itself IS the challenge for the people who wanted it.

The entire reason it's mostly Gold and Exp (along with Dyes which iirc was never even mentioned on the PTS as being a thing, which in itself is weird) was BECAUSE it wasn't meant to give rewards. Especially because the rewards can be cheesed SUPER easily by someone playing on whatever Difficulty and having some friends on Adventurer and just carrying them. It's why there aren't any major rewards, and probably won't be unless ZOS does something like force everyone in a group to whatever Difficulty setting is the highest out of them (so if someone is at Master, everyone in the group is set to Master). Either that, or make it so you can't get Achieves tied to Difficulty while in a group, which would obviously be a fairly poor way to handle things.

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.

They aren't being punished because they're getting what the whole point of Challenge Difficulty is; challenge. It was never meant to be something that people played only for rewards; the Exp and Gold increase is to reflect how long stuff takes to kill on the higher settings.

Again, it's why we have Dyes as another reward instead of anything major. How is a Mount, a Title, a Costume, or whatever really "earned" when someone can just have friends carry them for it? What's the point of putting that stuff behind higher Challenge settings when people can bypass the Challenge entirely?

timparr · June 15

I just wanted to chime in here to say that I absolutely love the new challenge difficulty. I really don't care about the rewards - as others have said, I haven't turned it on to get anything out of it, I did it to make the game fun again.

I created a new alt so that I had someone who had no progress in any quest, and have been running them through the DB and Thieves guild lines first. I picked those, because they give a decent number of skill points, and the stealth based gameplay is less punishing on vestige than some other lines. Even so there have been a few close calls in some boss fights and the game has come alive again for me. I even listen to all the dialogue again because I am that much more invested in the story. I do have a couple of tweaks that I would like to see though -

1. It would be really nice if we could somehow re-fight a boss fight if another player comes and ends it early. It is fine for delve bosses etc, but story bosses are only encountered once. I realize that this is difficult to do - abandoning the quest is one way to do it but that seems a little much.
2. It sometimes feels a little 'unfair' in a way that trial boss fights don't. I'm thinking of being 1 or 2 shot by trash mobs just doing normal attacks. In a vet mode dungeon or trial, you would expect some telegraphing of these attacks, which often doesn't happen in overland. I wonder if it would be possible to tweak is so that instead of a flat +x% damage taken, the nerf only applied to special skills - the ones that are telegraphed? So that maybe +200% for 'normal' attacks and then +1000% for telegraphed ones? The outgoing damage nerf could also be made a little more severe, so that it took even longer to drop the trash mobs, giving them more time to actually perform their mechanics.

Having said that, even if tweaks were not made, this is still an excellent improvement to the game - even if I have died over and over again! I'm not saying I wouldn't welcome more rewards (who doesn't want more stuff), but I don't think that this is what is motivating those of us who have turned the system on.

If better rewards ARE being considered though, I would argue that they shouldn't be exclusive to challenge mode. That would make it devisive if, for example, there were a furniture plan that you could only get if playing on vestige. If, on the other hand, the drop chances of the rarer items were buffed based on difficulty, then you would just have a better chance of getting them. Some sort of algorithm that looked at the loot table and tripled anything <0.1%, doubled anything <1% and so on would be enough to matter.

Melivar · June 15

The difficulty is the reward everyone said they wanted in the 80 page thread asking for it.

The XP and gold and little flavor achievements were a good addon but additional loot etc is out of the question or it then becomes necessary for those who could care less about difficulty, or those rewards would be useless anyways.

You either want the challenge and to test your abilities or just keep the settings on normal.