Please Adjust Healing in Vengeance + Combat Animation Concerns

Stamicka

Vengeance
New PTS patch notes are out and it looks like the healing in Vengeance did not get tweaked. In Vengeance 2, there was way too much healing and way too little damage. Players were able to use vigor + the restoration staff HoT + a burst heal. On top of this, the values for these heals seemed way too high compared to the values of the damage skills.

I understand that Vengeance was just a test, but even on a performance level, HoT stacking and low time to kill probably aren't good for performance. From a balance and gameplay perspective, the Vengeance environment wasn't very fun after the first day with the amount of healing going on. I think that it's important that players have a good experience in Vengeance, especially if there are more plans with it in the future.

Getting the healing in check would increase the role of skill in Vengeance greatly and make the environment a bit more appealing to veteran PvPers.

Combat Animations
So it looks like there's some behind the scenes changes being made to combat animations:

Combat Animation Memory Reduction
We are implementing some backend changes to reduce the size of combat animation files to lower their impact on the game’s memory. Specifically, you should experience the following:
The animation visuals after these changes should be virtually indistinguishable from the existing animations within the game.
There will be no impact to light attack weaving or animation cancelling – they should work as they did before.

My guess is that old gen consoles will need to be able to handle whatever new feature is coming next year, so the game needs to use a bit less memory. That aside, this is shockingly similar to what happened in 2019:

Updated block to be calculated more efficiently by the server, similarly to Sprint. Sets and passives that key off block or “While Blocking/While Bracing” now more accurately update as you transition between actively blocking and not.
Overall, the core block behaviors are untouched between mechanics and cost.
We will be monitoring the forums and other areas for feedback and bug reports, so please make sure to provide feedback on this change if you run into any strange behaviors or have questions.
Activating block while animating an ability or attack will now blend the animation more fluidly instead of completely obfuscating the attack. The core mechanics to block cancelling remain untouched, but now display more of the previous attack’s animation before your character animates the block.
Note the visual effects for blocking still appear as soon as block as officially activated, which has been untouched in terms of how long it takes to activate.

We were told that the core functionality would not change, but it did. The game never actually recovered from 2019's "performance improving changes" if I'm honest. The game has felt significantly worse since. I'm really hoping this won't happen again.

YandereGirlfriend

They've got to cut the cord on the ancient consoles. Keeping them around as shambling Necromancer summons is a huge drag on the game. Though this issue is a gaming issue in general rather than being unique to ESO.

Also, reading between the Vengeance lines... I think that the devs only want you to use siege. Vengeance is already lowest common denominator gameplay and siege is the lowest common denominator style of play. It just makes too much sense.

MincMincMinc

I am curious how the execute addition to steel tornado and whirlwind work. Cuz whirlwind already has two executes. One on the skill and another in passives on DW. Does it now have a third calculation? Or did the other two morphs just get a copy of the skill execute.

Is this just another layer of power creep adding calculations to the server? Is the concept of cutting back not clicking to some people on the dev team?

tomofhyrule

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I am curious how the execute addition to steel tornado and whirlwind work. Cuz whirlwind already has two executes. One on the skill and another in passives on DW. Does it now have a third calculation? Or did the other two morphs just get a copy of the skill execute.

Is this just another layer of power creep adding calculations to the server? Is the concept of cutting back not clicking to some people on the dev team?

I think it’s just the two - Whirlwind (the base morph) and Steel Tornado (the larger radius morph) don’t have the execute on them, only the Whirling Blades morph does.
…though if they all have an execute, what is the special effect from that morph now?

MashmalloMan

tomofhyrule wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I am curious how the execute addition to steel tornado and whirlwind work. Cuz whirlwind already has two executes. One on the skill and another in passives on DW. Does it now have a third calculation? Or did the other two morphs just get a copy of the skill execute.

Is this just another layer of power creep adding calculations to the server? Is the concept of cutting back not clicking to some people on the dev team?

…though if they all have an execute, what is the special effect from that morph now?

• 9m radius + 33% execute - 270 cost.
• 6m radius + 100% execute.

Steel Tornado won't beat it out because damage is king and 6m is more than enough, but it definitely competes now. Less of a gap between the 2, I could see Steel being more useful for solo content.

Stamicka

No one will want to test Vengeance as it is in Vengeance 3. Either buff damage by a lot or nerf healing. It’s not fun as is.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

MashmalloMan wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

MincMincMinc wrote: »

I am curious how the execute addition to steel tornado and whirlwind work. Cuz whirlwind already has two executes. One on the skill and another in passives on DW. Does it now have a third calculation? Or did the other two morphs just get a copy of the skill execute.

Is this just another layer of power creep adding calculations to the server? Is the concept of cutting back not clicking to some people on the dev team?

…though if they all have an execute, what is the special effect from that morph now?

• 9m radius + 33% execute - 270 cost.
• 6m radius + 100% execute.

Steel Tornado won't beat it out because damage is king and 6m is more than enough, but it definitely competes now. Less of a gap between the 2, I could see Steel being more useful for solo content.

It's just a ball group buff

MincMincMinc

Stamicka wrote: »

No one will want to test Vengeance as it is in Vengeance 3. Either buff damage by a lot or nerf healing. It’s not fun as is.

TBH I dont think vengeance 3 was supposed to do much of anything other than background tests.

1. The first test was obviously to see if the split system worked and to iron out a new basegame core player cap
2. The second test was for background tests and adding group related tools......which we experienced stuttering/pausing in a few big fights PCNA
3. This third test the only playerside changes were the guild skillines which had no secret sauce to them. Its not like adding the support or assault skill lines and weapon skill lines where there are tons of aoe and overtime group spam mechanics.........So what was the test for? Turning on achievements? Using the Undaunted event to gauge player interest with PVE people removed?
4. Test 4 will be atleast testing the perk and loadout system they threw together for people to have the stat choices (IMO they should have made a system that mimic'd item sets, mundus, enchants, food with 4 or so item set choices instead of loadouts)
5. Test 4 Week 2 will be in parallel with greyhost which should be the PvP version of the undaunted event test. Where now they can see what population of PvP players prefer Greyhost over vengeance.
6. Test 5+ probably depends how these population preference tests go. If the higher ups dont give up maybe we will see more added to vengeance or start getting into rule change tests like aoe caps or effects nolonger stacking between sources or hots stopping after overhealing or no crosshealing etc.

xylena_lazarow

Stamicka wrote: »

From a balance and gameplay perspective, the Vengeance environment wasn't very fun after the first day with the amount of healing going on.

Not sure what they're stress testing if they're gonna drive away all the players with the same broken heal stacking that drives them away from Live. The hype from the first test is long dead at this point.

Joy_Division

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

From a balance and gameplay perspective, the Vengeance environment wasn't very fun after the first day with the amount of healing going on.

Not sure what they're stress testing if they're gonna drive away all the players with the same broken heal stacking that drives them away from Live. The hype from the first test is long dead at this point.

100% correct.