tektight: "Players do want better rewards from this system". Tough sh*t. You said you wanted a more challenging system. Guess what. That IS your reward. They shouldn't give anything other than XP for overland if you ask me. All the players begging for challenge are getting it but now they want more. Then more, then more. They should never implement better rewards for more challenging content unless it's a color difference. You create too much FOMO and elitism otherwise.

Elixer12-Wompi: I believe overland difficulty is meant for solo adventuring, than on the multiplayer aspect.

TRMS2001: I’m happy asf with the new team and changes. They’re finally listening to what we want

SkyrimBeast: Imagine how fast it will be to level up a toon in Alik'r Desert on Vestige difficulty

stalarionjagarn188: More gold and more exp is just the bare logical minimum. But no additional rewerd is not a good idea.

chris2236: I just came back to eso from a long hiatus seems to me eso players are never happy. For as long as i can remember eso players wanted spell crafting and harder overland content we seemed to get that with scribing and multiclassing but now seems like players do not like that anymore?? And now they are adding harder overland content but its not good enough?? If they do instanced versions of the game the world will feel like world of warcraft where you never see anyone out in the world but maybe some players like that. Maybe if/when crossplay comes along that will boost numbers and it wont feel like that anymore idk.

Gade_Thrash: I do wish for separate instances. But I don't think there should be different rewards. Being able to do a zone story and have stakes feel higher is reward enough for a lot of people I bet.

hadoken95: Wonder if they'll expand upon that with achievements and such. This definitely puts people's money where their mouths have been about wanting a harder game though lol

buffaloman9671: Make the bosses tougher. Not the characters weaker.

prdamico: What if you are travelling in a group of 4 ppl and all 4 ppl have different difficulty ????

Joseph-wh5of: There is no problem here, you're just trying to create some sort of conflict.

This is the best option they could have made. Every individual player can select how much difficulty they want. From none to the most difficult and no players are separated, meaning that people don't have to create whole new characters to play with their friends or be separated by different instances.

michaelreid5307: They've looked at how LOTRO implemented their difficulty system.

jordannguyen661: I was really hoping for more attacks and mechanics on all adds in overland difficult. It would make the game more immersive if youre forced to think and fight rather than stomping every add you see, instead of just adjusting dmg and health values.

individual116: I wish we were separated instead of all being together. Just give us 2 difficulties, easy and vet. Let the vets play together

galenkaa: I was kind of hoping to reduce the difficulty in expansion areas to make up for the lack of players in those areas

gnr2396: Other mmos do this style with increased difficulty and it seems to work pretty well. Havent really heard anything about exploits in those although it might happen and not sure. Having separate instances is a big mistake and i find it surprising you dont think so

mattywells: So broken you theoretically could set yourself to Vestige, run into a zone like Spell Scar where most people are running around at a base difficulty and milk that xp/gold by just LAing a boss while running around with the ball group. I really think we should be getting more XP for vet dungeons.

LurnWell: We wanted harder difficulty to complete the content we were completing with little effort. That was the only reward we originally asked for. Now it's about tiers, who's with us, and rewards for effort. We ESO players are just used to whining.

Akeem2real96: I don’t see many people playing vestige difficulty

Caitlycan: I can see what they we're going for, but yeah this isn't it. Definitly reckon they should just add Veteran zone instances, that way griefing & exploiting wouldn't be nearly as much of a concern, and there would be a lot more freedom with what they can do with it; it'll fit with the rest of the games difficulty scaling. But I can understand why they want to keep it in the same zones, even splitting the player base into Normal & Veteran means to new & current players the game is going to look way more dead due to only seeing half the player base in an area you'd expect to see them (like in towns), which obviously isn't going to do Zos any favours. As you (kinda?) mentioned a solution could be that towns are seperate from this, but that would theoretically require them to be their own zone/instance to actually make work, which means more zone travel loading and splitting up the zones in ways that was never intended. I definitly think there is a solution here, & I believe ZoS are capable of implementing it, but it's definitly going to have it's own problems & I can see why they went with this option first.

theredmenace6322: I’ve never been the kind of gamer to play on different difficulties. Normal has always been my go to. Not to hard but not to easy either. Perfectly balanced as all things should be. Realistically though I’m really hoping it stays optional cuz I personally never asked for a harder experience.

Adz2: Choosing less optimal gear would pretty much have the same effect in terms of "difficulty", I think it's not going to work, especially when you can mix people with different difficulty levels in the same content.

They should introduce a hardcore mode though that deletes characters that die

111Tob111: I'm shocked that the only Thing they came up with is manipulating the DMG, health and exp Numbers. This is the laziest and Most Boring way to make Overland more challenging.

joeking5179: Overland bosses can one shot most players. I don’t see these difficulty tiers being popular or widely used. Misstep from ZOS.

xChinobi: This is for the whole world while doing quests and such right? Reason I never keep playing is everything dies so quick nothing feels strong in the game

cori7327: A good way to insure diff exp for diff lvl is basiclly making delves and public dung instances meaning overland is as it is zone where wb is and all delves and public dung are diff instances off diff that way any player on lowest lvl cant enter vestige diff instance and ruin your exp or troll you and there will be trolling if all in same instance

Jan 26 2026

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