Official Discussion Thread for "The Road Ahead – June 4th"

LilMcGinley

Ultimate spamming is a problem in PvP. We’ll address it on an ongoing basis.

How else is a group of 8 supposed to kill a zerg of 30+?? This only HELPS zergs when they need to be broken up.

Not all PvPers want to hold hands with 150 of their faction mates.

ferzalrwb17_ESO

Inco wrote: »

NB's are a tad more happy

Couldn't be further from the truth. NB's are angrier than ever with broken promises and more nerfs, not improvements, from these clowns. NBs and Templars will be nowhere to be found in ESO next month. Soon DKs will be nerfed out of the game and they'll have the sorcerer-only game they always wanted to release (obviously).

Garwulf

"tweaking them until they are in line with the survivability of the other classes" making them Dragon wimps....

If you are continually going to be screwing with the Character Stats then you need to give us a way of recasting our character as another class whilst keeping current Level. I for one am not going to be bothered working hard to get to VR level to find my dragon Knight is essentially not a Dragon Knight anymore.

Cody

Heck yeah. Im excited for all of this. I myself am especially excited about being able to pick up weapons you find laying around and using them, something I have felt disappointed to not be able to do. Im looking forward to the Thieves guild and the dark brotherhood(hope you guys did not forget about it:/). My NB stealth character needs a place to "fit in" so to speak(if you know what I mean) I am also looking forward to what will be happening in the next round of PvP campaigns. Hopefully the balance will be MUCH better, and the special rules you guys talk about, sound interesting. I am happy to know yall are working on Class balance. As long as you guys are fixing it, no matter fast or slow, that's cool. Cant wait to see what happens this summer.

DonKiller

thoto.harrisub17_ESO wrote: »

The actual PvP is awesome, the most imersive PvP i ever played.

The most bug abused?

thoto.harrisub17_ESO wrote: »

But i guess it needs a Sparring system, or arenas (solo, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4).

this.

kasain

Some people said they were angry no fixes for bots. Buf remember most mmos wo t say in public what they will do to control them.

ShedsHisTail

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Inco wrote: »

NB's are a tad more happy

Couldn't be further from the truth. NB's are angrier than ever with broken promises and more nerfs, not improvements, from these clowns. NBs and Templars will be nowhere to be found in ESO next month. Soon DKs will be nerfed out of the game and they'll have the sorcerer-only game they always wanted to release (obviously).

I'm not "angrier than ever". Hell, I'm not even "angrier than yesterday" or last week.

I acknowledge that some mechanics are still in need of fixing, but my preferred character is still completely playable and I still play him.

Might want to just try speaking for yourself. You'll appear less foolish.

xrist04

There's nothing in this article that addresses the blatant cheating and exploitation of bugs in the game.

GTech_1

irre_greg wrote: »

... As a side note, I've always disagreed with the concept of being over leveled. Lower level monsters give lower level loot and experience. That's the check and balance. 5 levels is too small a spread. ...

I absolutely agree.
Increase the "eligible for loot" level range, or slow down the 1-50 leveling as a whole.

My personal experiences:
I completed the original starter islands (Bleakrock, etc.) with my 2 characters.
I did them as soon as they were "originally intended", at level 3 or 4.
Unfortunately, due to the overly tight "5 level loot range" stuff, I have regretted it ever since. My crafting skills have also suffered.
I used to try to complete an entire zone before I moved on, just so I could "get the whole story". Regrettably, I had to stop "getting the whole story".

Here's why:
1) My character was ALWAYS 5 levels higher than the zone intended ... by the time I was 1/2 way through the zone.
2) I rarely saw a gear piece drop that was an upgrade for my character.
3) I had to craft nearly everything with my Very limited materials. (Very few drops = very few items to break for materials)

IMO, this is a very unfortunate side effect caused by the changes made at the end of the Beta that increased the leveling speed. The Pre-launch modifications to the "starting experience" also share in the blame.

TL;DR: In order to get consistent loot while leveling (and an easier time leveling your crafting skills) do not complete the "starter islands" ... and make sure you skip about 1/2 of the content as you level.

Maverick827

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Inco wrote: »

NB's are a tad more happy

Couldn't be further from the truth. NB's are angrier than ever with broken promises and more nerfs, not improvements, from these clowns. NBs and Templars will be nowhere to be found in ESO next month. Soon DKs will be nerfed out of the game and they'll have the sorcerer-only game they always wanted to release (obviously).

I'm not "angrier than ever". Hell, I'm not even "angrier than yesterday" or last week.

I acknowledge that some mechanics are still in need of fixing, but my preferred character is still completely playable and I still play him.

Might want to just try speaking for yourself. You'll appear less foolish.

Just because you're fine being a doormat doesn't mean that others aren't justified in being upset with nerfs instead of buffs to Nightblades.

GTech_1

Logan9a wrote: »

There was some MMO I played (don't remember which) that had 'mentoring'. You could set your level down and thus be able to adventure with your buddies. It scaled you back though you were a fairly powerful lower level guy. In MMO's it is important to be able to adventure with your buddies and that is one of the weaknesses of this game. If you've already completed a quest and brought peace to the area, you are not even able to see the monsters and help your buddy on the quest.

Rather than scaling up the dungeons, I'd rather be able to scale down my character.

I have thought long and hard about a "mentoring system" as well. I believe the game you are referring to that had it was EverQuest.

Brainstorming:
ZOS *may* already have all of the building blocks in place for this.
1) Everything in the game scales with level, which is key here.
2) The PvP system in Cyrodiil can "upscale" a character from level 10 to 50, so it should be able to be used in reverse as well.

Possibility:
Use this system to "down-level" our characters while we are with our buddies.
We would still have our skill points allocated, so we would still be rather powerful at those lower levels, but our gear, enchants, abilities, etc (but Not gear models) would be down-leveled with us.
This would be temporary, of course, but would allow for weapon, armor and class skills to improve; loot to be gained; quest rewards could be received a second time (except for skill points), etc.
Note: I say leave the rewards, because ZOS would want to actively promote questing with buddies as a key component in the social experience of the game.

This down-leveling could be used with a right-click on our buddy in the party interface. Select "Quest with this character", then a temporary "Mentor" quest log could be generated that matched your buddy's log. This special log would allow you to repeat any quests that you had already completed, as long as they are in your buddy's log. In this, your buddy would essentially be the "Quest phase leader", and you would enter into any of their phases. Optionally, Right-click > Promote to Quest Phase Leader > Party vote appears > if it passes, all party members receive the "Mentor" quest log.
When you leave the party, your own quest log and level would be restored, most likely after "auto-porting" you to the nearest Wayshrine (loading screen).

Thoughts?

Logan9a

Not Everquest but on the rest you make some good points.

ShedsHisTail

Maverick827 wrote: »

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Inco wrote: »

NB's are a tad more happy

Couldn't be further from the truth. NB's are angrier than ever with broken promises and more nerfs, not improvements, from these clowns. NBs and Templars will be nowhere to be found in ESO next month. Soon DKs will be nerfed out of the game and they'll have the sorcerer-only game they always wanted to release (obviously).

I'm not "angrier than ever". Hell, I'm not even "angrier than yesterday" or last week.

I acknowledge that some mechanics are still in need of fixing, but my preferred character is still completely playable and I still play him.

Might want to just try speaking for yourself. You'll appear less foolish.

Just because you're fine being a doormat doesn't mean that others aren't justified in being upset with nerfs instead of buffs to Nightblades.

And they're welcome to speak their piece.
I'd just rather they didn't speak mine.

NikkoChan

I am excited for everything I am reading, and i am really looking forward to the customization. I would like to see some more costumes and mounts too. HOWEVER, I make a humble request for some simple functional changes.

/time to give you time and date
/math (1+1=2) ***simple math system built into gui
/bag [item name] = X bank X bag ***without having to open it

and PLEASE

/trade and /tradeall to clear up chatter

It would also be nice if Guild masters could make a small tax (= to %) on all transactions. This wouldn't be abused I think because no one would want to join a trade guild where the tax is too high. This would also allow for ranking of Trade Guilds by profit on leader boards ( like PVP leader board )

I personally enjoy the economic aspects of games like ESO and would like to see it enhanced. Managing a trade guild isn't always easy and the only perk right now is bank space. It would also be nice if a Guild Master could allocate guild bank slots to members if he or she so desired. I would like to give my officers slots that only they could use. However this right now isn't possible, and the updates of what has been withdrawn and deposited are not robust enough for accountability.

ferzalrwb17_ESO

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

I'm not "angrier than ever". Hell, I'm not even "angrier than yesterday" or last week.

I acknowledge that some mechanics are still in need of fixing, but my preferred character is still completely playable and I still play him.

Might want to just try speaking for yourself. You'll appear less foolish.

I'll refrain from childish personal attacks to appear less foolish but you're right. I should have said "Most Nightblades" in order to exclude the odd few that are happy with the nerfs, broken promises and lies and are fine to continue to play a busted gimp (or those that are playing as stickwielding, skirtblades).

edit: And, of course, the point was that to inform non-NB's that the noises ZOS is making about fixing NBs is a facade (pile of "fixes" in 1.2 actually amounting to 1 fix and 2 nerfs and a bunch of graphical changes for example).

Snowstrider

Awesome!
Was just about to ask when the next road ahead was going to get released! ::D
I am most excited about dying,Eso really needs better cuztomisation so i am happy you are listening,i wonder and hope that chatbubbles and nameplates will also come with that update.

And perhaps new mount (even if i dont expect that to happen now i can still wish for it)

Keep up the work ZoS.

Hoodster92_ESO

You addressed a lot of great things for the future, but truthfully little to announce the fixes that are currently plaguing the game.

For example:

1). What are you doing to make different play styles viable in PvE? I am not talking catering to every build but simple things like certain classes and stamina users and templars / nightblades. They are basically useless when it comes to completing the trials in a top of the leaderboard time frame, and basically caters to only bringing sorcs and dks.

2). What are you doing the make questing actually rewarding. Every time logging into craglorn everyone is spamming "looking for grind group". You spent so much time on this games questing and being able to do all factions quests but guess what, no one wants to them because grinding is by far more rewarding and faster. Make some god damn reputation or even commendations that people can spend on to get good or fun pieces of gear.

3). Make crafting not so fricken easy. Yes it takes time to get the traits and stuff but once one person has them you basically don't need anyone else to do anything. Gearing up is to easy and it makes the grind of getting better worthless when I can craft an entire DPS set within 20 minutes provided I have the mats. Have sets that drop in trials or rare pvp bags where specific crafters can make a special set of gear.

4). PvP needs a vamp up, its repetitive and its more like Player Vs Doors / Mercs than it is Player vs Player. Give some reason for players to need to come outside their keeps and have more open battle objective fighting areas in Cyrodil. It would make your PvP a thousands times better if I wasn't circling the inner circle trying to dethrone the emperor. And I'm not even going to get into the lag situation, you know what you did and it needs to be fixed.

5). Make armor look more legendary. Unless you are wearing heavy armor and sometimes medium, light armors look all the same! Some might have a goofy looking helmet or shoulders that go up and not down, overall its the same pretty dress and bland overall glossy looking texture scheme on your armor. I thought your Manomarco costume looked fantastic! But I want to see more of those like that where I can feel like I'm a combat clothy, not one that sits around reading books all day (if I wanted to read books I wouldn't be playing this).

6). For the love of god fix the economy, there is nothing really worth buying in this game that you cant get yourself given 1 day. When you give the ability for everyone to do everything you take away the fact of needing other people for gear and materials. Find some way of making it so that when I look in zone chat, I don't see spammers trying to sell people a bunch of green tempers that I could spend 5 minutes farming hides in crows wood to get easily. What are you going to do there??

Overall these things have been issues for a long time and are what keep players interested in your game. Why not fix them? And not fix 1 thing and break 3 more, i mean fix it. Also fixing does not qualify as breaking a mob so that they get no loot or xp from doing it (Darkshades Cavern and Kaldara Ruins, pretty sure Darkshade first boss doesn't drop loot). I know your job is hard but literally these are things that should be thought about on a daily basis and way prior to game launch.

The game has a lot of potential and you have some nice ideas, but don't just leave them at ideas and words with no value. Act upon them listen to your community when it comes to fixing issues. Less with the nice little speeches more with the taking action!

Garwulf

Inco wrote: »

[*]
I'm a V12 Templar Healer and I refuse to crawl my way thru VR1-VR12 again with another class cause ZOS screwed mine up and can't seem to balance it correctly. You NERFED this class to the ground in BETA and said 2 months ago (Reddit link) it was being "fixed", but nothing has happened.

I am a VR7 Dragon Knight and I am definitely not going to go through the whole process again when they turn my Dragon Knight into a Dragon Wimp.
In fact I was wondering what would eventually turn me off this game and this is it.
We need a Class recasting Shrine.

ShedsHisTail

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

I'm not "angrier than ever". Hell, I'm not even "angrier than yesterday" or last week.

I acknowledge that some mechanics are still in need of fixing, but my preferred character is still completely playable and I still play him.

Might want to just try speaking for yourself. You'll appear less foolish.

I'll refrain from childish personal attacks to appear less foolish but you're right. I should have said "Most Nightblades" in order to exclude the odd few that are happy with the nerfs, broken promises and lies and are fine to continue to play a busted gimp (or those that are playing as stickwielding, skirtblades).

Which promises, specifically, are you referring to?
Don't get me wrong, I'd still love to see improvements.
I'm just not angry with things the way they are.

Anger rarely solves anything, it just makes me tense.

Ojustaboo

irre_greg wrote: »

Curious about dungeons leveling to the group leader. Does this mean we could actually replay (grind) in dungeons and actually get loot and experience? Or does it simply mean that dungeons will auto level to the leader and that you can still only go through it once for rewards?

You might want to consider having the dungeons auto level to the highest leveled player in the group as opposed to the group leader.

I presume the idea is that higher level players can help out lower lever guild mates but it still be a challenging dungeon, which is something I really like. Nothing worse than high level friends one shotting everything.

That said, I would rather the group was able to select the dungeon level rather than it auto scale. Then you could have 1 level 40 and 3 level 30s and try say a dungeon on level 35 and see how challenging it is.

And those players that struggle can lower it a bit, and those players finding content too easy can up it a bit.

bluxwaverwb17_ESO

I would like

- a LONGER afk logout timer.... (easy)

- more battlegrounds, cyrodiil is booorrring

ferzalrwb17_ESO

Hoodster92_ESO wrote: »

And I'm not even going to get into the lag situation, you know what you did and it needs to be fixed.

I'm not sure they do know what they did.

Something is clearly very wrong with the core code of this game that they actually can't seem to fix anything at it's root - they can only apply band-aids.

I realise they've spent a lot of time rushing to release content so that bored powerlevellers had something new to do for 2-6 hours but they've lost the majority of "normal" players along the way. It's getting very, very empty in Tamriel.

Logan9a

Ojustaboo wrote: »

irre_greg wrote: »

Curious about dungeons leveling to the group leader. Does this mean we could actually replay (grind) in dungeons and actually get loot and experience? Or does it simply mean that dungeons will auto level to the leader and that you can still only go through it once for rewards?

You might want to consider having the dungeons auto level to the highest leveled player in the group as opposed to the group leader.

I presume the idea is that higher level players can help out lower lever guild mates but it still be a challenging dungeon, which is something I really like. Nothing worse than high level friends one shotting everything.

That said, I would rather the group was able to select the dungeon level rather than it auto scale. Then you could have 1 level 40 and 3 level 30s and try say a dungeon on level 35 and see how challenging it is.

And those players that struggle can lower it a bit, and those players finding content too easy can up it a bit.

Could there be the possibility of exploitation setting the dungeon level as opposed to being able to lower your own level near or at your teammates, less so?

Ojustaboo

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

NBs were promised serious love in a previous patch. Lie. We were then told we'd be getting that love in 1.2. Lie. Now it's just... whatever, sometime soon, maybe, stuff. Pathetic.

You can paint your dresses pretty though! Oooh. That'll get us resubbing for sure.

Don't forget that just because it's not what you want, doesn't mean it's not a very good and very serious patch. it's not all about you or me, its about everyone.

Many in my guild will be estatic with the arrival of the dye system and will see it as a great indication of how well Zenimax are committed to improving ESO.

Maragar

Not a single mention on the utter uselessnes of stamina skills and builds..... Harry Potter in twilight saga all the way!!! well you can keep it!

ferzalrwb17_ESO

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

Which promises, specifically, are you referring to?
Don't get me wrong, I'd still love to see improvements.
I'm just not angry with things the way they are.

Anger rarely solves anything, it just makes me tense.

The main promise which is to "improve and fix" the NB. Originally this was a promise for the last patch (didn't eventuate) and then it was for 1.2 (and isn't happening). Alongside this we were told the viability of the DW class was being looked at (heard nothing since apart from a nerf).

So far we've had, mostly, nerfs either directly or indirectly and a couple of fixes.
Here's the only improvement I can think of off the top of my head that isn't a bugfix:
Catalyst improved to 15% per point from 10%.

We're not alone now that they've decided to take the DK class apart and nerf it into the ground but that doesn't make me any happier - quite the opposite. Some of those nerfs hit general gameplay mechanics and actually hit NBs harder as well.

I don't choose to be angry about it. They've just let us down. I actually have the patience, myself, to stick it out but I know most people won't so not fixing it fast enough will mean the expedited death of the game. I can't play the game if it's canned..

xaraan

I'm glad you are looking at Nightblades. They do still have some skills that need fixing. In fact, you could probably stop buffing them and just fix the skills that don't work or rework the useless ones. Don't buff the skills that people already get use out of (at least not yet). What really needs fixing more than NB is stamina builds (which will help a lot of NBs). You guys need to look at weapon damage, power, crit, and medium armor. Nobody will want to see this, but I think soft capping crit chance will even out spell and weapon crit more, otherwise, we need to see more ways to raise weapon crit.

ShedsHisTail

ferzalrwb17_ESO wrote: »

ShedsHisTail wrote: »

Which promises, specifically, are you referring to?
Don't get me wrong, I'd still love to see improvements.
I'm just not angry with things the way they are.

Anger rarely solves anything, it just makes me tense.

The main promise which is to "improve and fix" the NB. Originally this was a promise for the last patch (didn't eventuate) and then it was for 1.2 (and isn't happening). Alongside this we were told the viability of the DW class was being looked at (heard nothing since apart from a nerf).

Improvements did come in the last patch, and the closest thing to an actual promise we got was that Nightblades are being looked at closely and will continue to be adjusted in future updates.

So you're upset about the possibility that a "promise" won't be kept? I mean, all we've seen are PTS patch notes which are by definition subject to change. Though, agreed, I'd like to see some improvements to DW and medium armor.

So far we've had, mostly, nerfs either directly or indirectly and a couple of fixes.
Here's the only improvement I can think of off the top of my head that isn't a bugfix:
Catalyst improved to 15% per point from 10%.

I don't recall any significant nerfs but, to be fair, few of the changes they've made have had anything to do with abilities I use so I haven't really noticed them.

We're not alone now that they've decided to take the DK class apart and nerf it into the ground but that doesn't make me any happier - quite the opposite. Some of those nerfs hit general gameplay mechanics and actually hit NBs harder as well.

Which is misguided as, I'm sure you're aware, the problem lies with Weapon and Armor skills and I don't believe it's inherently related to classes at all. Personally, I think it's the imbalance between Magicka and Stamina and the fact that Staves rely on Magicka when all other weapons use Stamina that is causing the biggest upset; but I don't have any numbers to back that up.

I don't choose to be angry about it. They've just let us down. I actually have the patience, myself, to stick it out but I know most people won't so not fixing it fast enough will mean the expedited death of the game. I can't play the game if it's canned..

This is angrier than ever?
You must be a pretty chill guy.

columbineb14_ESO

Nice Road Ahead. Lots of good and wanted features. Shame Zenimax seems to be determined to take the "least common denominator" approach to class balancing (AKA "nerf everything to the ground b/c we're too lazy/incompetent to find out what's actually not working and why"), a fine thing for PvP but horrible for PvE. All the new features in the world won't matter if every single class is too frustrating to play, which is where I worry we're going here.

You may think that's an overreaction. Yeah. You could be right. Maybe it is. Sorry about that. This is the voice of a person who loves this game but has lost all faith that the devs and designers have the slightest clue what they're doing. I no longer trust them to get anything right, no matter how many truckloads of good intentions they drive to my door.

Kulrig

My initial reactions, haven't gone over the replies here yet.

The Good: I giggled and clapped when I saw the dye interface. I also smiled a bit at being able to finally loot all that armor laying around, hopefully it's in the style it shows up in the world as (e.g., when you raid an Altmer armor rack you get Altmer style armor).

The Bad: No mention of sorcs. Are we where we're supposed to be? A tad OP but unsure of how to go about fixing yet? Weaker than intended but NB needs more love?

The Ugly: The Breton should perhaps swap the black and red colors on his chest piece.

With that, I just wanted to say that healing as a sorc in this game is probably the most fun I've had as a healer since Wrath. I feel useful and effective, and unlike Neverwinter I didn't have to go into dungeons without a healer to notice a difference. Furthermore, I don't feel like I'm simply a soft enrage mechanic for each fight like I do in a more traditional action bar MMO. While I could do with a bit more control over the heals that don't target an area or a cone (stupid pets keep eating my Mutagens) I feel that sorc healing is in a nice spot. We'll see how that holds up when I get into veteran content though (five more levels to go!).