I'd also like to point out as others have, the horrid quest rewards. Costs are scaled up, yet eah quest still only gives the same amount of gold as the non vet version of the quest? [snip]
[edited for profanity bypass]

Been running about in Craglorn for a couple of days, tactics seem to pay off when scrapping with the enemies there, three of us managed to take out an anomaly in a long drawn out dodge roll heal yelp loudly attack yelp again kind of way.

Went back to Greenshade and died half a dozen times to a blithering trash mob on a side quest. Had to log out and pack in for the night and wait till a mate comes on line later so I can get some help.

How the hell can Zen justify getting the balance of this game so blasted well messed up ?

Come on Zen, I really want to know...

draxredd wrote: »

The true problem of veteran mode isn't recycled content or even ill balanced difficulty.
The true problem is its soul shriveling lack of fun. It feels like wire walking, on barbed wire in a tornado. Any misstep is punishing, tension builds and there is no rewarding way to blow it of.

This. 100%. It's simply not fun. It's stressful, very unrewarding and it doesn't seem as though the devs have the slightest clue as they (as others have pointed out) are too busy listening to the 'challenge' crowd of min-maxers that all run LA+staff builds and can faceroll content.

Between this and the total lack of comment on stamina builds, while the devs announce yet more nerfs to DK, I think I'm about done

When I first started playing this game I was happy. But when I got the first veteran rank the game turned into a complete hell. As many times as my character died in one vetran location, he did not die for the whole game to level 50. And this is only the beginning, still taken only the third rank. I dread to think about what will happen next, and I do not want to continue than to play the game.

hamon wrote: »

currently the game goes like this

1-50 = getting better. getting better. getting stronger. yay i killed molag bal and i,m a master wizard or fighters guild victor !!

V1-V12= [snip] i just got eated by skeevers. everything kills me.. need a 20k respec. need to level weapons i didnt want to use.. i,m a gimp

if ZOS done see this as a big problem with subscriber retention the road ahead is going nowhere

Being thrown into vr1 is always a bit harsh in the beginning I remember that myself not being able to do whatever I used to be able to do in the easy part of the game... but step by step looking at stuff with a different approach.. faithfully making sure I at least was mastering something made the day... if you just randomly add skill point to places completely then you must be a bot... for having let us say 5 skill points spend in every little different class/weapon/crafting line.
[edited to remove quote]

Actually listen to their tells... when saying to the sides.. or yelling fire or whatever it is time to move.. once one get over the first hump being vr1-2 and getting all vrish stuff it is not so bad... but they keep you on the toes which is good... but also it teach you damn well what to do and what not to do as well, put each little fraction of ways they do things into your consideration of how you approach stuff, and you will learn alot from it... also it move from a mindless slaughter to actual gameplay.

jkirchner71ub17_ESO2 wrote: »

We have been talking about this a lot in my guild since Craglorn. I am the GM of a guild of serious players - some are serious to hardcore and other serious but casual in terms of playtime. We welcome a challenge and some of us have finished all the quests in all the VR zones despite those lackluster end rewards as we enjoyed the maps and quest lines. However there is no doubt the VR mob difficulty is beginning to alienate a larger portion of the player base and even some within my guild. Personally I welcome the challenge these mobs provide but if this challenge also means it alienates the majority of the VR players, as it seems to have done, then it needs to be nerfed ASAP. They are walking a very thin line with ESO now with all the bugs that need to be addressed and pumping up these VR mobs was reckless on their part. Maybe I'm wrong here but I don't think ZOS has even clarified what their expectations are for the VR mob difficulty and that is pathetic. If they aren't careful this game will be another pathetic F2P Fantasy MMO before we reach the two year anniversary and then in maintenance mode by the fourth year anniversary.

I love this game immensely but when I see so many disheartened by the difficulty of the VR mobs I have to wonder is this challenge really worth seeing so many frustrated to the point of canceling subs worth it? Not when it means a shrinking player base of paying customers and leads this game down a path to ruin. No matter how hardcore, uber or elitist you are if their aren't players paying the bills for ZOS there won't be content for any of us to run. They need to nerf the VR mobs and snuff out the steroid and skooma dealers before there is no one left to fight these mobs on the maps.

To me they are not challenge as in they bring interesting mechanics to react to, they are for the most part over buffed to the point that even basic attacks do a nasty chunk of damage and due to the randomness more often or not you're left having to deal with three lots of power attacks straight after.

It's almost like they didn't think about balance at all, they most probably just buffed up the numbers insanely high and said "this will keep people occupied until craglorn".

Don't get me wrong I'm all for super hard bosses, dungeons, etc... but nobody likes overly difficult trash mobs.

As a sword and shield Templar I had to wait for help to complete my first quest today, at VR2.

Those Maulborn healers in Obsidian Gorge (Deshann zone) heal very fast indeed, even if I interrupt immediately they heal about 25% in half a second, which isn't much more than my slow dps can do to them before they recast it. I takes me a long time to get one of them down.

Well, for the quest Payback, you have to fight a group of three Maulborn to access the chamber where the wards are placed. As luck would have it, one of them was a healer. With two DPS mobs beating on me I can barely survive long enough to get the Healer to heal once... taking them on their own, they healed and were interrupted six times before I beat them. I was also running out of stamina, since I was absorbing hits when pressing block key before left click and interrupt.

How about they lower the cost of respeccing? I would like to try some different approaches but I've only got 35K gold to my name at VR2, one respec and then all my gold is gone and not likely to come back with all the repair bills i'll soon have.

Since the game only allows a few cookie cutter builds to complete VR content, and since the tooltips don't paint an accurate picture what various skills will do (since they don't take account your weapon, stats or passives) until you equip the skill, it's very hard to know what to go for.

Well I do enjoy a challenge, boss fights should be hard... some dungeons should be difficult but some mobs are just hitting you and damaging you more than they should. That's why with my Sorcerer I stopped playing in the Vet Zones once I hit Rivenspire and with my DK, who is new to VR level, I am probably not going to run him through any of it till they fix these levels.

I was actually doing pretty good in the VR zones until one dungeon in Stonefalls where some of the mages were hitting me with fire spells and caused an insane amount of damage. I even used Reflective Scales and that helped a ton but that one ground fire spell that they throw at you... if you don't dodge that in time often times you're dead. Boss fights shouldn't be easier than the mobs you need to fight to get to it, lol. Time to level up a new character until this is fixed, kind of sad really.

This better you stay in touch about how the mobs react this easier it is to beat them down.... it is not exactly simple minded hack and slash, if you get burned by some of their specials... then you got to look at it another what.. what break the chain... and also the chain always have a weak link.

If you are extreme spell resistent... it would make sense for an instance to kill the physical NPCs first and vice versa and often even using a combination of both, remember one thing.. it is you who should be in control of your character not the NPC's.... but if for an instance only been group grinding stuff for like half the game, you might encounter quite an amount of issues once having to go solo, learn both ways and master it well, it is the way ahead...

With some heavy content spendt like 30 minutes dying believing this is possible to do on your own.... and then... you hit the moment and it trigger the solution to the problem and finally you win.... important thing is I learned something and would be able to repeat the scenario again and again and again without having to die a single time.

SBR_QuorTek wrote: »

This better you stay in touch about how the mobs react this easier it is to beat them down.... it is not exactly simple minded hack and slash, if you get burned by some of their specials... then you got to look at it another what.. what break the chain... and also the chain always have a weak link.

/sigh

It's not specials that are the problem 95% of the time, other than a few mobs with ridiculously powerful, short cast, uninterruptible abilities. It's insane amounts of white damage. As a medium armour, melee character, I could give a rat's ass about specials, they are easy to avoid. But 400-600 damage per second while blocking PER mob is insane.

If you are extreme spell resistent... it would make sense for an instance to kill the physical NPCs first and vice versa and often even using a combination of both, remember one thing.. it is you who should be in control of your character not the NPC's.... but if for an instance only been group grinding stuff for like half the game, you might encounter quite an amount of issues once having to go solo, learn both ways and master it well, it is the way ahead...

Soloed all the way, didn't have an issue until VR2 with trash mobs wiping me out in 3-4 seconds. I've soloed public group dungeons, world bosses while using a very underpowered build (by choice) because I do not want to be yet another LA+staff FOTM (or should that be year, that rate things are going)

With some heavy content spendt like 30 minutes dying believing this is possible to do on your own.... and then... you hit the moment and it trigger the solution to the problem and finally you win.... important thing is I learned something and would be able to repeat the scenario again and again and again without having to die a single time.

There is no 'magic solution' for melee dps characters when faced with these completely over-tuned trash mobs.

Once again, for the hard=of-understanding - it's not boss mobs! It's seemingly random trash mobs that hit for white damage harder than a boss mobs special attacks and at a far faster rate that is the biggest issue.

SootyTX wrote: »

SBR_QuorTek wrote: »

This better you stay in touch about how the mobs react this easier it is to beat them down.... it is not exactly simple minded hack and slash, if you get burned by some of their specials... then you got to look at it another what.. what break the chain... and also the chain always have a weak link.

/sigh

It's not specials that are the problem 95% of the time, other than a few mobs with ridiculously powerful, short cast, uninterruptible abilities. It's insane amounts of white damage. As a medium armour, melee character, I could give a rat's ass about specials, they are easy to avoid. But 400-600 damage per second while blocking PER mob is insane.

If you are extreme spell resistent... it would make sense for an instance to kill the physical NPCs first and vice versa and often even using a combination of both, remember one thing.. it is you who should be in control of your character not the NPC's.... but if for an instance only been group grinding stuff for like half the game, you might encounter quite an amount of issues once having to go solo, learn both ways and master it well, it is the way ahead...

Soloed all the way, didn't have an issue until VR2 with trash mobs wiping me out in 3-4 seconds. I've soloed public group dungeons, world bosses while using a very underpowered build (by choice) because I do not want to be yet another LA+staff FOTM (or should that be year, that rate things are going)

With some heavy content spendt like 30 minutes dying believing this is possible to do on your own.... and then... you hit the moment and it trigger the solution to the problem and finally you win.... important thing is I learned something and would be able to repeat the scenario again and again and again without having to die a single time.

There is no 'magic solution' for melee dps characters when faced with these completely over-tuned trash mobs.

Once again, for the hard=of-understanding - it's not boss mobs! It's seemingly random trash mobs that hit for white damage harder than a boss mobs special attacks and at a far faster rate that is the biggest issue.

What class are you? I did this as a NB DW/Bow using assassin/siphoning and dw stamina skills and bow + medium armor... with either of the class skills mixed in being hybrid stam/mag.

Soloed all the way to vr12 pretty much, add in certain group content accomplished as well... and bow was mostly only used to solo world bosses.

For the most part went crazy dual wield... tune your ultimate for siphoning when in dual wield, head there... first backstab a mob in the group jumping in with ambush(cMag).. one time power extraction(cMag) to get dps up higher... ultimate soul tether(cULTI)... stuns the mobs + damage and additional dot to one mob... whirlwind blades(sta) from dual wield a couple of times and your day is saved...

Have your second bar set for bow stuff once and a while you get unlucky good reaction pushing mobs away one way or another is a nice stamina feat venom arrow (sta) is good for a ranged interrupt... swallow soul (cMag) some decent magic damage and heals you a bit... crippling grasp (cMag) is nice to temporarely stopping them adding an additional dot... draining shot(sta) push them back with that

Key: (cMag - Class Magic, sta - stamina feat) feats and skills taken off Dual Wield, Bow and Assassination and siphoning

Keep in mind no fancy pansy other stuff some passives from the guilds fighters and naturally everything from medium armor.

I have to add my own voice to this as well. Vet content is getting nuts at VR3. As one person said, every fight is like a tightrope walk; even the slightest mistake and you get severely punished.

Additionally, as another person pointed out, at 1-50, we actually feel like we're getting stronger, but in vet content, it feels like we are getting weaker with every new level.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that 1) some monsters are just pure evil incarnate anyway (harvesters) and 2) the original zones were balanced for about 6 to 7 levels each, past the first zone.

Basically, by the time a player gets to the end of a zone in non Vet content, he or she has 6-7 new stat points to play with, 6-7 levels worth of armor and weapon damage, and 6-7 additional skill points on top of sky shards, quests, and the like.

In the current vet content, the player goes *1* level of armor and *1* level of weapon damage between vet levels. And that's assuming that you actually upgrade every vet level and can afford to lose the sweet set bonuses from DROP ONLY armor. No additional stat points, no 6-7 level's worth of armor, no 6-7 level's worth of weapon damage, no 6-7 level's worth of additional skill points.

And mobs gain health and do even more (!) damage at every VR level.

What the hell, ZOS?

I've actually gone off to play Minecraft and Skyrim again now that my Templar is V3, logging in once or twice a day to continue researching and get crafting materials from my hireling.

I have to admit that it seems exceedingly difficult a lot of the time. I am in my Vet++ content and I end up avoiding many mobs because more than two to a group pretty much guarantees death. I mean, the last area was fairly challenging, occasionally off-puttingly so. I've not ventured far in my Vet++ content because I am waiting on my friend to catch up with me, but if I am to extrapolate from my previous vet content and what I have experienced of trash mobs here I don't know that I'll even be able to do a significant portion of it on my own... and given how barren the areas are it is making me seriously question "why bother?" Which sucks to experience! I was so excited about this game. I still like it, but there's a certain level of masochism that I just do not have within me.

I do think it is worth reconsidering because while some games can cater to a demographic that enjoys stressfully intense difficulty (Binding of Isaac being an example that comes to mind) there is a certain point where it starts to become detrimental to the playerbase - the more that drop out (or start alts, or whatever) the more difficult it gets to those trying to stick it out. Even if I need to L2P, if a significant portion of the players also need to L2P but can't because the difficulty curve is too high and the fun has been sucked out, that's an issue for the game as a whole in the longterm.

Make no mistake, I've had a lot of fun getting where I am, even if some of the time I've been pissy because of a particularly difficult fight, but if what I experienced through the last zones is going to be *even more difficult* (and it certainly seems to be the case) I just won't be able to do it. I'm by no means an uber player, but I guess I'm decently-decent. Not saying I want a cakewalk, but I also don't want to drop a character I've put so much time and effort into.