Update 35: I thought the goal was accessibility?

edward_frigidhands

As the title states, I was under the impression that the primary goal of this patch was to make the core combat of the game more accessible and allow both new and disabled players a better way to chart their path to excel at endgame content if they choose to.

However, looking at the patch notes it seems like the results are a bit on the opposite side. Additionally, it seems that the scope of the patch seems to have expanded beyond the aforementioned goals and moved into a complete overhaul of every playstyle that every player has grown to love.

- What is the point of tying down increasingly more abilities to Battle Spirit or assigning them PvP/PvE only and how does it make things simpler for newer or disadvantaged players? Doesn't that make things more complicated? Is this good for the game?

- What is the point of setting up a Resto Staff heavy attack build meta? How does that make things easier for healers who build a healer to heal? Whatever your answer to that, is that good for the game?

- Is redesigning entire class/build styles good for the game?

Is Update 35 good for the game?

You have players who have played this game for over half a decade, some of them for longer. These are people paying for subscriptions, crown crates and purchasing in-game gifts for their friends, family and fellow gamers.

These are people paying Zenimax, because they are providing them with an amazing experience. An experience that is rooted in solid combat and the freedom to play the way you want in the content that you want to.

Is it a good idea to change all of the above and trade it for an uncertain future for the players and the community of the game? Who asked for all of this and who is it for? Is Update 35 good for Elder Scrolls Online?

Is Update 35 good for Zenimax?

GreatGildersleeve

The primary goal of this cycle was ‘reigning in absurd dps’. Anything else was… something I’m not going to call it so it passes snipping.

katorga

What is more accessible than a resto staff heavy meta?

Rimskjegg

GreatGildersleeve wrote: »

The primary goal of this cycle was ‘reigning in absurd dps’. Anything else was… something I’m not going to call it so it passes snipping.

Well that goal failed spectacularly now with medium weaving producing absurd DPS again.

LukosCreyden

boi_anachronism_

It's a resto medium weave meta lol. No healers, just dps with a resto and a self heal slotted

Freelancer_ESO

The combat experience between players in overland, group pve content, and pvp tends to vary a bit and as a result the stats/skills/items aren't necessarily equally valuable across modes.

Something can easily end up being weak in one mode and powerful in another or annoying in one mode and not in another.

For example, the Heavy Attacks weren't very impressive or that annoying in most of the games content.

However, in PvP if you slanted your build towards it you could potentially kill players in a single hit from range. Needless to say, people weren't exactly pleased about that.

This leaves you several options:

1. You can leave Heavy Attacks in PvP alone and just have PvP players complain about them.
2. You can attempt to change the skills/items used in PvP Heavy Attack builds with the hopes of not gutting too many other builds/annoying too many people in the process.
3. You can make it so Heavy Attacks/the skills and items that enable them function differently in PvP which adds a degree of confusion.

Needless to say, this leaves it a bit up in the air on what the optimal solution is depending on the situation.

I've got no explanation for the restoration staff situation.

Redesigning classes/build styles can be good for a game if they are in a bad enough place but, if they aren't it can be quite bad for the game. I was getting annoyed with the degree I was reworking some of my characters on the PTS from week to week and on the PTS gear is literally handed to you. I'm possibly going to take a break for a bit when it hits live unless I'm totally bored.

I think Update 35 isn't good for the game as it's got a fair number of controversial ideas mixed in with a lack of polish on some of the content.

However, it's possible it will have positive long term implications as it might lead to events that steer priority away from the top few % of the game which I think would benefit the game.

Xandreia_

They did make it accessible for me to uninstall and move on, so guess that's a plus

Lady_Galadhiel

I don't regret buying a full year Sub for my Nintendo Switch
My sorc healer main is useless now.

KrawatteKamm961

It was never about accessibility. If they cared about that, then they would have made the oakensoul ring only work in PvE instead of throwing the games combat down the gutter 8 years after release.

ADarklore

Xandreia_ wrote: »

They did make it accessible for me to uninstall and move on, so guess that's a plus

Right! I've opted to jump back over to FFXIV where the devs have a clear vision and actually seem to care about their players and making their game more fun. Currently they are focusing on player retention, something ZOS clearly has no concept about... but I guess that's the difference between an Eastern MMO and Western... one cares about their players and game, the other cares solely about $$$. We all see which one is winning.

Ksariyu

To preface, I'm not all in favor of this update either, but I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a minute because I see a lot of posts like this that just don't make any sense.

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

. . .moved into a complete overhaul of every playstyle that every player has grown to love.

Can someone explain to me where these magical "other" playstyles people are loving? I know in PvP there's a bit more variety, but there has literally been no other playstyle in PvE besides LA weaving for like, four years. Every class with any weapon type all boiled down to the same pattern of Buff > LA > DoT > LA > Spam > Repeat. To give the devs at least some credit, these changes are actually looking to add playstyles to the game. Unfortunately it's really hard to see when everyone's just going for optimal dummy parse numbers instead of testing legit content.

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

- What is the point of tying down increasingly more abilities to Battle Spirit or assigning them PvP/PvE only and how does it make things simpler for newer or disadvantaged players? Doesn't that make things more complicated? Is this good for the game?

People have actually been asking for ages for ZoS to separate skills and sets between PvE and PvP because nearly every change made to help one mode ended up hurting the other. The learning curve for this game's PvP has also never been slight, so it's not like they're destroying some great system they had to help funnel newer players into Cyro.

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

- What is the point of setting up a Resto Staff heavy attack build meta? How does that make things easier for healers who build a healer to heal? Whatever your answer to that, is that good for the game?

I see this one a lot which is really funny because it's a straight 180 from everyone saying the game is now harder. There's two things to look at here though: One, the "Resto staff" meta is not a meta at all. Pretty much anyone who's tried has been able to pull bigger numbers with normal damage weapons and LA/MA weaving. Two: If a player can pull respectable numbers with a Resto staff HA build, then that would imply that they in fact DID increase the floor, and quite dramatically since such a setup on live right now would do next to no damage.
The third advantage is more of a personal joy of mine, and applies more towards PuGs (Like normal casual players usually play in). By allowing Resto staves to do some damage, healers can now have more independent impact in a group where the DPS are just not cutting it. Rather than swapping builds or just quitting and finding a new group, healers can now on-the-fly adjust to their group's needs, at least to a slight extent. Obviously healers are not going to be doing 80k like people are seeing in parses with DPS gear, but it's something.

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

- Is redesigning entire class/build styles good for the game?

Obviously this has a very subjective answer, but for me, I'd say yes*. Once again, the community has been complaining for a while now (myself included) that classes lack any real identity or unique features. In order to change that, there's going to have to be some major adjustments to those classes.
* These changes do need to be well-tested, likely beyond what any single PTS cycle would allow.

Lastly, I'll leave with another example of why making decisions for the game is not as easy as just "Listen to the community."

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

. . . an experience that is rooted in solid combat and the freedom to play the way you want in the content that you want to.

The game's combat has been its most critiqued aspect for the entire lifespan of the game. Loads of people stopped playing shortly after they stopped because they genuinely hated the combat, and loads more continue to play in spite of it, often preferring to just forgo combat-related content altogether (That's why our endgame community is so minuscule). As for "play the way you want," I've NEVER found this to be the case beyond overland. It has in fact been the opinion of myself and many others that there is very little flexibility in build choices and real playstyles, especially once you start getting into vet content. I look even now at groups like Nefas's Project Vitality, which was designed to expand the endgame community and get more people doing trials by lowering the restrictions on gear and parses, and you'll still see the same specific sets become required as you get into vDLC trials (Encratis, Catalyst, Alkosh, etc). That, to me, is the exact opposite of freedom to play how I want. So as you can see, even with the all this feedback the devs are getting, even among all these people who say they want they same thing, there's actually a ton of variation in people's opinions on how to move forward.

EmilyElizabethESO

I'm on Xbox and I joined a group last week to help them clear a dungeon, Wayrest 2. The healer was doing okay but the dps were struggling and fights were taking awhile and there were quite a few deaths. They were 400-600 cp and these are the people getting hit the hardest. If they struggle now on a normal dungeon then they're not going to be able to complete it at all after U35. These are the people they said they were trying to help and it's just hurting them and I feel bad for them.

Enundr

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Is Update 35 good for the game?[/b]

You have players who have played this game for over half a decade, some of them for longer. These are people paying for subscriptions, crown crates and purchasing in-game gifts for their friends, family and fellow gamers.

These are people paying Zenimax, because they are providing them with an amazing experience. An experience that is rooted in solid combat and the freedom to play the way you want in the content that you want to.

Is it a good idea to change all of the above and trade it for an uncertain future for the players and the community of the game? Who asked for all of this and who is it for? Is Update 35 good for Elder Scrolls Online?

Is Update 35 good for Zenimax?

as an extremely casual player , atm i can say with a heavy HECK NO , it is by far a design intended to kill an mmo. ive seen the death of quite a few mmos (wildstar being the most memorable).....and this is definetely one of those decisions that will kill it if not put it on its deathbed.

shadyjane62

Enundr wrote: »

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Is Update 35 good for the game?[/b]

You have players who have played this game for over half a decade, some of them for longer. These are people paying for subscriptions, crown crates and purchasing in-game gifts for their friends, family and fellow gamers.

These are people paying Zenimax, because they are providing them with an amazing experience. An experience that is rooted in solid combat and the freedom to play the way you want in the content that you want to.

Is it a good idea to change all of the above and trade it for an uncertain future for the players and the community of the game? Who asked for all of this and who is it for? Is Update 35 good for Elder Scrolls Online?

Is Update 35 good for Zenimax?

as an extremely casual player , atm i can say with a heavy HECK NO , it is by far a design intended to kill an mmo. ive seen the death of quite a few mmos (wildstar being the most memorable).....and this is definetely one of those decisions that will kill it if not put it on its deathbed.

I was there for Galaxies. This feels like that.

Lalothen

Ksariyu wrote: »

Two: If a player can pull respectable numbers with a Resto staff HA build, then that would imply that they in fact DID increase the floor, and quite dramatically since such a setup on live right now would do next to no damage.

Incorrect. Once you account for all of the extra buffs added to the PTS dummy - which it is estimated are inflating DPS by up to around 18% compared to the Live dummy - Resto HA builds aren't actually pulling very much more than Live.

Take X_K's 95k Resto HA DK parse (which will probably be about the same this week given the nerf to wall being offset by the extra debuffs on the Dummy). Take off 18% and it would be around 80.5k DPS on Live. I just did a quick Infiltrator/Rele/Kilt HA parse with the Infiltrator Resto I've used on-and-off since Elsweyr, and got 72.8k DPS:

It's not a like-to-like build comparison, but then that's impossible to do so this is the next best thing.

It's not optimised; I could probably squeeze out 2-3k more DPS if I used trap & double-slotted whip for the wp/sp bonus from using claw/engulfing/foo on front bar, and I'd add another 1-2k DPS to my Resto HAs using Noble Duelist over Infiltrator - which in turn would allow me to switch things around and wear 3 more pieces of light armor, improving my crit a little and more importantly meaning I'd hit the pen cap without using a kra'gh 1-piece, which I'd then switch to slimecraw 1-piece for yet more crit, which likely would net me another 2-3k DPS overall. There's also an arcane jewelery trait in there that should be bloodthirsty.

Optimisation would therefore give me a peak of around the 80k DPS mark on Live with a Resto HA build.

This further renders your next point about healers a bit moot I guess; they can already run an HA + heals build with a Resto on Live. That's actually what I did last year on my Magden healer in both pugs & the 4-man I used to regularly play with, and could add 30k or so ST dps to boss encounters whilst still keeping everyone healed & buffed. SPC/Infiltrator/Symphony was what I used with Maelstrom Lightning back-barred.

I'm actually a little surprised folk have been so shooketh about Resto HA. It's always existed but I guess few have ever bothered attempting a Resto parse - and that comes from the fact Lightning staff with its 4-tic channeled HA on Live is objectively better for both ST & AoE encounters. If Lightning hadn't been hit with more than a 25% total nerf on the PTS (most of that being in the form of 1 lost channeled tic), I actually doubt the resto HA conversation would ever have happened.

Irfind

Well my wallet is more accessible for me, canceld my eso+ after 6 years ...

FantasticFreddie

Ksariyu wrote: »

To preface, I'm not all in favor of this update either, but I'm gonna play devil's advocate for a minute because I see a lot of posts like this that just don't make any sense.

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

. . .moved into a complete overhaul of every playstyle that every player has grown to love.

Can someone explain to me where these magical "other" playstyles people are loving? I know in PvP there's a bit more variety, but there has literally been no other playstyle in PvE besides LA weaving for like, four years. Every class with any weapon type all boiled down to the same pattern of Buff > LA > DoT > LA > Spam > Repeat. To give the devs at least some credit, these changes are actually looking to add playstyles to the game. Unfortunately it's really hard to see when everyone's just going for optimal dummy parse numbers instead of testing legit content.

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

- What is the point of tying down increasingly more abilities to Battle Spirit or assigning them PvP/PvE only and how does it make things simpler for newer or disadvantaged players? Doesn't that make things more complicated? Is this good for the game?

People have actually been asking for ages for ZoS to separate skills and sets between PvE and PvP because nearly every change made to help one mode ended up hurting the other. The learning curve for this game's PvP has also never been slight, so it's not like they're destroying some great system they had to help funnel newer players into Cyro.

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

- What is the point of setting up a Resto Staff heavy attack build meta? How does that make things easier for healers who build a healer to heal? Whatever your answer to that, is that good for the game?

I see this one a lot which is really funny because it's a straight 180 from everyone saying the game is now harder. There's two things to look at here though: One, the "Resto staff" meta is not a meta at all. Pretty much anyone who's tried has been able to pull bigger numbers with normal damage weapons and LA/MA weaving. Two: If a player can pull respectable numbers with a Resto staff HA build, then that would imply that they in fact DID increase the floor, and quite dramatically since such a setup on live right now would do next to no damage.
The third advantage is more of a personal joy of mine, and applies more towards PuGs (Like normal casual players usually play in). By allowing Resto staves to do some damage, healers can now have more independent impact in a group where the DPS are just not cutting it. Rather than swapping builds or just quitting and finding a new group, healers can now on-the-fly adjust to their group's needs, at least to a slight extent. Obviously healers are not going to be doing 80k like people are seeing in parses with DPS gear, but it's something.

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

- Is redesigning entire class/build styles good for the game?

Obviously this has a very subjective answer, but for me, I'd say yes*. Once again, the community has been complaining for a while now (myself included) that classes lack any real identity or unique features. In order to change that, there's going to have to be some major adjustments to those classes.
* These changes do need to be well-tested, likely beyond what any single PTS cycle would allow.

Lastly, I'll leave with another example of why making decisions for the game is not as easy as just "Listen to the community."

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

. . . an experience that is rooted in solid combat and the freedom to play the way you want in the content that you want to.

The game's combat has been its most critiqued aspect for the entire lifespan of the game. Loads of people stopped playing shortly after they stopped because they genuinely hated the combat, and loads more continue to play in spite of it, often preferring to just forgo combat-related content altogether (That's why our endgame community is so minuscule). As for "play the way you want," I've NEVER found this to be the case beyond overland. It has in fact been the opinion of myself and many others that there is very little flexibility in build choices and real playstyles, especially once you start getting into vet content. I look even now at groups like Nefas's Project Vitality, which was designed to expand the endgame community and get more people doing trials by lowering the restrictions on gear and parses, and you'll still see the same specific sets become required as you get into vDLC trials (Encratis, Catalyst, Alkosh, etc). That, to me, is the exact opposite of freedom to play how I want. So as you can see, even with the all this feedback the devs are getting, even among all these people who say they want they same thing, there's actually a ton of variation in people's opinions on how to move forward.

This is not making more "freedom to play your way"

We will still need all the buff sets in group to be optimized. Medium and light attack weaving is still better than the nonsensical resto parses, and lightning heavy attack builds are now DOA.
This will not create more freedom to do anything. It's a blanket nerf to damage, and it's ridiculous.

WrathOfInnos

Rimskjegg wrote: »

GreatGildersleeve wrote: »

The primary goal of this cycle was ‘reigning in absurd dps’. Anything else was… something I’m not going to call it so it passes snipping.

Well that goal failed spectacularly now with medium weaving producing absurd DPS again.

The high end of DPS is still down significantly. The 140k parses we're seeing on live would be over 160k with the buffed trial dummy. On PTS, DPS on this new dummy seems to be hitting about 120k, for a 25% DPS nerf. The 10% health reduction on vet trial bosses does not cover this.

I agree that medium weaving is a problem. It requires much more skill than light weaving, and most of the players will not adapt. They will lose much more DPS than those at the top.

Lalothen

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I agree that medium weaving is a problem. It requires much more skill than light weaving, and most of the players will not adapt. They will lose much more DPS than those at the top.

The big kicker is it could've been avoided entirely by adjusting Empower to impact fully-charged HAs only, and buffing the % modifier to compensate for the fact it would no longer buff channeled tics for Lightning & Resto. It would've been that simple to deal with it... It would also have closed the glaring gap between the different weapons and how much benefit they receive from running an HA-themed build.

Everest_Lionheart

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

Rimskjegg wrote: »

GreatGildersleeve wrote: »

The primary goal of this cycle was ‘reigning in absurd dps’. Anything else was… something I’m not going to call it so it passes snipping.

Well that goal failed spectacularly now with medium weaving producing absurd DPS again.

The high end of DPS is still down significantly. The 140k parses we're seeing on live would be over 160k with the buffed trial dummy. On PTS, DPS on this new dummy seems to be hitting about 120k, for a 25% DPS nerf. The 10% health reduction on vet trial bosses does not cover this.

I agree that medium weaving is a problem. It requires much more skill than light weaving, and most of the players will not adapt. They will lose much more DPS than those at the top.

The elite players will be fine. The will still get the completion, will probably fail a bit more often but 120K DPS is not needed anywhere in this game. Where they will likely suffer is healing changes. Boss damage didn’t change and that is what needed to scale down even more than a health reduction.

Everyone else on the other hand, better get to poly farming if you haven’t because trials like vAS2 and vCR3 are off the menu for a while.

Sennecca

I find it actually amusing that they state they want to raise the floor, but decreased damage and healing tick rates done by a lot of skills,so that killing normal bosses will take longer with more mechaincis to deal while decreasing boss health on vet versions to make it close to the same difficulty. So content will be harder for ppl not pushing vet and close to similar for ppl pushing vet *scratches head*

Jaraal

The goal seems to be accessibility for top end players to achieve maximum possible DPS.

And the card game is as accessible as usual to everyone else.

eovogtb16_ESO

@Krymsyn_Panda made a great forum post here about the problems and how accessibility is not even a thought in their minds. IF accessibility was a concern of theirs they would have actually done more to address it, not make combat more difficult with heavy/medium weaving, and actually addressed the main problems with accessibility which is buffs and debuffs and accessibility to them and make them easiar to keep up.

They did make some great changes to some sets such as Powerful Assault, but there are still dozens of buffs that are insanely hard to keep up for most groups. Brittle is absolutely terrible, it should last longer than a few seconds and should be able to be applied from all ice sources. Stonefist is a slog and incredibly tough to keep up for most DK tanks outside of the hardcore raiders. Skills; buffs and debuffs like these is what separates the top 1% from the rest of the players.

If they made these extremely important core combat mechanics available and accessible for the entire gamebase to use and make them easier to apply we would be in a much better place and we wouldn't have polls that say over 90% of people think that the developers aren't listening to them. There is zero problems with power creep. Give people more power, allow them to complete content that is years old easiar. Use battle spirit to separate the PVP and PVE. Listen to your players who care.

Eira_Rosynhwyr

Medium weaving is going to be cancer in this game when it comes to balancing. The top 1% of players will get it, the rest of us won't. I can LA weave just fine as a middle-of-the-roads player, and not just against dummy's, but MA weaving? Maybe I could get okay at it one day, but not enough to boost my performance and by that time it will probably be "fixed".

Belegnole

This one finds that when listening to marketing talk one does not believe a thing. One must often look instead at the results and guess as to the real intent.

Firstmep

Okay, so their original intent was to change the perception about end game players.
They wanted to bring down high end damage, so less skilled players wouldn't feel as bad about not reaching their numbers.
How I came to that conclusion? Well if they wanted to make end game more accessible, they could've just nerfed content, period. But they specifically wanted to go after high end dps.
I guess to many people complained about not getting into vet trial groups or something.

Then the backlash came and they realised it wouldn't fly, and started doing random changes, without considering the consequences, beacuse they cant just say, okay we messed up, we will revisit this later, no they have to do changes for the sake of appearing like they actually are making this better.

The fact that despite them saying that they will nerf content on a case by case basis, and then just going with a flat 10% on basically everything is pretty telling, that they just dont have the time or resources to actually make educated changes.

MudcrabAttack

I know some people this patch was probably intended to help, but still won’t.

One of the people in mind plays a 1-bar heavy attack pet sorc. It sounds like this patch is made for them, right? but it’s NOT going to help them at all because of one simple thing. They will do absolutely nothing about their build, and don’t care about improving by changing out equipment, they only play the game just to chat with people they know. Try to tell them about the new 80% buff from empower, or even just try Oakensoul (even though they play only one bar) or tell them about seargents mail jewelry and weapons and they just say nope. “I’ve already got infallible, that’s all I need”. And that’s all they’re ever going to use because they feel like they already invested as much time as they ever want to put into the build. They see things dying and that’s good enough for them

Another friend has been playing as long as I have, and will spend tons of resources to gold out things, practices bow builds on a trial dummy for hours. They love bow builds, but their 25% hawk eye buff is off 50% of the time. They downloaded the weaving addon, but still miss a ton of light attacks and have a 0.4 second skill weave. When they share a screen to show me their build, I have to remind them about the weapon damage glyphs and traits. They still struggle with reapplying dots too soon, so how’s it going to look when those dots last twice as long? They have no solo arena weapons at all after playing this game for years, and the reason they gave for giving up on on arenas is they kept dying to stuff, even on normal. I told them about the pale order mythic years ago, again last year, and again just a month ago, but they still haven’t leveled up digging because they have a hard time concentrating.

Jaraal

Eira_Rosynhwyr wrote: »

Medium weaving is going to be cancer in this game when it comes to balancing. The top 1% of players will get it, the rest of us won't. I can LA weave just fine as a middle-of-the-roads player, and not just against dummy's, but MA weaving? Maybe I could get okay at it one day, but not enough to boost my performance and by that time it will probably be "fixed".

And the problem is that ZOS will be balancing going forth based upon the top 1%, not the 99% who aren't Master Medium Weavers.

Their stated purpose for these radical changes with Update 35 is to "attempt to quell some of the obscene damage production at the high end." They seem to be embarrassed by the trivialization of content by the top 1%, and thus intend to make the other 99% of us pay.

Everest_Lionheart

Honestly to achieve accessibility they should have looked at this the other way.

1. Reduce boss damage.
2. Buff boss health.
3. Reduce the amount of 1 shot mechs.
4. Increase incoming damage to other mechs.

It’s a give and take, basic things hit a little harder, the hardest stuff hits weaker, the most punishing mechs are survivable and the bosses take enough time to kill that groups with high burn will see more mechs.

The reason trial groups want crazy high DPS numbers is to skip as many punishing mechs as possible. I don’t think this is how the game was meant to be played where even a single mistake can wipe an entire group. The prog groups I play with currently do not die due to lack of DPS, they die to mechs.

By reducing the pressure to burn as fast as humanly possible to avoid the next mech you make the game more accessible to all. By increasing the incoming damage of basic mechs you reinforce to newer players that you can’t always survive and burn through a fight, you actually have to block or avoid things. This would also make healers relevant again in 4 man content where groups want to do the burn strat but would need additional healing in order to do so.

Less pressure + less punishment = more accessibility.

Toxic_Hemlock

KrawatteKamm961 wrote: »

It was never about accessibility. If they cared about that, then they would have made the oakensoul ring only work in PvE instead of throwing the games combat down the gutter 8 years after release.

Yep. I already switched all my alts to wild hunt as I may as well be fast. Thanks for the carrot Zos, but you got my money for this chapter now. I hope you spend it well because you won't get me to buy another one with bait and switch like this.

I wanted to try a few arenas and eventually trials, but now I'm just gonna watch movies and do crafting until my sub runs out.