My genuine thoughts about the game as of PTS Update 45.

ESO_Nightingale

Hi everyone. I just wanted to chat about my thoughts on the game as a long time player and, how i feel about it now and the direction its going in.

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The state of the game now and my experience

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My Background in ESO

To get things out of the way immediately, I'm feeling fairly anxious about the game in its current state. I am not having as much fun with the game as i have with others (namely World of Warcraft(retail) and Path of Exile 2) but i still love the game and for many years now i've been clinging onto some hope that the game would get better. I still log in fairly regularly, and parse and test things on the PTS. I also have long chats with my friends when i log in. What i don't do in-game is play trials anymore. i sometimes get invited to them and smash them out, but i no longer actively seek to play them anymore. Sometimes i quest though, i often get really bored as the difficulty is simply too low to hold my attention for very long.

I am what i would call a theme player, as i'm sure many of you all have seen my previous posts on the topic of frost dps warden that have sometimes gained enough traction to be implemented into the game, i really really like using frost magic spells to deal high dps. The same is true in other games. its just what i like to play, and i optimise damage as much as i can with a frost dps theme.

ESO's Combat Changes and balancing

ESO is a difficult game to make a satisfying build in when it comes to PVE content. Over the years, things such as standardisation and hybridisation(which have never been completed) have fundamentally changed the game in a way that has, in my opinion, erroded the identities of everything. when everything scales with everything and has a standardised amount of dps it follows at the base level, the differences in classes and build types begins to rapidly disolve.

Hybridisation And Standardisation.
Everything deals nearly exactly the same damage with few unique effects of note and you have a plethora of abilities that fill the same role. There are some things can push the numbers of certain skills higher than the rest of the other ones, so they're used instead all of the time between every single class. Dual Wield and Two-Handed weapons are probably my biggest example of this. I swear, nearly every single endgame build uses daggers and two hander. Yes, you can argue that you don't have to use these because Destruction Staves exist and are a ranged option. And i get it, however, when you want to commit to using a magicka based character with spells and that sort of thing, it does not feel right that stamina weapons still end up being better at the highest end. This means the primary difference between classes is the colours of their class skills, and (IF THEY HAVE ONE) their payoff skill which may change their rotation ever so-slightly.

It is in this regard that i don't think that hybridisation has been good for the game. Standardisation has not really helped either, to me, it just seems like it made everything look nicer on a spreadsheet or something. I know as a player looking to constantly optimise dps, i don't care to use the things that deal less damage than the thing that does fire damage because for some reason, fire damage is buffed in the group when frost, shock and magic damage are not because contrary to the name "standardisation", not everything has been standardised including DK's engulfing flames debuff. we all know the most popular damage types are the ones that deal the most dps, mainly because they have additional scaling and also damage over time status effects like burning, hemo and poisoned. It was for this reason that I campaigned for chilled to mean something for frost damage dealing. something to set warden, or frost dps apart from the rest of the builds.

Sweeping Disasters.
Balance is never going to be perfect and people are always going to be mad regardless of what you as a developer do. That being said, there have been some pretty atrocious changes in the past which have made people leave en-masse. These are primarily the big sweeping nerfs to things that most people do not complain about, or are used to. Often times these changes are considered so heinous purely for the fact that there's all of this feedback about how crap it feels to play with them, and in the past they've mostly been ignored and pushed to live servers. That's been a major MAJOR issue why people are so mad. There has also been a history of changes being proposed that genuinely do not make any sense to anyone at all that have also made it to live with little or incredibly flawed reasoning. it is for this reason why the playerbase acts like this and there is constantly rising discord.

The future of builds

I think there is a lot to learn from other games. If there is 1 single thing i could ever hope for in this game for builds to come back, it would be some type of system that further expands upon your build passively. Champion Points and Class Sets could have been this type of effect, but instead, they ended up being generic bonuses that might as well not even exist. to expand upon what i mean, I think what this game needs is for builds to finally have upgrade nodes for specific spells, and to give spells specific interactions with eachother, and other mechanics in the game. I believe there should be MANY kinds of different nodes for all of the weapon and class trees.

Let me include all kinds of examples i thought of:
Warden:
Coordinated Attack: When you cast Scorch and then Dive while in combat, you gain Coordinated Attack for 10 seconds. Your next Direct Damage skill consumes Coordinated Attack to increase its damage done by 25%.

Nightblade:
Dark Executioner: When you use Death Stroke or its morphs, your next Execute Ability costs 50% less and deals damage as if the target were at 0% HP.

Dragon Knight:
Firey Warrior: Your Weapon Attacks deal 10% more damage as Flame Damage.

Arcanist:
Arcane Insight: you can generate and store up to 5 crux.

Necromancer:
Mass Graves: Every 5th corpse consumed summons a Blighted Blastbones to attack your last target.

Sorcerer:
Thunderfury: While Surge and its morphs are active, your Concussed status effect chance and damage are increased by 200%.

Templar:
Radical Sweep: When Power of the Light errupts, you have a 30% chance for your next (class spammable) to also cast Radial Sweep at 33% effectiveness.

Sword and Shield:
Targe of the Blooded: Your bash attacks always proc hemorraging.

Restoration Staff:
Spring to Life: Dead Players in Healing Springs are resurrected 30% faster. Allies inside the radius instantly heal for 15% of their max hp if below 50% health. this effect can occur once per target once every 45 seconds.

Two Handed:
Knock Them Down: Using Uppercut causes your next executioner or (class spammable) to deal 20% more damage and stun the target for 3 seconds.

Destruction Staff:
Crippling Weakness to Elements: Your Weakness to Elements increases your Frost/Shock/Flame damage done to the target by 20% depending on the type of your equipped staff.

Dual Wield:
Whirling Storm: Whirling Blades is now a Chanelled ability that does its damage in an area once per second, Draining your stamina while active. While Whirling Blades is active you gain a stack of Flurry Storm, increasing the damage of your next Flurry by 10% for every second of whirling storm's duration up to a maximum of 200%.

Bow:
Sic em: Your Snipe marks your target, causing your pets to deal 33% more damage to them for 10 seconds. This effect stacks with other similar effects.

The future of patches

I think its in ZOS's best interest to have incredibly frequent tuning passes unlike what's been happening recently. This PTS I woke up and was excited to see what changes frost DPS builds might potentially be getting, only to be disappointed once again. Dissapointment is inevitable of course because you can't change everything all of the time, but balance tuning in this game happens so incredibly infrequently that its genuinely disheartening to feel "well, crap. the game's gonna be exactly the same as it has been the last year until maybe the next pts cycle in 2-3 months". It's all well and good to work on new systems of combat, but you should also be thinking about the live game as well.

The future of rewards

Rewards still are a massive point of contention. most of the things you guys make go on the crown store and while we all understand thats where your money is coming from, there are so many mounts created for the store that really could just be achievement rewards in the game to keep people excited and playing. you have definitely recently started commiting more things to the game than the crownstore in the past, but its still not quite at that level yet. houses could be good rewards for major things raid achievements for example.

The future of communication

I commend your recent attempts at communication, they're definitely what the community needs, but I just hope that things remain as is in the long term.

The future is in your hands ZOS.

With all of this being said, i think the announced direction the game is going in would be fantastic if everything goes exactly as it was said in Matt Firor's letter. With the caveat being, if things that were announced are not fulfilled and content permenently drops back in scale and amount, this game is likely going to spiral into an unrecoverable state given how incredibly low community morale and ZOS's goodwill is at the moment. I genuinely believe that as someone who has been here for many years on the forums and in the community, that this is it. If things do not recover from this point this game's time is limited. Yes, it's a grim message but at this point, this game's retained players do not have any patience left. This is make it or break it ZOS. You cannot afford to mess this up. I still have hope that this can be turned around.

Tannus15

I can't say I disagree with anything here.

I will say that just because there isn't anything this patch for people who like to push the meta, there also isn't anything bad in this update. There is a slight nerf to relequen and some decent changes to sets no one uses and will probably continue to not use.

The green CP changes are great, the visual update to the base game is long over due and the new PVP campaign is fantastic. None of these changes actually impact my preferred area of the game, but that doesn't mean this is a nothing update.

I think the lack of balance changes really comes down to how oppressive the arcanist meta has become with banners. They are stronger than ever and it's really starting to feel like any other dps should really be shelved.

ESO_Nightingale

Tannus15 wrote: »

I can't say I disagree with anything here.

I will say that just because there isn't anything this patch for people who like to push the meta, there also isn't anything bad in this update. There is a slight nerf to relequen and some decent changes to sets no one uses and will probably continue to not use.

The green CP changes are great, the visual update to the base game is long over due and the new PVP campaign is fantastic. None of these changes actually impact my preferred area of the game, but that doesn't mean this is a nothing update.

I think the lack of balance changes really comes down to how oppressive the arcanist meta has become with banners. They are stronger than ever and it's really starting to feel like any other dps should really be shelved.

I don't think this patch is inherently bad either, but due to how infrequent balance patches are, i would have expected some class changes. We only get 4 chances at class balance every year so we just lost 1 of them.

Necrotech_Master

im kind of in a wait and see mode depending on how they shift content cadence

if they do smaller more frequent updates, we could see more incremental class balance change instead of right now where its 4 major content updates per year, with incrementals dedicated to fixing bugs from those patches

personally i wouldnt want them changing class related stuff that frequently anyway, but i do understand that many classes have some kind of pain point (templar - sustain, warden - the frost/non frost dps identity among other things, necromancer - too many to list, etc) and that these should be addressed at some point, but the devs have to play a balance game with both introducing new content and fixing/modifying old content

it sounds like they may be trying to make a balance pass across gear sets right now as a sub-focus of the patch

Artem_gig

In general, I agree, but I hope that the build system you have proposed will not be a meta... like anything else. Meta is one of the most basic things that kills diversity for me in this game. There are only 3-5 types of set assemblies that are used by DD. And I would not like Sorc to focus only on dealing electrical damage. Actually, the best update for me was Scribing. Because he personally allowed me to achieve the necessary DPS (he even grew up) without using meta skills. I was even able to build the build I've been dreaming about for all the 6 years that I've been playing this game (Sorc with a bow on the front panel and daggers on the back panel with fire magic skills).
I've never been able to afford something as different as this before.

ESO_Nightingale

Artem_gig wrote: »

In general, I agree, but I hope that the build system you have proposed will not be a meta... like anything else. Meta is one of the most basic things that kills diversity for me in this game. There are only 3-5 types of set assemblies that are used by DD. And I would not like Sorc to focus only on dealing electrical damage. Actually, the best update for me was Scribing. Because he personally allowed me to achieve the necessary DPS (he even grew up) without using meta skills. I was even able to build the build I've been dreaming about for all the 6 years that I've been playing this game (Sorc with a bow on the front panel and daggers on the back panel with fire magic skills).
I've never been able to afford something as different as this before.

there will always be a meta. it means "most effective tactic available". people will always tend to that. the system i proposed would significantly shift rotations and skill usage depending on class and build, creating real build diversity. people will always tend to the best thing, but when the best thing is nearly exactly like everything else, whats the point? thats why i proposed what i did.

i agree that scribing was fantastic, but it's far from perfect. we are missing things like an execute script, and not every damage type is on every grimoire.

Tannus15

the main thing missing from scribing to me is the ability to choose pure damage as the sig and affix scripts.

shocking soul for example is a spammable for sorcs, but it's just less damage than every other spammable, and the only thing you can do for it is add a dot that almost never procs if you're using it as a spammable.

I get that they might want to do this because of the utility it can provide, but why not give me the option to just make it hit hard so i can use it as a proper dps option?

ZhuJiuyin

100% agree. The identities of each class should be strengthened, and their magic and stamina versions should be similarly balanced in the end-game.
Taking PVE as an example, the DPS that currently perform well are Stamina ARC, Stamina and Magic DK, the next best are Stamina Necro, Stamina and Magic Temp, Stamina Sorc, and the rest perform poorly or badly.
Considering we have 7 classes, ideally there should be at least 14 different builds competing for the top 100 of the HM Trials. But in reality we often only see 4-5 builds appearing on the list.

Developers should strengthen the magic and stamina versions of each class to enhance their own characteristics, for example:
Magic DK: Emphasize fire damage and make sure poison damage does not exceed 20% of DPS. Stam DK should emphasize poison and their fire damage does not exceed 20% of DPS.
Magic Sorc: Increase the damage of Storm and Black Magic skill lines, and make pet and physical damage no more than 20% of DPS, while Stam Sorc's pet and physical damage should be increased, but lightning and black magic damage should not be too high (taking into account Once summoned, the pet exists permanently and does not require too much mana unless an active skill is used, so it is more suitable for Stam Sorc.)

Homogeneity is making games boring and making the disadvantaged even more disadvantaged. Ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a NB DPS in the latest HM (LC or SE, for now) top 100? Even the magic Arc, under the influence of homogenization, finds it difficult to compete with its stam version cousin.
The continuous weakening since U35 has almost killed diversity. In U34, we can still see the magic and stam versions of each class appear in the latest HM top 100.

ESO_Nightingale

Tannus15 wrote: »

the main thing missing from scribing to me is the ability to choose pure damage as the sig and affix scripts.

shocking soul for example is a spammable for sorcs, but it's just less damage than every other spammable, and the only thing you can do for it is add a dot that almost never procs if you're using it as a spammable.

I get that they might want to do this because of the utility it can provide, but why not give me the option to just make it hit hard so i can use it as a proper dps option?

I want an execute secondary script and an increased status effect application affix script.

ESO_Nightingale

ZhuJiuyin wrote: »

100% agree. The identities of each class should be strengthened, and their magic and stamina versions should be similarly balanced in the end-game.
Taking PVE as an example, the DPS that currently perform well are Stamina ARC, Stamina and Magic DK, the next best are Stamina Necro, Stamina and Magic Temp, Stamina Sorc, and the rest perform poorly or badly.
Considering we have 7 classes, ideally there should be at least 14 different builds competing for the top 100 of the HM Trials. But in reality we often only see 4-5 builds appearing on the list.

Developers should strengthen the magic and stamina versions of each class to enhance their own characteristics, for example:
Magic DK: Emphasize fire damage and make sure poison damage does not exceed 20% of DPS. Stam DK should emphasize poison and their fire damage does not exceed 20% of DPS.
Magic Sorc: Increase the damage of Storm and Black Magic skill lines, and make pet and physical damage no more than 20% of DPS, while Stam Sorc's pet and physical damage should be increased, but lightning and black magic damage should not be too high (taking into account Once summoned, the pet exists permanently and does not require too much mana unless an active skill is used, so it is more suitable for Stam Sorc.)

Homogeneity is making games boring and making the disadvantaged even more disadvantaged. Ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a NB DPS in the latest HM (LC or SE, for now) top 100? Even the magic Arc, under the influence of homogenization, finds it difficult to compete with its stam version cousin.
The continuous weakening since U35 has almost killed diversity. In U34, we can still see the magic and stam versions of each class appear in the latest HM top 100.

I completely agree. I remember when stamina/magicka varients of classes meant something.

LukosCreyden

This is a pretty optimistic post.
Unless April shows something amazing, I think we can expect the game to continue winding down to make room for ZOS' next MMO.

ESO_Nightingale

LukosCreyden wrote: »

This is a pretty optimistic post.
Unless April shows something amazing, I think we can expect the game to continue winding down to make room for ZOS' next MMO.

unfortunately, i agree with you.

Ruj

LukosCreyden wrote: »

This is a pretty optimistic post.
Unless April shows something amazing, I think we can expect the game to continue winding down to make room for ZOS' next MMO.

This is the only thing that makes sense.

Even from a casual player perspective, the first thing any player sees is the character creator. It hasn't been updated since launch. The hair textures are the worst in the MMO genre. All male elves, Nord, and Breton look hideous. Even the supposed dashingly handsome NPCs are extremely ugly. And made uglier by shockingly outdated faces, hairstyles, and hair textures.

They are updating some environmental things for starter zones, but they aren't updating what players see most and stand out as most outdated. That screams maintenance mode.

ESO also could have a fantastic modular building game within housing, but they don't have a single empty plot of land that is the most generic/ basic/ widespread appeal: alpine.
They don't have modular roof pieces.
The structural pieces they do come out with lately are more "art piece" rather than implementing easily aligned modular pieces that are clearly meant to become a building. Even the Colovian walls textures do not match one another. The one with the door has beautiful dark stones. The one without the door has ugly beige plaster. Placing them beside one another looks jarring.

This makes me wonder if ZOS has a new MMO in the making, so they are forcing ESO to fall short on its potential. Not only for combat/ PvP, but for casual player obvious things as well.

They have had problems with an outdated engine and poor notetaking on their mess of a code. So maybe starting from scratch is the best option.
I wouldn't mind a new MMO that finally has all the features players have been wanting from ESO.

Final Fantasy made a second MMO, and that turned out brilliantly.
AION and ArcheAge are doing the same.

It's not all doom and gloom if their plan is another MMO.

Iuppiterr

Pls give me cool floaty capes