I do want to make another anecdotal observation I've had in the weeks since U46's release.

I run content with two main types of players - the sweaty high-end DLC trial HM crowd, and the much more casual social guild running standard vets and dipping their toes into some dungeon HMs.

As to subclassing: the high-end players all go directly into it and build to the meta because their goal is to get content done faster. The other group mostly has kept their builds the same; either they like their characters the way they are, or they built based on a character lore, or whatever.

What I've seen is that the damage of the high-end (who do subclass, and specifically go for the meta) has exponentially increased. The more casual end... has mostly gone down. They're not getting to the damage level they had even before Subclassing was a thing due to individual line nerfs, and their goal is not to be forced to Subclass for personal reasons, which means their efficacy has backslid.

This means the gap between the mid-level and high-level players is only increasing. Sure, you have some from the mid-level who are trying to get into the high end by picking "the right" lines, but for anyone who really wants to "play the way you want," they're barely able to be at the point they were at before the patch.

I also want to address the "buff, don't nerf" idea. Yes, nerfs are never fun, and U35 was a major problem because of all the nerfs (which again the high-end players quickly bounced back from, but the mid-level players were kneecapped and struggled to build back up from there). However, a power infusion of over 50% is ridiculous. It should simply not be possible for some of the apex-tier strategies to be possible, like how they can skip a majority of HM mechanics just by doing more damage.

I don't know how possible it is for ZOS to specifically "raise the floor and lower the ceiling," since that's been the stated goal every time and every time it only seems to do the opposite. But the levels of damage right now are nothing short of ridiculous. We already know that barely any players anymore have ever even seen Lunar in MoL, and now we're going to be getting to a point where trials like vDSR are like "Taleria bridges? What's that?"

Yes, I'm well aware that I can imagine whatever I choose.

My point, which maybe I should have spelt out more clearly instead of wrapping it in a little RP, is that ZOS goes to the trouble to not only place these npcs in the world, but also give them voice acted dialogue. Yet, they don't allow us to interact with them in the world other than pick pocketing or murder.

I think it would be nice if we could interact with a little kindness, instead of the cruelty of robbing or murdering the poor.

SkaiFaith wrote: »

For years we've had huge changes every 3 months - no, thanks.
The playerbase was tired and made it clear. Devs reacted accordingly and the past 2 years have been easier on us.
Personally I don't want to come back to dramatic changes every 3 months, I very much prefer as it is now.

The problem is that hardly anyone asked for the huge changes that they used to make every 3 months. I don't think people would mind good changes. It's unfortunate that they only stopped making these rapid changes once the game was in a pretty rough state. Now that serious change is desperately needed, we don't get it.

If they decided to stop making dramatic and rapid changes around early 2017, I don't think there would be many complaints. After Homestead, all they really needed to do was tone down heavy armor and procs a bit more than they already did that patch. Instead, they went way off the rails out of nowhere.

argyro wrote: »

As a guild leader, a topic that I see come up fairly often is how certain guilds will park characters at wayshrines in busy cities and spam guild invites to anyone nearby with an empty slot. Ignoring them only goes so far as they turn up on another new account later, and it seems to be multiple iterations of the same main guild. This is an ongoing problem, and previously the only advice given was to ask them to stop and then report if they continue, otherwise they are technically not breaking any rules.

We already have auto-decline settings for things like duels and ToT matches. Adding a setting which allows players to toggle receiving guild invites on and off wouldn’t be a perfect fix, but it would definitely help alleviate some of this issue.

When the game was still young, I guess it really made sense to be a little more assertive in promoting your Guild, however by this time, we have all the major Guilds that 'made it' and smaller guilds that are little more than personal assets for their creator.

That said, I'm entirely familiar with the Guild we are most likely referring to and so, they already have like 2 or 3 other chapters with good population (as far as I know). It's time to be able to opt-out of these messages however I wonder, isn't it also time for some other changes as well? Like how expensive the weekly Kiosk rentals can be and availability?

Rittings wrote: »

Okay, so I've had several guildies test this, and had my wife test it also. Not having the Botanist achievement on a character is seemingly the factor between getting 6 and 12 pulls on alchemy nodes.

100% of all pulls without that achievement have come back as only getting 4 or 8 from an alchemy survey node... whilst having the trait on a character has resulted in lots of 6 and 12s. For sure, go test for yourself and come back and show me the results

You can't have the Botanist achievement on a character. It's account wide, so your whole account has it or is missing it. You proved this achievement was not a factor when you noted that you had two different characters on the same account experience different things with 4 vs 6. The testing on the PTS confirmed that.

Trait knowledge is also not a factor, as shown in the screenshots I posted above from the PTS.

In further testing, the issue is reproducible on the PTS, but not with either of the parameters you identified.

On a fresh template character without any alchemy trait knowledge (and without Botanist on the account, as shown), I got 6s and 12s no problem. That character by nature has level 50 in alchemy and came with all the alchemy passives filled. I tested it as such.

When I passed alchemy surveys to my level 6 character, who had never unlocked Alchemy at all, they only got 4s for 3 surveys in a row.

So there is something that seems to unlock the ability impact the chance to get 6, but trait knowledge and Botanist are not it.

I will continue to test to see if I can figure out what the unlock is.

Update: Back on the template character I used to test, on whom I got 6x and 12x no problem in my previous post, I removed all the alchemy passives (except 1/8 in proficiency, which cannot be removed).

Three surveys, all 4x and 8x.

Something in the alchemy skill point passives seems to be affecting the drop rate for 6x/12x.

Update 2: Maxing all the passives except the first (Proficiency), I still got only 4x and 8x from three surveys.

Update 3: At 7/8 Proficiency, I was able to draw 6x and 12x, but the rate may well be lower than at 8/8 Proficiency. Three surveys resulted in only 3 of 18 nodes producing 6x or 12x.

Based on this, I'm thinking that the drop chance of 6x/12x may increase with skill points invested in Solvent Proficiency, until it reaches the equal chances between 4x/8x and 6x/12x at 8/8 in Proficiency. It will take further testing to know better.

At 60 nodes (10 surveys) with 7/8 Proficiency, I have gotten 6x or 12x on only 12 of those pulls (20%). (ETA: 22 of 102 nodes now, or 21.6%.) That's too low a number to know for sure what the actual drop chance is, but it does at least seem it's lower than the 50% chance at 8/8 Proficiency.

I think the best idea would be for ZOS to give away a hero armor outfit for getting each race to level 160, when the toon of that race reached CP160.

ZOS really misses a lot of good PR by not giving away much of anything at all as in game achievements.

During this same time frame last evening/afternoon a former AD player on EP was bragging about being a spy.

Are they? I don't know. But I do know they said they were in a fashion daring us to do something about it....as if there is anything we can do.

PC NA Greyhost