If the rewards/incentives for playing on Vestige difficulty get increased enough, it could end up being a real money maker. Multiple players playing on Vestige difficulty with one uber DPS on Adventurer difficulty.

Wait, maybe ZOS should not increase the rewards/incentives for playing on Vestige difficulty. I'm not sure I want to see trains of players obliterating everything in Tamriel while sharing the increased rewards/incentives.

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Both arguments can be true.

Yes, it's true that the primary draw of Vestige difficulty is not the rewards but the actual challenge itself. I'm using Vestige not because I get a bit of extra XP and Gold but because I find the default Overland difficulty mind-numbingly easy.

However, since ZOS is already offering more Gold and XP for toggling on Vestige, they could at least make the math make sense. Getting double XP and double Gold isn't worth taking 5x the amount of time to kill things; 5 times the time for only double the rewards just doesn't really make sense because you are actively reducing the amount of gold and XP you're receiving throughout a day's worth of questing.

Whether they boost the values or add an additional reward (such as a slight chance of enemies dropping gold crafting mats for example), I do think ZOS should boost the rewards. That being said, if they don't, I don't really care that much either because I see the challenge of Vestige itself as the primary reason to toggle it on.

That's how I feel too.

Having fun is its own reward and I'll be playing on Vestige regardless. But the rewards should still matter. Players shouldn't be essentially punished with less gold/exp per hour because they are choosing to engage with more difficult content. That sounds like an objectively correct point of view to me and it's frankly baffling to me how anyone could disagree with it.

At the very least the exp/gold rewards should be increased to where it's at least on par with slaughtering enemies on the easiest mode.

Is not the dopamine hit for being such a badass enough?!

If there were to be Vestige only rewards, then this would necessitate something that Zos have been clear they do not want to do - separate the overland out into ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ instances.

This would affect gameplay, as people of different abilities (or even just those who don’t care about being a gaming god) would not be able to play together.

Why can’t the challenge be enough? Why does there always have to be prizes? It’s a bit sad really.

(Remember my son finally killing the Valkyrie boss in Give me God of War level in GoW. So pleased & did not care about rewards, just that he had done it.)

Hate to sound old, but tired of greediness.

This thread makes me so glad I gave up whatever new thing we might have gotten while the devs and their very limited scope and budget were working on this.

Keihndeth wrote: »

I saw this post and I just had to reply. The amount of ESO sycophancy and bashing the OP is just ridiculous…

Yeah it’s pretty disgusting, I’m not gonna lie.
I was very disappointed reading some of these.

Keihndeth wrote: »

The "vestige is the incentive and reward" crowd in here are being extremely disingenuous. No one asked for Vestige in its current form. The types of players who wanted a Vestige-type mode wanted to play in the world for a challenge where there is mob diversity and mechanic diversity that gives a sense of accomplishment. Fighting a mudcrab in a Vestige-type mode, you should have to apply a resistance debuff like Nightblade's Surprise Attack otherwise all damage is reduced by 99%. If you're fighting a Flame Atronach, its immune to fire damage. If you're fighting a Troll, it full heals after one tick if a bleed effect isn't on it. Goblins could summon other Goblins when you attack one in a huge aggro radius like Murlocs in Classic WoW. Things that make you engage with mobs, the world and mechanics in a different way each time. It makes you create different builds and collect different sets. That is what players wanted.

I'm not quite sure disingenuous means what you think it does. No one that I've seen is skewing facts or acting like we know less than we actually do to argue a point. No one is saying anyone asked for Vestige itself. What we're saying is people were saying for literal years that Overland was too easy and thus that made it boring. It felt bland and lacked any threat or need for strategy. The complaint was never "Overland doesn't give enough rewards". The complaint was "Overland is too easy and boring".

THAT is the complaint Challenge Difficulty was made to address. And it was clear they wanted to make it opt in unless there was literally no other way they could implement it. And one could argue "setting your game to Vestige adds a whole bunch of different game rules" but what about the fact that would take a TON of resources? Even if only 10k players are using Vestige that's a lot of calculating the game needs to do that it never had to before. The more special mechs or conditions you want Vestige to apply, the more resources it would cost. Also the claim that "Vestige players wanted mech diversity" and claiming "that's what players wanted" is completely disregarding the players who have said they like Vestige and enjoy the challenge as it is.

Challenge Difficulty was developed because people kept saying Overland was too easy. It was the response to people not feeling the game engaged them enough in that regard. It wasn't made to entice people who were already happy with the difficulty to play at a higher one. It was made to make things more fun for the people who felt things just weren't challenging enough.

Keihndeth wrote: »

The "vestige is the incentive and reward" crowd in here are being extremely disingenuous. No one asked for Vestige in its current form. The types of players who wanted a Vestige-type mode wanted to play in the world for a challenge where there is mob diversity and mechanic diversity that gives a sense of accomplishment. Fighting a mudcrab in a Vestige-type mode, you should have to apply a resistance debuff like Nightblade's Surprise Attack otherwise all damage is reduced by 99%. If you're fighting a Flame Atronach, its immune to fire damage. If you're fighting a Troll, it full heals after one tick if a bleed effect isn't on it. Goblins could summon other Goblins when you attack one in a huge aggro radius like Murlocs in Classic WoW. Things that make you engage with mobs, the world and mechanics in a different way each time. It makes you create different builds and collect different sets. That is what players wanted.

So "they" wanted an entirely different game?!

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

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?

I didn't doge your question. I answered you about World Bosses. You just conveniently left my answer out of that quote of mine so you can pretend I didn't.

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.

That's what I wrote in my last post to you. Everyone can see that is what I wrote to you. So playing these games is pointless and dishonest..

And I disagrede with you because you were wrong. If you have to play smarter and create a better build to win a fight it adds to the complexity of said fight. That is basic logic.

Yeah, that's not an answer. It ignores both the context of my question, and the fact it is a generalised question.

Yeah, that is an answer. My comment you responded to had nothing to do with World Bosses (which I told you I never had a problem with). You don't decide the context of my comments.

When I was referring to a level 10 being able to kill something naked and blindfolded, I was not referring to chapter World Bosses.

Keihndeth wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Keihndeth wrote: »

The "vestige is the incentive and reward" crowd in here are being extremely disingenuous. No one asked for Vestige in its current form. The types of players who wanted a Vestige-type mode wanted to play in the world for a challenge where there is mob diversity and mechanic diversity that gives a sense of accomplishment. Fighting a mudcrab in a Vestige-type mode, you should have to apply a resistance debuff like Nightblade's Surprise Attack otherwise all damage is reduced by 99%. If you're fighting a Flame Atronach, its immune to fire damage. If you're fighting a Troll, it full heals after one tick if a bleed effect isn't on it. Goblins could summon other Goblins when you attack one in a huge aggro radius like Murlocs in Classic WoW. Things that make you engage with mobs, the world and mechanics in a different way each time. It makes you create different builds and collect different sets. That is what players wanted.

I'm not quite sure disingenuous means what you think it does. No one that I've seen is skewing facts or acting like we know less than we actually do to argue a point. No one is saying anyone asked for Vestige itself. What we're saying is people were saying for literal years that Overland was too easy and thus that made it boring. It felt bland and lacked any threat or need for strategy. The complaint was never "Overland doesn't give enough rewards". The complaint was "Overland is too easy and boring".

THAT is the complaint Challenge Difficulty was made to address. And it was clear they wanted to make it opt in unless there was literally no other way they could implement it. And one could argue "setting your game to Vestige adds a whole bunch of different game rules" but what about the fact that would take a TON of resources? Even if only 10k players are using Vestige that's a lot of calculating the game needs to do that it never had to before. The more special mechs or conditions you want Vestige to apply, the more resources it would cost. Also the claim that "Vestige players wanted mech diversity" and claiming "that's what players wanted" is completely disregarding the players who have said they like Vestige and enjoy the challenge as it is.

Challenge Difficulty was developed because people kept saying Overland was too easy. It was the response to people not feeling the game engaged them enough in that regard. It wasn't made to entice people who were already happy with the difficulty to play at a higher one. It was made to make things more fun for the people who felt things just weren't challenging enough.

When has a difficulty slider ever made any game more engaging? Genuine question. I've never seen it once.
The "vestige is the incentive and reward" crowd are attempting to get people who are unhappy to shut them up. It's disingenuous because they know that this system isn't what anyone asked for and they are treating the vocally unhappy as if they are a bunch of ingrates. These people are sycophants who fear any critiques of the game on something they don't care about risks damaging it. It's ridiculous and childish.

How would you implement it? ZOS has said overland difficulty is one of the most requested features, so it should be implemented.

However, there are limitations.

• The challenge difficulty is more of a QoL update, rather than a fully fleshed out new mechanic.
• The difficulty cannot be split into instances. All players, regardless of difficulty have to be in the same instance.
• Adding new mechanics would be a huge development challenge, and the cost of development would be higher than the benefit.
• Adding new mechanics is not possible anyway, due to the fact that players of all difficulty levels must be in the same instance. You cannot make different boss mechanics to different players in the same instance.
• The "go to" reward for something where reward is not the point is low xp and low gold. Like a lot of small side quests, or repeating a quest too early (such as the weekly trial quest for the second time).
• Rewards for the Challenge Difficulty cannot be such as to allow exploits. So that you cannot use it to cheese the XP system by grouping with someone with low difficulty and let them carry.

With these limitations in mind, how would you implement this one of the most requested features?

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.

Yup. I think it's ridiculous to say it's supposed to be both the incentive and the rewards. That's not how any other gameplay activity works in the game. It's not what was requested as people were discussing rewards separately from the challenge slider from the very beginning. It's not what the devs stated they wanted in even their earliest explanations. And it's not how the system was explicitly built.

It's trying to hold players to a standard that was not discussed often at all.

I think they should increase the exp so that it actually properly offsets the lower damage rather than setting it to other players. I'm the one killing my enemies so I should get my same exp. They could maybe do it so it's a bonus if not grouped so it's not so easily cheesed.

frogthroat wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

But they should be able to do things like having the enemy throw boulders at marked targets that do additional damage or add some status effect.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

They could maybe do it so it's a bonus if not grouped so it's not so easily cheesed.

These are actually pretty good suggestions.

For the extra mechanics to targeted players (ie, those who have higher than Adventurer) it would still be a massive ordeal. Player debuff is only affecting one part. Adding mechanics to bosses would affect every single WB, delve boss, PD boss, incursion, dragon, harrowstorm and the like. This would mean a huuuuuuge development project. So the cost-benefit factor might come into play.

The bonus if not grouped is also a good idea, but I think ZOS is trying to encourage players to group up, rather than incentivise not grouping.

Yeah but one of the reasons that they stated the rewards were meager was so that it wasn't too much if cheesed.

So I was thinking it could keep it's same exp as it has right now as a bonus to all on Vestige mode. And then an additional exp bonus if you're not grouped (they could maybe count being at incursions as being in a group area like in Craglorn).

I think that would solve most of that.

Keihndeth wrote: »

What they should have done was introduce 1 new mechanic (probably an ultimate) to each different mob type that was punishing if you weren't paying attention so you can't coast through. On top of that, you increase the speed of the attacks of the mob, damage it does, and its hit points significantly. Instead, they made the game feel terrible by decreasing player damage by 80%.

Um. This is a MMO, not a single-target game. How exactly would you implement such a fanciful idea in world where players can change difficulty at will and exist alongside other players?

Keihndeth wrote: »

You should never, EVER, decrease player damage in order to balance. It inherently makes you feel weaker instead of making the mobs feel stronger.

Uh, you realize that decreasing damage output by 80% is equivalent to increasing enemy health by 5x, yes? In terms of gameplay, these two things are identical, with the only difference being the cosmetics of how big the numbers are. But, you see, decreasing damage fits with that pesky this-is-an-MMO-with-other-players constraint, while raising enemy health does not.

Keihndeth wrote: »

I saw this post and I just had to reply. The amount of ESO sycophancy and bashing the OP is just ridiculous…

Pretty sure the response here are pointing out the problems with the OP's ideas (and your ideas). Reframing it as a personal attack in order to derail the argument is a choice that you made.

code65536 wrote: »

Keihndeth wrote: »

I saw this post and I just had to reply. The amount of ESO sycophancy and bashing the OP is just ridiculous…

Pretty sure the response here are pointing out the problems with the OP's ideas (and your ideas). Reframing it as a personal attack in order to derail the argument is a choice that you made.

So you’re suggesting that reframing my feedback as someone just complaining, and suggesting I don’t like Vestige because I’m seeking for ways to improve it, are not forms of word twisting meant to devalue my feedback?

There are 3 posts doing this on page 1 alone, forget the other pages…

Very few responses here actually involve my direct feedback, talking in circles around an idea that was never even brought up by me, or anyone in this thread.

Keihndeth wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Keihndeth wrote: »

The "vestige is the incentive and reward" crowd in here are being extremely disingenuous. No one asked for Vestige in its current form. The types of players who wanted a Vestige-type mode wanted to play in the world for a challenge where there is mob diversity and mechanic diversity that gives a sense of accomplishment. Fighting a mudcrab in a Vestige-type mode, you should have to apply a resistance debuff like Nightblade's Surprise Attack otherwise all damage is reduced by 99%. If you're fighting a Flame Atronach, its immune to fire damage. If you're fighting a Troll, it full heals after one tick if a bleed effect isn't on it. Goblins could summon other Goblins when you attack one in a huge aggro radius like Murlocs in Classic WoW. Things that make you engage with mobs, the world and mechanics in a different way each time. It makes you create different builds and collect different sets. That is what players wanted.

I'm not quite sure disingenuous means what you think it does. No one that I've seen is skewing facts or acting like we know less than we actually do to argue a point. No one is saying anyone asked for Vestige itself. What we're saying is people were saying for literal years that Overland was too easy and thus that made it boring. It felt bland and lacked any threat or need for strategy. The complaint was never "Overland doesn't give enough rewards". The complaint was "Overland is too easy and boring".

THAT is the complaint Challenge Difficulty was made to address. And it was clear they wanted to make it opt in unless there was literally no other way they could implement it. And one could argue "setting your game to Vestige adds a whole bunch of different game rules" but what about the fact that would take a TON of resources? Even if only 10k players are using Vestige that's a lot of calculating the game needs to do that it never had to before. The more special mechs or conditions you want Vestige to apply, the more resources it would cost. Also the claim that "Vestige players wanted mech diversity" and claiming "that's what players wanted" is completely disregarding the players who have said they like Vestige and enjoy the challenge as it is.

Challenge Difficulty was developed because people kept saying Overland was too easy. It was the response to people not feeling the game engaged them enough in that regard. It wasn't made to entice people who were already happy with the difficulty to play at a higher one. It was made to make things more fun for the people who felt things just weren't challenging enough.

When has a difficulty slider ever made any game more engaging? Genuine question. I've never seen it once.
The "vestige is the incentive and reward" crowd are attempting to get people who are unhappy to shut them up. It's disingenuous because they know that this system isn't what anyone asked for and they are treating the vocally unhappy as if they are a bunch of ingrates. These people are sycophants who fear any critiques of the game on something they don't care about risks damaging it. It's ridiculous and childish.

On the point about difficulty making a game more engaging: I don't know, any game that has difficulty settings to allow people to decide for themselves if Easy is too easy or Hard is too hard? Do you know how many games out there have adjustable difficulty settings? Because some people like Dark Souls level difficulty and some people like Animal Crossing level difficulty. It's super subjective and there are slews of games that give people options, including harder ones, because they know there are people who want a challenge and people who just want to experience the game without struggling to get five minutes in without dying. Hell there are games like RE that have challenges like not healing a single time.

On the point about trying to shut people up: You're putting words in peoples' mouths and twisting what we're saying to suit a narrative. We aren't trying to shut people up, we're trying to explain the whole reason Challenge Difficulty was introduced. It wasn't because Overland didn't give enough rewards, it was because Overland was too easy to a lot of people. So a self-nerf was introduced for people to make the game harder for themselves if that's what they wanted.

On the point about being disingenuous: I still don't think that word means what you think it means. No one knew how they were going to implement Challenge Difficulty, and saying "it's not what anyone asked for" as though you speak for EVERYONE who wanted harder Overland is silly. It also completely ignores and invalidates the people who are more than happy with what was implemented and say it's made them game what they've wanted it to be. It's not what YOU asked for, maybe, but there are plenty of people pleased with it. A lot of people simply asked for the ability to make things harder, regardless of how that was done.

On the point about fearing critiques and being childish and such: Now you're just resorting to ad hominen attacks because YOU don't like the critique that's being provided. It's a two-way road and just as people are allowed to voice dissatisfaction with something, it doesn't absolve that dissatisfaction from itself being critiqued. Also me personally, I don't care if they add more rewards like they did Dyes, aka something tied directly to the system. If it's something I want enough I'll do what everyone else would likely do; run with the crowd or ask a few friends for help. I'm not saying they never should. I'm just saying as it currently is, getting additional rewards isn't the main point of Challenge Difficulty.

We have a GP going now that rewards you for doing things on higher Challenge Difficulty, and it's already shown how very easy it is to cheese getting these rewards. There have been people saying they set their game to Vestige and just ran with a crowd. And while it's not adding rewards to Overland itself or the system itself, it's probably going to be one of the only ways they can impart rewards for engaging with the system. Because again, the main point of Challenge Difficulty isn't to be rewarded for opting to do Overland on a harder setting, and also because anything they add can easily be gotten by everyone anyway.

And to get ahead of the inevitable "different instances!" argument, it's already been explained why they can't. Demanding they do something that would make the game run worse for everyone is not the answer.

Like I said before and don't remember seeing anyone respond to: Challenge Difficulty is largely the same as going into content naked and with unmorphed Skills with no assigned Attribute Points or CP. In both cases you do less damage while taking more damage. But would we expect someone who chooses to go through the game naked and purposefully gimped to get more rewards than someone who doesn't? I know spartaxoxo mentioned feeling there's a difference because one is an official mechanic in the game and another isn't, but regardless both achieve the same thing. If we wouldn't expect the naked gimped player to get extra rewards in one way, it seems odd to expect them to get rewards from another, when both ways do the same thing.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

MRAW wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I for one would rather get new things (especially since they cut Dungeons this year and the Night Market did not make up for it) than rehash old things.

What do you think how much in USD for wages did
a) this vestige thing cost and
b) two new dungeon would cost?

I have no idea but I guess this vestige would maybe be 20k USD and two dungeons like 150k USD?

Yes, the “Vestige difficulty” was super cheap. But it wasn’t conflicting with Dungeons.

They already confirmed that the Night Market was the replacement for Dungeons, i.e. we got Night Market instead of Dungeons.

My post was all about if Overland Difficulty had been “what people wanted” (aka rebuilding the game from the ground up to give every enemy mechanics), that would not be a little thing anymore. That would have taken the place of things.

Did they actually state that the NM was going to be a replacement for Dungeons? That seems odd considering it's supposed to be the "Zone" for this year afaik.

Also the NM is an experimental Zone that might not come back again after its second and third runs. They said it depends on the engagement, that it MIGHT become permanent.

I also don't remember if they've said or not for sure we aren't getting any new Zones this year, because they seem to REALLY be hinting at Winterhold for Q4 I believe (and if not that it's SOME Skyrim-based area). I know that doesn't mean it's going to be a whole Zone but it could be. We still know next to nothing about what's coming in Season Two after all.