Official statement of ZOS about gear cap increase

Dagoth_Rac · February 2017

With the way scaling works in this game, what purpose would a gear cap increase make? If they increase gear to CP180 but leave all zones CP160, it completely invalidates all the work of One Tamriel. CP160 zones will be back to empty wastelands. If they increase gear to CP180 and also increase all zones to CP180, it completely invalidates gear cap increase. Your gear got more powerful, but so did every mudcrab, troll, and Trial boss in game. You would have to spend millions on gold or thousands of hours of time farming/grinding just to regain power you lost.

I really feel gear cap increases are pointless now with One Tamriel. When HRC was VR12 and Sanctum was VR14 and VMA was VR16, gear caps made sense. New gear for higher level content. But all content is now same level. Best approach is to to tune content for certain CP levels. With the CP catch-up system, that is tied to CP cap and thus earlier CP become easier and easier to obtain with each increase, there is still time involved in hitting CP600, albeit nowhere near as bad as getting 8 characters to VR16! So a Morrowind Trial tuned for CP630 characters can still be "aspirational" content for most players without explicitly raising gear cap.

Everyone complains about "power creep" of CP system. But it is actually a very good way to make increasingly difficult content without need for the despised gear cap increases of other (worse) MMOs.

Xerton · February 2017

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

With the way scaling works in this game, what purpose would a gear cap increase make? If they increase gear to CP180 but leave all zones CP160, it completely invalidates all the work of One Tamriel. CP160 zones will be back to empty wastelands. If they increase gear to CP180 and also increase all zones to CP180, it completely invalidates gear cap increase. Your gear got more powerful, but so did every mudcrab, troll, and Trial boss in game. You would have to spend millions on gold or thousands of hours of time farming/grinding just to regain power you lost.

I really feel gear cap increases are pointless now with One Tamriel. When HRC was VR12 and Sanctum was VR14 and VMA was VR16, gear caps made sense. New gear for higher level content. But all content is now same level. Best approach is to to tune content for certain CP levels. With the CP catch-up system, that is tied to CP cap and thus earlier CP become easier and easier to obtain with each increase, there is still time involved in hitting CP600, albeit nowhere near as bad as getting 8 characters to VR16! So a Morrowind Trial tuned for CP630 characters can still be "aspirational" content for most players without explicitly raising gear cap.

Everyone complains about "power creep" of CP system. But it is actually a very good way to make increasingly difficult content without need for the despised gear cap increases of other (worse) MMOs.

Katinas · February 2017

mr_wazzabi wrote: »

@Alcast needed 9 months of grinding vmaw to get sharpened moondancer swords for his templar. Do you have any idea how pissed off we would be to go through that kind of rng again? What about those players that needed 500 runs of vma to get the sharpened inferno staff?

Who cares how long it took Lolcast to grind a particular item of a particular trait. You can loot it on first attempt or it can take you seven times longer than it took him.
My point is if there is a cap increase then Morrowind is an almost perfect scenario of using the opportunity and increasing the cap with the launch of Morrowind. Not during some future update like a Dungeon Pack, or a regular maintenance update, or a regular sized DLC launch. Morrowind update is absolutely massive, if not then - when?

Tommy_The_Gun · February 2017

In other mmos this gear cap increase works because it is far easier to get gear there. And also - zones are scaled to different levels (just like ESO before One Tamriel update). When new content appears - the whole new zone is higher level, thus items you will find there will also be higher level.

But is ESO, after One Tamriel all zones are scaled to the same level. And if you are level 3 you can still go to any zone with now problem (because you are scaled - up to the zone you are in). And items you find are completely dependable of your character level (with CP 160 being current cap).

psychotic13 · February 2017

Katinas wrote: »

mr_wazzabi wrote: »

@Alcast needed 9 months of grinding vmaw to get sharpened moondancer swords for his templar. Do you have any idea how pissed off we would be to go through that kind of rng again? What about those players that needed 500 runs of vma to get the sharpened inferno staff?

Who cares how long it took Lolcast to grind a particular item of a particular trait. You can loot it on first attempt or it can take you seven times longer than it took him.
My point is if there is a cap increase then Morrowind is an almost perfect scenario of using the opportunity and increasing the cap with the launch of Morrowind. Not during some future update like a Dungeon Pack, or a regular maintenance update, or a regular sized DLC launch. Morrowind update is absolutely massive, if not then - when?

Never! Now shut up saying it's a good idea

Tyrion87 · February 2017

Katinas wrote: »

mr_wazzabi wrote: »

@Alcast needed 9 months of grinding vmaw to get sharpened moondancer swords for his templar. Do you have any idea how pissed off we would be to go through that kind of rng again? What about those players that needed 500 runs of vma to get the sharpened inferno staff?

Who cares how long it took Lolcast to grind a particular item of a particular trait. You can loot it on first attempt or it can take you seven times longer than it took him.
My point is if there is a cap increase then Morrowind is an almost perfect scenario of using the opportunity and increasing the cap with the launch of Morrowind. Not during some future update like a Dungeon Pack, or a regular maintenance update, or a regular sized DLC launch. Morrowind update is absolutely massive, if not then - when?

NEVER.

magictucktuck · February 2017

I feel like no ones played an MMO before.. I mean grindings not my favorite thing but i fully expected it coming into the game.

Pangnirtung · February 2017

The game is clearly being aimed at newer players.

Easier to get to vet level. Diminishing XP for those above the cap. Lowered research times.

For those of us who have been in game since day one, the idea of outfitting all my max xp characters to new/higher levels is disheartening.

I already cancelled my monthly sub when I found out that the expansion will not be a DLC but is like playing for a complete game. This is another reason why I am becoming less and less interested in the grind the game is becoming for long time players.

The Uninvited · February 2017

Junipus wrote: »

Can I have everyone's stuff?

Will use the gold to buy all the new scaled gear or pay others to farm it

You mean paying for Bind On Pickup gear?

mr_wazzabi · February 2017

Katinas wrote: »

mr_wazzabi wrote: »

@Alcast needed 9 months of grinding vmaw to get sharpened moondancer swords for his templar. Do you have any idea how pissed off we would be to go through that kind of rng again? What about those players that needed 500 runs of vma to get the sharpened inferno staff?

Who cares how long it took Lolcast to grind a particular item of a particular trait. You can loot it on first attempt or it can take you seven times longer than it took him.
My point is if there is a cap increase then Morrowind is an almost perfect scenario of using the opportunity and increasing the cap with the launch of Morrowind. Not during some future update like a Dungeon Pack, or a regular maintenance update, or a regular sized DLC launch. Morrowind update is absolutely massive, if not then - when?

How about they NEVER increase the gear cap? Majority of players can get behind that. You don't need to advocate and defend something that will cause pain and frustration.

timidobserver · February 2017

I'd be fine with it as long as the new DLC has weapons that beat out VMA weapons. I am not interested in farming VMA again.

MLGProPlayer · February 2017

vyndral13preub18_ESO wrote: »

Malamar1229 wrote: »

Nermy wrote: »

Gear cap rises come to any MMO

I want to highlight this sentence in the quote and point out the following:

1) many of us came here because this game was unlike other MMOs
2) Some of us prefer an MMO without the gear grund at every expac (star wars galaxies pulled it off and was the best MMO to date)

Guild Wars 2 is another game that doesnt do the gear grind. Heck they had a new expansion and i didnt even have to change my gear.

GW2, like ESO, has LEVEL SCALING. This means that a gear cap increase is 100% pointless.

Zvorgin · February 2017

Gear should be able to be crafted up to the new max level. It's the grind for traits that sucks.

Qbiken · February 2017

Xerton wrote: »

From the german forum section:

ZOS_KaiSchober wrote: »

Gerne noch einmal: Details gibt es, wenn sie feststehen.

Jeder hier ist sich bewusst, wie aufwändig die Jagd gerade nach der richtigen Waffe mit der richtigen Eigenschaft ist, und auch wieviel goldene Aufwerter verbraucht werden. Falls wir das Gegenstandscap erhöhen sollten, geschieht das nicht leichtfertig, um all eure Mühen zu entwerten.

One Tamriel gilt für ganz Tamriel, incl. Vvardenfell. Monster haben überall die gleiche Stufe, Spieler werden überall entsprechend angehoben.

In english:

Once again: Details will be published when we have them.

Everyone here is aware of how hard it is to get those weapons in the perfect trait and how many golden tempers have to be used.
In case we were to increase the gearcap, it would not happen thoughtless, to make all your efforts meaningless.

One Tamriel applies to whole Tamriel, including Vvardenfell. Monsters have the same level everywhere, players are being adjustet accordingly.

So bottom line: A new gearcap will be happening, they just don't want to kill the mood right now

That´s a very wierd conclusion to make. He doesn´t say that gearcap will increase. Note "IN CASE WE WERE TO RAISE GEARCAP". This isn´t the same thing as "we will raise gearcap".

OtarTheMad · February 2017

I understand people's saltiness if they raised the level cap. All the gear I made and grinded is now invalid and that is frustrating especially since some were dungeon sets. However can we all sit here and say that we are surprised by the cap increase? It was bound to happen eventually. Good news is CP160 gear will be cheaper to make if they increase it lol but CP180 gear will probably be high.

Edit- Of course if they announced the level cap increase now Guild Stores would certainly take a HUGE hit. All the gear that is top level now for sale (IE- Spinner, Spriggan, Black Rose etc) will be almost worthless.

Illurian · February 2017

To all the people complaining about sitting on the same set of gear, what if instead of increasing the cp cap, they added another tier of gear strength? Legendary (Yellow) -> Mythical (Pink) or something like that. You still get your sense of upgrading your gear, but without the pointless RNG grind.

Gandrhulf_Harbard · February 2017

As @Dagoth_Rac has pointed out CP cap increase makes no sense with 1T.

The only way a change to current end-game gearing makes sense is if they go with some kind horizontal progression.

That could be as simple as allowing us to earn some kind of unlock to add a second trait.
It could be something like Jewelcrafting was in WoW and lets us add a gem to an existing item to give it new/improved properties.
It could even be some form a Legendary Item like LOTRO has reasonably successfully managed and WoW messed up.

But a simple increase on CP cap makes no sense, it would undo EVERYTHING that was achieved with One Tamriel.

All The Best

OtarTheMad · February 2017

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

As @Dagoth_Rac has pointed out CP cap increase makes no sense with 1T.

The only way a change to current end-game gearing makes sense is if they go with some kind horizontal progression.

That could be as simple as allowing us to earn some kind of unlock to add a second trait.
It could be something like Jewelcrafting was in WoW and lets us add a gem to an existing item to give it new/improved properties.
It could even be some form a Legendary Item like LOTRO has reasonably successfully managed and WoW messed up.

But a simple increase on CP cap makes no sense, it would undo EVERYTHING that was achieved with One Tamriel.

All The Best

While I do agree with you I also have to point out that this game has almost always been a grind for gear when they increased level, ever since original launch. My guess is all zones will be now CP180.

Kind of funny though for a company who went/goes so hardcore over grinding spots to have a game that is almost 100% reliant on grinding to get gear. It would make more sense to leave the cap where it is and do something close to what you mentioned so that players can still just sit back and enjoy the game and their finished characters but that has never been ZOS' style.

MLGProPlayer · February 2017

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

As @Dagoth_Rac has pointed out CP cap increase makes no sense with 1T.

The only way a change to current end-game gearing makes sense is if they go with some kind horizontal progression.

That could be as simple as allowing us to earn some kind of unlock to add a second trait.
It could be something like Jewelcrafting was in WoW and lets us add a gem to an existing item to give it new/improved properties.
It could even be some form a Legendary Item like LOTRO has reasonably successfully managed and WoW messed up.

But a simple increase on CP cap makes no sense, it would undo EVERYTHING that was achieved with One Tamriel.

All The Best

While I do agree with you I also have to point out that this game has almost always been a grind for gear when they increased level, ever since original launch. My guess is all zones will be now CP180.

Kind of funny though for a company who went/goes so hardcore over grinding spots to have a game that is almost 100% reliant on grinding to get gear. It would make more sense to leave the cap where it is and do something close to what you mentioned so that players can still just sit back and enjoy the game and their finished characters but that has never been ZOS' style.

Back when the caps were increased:

- There was no scaling
- All the best gear was craftable, meaning no grind needed to re-gear (there were no vMA weapons and monster sets were not mandatory)

It's a totally different game now.

Most BiS gear is farmed in dungeons and trials. Monster gear is mandatory. vMA weapons are mandatory. Whereas it might have taken a few weeks to re-gear back in the day when they increased VR caps, it would take MONTHS to re-gear now.

ZOS_GinaBruno · February 2017

To clarify, we do not plan on raising the gear cap when Morrowind launches in June. We’ll let you know when we plan to raise the gear cap in the future, but it won’t be in Homestead or Morrowind.

Illurian · February 2017

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

To clarify, we do not plan on raising the gear cap when Morrowind launches in June. We’ll let you know when we plan to raise the gear cap in the future, but it won’t be in Homestead or Morrowind.

PHEW! Thanks for calming the storm, @ZOS_GinaBruno!

Juhasow · February 2017

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

To clarify, we do not plan on raising the gear cap when Morrowind launches in June. We’ll let you know when we plan to raise the gear cap in the future, but it won’t be in Homestead or Morrowind.

Tbh I am even little dissapointed.

mr_wazzabi · February 2017

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

To clarify, we do not plan on raising the gear cap when Morrowind launches in June. We’ll let you know when we plan to raise the gear cap in the future, but it won’t be in Homestead or Morrowind.

@ZOS_GinaBruno that's a sigh of relief, but you did say "WHEN we plan to raise the gear cap in the future"

This concerns me. Did you really mean "WHEN" or was it "IF"?

Autolycus · February 2017

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

With the way scaling works in this game, what purpose would a gear cap increase make? If they increase gear to CP180 but leave all zones CP160, it completely invalidates all the work of One Tamriel. CP160 zones will be back to empty wastelands. If they increase gear to CP180 and also increase all zones to CP180, it completely invalidates gear cap increase. Your gear got more powerful, but so did every mudcrab, troll, and Trial boss in game. You would have to spend millions on gold or thousands of hours of time farming/grinding just to regain power you lost.

I really feel gear cap increases are pointless now with One Tamriel. When HRC was VR12 and Sanctum was VR14 and VMA was VR16, gear caps made sense. New gear for higher level content. But all content is now same level. Best approach is to to tune content for certain CP levels. With the CP catch-up system, that is tied to CP cap and thus earlier CP become easier and easier to obtain with each increase, there is still time involved in hitting CP600, albeit nowhere near as bad as getting 8 characters to VR16! So a Morrowind Trial tuned for CP630 characters can still be "aspirational" content for most players without explicitly raising gear cap.

Everyone complains about "power creep" of CP system. But it is actually a very good way to make increasingly difficult content without need for the despised gear cap increases of other (worse) MMOs.

Could not have said it better myself, Rac.

Dracane · February 2017

I don't care for effort. IF you raise the level cap, then please bring ALL gear up to date.
Effort might be frustrating to some (for whatever reason) but it's more frustrating to see your beloved sets become unrelevant and underpowered.

Please in any case, level up all gear as you increase the level cap. This helps the economy. Let them cry, but in the end, everyone will be happy. MMOs are known for constant advancing, still stand is not healthy.

MLGProPlayer · February 2017

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

To clarify, we do not plan on raising the gear cap when Morrowind launches in June. We’ll let you know when we plan to raise the gear cap in the future, but it won’t be in Homestead or Morrowind.

Thanks for the clarification.

But does that mean we are getting an increase for sure at some point? Or did you mean "if we plan to raise the cap".

Minalan · February 2017

Nermy wrote: »

Gear cap rises come to any MMO, it's the way of things but for those of us who have just sorted out our gear and builds, only to have to go through the whole process again, it can very disheartening. Not to mention expensive.

No other MMO I have ever played has this level of miserable grind, I hope they do something to fix it.

Trait respec has to happen. Period.

Training and prosperous needs to leave the end game loot table.

BigBragg · February 2017

Redacted

NewBlacksmurf · February 2017

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

To clarify, we do not plan on raising the gear cap when Morrowind launches in June. We’ll let you know when we plan to raise the gear cap in the future, but it won’t be in Homestead or Morrowind.

Well dang so you're going to raise it

@ZOS_GinaBruno
Can you at least remove the cpstuff if you're going to raise it so that VR is completely removed?

JamieAubrey · February 2017

And this is why i DONT gold my gear, only weapons, plus I'm not a hardcore farmer so I don't have 200+ gold items to spare