Canceled Subscription Due to Bad PvP Balance

tnanever

The game is a mess in general when it comes to PvP balance, but it's especially bad with magicka sorc now. PvP was the main thing that kept me playing, because the PvE content has become bland and repetitive.

It's amazing how bad balance has become in general. [snip]

They're a private business, and so of course the only thing that would motivate them would be a change in sales (which is natural and expected - no negative implication there). I suggest that everyone sick of the current state of things, and especially the letdown of the current PTS notes, cancel their subscriptions and to not buy crowns until the situation has substantially improved.

[edited for bashing]

Mackinsar

Hah! Stamwardens and magwardens have it worse. (I have all three.)

psychotrip

Mackinsar wrote: »

Hah! Stamwardens and magwardens have it worse. (I have all three.)

Your point?

nb_rich

I think they have a post that they haven’t forgot about PvP and they are working on some things they just need some time. At least the acknowledged they are working on it

Ankael07

nb_rich wrote: »

I think they have a post that they haven’t forgot about PvP and they are working on some things they just need some time. At least the acknowledged they are working on it

They say the same thing every quarter, even on every livestream.

drsalvation

I cancelled subscription due to bad everything at this point.

Mindless RNG for fake player retention:
You want that shiny new mythic to improve your build, that's good, now you have to farm it.
There's nothing wrong with grinding, but the RNG-based grind is a prison.
There are ways to make grinding for shiny artifacts way more engaging than just repeating the same task over and over again

My solution, at least for mythics was a lot more simple and yet more engaging:
Instead of looking internet videos to see where to find the leads for a mythic item, let us go back to the antiquarian house (or maybe a version of it in vanilla zones to avoid DLC) where we can get a daily quest. The daily quest takes us to any sort of dungeon, either a delve, a public dungeon, a group dungeon, etc. Once inside, we can use the antiquarian's eye to find a chest within said dungeon which will uncover a clue for a lead. Once we unlock 5 clues of a lead, we can then proceed to go to wherever the lead is unlocked (like the chest in falkreath hold) and get a guaranteed unlock. Otherwise we can brute force it and try to get it based on RNG the way we already do. The guaranteed drop sounds like something that will break a mythic, but considering you need 5 clues for one lead, and 5 leads for the mythic item, it would take 25 days to get a mythic.
It's a long time, that's for sure, but then again, it took me the same time of just mindlessly grinding for that belharza's band lead in falkreath hold over and over again.
This way, players have a reason to log in every day and actually do some in-game content. This also feels like we're actually making any sort of progress unlike running falkreath hold over and over again never knowing if you'll be lucky or not.

No RPG in this MMORPG
I guess it all depends on what "role" means to us individually. Tank, Heal, Damage roles are naturally essential, but this game takes things to an extreme where it's not necessarily enjoyable. Anything fun tanks had going on for them has been reworked to pander to the DPS roles (I'll keep bringing up power slam's rework) because of course that DPS don't block, so why would they want to block 10 attacks? Tanks shouldn't deal damage so let's take that skill away from tanks and give it to the DPS types of people (with that logic, DPS shouldn't block, that's the tank's job).
So either support roles are completely useless, or absolutely mandatory, however the rest of the game ONLY REWARDS your DPS outcome, you can tell because there are no training tank dummies to see how much damage you can mitigate, or healing dummies to see what your HPS is. There's just DPS dummies and DPS checks. Vateshran would've been a fun dungeon for all roles if not because you get punished for your low DPS with a blocker: Either pass this check, or fail the final boss.
So there's no real incentive to get better at a support role, and armory is there to remind us that support roles are just an after thought, once you're done with your dungeon or trial, it's time to switch back to the only build that actually matters. (At least I don't have to pay to respec anymore so thanks for that I guess?)

My solution is to stop exaggerating the numbers to such great extents. Tanks have a cap on how much armor they can reach, healers and DPS don't. By forcing something like that you're alienating issues that cause a massive balance struggle.
Tanks shouldn't be towel holders, they should be able to deal damage too, give us back damage skills based on tanking, like power slam. Making offense out of defense is a good way to keep roles engaged in whatever other activity, no more fake tanks either. I'm not even asking for tanks to do the DPS, just something that will help the overall DPS output the same way DD's can block and mitigate a lot of damage. Not everything should revolve around DPS.
Make defensive skills scale off max health or armor, and motivate players to make good tank builds, otherwise, there's no real point.
As for PvP, who cares? It's all about burst damage, it's not like a tank blocking 10 times to do a 15k burst (7.5k with battle spirit) is going to break the balance of the game. But I'll get to that later.

But what about actual character roleplay?
At this point, writers don't care anymore, this is a linear game with no choices. I get it's both a live service, so none of your choices change anything, and an MMO so the best you can do is choose which character dies and I see the other one alive while my brother sees the dead one alive. And as a live service, you will never really stop anything, the planemeld will continue even after defeating molag bal twice. I don't necessarily like that, but I get it and I can tolerate it given the circumstances of this service we call a game.
But that is no excuse for poorly written dialogue on which our characters suffer from amnesia, where we are FORCED to ask to remind us again what's going on, where we are FORCED to choose only 1 single dialogue choice on meaningless conversations. Again, why are we forced to be nice to Eveli and say she looks good in that dress? Why not a sarcastic/jerk response too, which changes nothing, but at least we can choose our own personality while having conversations.
The character we're playing is dumb as bricks, it's an empty shell that we're supposed to pour our personalities into but can't even express it in game. And we're forced locked into alternative routes (WHICH ARE THERE) just because of a questline we did YEARS AGO. Again, why are we forced to confess to eveli we're part of the brotherhood? I know there's another dialogue branch if you never joined, my character hasn't done any brotherhood quests since morrowind released.
But that's not the baffling part, the check where dialogues show if you're part of the thieves guild or not isn't even related to quests, it's related to your skill tree. I picked up a thief's trove ONCE, a few minutes BEFORE going to Borderwatch.
Think of it this way: One moment I'm going up north to do a main quest to get all help I can get from all available allies. Then I stumble upon this glowing chest my brother always takes, but he's not there at the moment, so I see if I can pick it up despite the fact I've never joined the thieve's guild. It turns out I CAN pick it up and it unlocks the TG skill tree. I don't care so I just keep going north to borderwatch, start the main quest, meet a couple of new characters I've never seen before.
The ONLY dialogue choice I have is "I'm part of the TG and I've never heard of you before"

My solution:
Give us choices. Give us the option to keep secrets to ourselves, at least it would help to know that I can still choose a story where I don't boldly claim to be part of a well renowned criminal organization just because I opened one single chest a few minutes ago.
We don't need significant choices in every dialogue branch, but just give us a basic good guy/jerk guy branch that changes nothing but the immediate response, it's a simple thing, but it would improve dialogue a bit more.
Or at the very least, don't force us to ask stupid questions. I did murkmire, spent a lot of time delving into argonian lore, I can infer what ojel means, there was no need for my character to go full amnesiac and forget about murkmire, just so that I could have a lazy excuse to visit the argonian in gideon to translate something I already know how to infer.
A lore dialogue: "What is ojel bak?" and get expo dump where you need to go to gideon
A veteran dialogue: "I know what it means, but I might need some more info on the tribe" And now you go to gideon to ask for intel.
The story won't change, the journey steps are the same, but now we go there not feeling like amnesiac bricks who are just artefacts to witness a story.

No real PvE motivation to actually get stronger
In story quests, which are insultingly easy, they try to sell you this main antagonist as a major threat to existence. There's molag bal and the planemeld. The only way you can make that battle a hard one is by completely removing your gear.
This completely ruins the grind for better equipment, either you lose your mind with mindless RNG for that shiny new mythic, or run dungeons over and over and over again for their gear set and then get doomed to a walk in the ball pit, or don't grind for anything, don't make any specialized builds, and actually try a challenge.
It's backwards mentality, the difficulty is supposed to motivate us to grind for those gear sets, not show us how unnecessary it is to actually do so.
I know trials and dungeons are hard and you should get better gear to be able to run them. But trials and dungeons have no story attached that would relate to the main quest. Story content is the vast majority of content in this game, there are many reasons to explore overlands, but the story is the only thing that pushes you to do so. So dungeons and trials are completely optional, that's fine, this means dungeons and trials are nothing but gear farms, where you farm your gear and move on to the next farm to keep farming. It feels shallow, it lacks any sort of real depth.
What if I wanted to stop molag bal but kept failing, so now I have to farm gear on dungeons that will help me against molag bal? NOW I have an actual motivation to do all that farming.

My solution:
I know there's people discussing veteran overland, I personally think a simple veteran story mode would suffice. No need for "better rewards" just give +100 gold to whatever we already make and purple/gold gear instead of green/blue.

Terrible Balance issues
The most fun I've had in this game was when I could deflect all sort of damage back to mobs and defeat overland creatures just by blocking using resilient yokeda and harbinger. My gear allowed me to do that in overland (to be fair, it still can)
It was the ONLY thing I was using to actually deal damage, other than light and heavy attacks, the rest of my bar was for shields, defense runes, and some HoTs since I main templar, everything to aid my survivability.
Now, imagine how fun it would be if those gear sets still have their original damage numbers. The only way to deal damage is to block. Meanwhile every other skill is for survival and protecting your team.

Naturally, they got nerfed to the ground because it was breaking PvP.
People will complain how boring it is to just hold block and that's it.

Same thing with other skills that break PvE, like mist form.

Personally, I think the developers should have in mind all skills available and design the game around it, not the other way around. They say "play as you want" but then proceed to rework skills so that we play as THEY want us to play. Mist form was a creative solution that required a specific build, it was one of many solutions, now we can't have that.

My solution:
The same as every single living being has said countless of times before.
SEPARATE PVP FROM PVE
A battle spirit check would help a lot.
Harbinger and resilient yokeda is too OP in PvP? Good, with battle spirit, that's no longer the case, it now only works in PvE (at least it's more effective in PvE)
That said, I don't think they should completely remove PvE from PvP like they did with mist form. Mist form could easily have a battle spirit buff. It has 30% dmg reduction in PvE, but with battle spirit, it has 75% NOW players can still use mist form as a way to protect themselves while not completely overhauling a dungeon cheese.




This game has become a chore for me
I'm tired of it. I log in every day to train my horses on my alts, but I wonder why I'm doing it, I say it's to hunt skyshards quicker, but I still won't do it, I'm tired of that. The only reason to have alts is to try different builds, but the only reason to try different builds is for vet content or pvp, which I have no plan on partaking in anymore, it's all pointless.

Not only that, after grinding PvP for the cool aesthetic items I wanted, like the lion, the centurion title, the gladiator outfit, I came to realize that this game is no different from mobile games, except with better input.
It's all just a numbers game. You can do everything right behind your controller, but if you don't have the numbers in your side, no matter what you do, the fight is already rigged. It's easy to see when you've lost the fight when you don't even chip more than 5% of your PvP opponent and even with your best burst and follow up combo, you're running low on resources. There's nothing you can do at that point than just run and wonder why the hell nothing worked until you realize it's your gear.
When I started decimating players when I updated my gear, I never felt satisfied, it never felt like it was MY victory, it felt like it was just the game playing itself, using me as a vessel to see how nice the numbers my gear provided outpeform the numbers my opponent's gear provide. I did the same things, but now I was winning? Just because of gear?
The same thing happens when I lose. It never feels like it was my own fault, but my gear's. And as long as it never feels like I'm the one responsible behind my outcome, it will never feel like any of it actually matters.

This is the reason why people still complain about gear being nerfed or buffed, because it's the determining factor on weather you win or lose.

For this and many more reasons that have been piling up and crawling up, I cancelled my subscription, and most likely will end up never coming back.
Which is a shame, this game is the reason I got an xbox one instead of switching to Ps4, it's the first game I got on my console, and it's the only game I haven't stopped playing since.
But I can only take so much before something I used to enjoy becomes a tedious, meaningless chore where anything that's fun will be tweaked just because it's what the numbers dictate.

The devs have clearly let the numbers decide how to play the game, and by doing so, the game has lost its soul.

noblecron

Cancelled my sub also and might not renew it. Completely agree with you. This game just isn't doing it for me as much as it used too

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

Same for me.

I used to sub a lot, hardly ever do any more.

Just some random PvP when the game works, but that said I agree with the contexts above and have pumped my fair share of cash in the game, hence my presence here.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding

BazOfWar

Same here! I have only been playing a few years and PvP became my favourite part of the game but its as if its had the life sucked out if it.

I will still play occasionally but not as much and without subs.

ATomiX69

They make the majority of their money from all the casual gamer whales who buy cosmetics and gambling crates, if you want good pvp you should look around for other games.

xHotguy6pack

I canceled mine like a year ago. [snip]

[edited for bashing]

Ballzy321

You can’t have class balance with so many broken gear sets. The reason why so mmo’s have separate pvp specific gear.

Firstmep

Ballzy321 wrote: »

You can’t have class balance with so many broken gear sets. The reason why so mmo’s have separate pvp specific gear.

Well, no proc cyro is out there and you can see how many ppl play on it.
Honestly gear sets are kind of a separate issue from class balance.
Just look at plaguebreak, pretty much everyone on every class is using it, same for oaken.

Didgerion

OP, do you realize that a class based game is impossible to balance?

You want to retain the class identity and at the same time you want to make it balanced, how do you imagine that?

Here is a scenario for you:
Take a magsorc and a magDK for example. Mag sorcs are very good at kill assisting from far away, also sorcs are good at getting away from fights. Those are 2 powerful qualities which I assume you consider them not strong enough. Probably you want the mag sorc to be good in 1v1 situations too, but 1v1 is the DK's territory if you make sorc and dk equal in 1v1 then DK will be left out in the range execute area and mobility. No problem, lets fix DKs then and give them range and mobility, but what will be the difference between DKs and Sorcs then?

To have a balanced game there should be no classes but skill lines only.
But no one wants to part ways with their favorite class, they want the class to retain their identity and be powerful.
Well there are 12 classes (if we are still talking mag/stam) and instead of complaining about balance you can give ZOS hints on how exactly you want to buff 1 class (magsorc in your case) without affecting the rest 11. My hint is to get rid of classes, what's yours?

malistorr

Didgerion: Just 1 small example is giving Mag sorc the same potential defense as other classes. Right now for a mag sorc to get offensive buffs that are useful to the class they have to use light armor. That means lower armor/protection than other DPS type toons that are other classes. Those stam type toons get to use medium armor and therefore have better protection. They get all their offensive buffs but have better defense. Mag sorcs may just have a bit of speed and the ability to streak away. They have to leave combat constantly because if basically any other class gets within a reasonable distance to you you're stunned and killed almost instantly. Even orc has a racial speed buff so it's hard for sorcs to even get away from some stam toons. The class skills are not powerful enough to kill anyone and the class healing is worse than many of the other classes. There is almost no reason to play the sorc class period vs. other classes. That is awful class balance and can and should be improved.

Miracle19

Didgerion wrote: »

OP, do you realize that a class based game is impossible to balance?

You want to retain the class identity and at the same time you want to make it balanced, how do you imagine that?

Here is a scenario for you:
Take a magsorc and a magDK for example. Mag sorcs are very good at kill assisting from far away, also sorcs are good at getting away from fights. Those are 2 powerful qualities which I assume you consider them not strong enough. Probably you want the mag sorc to be good in 1v1 situations too, but 1v1 is the DK's territory if you make sorc and dk equal in 1v1 then DK will be left out in the range execute area and mobility. No problem, lets fix DKs then and give them range and mobility, but what will be the difference between DKs and Sorcs then?

To have a balanced game there should be no classes but skill lines only.
But no one wants to part ways with their favorite class, they want the class to retain their identity and be powerful.
Well there are 12 classes (if we are still talking mag/stam) and instead of complaining about balance you can give ZOS hints on how exactly you want to buff 1 class (magsorc in your case) without affecting the rest 11. My hint is to get rid of classes, what's yours?

Finally someone who understands how class identity works and effects the "balance"

Didgerion

malistorr wrote: »

Didgerion: Just 1 small example is giving Mag sorc the same potential defense as other classes. Right now for a mag sorc to get offensive buffs that are useful to the class they have to use light armor. That means lower armor/protection than other DPS type toons that are other classes. Those stam type toons get to use medium armor and therefore have better protection. They get all their offensive buffs but have better defense. Mag sorcs may just have a bit of speed and the ability to streak away. They have to leave combat constantly because if basically any other class gets within a reasonable distance to you you're stunned and killed almost instantly. Even orc has a racial speed buff so it's hard for sorcs to even get away from some stam toons. The class skills are not powerful enough to kill anyone and the class healing is worse than many of the other classes. There is almost no reason to play the sorc class period vs. other classes. That is awful class balance and can and should be improved.

It sounds exactly like the experience I had in CP campaign the other day. CP system is broken, proc system is broken too! Stay away from CP campaigns and your sorcerer will do much better.

DaisyRay

No game is perfect. They have their flaws, but I still enjoy the game enough to keep my subscription. I guess me being newer to the game means I won't fully understand how you all feel. I hope you can one day rekindle the joy you once had for this game.

tnanever

Didgerion wrote: »

OP, do you realize that a class based game is impossible to balance?

You want to retain the class identity and at the same time you want to make it balanced, how do you imagine that?

Here is a scenario for you:
Take a magsorc and a magDK for example. Mag sorcs are very good at kill assisting from far away, also sorcs are good at getting away from fights. Those are 2 powerful qualities which I assume you consider them not strong enough. Probably you want the mag sorc to be good in 1v1 situations too, but 1v1 is the DK's territory if you make sorc and dk equal in 1v1 then DK will be left out in the range execute area and mobility. No problem, lets fix DKs then and give them range and mobility, but what will be the difference between DKs and Sorcs then?

To have a balanced game there should be no classes but skill lines only.
But no one wants to part ways with their favorite class, they want the class to retain their identity and be powerful.
Well there are 12 classes (if we are still talking mag/stam) and instead of complaining about balance you can give ZOS hints on how exactly you want to buff 1 class (magsorc in your case) without affecting the rest 11. My hint is to get rid of classes, what's yours?

The way you use the term "balanced" doesn't properly acknowledge magnitude. It's a strawman argument you're making, or a red herring at best, when you imply that because chess-like balance is not possible, demanding "balance" must not be reasonable.

Assuming a set of players have similar levels of skill and high level equipment, outcomes of matches should have close win rates between the classes (perhaps within 15%). When instead, I see garbage like dragon-knights going 30-0 in battlegrounds by spamming three skills, with no other class having a chance of killing them, clearly the balance is very bad and unacceptable. I mean "unacceptable" literally, which is why I cancelled my subscription and will not pay for more services unless it's fixed. The devs clearly don't know what they're doing when the balance devolves this badly.

Side notes:

1 - "far away" doesn't mean much when streak has repeat-cast cost penalties, while gap closers and sprint can be effectively perma-spammed

2 - Sure, getting rid of classes would be fine, but that would still leave clearly unbalanced skills and equipment, and that would have to be fixed as well.

tnanever

DaisyRay wrote: »

No game is perfect. They have their flaws, but I still enjoy the game enough to keep my subscription. I guess me being newer to the game means I won't fully understand how you all feel. I hope you can one day rekindle the joy you once had for this game.

It's very easy to see the issue for yourself. If you haven't already, go make a magicka sorcerer and play battlegrounds or Cyrodil. You'll see that your attacks will regularly be dodge-rolled, your shields will be 1-hit, and you'll be pretty useless in general unless fighting AFK opponents or are part of a larger zerg.

tnanever

Miracle19 wrote: »

Didgerion wrote: »

OP, do you realize that a class based game is impossible to balance?
...

Finally someone who understands how class identity works and effects the "balance"

Neither of you understand it. If one class is clearly disadvantaged (you can measure this with win rates, total kills, etc.), then it's too weak, and identity is irrelevant. Having a relative disadvantage in one area, in order to break homogeneity, means that there must be an advantage in another area of similar utility.

If dragon knights, for example, can always spam charge skills towards a sorc and win 80% of the time, then clearly either gap closing needs to be weaker, or gap creation needs to be stronger - or sorcs should have higher damage application, or dragon knights need less survivability - or a combination of all of the above.

You and didgerion are simply trying to hand-wave blatant balance issues away, while chanting "class identity" as a magic phrase for justification. I guess you two are dragon knight mains. Lol.

ThirdEye_PULSE

Idk. Imo some classes unique toolkits shouldnt be directly balanced with another class toolkit. Each class should have inherent weaknesses and strengths tied to that class identity and like rock, paper, scissors game the toolkit of one class going up against another makes them superior but that toolkit leaves them at a disadvantage against another class. This is fairly standard in the MMO world but as classes have lost a lot of flavor and identity over the years its generally more so this:

OP classes for that patch cycle generally have a certain amount of skills which has better synergy with the best sets of that patch cycle over other classes. At least we saw a lot of that with U34.

Dk for example: Toolkit worked very well when you paired Oakensoul with Corrosive Armor spamming. Could get healing and sustain from ULT as well as from one of your dmg abilities. So the class became extremely overpowered when you paired the synergy of one mythic item with one ultimate and class passives (which are tied to using ULT), as well as having strong pressure from DoTs and a really good spammable to rely on for constant dmg. The ULT worked as both defensive and offensive, as well as giving sustain and healing.

As for finding balance in sets... doubtful. Thats why Lost Ark and GW2 takes that equation out of the picture entirely. Allows you to focus on strength and weakness of classes as well as your skill and knowledge of the class you play as well as the ones you play against. That is probably one of the easiest ways to narrow the things you need to balance in PVP. Of course, you lose some interesting mechanics and variety but you gain power fantasy in the class rather then in the sets. There are many sets which can give you similar toolkit that another class has that you otherwise couldnt get. Again, which devalues the toolkit a class offers.

Dont think there ever will be balance as long as ESO ties selling their new content to overpowered sets. So much of the power in this game comes from sets and those sets are financially beneficial to ZOS. At least for 3 months.

tnanever

8/22/22 Update - Magicka sorc is still trash (as expected) - ZOS has no idea what's going on with PvP balance. Still not buying a subscription.

Nemeliom

nb_rich wrote: »

I think they have a post that they haven’t forgot about PvP and they are working on some things they just need some time. At least the acknowledged they are working on it

total [snip] PvP is horrible at this moment, everything hits like a wet noodle.
[snip]
Thanks for ruining the game for pvpers.

[edited for inappropriate content & profanity bypass]

afkpro

balancing has not been great for pvp. as a fairly new player looking back on the last few updates and community reactions, it seems like players are just used to it by now. at least that makes it an easy decision on whether to show support and buy eso plus; and, for me personally, an iffy decision if i would ever want to buy a collection (even on cheap 67% anniversary sale as it would still technically show support) to upgrade out of base game.

i'm not a gold farmer so it would take a very long time to get chapters (not including any dlc's) through that route lol.

PhoenixGrey

Didgerion wrote: »

Mag sorcs are very good at kill assisting from far away, also sorcs are good at getting away from fights.

Right now mag sorcs are a farmable dummies in cyrodil and are good at nothing.

ZOS can buff them in any way and idc. My only concern is whether the class is worth playing.

olsborg

Lagg is the main problem, but the fact that the game changes directions entirely every 3-6 months and the balanceshift is 360 also contributes to eso-fatigue.

Heresyall

Pvp on eu is unplayable since the update, pops are medium and lag (server side) spikes to 200 ms. Pvp on eu is dying meanwhile NA have good performance. feelsbadman

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

Heresyall wrote: »

Pvp on eu is unplayable since the update, pops are medium and lag (server side) spikes to 200 ms. Pvp on eu is dying meanwhile NA have good performance. feelsbadman

Agreed and my experience is shared with Hereyall as we are on the same server.

It's unplayable and even roll backs.

Are we on preprogrammed PC EU death? (Honest question, truely)

Gahn

Yep, EU pretty dead and lag spikes at medium pop. also had to cancel the sub. sad indeed. just came back a few weeks ago and already not feeling the changes made a positive impact. I hope there will be some action by ZOS otherwise I think fall will be dire.