Basic Concept: Adding Extra Challenge

There regular request on the official forums for more challenge in PvE content, particularly in the open world and their open instances. This is difficult, as there are experienced players and new ones, there are people with top level gear and builds and those in quest reward and mob drop mishmash, those with physical and neurological limitations to their game play and those without, and so on.

The lead developers have stated that they want more challenging play to be optional, so they lock it behind privately instanced content.

Well, most of it.

There are dolmens and their equivalents and world bosses that offer varying increases of challenge compared to one or three mobs here and there. Not nearly as much challenge, though, as veteran hardmode DLC dungeons and trials and DLC group/solo arenas. Here I'm talking about the difficulty or challenge of one type of content relative to other types of content. Not what individual player's personally consider to be challenging.

So how could extra challenge be added while also making it optional? I've posted and commented about this on the official forums, but to boil it down there are a few options:

1. add extra private areas in open instances
2. add zones or sections of zones that are harder
3. add instancing for those who opt into harder content
4. add a self-chosen set of debuffs

The first two are more likely (not likely, *more* likely by comparison), the latter two are not.

Why?

Look at #3 and keep in mind ZOS doesn't like separating people by instance unless necessary. If players are off in their own harder instance, fewer people are in the regular instance chatting, meeting each other, playing together, helping each other, etc. And if there aren't enough players using the harder instance to make that kind of difference, why bother spending developer resources on it?

As for #4, it isn't the same as "not using your Champion Points" from a roleplay perspective. You are taking on some kind of challenge as per a quest/reward system in the game tied to a story. You can choose to activate it to get a harder challenge and whatever comes with it so it isn't forced on anyone. But, still, you are just asking ZOS to make you weaker and they probably won't see a value for their time in that.

This doesn't mean that they will see sufficient value in #1 and #2, but they offer a little more. They are still optional and they fit the a pattern we already see in the game. Specific suggestions for them will be offered in other posts.