Those who so-called "try to learn everything on their own through their unique playstyle (which includes the build)" often have very low DPS, even being considered non-DPS in the log. These same people are often the least willing to improve.
Today, I participated in a VOC match where the highest DPS was 22%, and guess what the lowest? 1.83%. Yes, a DPS player only dealt 1.83% damage (about 8,000 damage) in the VOC, yet they believed their build was good enough and refused to change.

And both players were non-pure classes: one used Arc (Herald of the Tome), NB (Assassin), and Sorc (Storm), while the other used Templ (Aedric Spear), Warden (Animal Companions), and Sorc (Dark Magic).

This is a common problem in PvE right now: players with low DPS refuse to change and become a burden to the team. However, these same players are often the ones who report to ZOS that a particular skill line is good enough and doesn't need buffs, even though experienced players might argue the opposite. One reason the skill lines are so unbalanced right now is precisely because of this toxic feedback.

The data doesn't lie. If the ZOS developers had spent more time studying the logs and actually running mid-level raid trials with different builds, they would have seen just how unbalanced the skill lines are right now.

ZOS has made two things about console transfers quite clear multiple times:

1. Console Transfers are not a thing and never will be. The one they did was a one-time only thing because the receiving servers were empty.
2. Crossplay is in the works, but it's early in the process so we have no details on what that will entail.

The point is to win the fight, right? So if people can skip a mechanic and still win they're going to because usually that gets them to the point of winning the fight faster, and winning the fight was the point.

Group finder was released way before MS bought them and the lay offs. The thing has always been buggy. It is a disgrace that ZoS can't make it work properly after all these years.

This is giving me bad memories of the first year of Guild Wars 2. Although that was free updates so at least no one was paying for stuff that was removed. Also they only did a one-time-only event once, because it went so badly they redesigned the format for all future releases to ensure each part would stay for at least a month so people could actually play it.

I suppose you could say it succeeded in "making gaming history" in the sense that that fans were required to step in and fill the gaping hole it left in the story, so there were loads of YouTube videos explaining what was missing, but I don't think anyone considered that a good thing (except maybe some of the people making the video who got free traffic to their channels).

But the only response you'd ever get to "I was there" was some version of "Oh so I can't play it? That sucks." No one cares that someone else logged into a game on a specific week, they care that part of their game is missing or "broken" and not going to be "fixed".

Maybe ESO will be the game that finally gets it right, but GW2 wasn't the first to try it or the only one doing it at the time and as far as I know the end result is always that it becomes a reason to avoid buying or returning to the game because it's broken and incomplete and you'll never be able to play it all anyway.

I have a question: why do so many veteran players avoid doing mechanics? For example; kiting in vRG, handling tombs or portals in vSS, taking portals in vSE, doing interrupts or managing reefs in vDSR... you name it. I see this all the time, and I’m sure you do too. Why do veteran players always try to avoid mechanics? Is it just to prevent losing DPS? lol

And what about reviving other players? Same story, right? Because when you’re rezzing, you’re not parsing.

This brings me back to an old argument I’ve had for a long time: if most players intentionally skip mechanics just to protect their parse, how exactly is DPS sharing good for the game? It already fuels toxicity and gatekeeping and now it’s encouraging people to ignore mechanics too.

There’s a lot to debate about features like DPS sharing, Hodor Reflex, and logs, but I think the core issue is simple: why do so many players care more about their numbers than about actually playing the fight properly?

edit:

I’m not talking about skipping mechanics. I’m talking about players who simply don’t want to do them.

1. vRG: No one wants to kite.
2. vDSR: No one wants to handle interrupts or reefs.
3. vSS: No one wants to take T1 or T2.
4. vSE: No one wants to go into portals to kill the ghosts.
5. you name it...

I’m not talking about skipping T2&T3 tomb when the DPS is high, that makes sense sometimes.
I’m talking about skipping T1, T2, Reefs, portals in vCR and other necessary mechanics even when they’re required. The same goes for every other trial.

Subclassing is the worst feature to be added into this game. Best case scenario is they "revamp" it and put some heavy restrictions on it. Or they can dodge having to mess with the actual lines of coding behind that and disrupting people's builds/armory(hasn't stopped them before though!) by adding some unique cp slottable or baked-in passives that gain % bonuses for each base class line you maintain.

Worst-case scenario they just keep trying to balance each skill-line as itself. Eventually the game will achieve true homeostasis, how exciting /s!

tomofhyrule wrote: »

As for the “why favor burning through?” question, the simple answer is that it’s easier. Something that a lot of new players (or even experienced players who only DPS) don’t know is that lower DPS is exponentially harder on the supports. They know you can run nFGI with fake tanks and fake healers, and don’t understand that support roles are extremely necessary in higher-level content, and are incredibly stressful. In a lot of cases, a DPS dying means someone needs to stop and rez them, while a support dying will lead to panic and often to a group wipe. And the longer a fight goes on, the more of a chance there is to make that one tiny mistake.

It doesn't help that there's a pretty hard wall for tanks especially that kicks in shortly after vet base games, where it goes from everything being pretty easy even on vet to "dead if you stand in the wrong place for two seconds in a row" with basically no ramp up.

No, really. It looks like the pumpkin is pooping.