Rich Lambert's Comments About The Current State of Balance

Ingenon

In my limited experience playing multiplayer online games, each MMO game has a meta build for damage dealers. For example, the few times I have played Fallout 76 I have noticed that most people that show up for a seasonal boss fight event are using one meta build. I do not care that ESO has a meta build for damage dealers also. I have been playing ESO since Morrowind chapter, and I have seen several different meta builds for damage dealers come and go.

I understand that this approach that MMO games seem to tend to take is hard on players that want to have one character that does everything for years of play. However, ESO is like other MMO in that it allows multiple alts. I decided early on to build one alt of each starting class. So I don't get left in the dust when ESO does another balance change, and a different build becomes the one build to rule them all.

colossalvoids

noblecron wrote: »

I'd agree with lambert but everyone else's posts here make more sense. I don't even think he pvp's. I don't even know if he plays with other players or if they just use the private dev server.

In vacuum his words do make sense indeed, but when it clashes with actual player experience it starts to make less and less sense.

Meta isn't necessary - correct, meta will be always there in some form or another no matter balancing, that's the nature of life basically.

Broken builds are fine and fun, this can be in the game to some extent.

Yes, to a new player the amount of options could be "mind blowing". That's kind of the point of action RPG games to some extent.

But minus promotional speech for the new players (which is 100% of all interviews ever) it clashes into reality.

Meta isn't some wild beast, it's just an optimal route to the destination. It's not the problem in itself to even mention - the amount of noob traps for the new players are, who can fall into them and proceed to the absurd levels and not see an issue until they're met with other players at some level and hitting a wall they had no idea existed as overland and easier solo and group content is clearable without an issue on literally no build at all.

Broken builds aren't there apart from PvP really, anything going 1% over the new spreadsheet iteration gets mercilessly nerfed where in result some niche damage types and play styles became obsolete, at some cases completely so. A lot of them lost their colours so to speak when two easily accessible crafted sets can be infinitely better than most trial and dungeon gear game has to offer. I still remember dot standardisation that was around elsweyr essentially killing off entire archetypes, needing skills to the new standards but the next patch due to excessive new damage caps in both PvP and PvE it's got changed again, but most stuff that was nerfed over the first iteration never recovered and was forgotten, essentially. Same stuff happened a lot over the years and backlog of broken stuff is glaring, that's most of the things in the game now percentage wise. And broken not in a fun, unique way giving amazing possibilities to build craft as you'd want in RPG game. Just made bad.

Sorry this topic is living rent free today in my head after AUA and all of that lmao.

Thumbless_Bot

Frayton wrote: »

What does everyone think?

He's right.

I agree. However the reaction speed to fix what is broken is glacial and that is the problem. That is literally THE problem with their mentality.

Fix it in a hot fix. Dont wait six months while meta chasers abuse it. That makes the game less.fun for the vast majority of players who agree woth him, like me. That there is more.than one way to do things.

If you cannot support quick fixes, the philosophy fails, miserably.

Destai

I didn't find much value in most of the questions and their answers. I especially don't want to hear about the early days anymore. It's not relevant for me.

Only the subclassing commentary stood out for me. Seeing the tone difference between Nick and Rich make me grateful Nick's in charge. This statement seems promising:

Giacomini agrees and says this is always the case with major updates. “I can't think of a single time we launched something and it’s been like, ‘Yes, we did everything right,’” he explains. “We’re listening to feedback and trying to make some changes. Rich alluded to the meta; that’s something we’re really focused on. How do we make it so that players don’t feel like they need to play one particular build to be competitive? That's something that we're having conversations about, we're listening to players, and we have some changes in mind.”

The topic of this becoming a 30-year game seems like a talking point they've rehearsed and carry with them from interview to interview. Just like the early days talking points. If you want me to believe this game will be around for 30 years - articulate the next year or two for me ZOS. Provide a roadmap. And not just one little slide that Kevin fills out over the year.

Sluggy

Meiox wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Frayton wrote: »

What does everyone think?

He's right.

So do you think that balancing is not important because a "meta" doesn't need to be followed?

I think it's a true statement that meta doesn't need to be followed. In practice that means you will do lower damage than you could be doing in trials, you might not make it on to teams, and you'll be outmatched in PvP constantly. This argument doesn't address the fact that in certain environments, performance measured against other players matters. Most people don't want to be unnecessarily gimped. They are essentially punishing being creative when creative builds underperform so much compared to what's meta.

you can try to balance as much as you want, there will allways be a meta.
People even choose a race where they get just a small benefit over another race, therefore if the second best build would be 1% less effectiv they would still just use the meta build

But the point they are making is that the gap has never quite this large. I've never played a meta DPS build and the difference was usually between 10% and 20% - which is quite large but at least workable. The difference now is well over 100% in some cases. That's not swapping a race and a skill to eek out an extra percent. That's equivalent adding a whole extra character to the team doing a full rotation.

There are other areas of balance than just damage output too. There was a time when you wanted a tank and healer for pretty much anything you did outside of some quests. Nowadays they are redundant at best and detrimental at worse in a lot of the content. And not even particularly fun to play. What's the point of taunting a boss that can't hurt anyone and will be dead in less than five seconds anyway? What's the point of using your skill and experience to gather enemies and control their movement for the sake of the group when someone can do all of that with the press of a single button that will also kill all of those enemies?

On top of that there are sets and skill in this game that no person capable of reading would ever consider using. That's not balance. That's negligence.

StihlReign

The lead combat dev at the highest level of the game can't play, neither can the community managers. There's thumb twiddling because the culture has been to pretend the devs can or will balance the game's abilities, sets and skills meanwhile ignoring the cries from the educated 'elite' players who come to the forums. The forum population matches the over-all game population percentage-wise.

The devs ran from the forums to Reddit for a nicer environment. Less accountability. It often feels like the community managers have little to no respect for the community's time - this is apparent when you watch the latest community video for Solstice. They waste a lot of time discussing nothing (mint peanut butter and chocolate...), and didn't perform a precursory sound check. In the past they've taken down videos that show their gameplay.

Nothing's wrong....we'll wait them out - that's the take.

18 years of ignoring player concerns won't change his animosity towards the player base, since the player's aren't his audience. It's Altman (February 23, 1947 – February 3, 2021), who can't play the game, and the players who play another game - Skyrim.

He tells us, they were bad at working the task given, so they quit. They decided to make a single player game that could host a lot of players. Through this prism the strategy becomes clear through history - change the abilities, tweak them, it'll look like they're doing something, even if it destabilizes the game (often), it'll create something fresh and keep the players paying...in anticipation of the fix...that will never come.

If we've asked why it's so difficult to have teams for each class to address imbalance - it's never been on the menu.

You fall to the level of your training (not rise to your expectations) under pressure is a widely accepted concept.
(Navy SEALs and Chris Voss, and originally attributed to the Greek poet Archilochus.)

This means your default behavior under duress reflects your ingrained habits and practiced skills, not your idealized goals or aspirations. To perform at your best under stress, you must build a strong foundation of consistent, high-level training and preparation.

This mirrors the attitude of players as they progress, and the guilds and guild masters that train, theorycraft, counsel and coach players, trials and groups. So who's left (out)? The devs.

There was well over 6 Million armor set combinations BEFORE scribing or subclassing, this was documented in a forum post.

"As of August 2024, there are over 650 unique item sets in ESO. Since players can wear two different five-piece sets, plus a two-piece monster set and a mythic item, the raw number of possible set combinations is extremely high and the number 6 million is likely a conservative estimate" Source AI

Everyone didn't need to have every ability from every class, there were many paths to give roleplayers more. But here we are, faced with a history of non-completion and failed promises, poor communication and a mocked fanbase.

Lucasl402

React wrote: »

Meta absolutely matters in any competitive content, and pretending that it doesn't is spitting in the face of your veterans. His statements might apply to casual content such as overland, normal dungeons and trials, and vet dungeons. But in terms of vet trials, HM vet content and PVP, they're just objectively wrong.

The very systems he references as providing this "freedom of choice" are the exact ones which have widened the gap between meta and off meta setups. Pre hybridization I was able to play off-meta magicka and stamina builds that more often than not could compete with high-skill full meta players, because the gap wasn't nearly as wide. Nowadays if you play some off meta setup and you come up against an average/above average player running a best in slot meta setup, it is highly unlikely you will be able to overcome the power difference regardless of the skill gap.

This sucks for veterans and casuals alike. Veterans are bored and fed up of playing/fighting the exact same builds all the time (in pvp and pve!), and casuals hate the "unkillable one shot builds" that are smashing them with 2-3x their stat density.

Him saying this after the complete lack of care for balancing over the past few years since hybridization and subclassing is very telling. It speaks volumes to why the ship has been steered so far in the wrong direction.

I've always felt that the higher ups at ZOS were hostile to PvP and end game PvE. And who could ever forget the "Waaa Waaa Waaa They're working on it" video?

tomofhyrule

I knew that there was a big sentiment of "you don't have to listen to others, just play how you want!" from the top, but it's amazing to think of how out of touch that is with the real world.

Sure, you can go wild in a single-player game where you fight with or against NPCs. Who cares if you want to make everything easy mode or whether you want to stubbornly add a lot of nerfs to yourself if it affects nobody? Heck, I love playing the mainline TES games where I have to specifically RP walk everywhere (no running, because I'd get tired in real life), remember to eat and sleep every day, only stick to damage since I dislike magic, and the like.

But ESO is not playing with or against NPCs. There are people there. Going up to a group and saying "Hi, I don't give a flying skeever's butt about any of you and you need to play my way because I'm the most important person here" is kinda toxic. If you want to work with others, you really shouldn't come in with your self-nerf RP-only build. And for PvP, if you're not playing meta, are you expecting that you should have a big neon sign over your head saying "DO NOT ATTACK ME IF YOU PLAY META BECAUSE I DESERVE TO HAVE A CHANCE TO WIN."

I completely agree that players should not be forced into the meta. However, that implies that "meta" and "non-meta" are within 5-10% of each other. What we have now is one meta that's like 50-75% above anything else, and that means that if you're not playing meta, you are literally throwing and being completely disrespectful to your group. With that high of a gap, it can be argued that bringing your "play the way you want" build is literally griefing, so are the devs condoning trolling your team?

I always come back to the race analogy: If I'm going to run a race and I need to choose shoes, the best circumstance is that I can choose between a few different running shoes. What we have now is a choice between sneakers, flip flops, stiletto heels, and rocket-powered roller skates. If I'm running alone and I want to run in heels, great. But then it's pretty clear that I'm not winning a race against Sonic the Hedgehog. And if I'm doing a relay with a team and I demand that I should be able to run in flip-flops while the others are all in rocket boosters, what does that say about me as a team player?

aetherix8

Just to be clear, I like subclassing, I want it to stay, but I think it needs to be adjusted so pure classes can compete against subclassed builds in PvP, and be just as viable in PvE as subclassed builds are.

My 2 cents on the OP quote:

“There's a ‘meta’, right? People say this is the only way you can do a thing. I love going against that, pushing the boundaries, and showing this group does it this way, and that works for them, but this works for me.

There's always a 'meta', there always was and there always will be. But before, no matter what 'meta' it was, we were seeing different playstyles in dungeons. Now we see only one playstyle: beam. So something is obviously wrong. Is it players being too lazy to push boundaries? Or is it that one playstyle is by far the most performant and so the only thing we ever see now is beam+assassination everywhere.

“I think overall it's been really positive in the community. I mean, obviously, there's feedback, especially at the top end, where they're like, ‘Now everything's the same.’ Only because you want it to be that way.”

That strikes me as "we wash our hands of it" kind of approach. If there is only beam everywhere it is because players only want to beam. Really? I can't believe that I'm the only one who thinks beam-only is deadly boring. If there's only beam everywhere it is because it is by far the most efficient way to clear content. It needs to be tuned down to make other playstyles competitive.

“We went in eyes wide open” “We’re confident enough that we know the system's going to work, but we're also confident that players are going to find unique combinations of things, or do things that we didn't necessarily think about and potentially break things. We were comfortable with that. We knew that was going to come.”

Players are only beaming right now. Soon they are going to beam this game into Oblivion because of the total absence of unique combinations of things that are actually being applied in the actual game. One thing is to see many viable builds on paper. But in the actual game, the only thing we see is beam.

Not only there's only beam everywhere in group content, but also that beam is so strong that group content (vet dungeons) feels like clearing mudcrabs around Khenarthi's Roost. All challenge is gone, it is mind-numbing and therefore unfun. As someone said already, I don't even know why I would taunt anymore, oftentimes before I even get the chance to taunt smth it is already beamed down. I'm used to never seeing mechanics in normal dungeons, but vet? Isn't that supposed to be the point of it? To learn mechanics and learn how to counter them? Each boss having unique mechanics makes the entire affair interesting, but now the only distinction between bosses is their looks. So in the end it all feels the same, and it is the contrary of engaging.

If there happens to be no beam, then it's usually newer players who didn't yet figure out how to build at all, and to clear a dungeon can take a very long time. It's like there's nothing in between anymore, and that's alarming.

Edit spelling

Avran_Sylt

Love subclassing, I agree in that regard.

My problem is still arcanists beam, even though I use it a lot, I even like it:

• The amount of cleave damage leaves many other single-target skills in the dust, and most encounters have several enemies.
• The amount of damage being on par with single-target skills for all targets makes it a jack of all trades.
• I like the simplified rotation, not needing to be too cognizant of maintaining DoTs as your main focus is using direct damage abilities to generate crux. But outside of Heavy Attack builds, no other build comes close to as little complexity as this, or one that primarily uses direct damage attacks. There's a variety of abilities in the game, but little variety of approach.

Tandor

It seems to me that the problem is that ZOS either balance all skills to be exactly the same, in which case players complain that there's no difference between their characters and the classes, or they have the skills unbalanced in which case ultra competitive players complain that the meta build is overpowered so they're forced into it, while the non-competitive players love the fact that they can play the way they want and see a meaningful difference between their characters thereby promoting the development of multiple characters.

I accept that some will argue that it's a question of the degree of any imbalance, but that is a hugely subjective point. I also accept that it's not just about skills, but also about sets - and they do seem ridiculously excessive in number these days, most of the time they're mentioned I've never even heard of them let alone got them!

CalamityCat

I'm one of those players who doesn't like to follow what everyone else is doing. So I hate the meta and try to avoid it unless it happens to be the sort of build I want to run. I get bored easily, so I like choice in games. But only when those choices are similarly effective and actually balanced. Then you CAN actually choose how you play and not have team mates complain about your low DPS. If you always feel your build is worse than those you group with, that "choice" doesn't feel very good. It really pushes players towards those meta builds when the non meta is so far behind.

What I feel with subclassing is that the choice is an illusion. Theoretically we can build many subclass combinations or play pure builds. In reality though, only a few things work really well and the others can be far less satisfying. Wanting to do a good amount of damage and be effective doesn't mean you only want 2 builds to choose from!

I honestly feel ESO's fake choice is more harmful at this point, because a player can see all these theoretical options, but then finds it disappointing that only a few feel effective. When you're playing a game with actual choice and balance alongside ESO, the fake choice in ESO just feels like the devs have crippled the fun and replayability of their own game.

Thumbless_Bot

Meiox wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Frayton wrote: »

What does everyone think?

He's right.

So do you think that balancing is not important because a "meta" doesn't need to be followed?

I think it's a true statement that meta doesn't need to be followed. In practice that means you will do lower damage than you could be doing in trials, you might not make it on to teams, and you'll be outmatched in PvP constantly. This argument doesn't address the fact that in certain environments, performance measured against other players matters. Most people don't want to be unnecessarily gimped. They are essentially punishing being creative when creative builds underperform so much compared to what's meta.

you can try to balance as much as you want, there will allways be a meta.
People even choose a race where they get just a small benefit over another race, therefore if the second best build would be 1% less effectiv they would still just use the meta build

Some will and some will not.

The problem is that there is not just a 1% gap.

Right now in pvp there is one meta that is pretty far ahead.

This happens when a vendor gets greedy and puts thing behind a pay wall that cause imbalances beyond 1 or 2%.

They 'adjust' things after they've made their money. This takes its toll on veteran and new players, at least the ones who arent meta chasers and/or arent willing to fork over money to get the bis stuff.

karthrag_inak

loosej wrote: »

His comments seem to address the meta in group-based PvE. What about players who (used to) enjoy PvP?

After participating on the forums for about a decade, Khajiit thinks that most players who primarily PvP have never enjoyed it.

GloatingSwine

Meiox wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Frayton wrote: »

What does everyone think?

He's right.

So do you think that balancing is not important because a "meta" doesn't need to be followed?

I think it's a true statement that meta doesn't need to be followed. In practice that means you will do lower damage than you could be doing in trials, you might not make it on to teams, and you'll be outmatched in PvP constantly. This argument doesn't address the fact that in certain environments, performance measured against other players matters. Most people don't want to be unnecessarily gimped. They are essentially punishing being creative when creative builds underperform so much compared to what's meta.

you can try to balance as much as you want, there will allways be a meta.
People even choose a race where they get just a small benefit over another race, therefore if the second best build would be 1% less effectiv they would still just use the meta build

There will always be a meta, but how close the options are determine how vibrant and interesting it is.

Right now, the options are world's apart and the meta is stagnant. Even builds that can theoretically outperform beam can only do so for a vanishingly small number of players.

And beaming is the most boring way to do damage.

mdjessup4906

This is a take id expect from a stubborn new player or just someone very casual, not the freaking combat lead.

Jaimeh wrote: »

I mean, obviously, there's feedback, especially at the top end, where they're like, ‘Now everything's the same.’ Only because you want it to be that way.”

This rings a little out of touch or sort of cavalier, imo. Of course people at the top end would love to be more creative with their playstyles, but some fights are designed in a way that you need to optimize in very specific combos to clear. I would love for the devs to show us a quite off-meta composition clearing hard encounters with decent times/vitality.

Combat team should stream themselves doing a hard mode trial with the sort of build diversity they say exists. They ought to be able to clear even if they arent the most skilled at actual gaming, because diversity right?

Onomog

I would pay $$ to watch that stream, for real.

Kendaric

GloatingSwine wrote: »

you can try to balance as much as you want, there will allways be a meta.
People even choose a race where they get just a small benefit over another race, therefore if the second best build would be 1% less effectiv they would still just use the meta build

There will always be a meta, but how close the options are determine how vibrant and interesting it is.

Right now, the options are world's apart and the meta is stagnant. Even builds that can theoretically outperform beam can only do so for a vanishingly small number of players.

And beaming is the most boring way to do damage.[/quote]

So, out of curiosity... is the beam still overpowered even without subclassing? I recall it pretty being totally overpowered when Necrom came out, but wasn't it brought down to a more normal level afterwards?
I don't have Necrom (or the Arcanist), so I can't really check.

tomofhyrule

Kendaric wrote: »

So, out of curiosity... is the beam still overpowered even without subclassing? I recall it pretty being totally overpowered when Necrom came out, but wasn't it brought down to a more normal level afterwards?
I don't have Necrom (or the Arcanist), so I can't really check.

Yes.

And no, it was not brought to a more normal level ever.

A lot of the issue is the specific combo is extremely overloaded. You have:

1. A buff that gives permanent Major Brutality/Sorcery and powers up your beam and does an extra bit of damage when using Class abilities.
2. An AoE spammable which powers up your beam and is a self heal and gives you a unique damage done bonus.
3. An AoE beam which does incredibly heavy damage over a long channel time since it’s been powered so much by the previous attacks and gives you a free damage shield while using it and is super cheap
4. Passives which greatly increase your crit damage and penetration.
5. Normally paired with sets that increase damage of channels by 15%, damage overall done by 15%, and permanent Force.

Subclassing just allows you to also stack passives to give loads of crit so you’re just doing stupid amounts of damage.

Again, Arcanist was the go to since it released for parse DPS, but at least there were times that other Classes could take a support DPS role (or in some cases even outparse Arcanist, but only in the hands of a total expert in their class). Now, nothing comes close to the level of the Arcblade, so it seriously is if you don’t want to play it, you are not measuring up full stop.

You know what would be fun? If they ever released a dungeon/trial that punished the meta. I’m imagining a boss fight where there are two bosses that are immune unless they’re brought next to each other, but if Boss A dies, it’s a wipe. Basically you need to hard single-target Boss B while they’re essentially stacked. That could be a fun way to get people to play other things, if only for one fight…

Radiate77

Kendaric wrote: »

So, out of curiosity... is the beam still overpowered even without subclassing? I recall it pretty being totally overpowered when Necrom came out, but wasn't it brought down to a more normal level afterwards?
I don't have Necrom (or the Arcanist), so I can't really check.

It was never brought down enough to the point where people sought out other options.

It has too much add clear potential, and I have no idea how any dev thought that the Amulet of Kings beam was something every player needed to get their hands on.

How do you even balance it with the design it currently has? Let’s say 150k is a good number for Single Target, even at 75k DPS, Beam meets that number hitting just two targets, and priority add clear is extremely important in high end content and you can almost always stack the mobs together.

Fatecarver needs a redesign from the ground up.

I mean honestly it wouldn’t be that hard. They could just remove the channel, make it a cast time skill that hits only one time, but for more damage, still scaling with Crux, if it was part of a rotation instead of the majority of it, there wouldn’t be a problem.

reazea

Lucasl402 wrote: »

React wrote: »

Meta absolutely matters in any competitive content, and pretending that it doesn't is spitting in the face of your veterans. His statements might apply to casual content such as overland, normal dungeons and trials, and vet dungeons. But in terms of vet trials, HM vet content and PVP, they're just objectively wrong.

The very systems he references as providing this "freedom of choice" are the exact ones which have widened the gap between meta and off meta setups. Pre hybridization I was able to play off-meta magicka and stamina builds that more often than not could compete with high-skill full meta players, because the gap wasn't nearly as wide. Nowadays if you play some off meta setup and you come up against an average/above average player running a best in slot meta setup, it is highly unlikely you will be able to overcome the power difference regardless of the skill gap.

This sucks for veterans and casuals alike. Veterans are bored and fed up of playing/fighting the exact same builds all the time (in pvp and pve!), and casuals hate the "unkillable one shot builds" that are smashing them with 2-3x their stat density.

Him saying this after the complete lack of care for balancing over the past few years since hybridization and subclassing is very telling. It speaks volumes to why the ship has been steered so far in the wrong direction.

I've always felt that the higher ups at ZOS were hostile to PvP and end game PvE. And who could ever forget the "Waaa Waaa Waaa They're working on it" video?

Never forget that video. It's burned into my brain like a shadow on a wall after a nuclear explosion. That was when we learned what was going on.

tomofhyrule

There’s also the fact that they don’t seem to be consistently applying their standards. Let’s ignore Fatecarver for a sec and just compare two AoE skills: Arctic Blast from Warden and Cephaliarch’s Flail from Arcanist:

Flail: 3k Stam cost, 15m conal AoE doing 1.9k damage, immobilizes enemies hit for 3s, self heal for 1k if it hits, empowers later attacks, and also applies a 20s unique 5% damage taken debuff on the enemy.

Blast: 3.8 mag cost, 6m radial AoE doing 1.8k damage, stuns after a delay for 3s, and continues dealing 300 damage every 2s for 18s. But because it “was too overloaded,” the self heal it had (2.3k) was made conditional on it not hitting anyone.

And note that I’m not even considering the passives of their respective lines here - Herald of the Tome has 4 damage-increasing passives, while Winter’s Embrace has one (two if you count the increased damage of the Chilled status which Blast has a chance to apply)

So… why was one nerfed (which was rarely used outside of soloing content; meanwhile the other morph was very problematic in PvP) when the other is just as overloaded and… is fine?

Daoin

if people need to turn an rpg game into a massive competition rather than massive multiplayer experience but cannot handle differences in the way people want to play then they need touch some grass and rethink thier lives
as for the 20 years ahead thing...i'll give eso 20 minutes each time i log in to keep me captivated, 20 years is just never going to happen

Parasaurolophus

Daoin wrote: »

if people need to turn an rpg game into a massive competition rather than massive multiplayer experience but cannot handle differences in the way people want to play then they need touch some grass and rethink thier lives
as for the 20 years ahead thing...i'll give eso 20 minutes each time i log in to keep me captivated, 20 years is just never going to happen

Where you find rpg in mmo game?

alpha_synuclein

Onomog wrote: »

I would pay $$ to watch that stream, for real.

Me too!

I have yet to see an off meta comp clearing any HM from DSR onwards.

Pevey

This just shows how out of touch Rich is. Which we already knew.

Amottica

What is interesting is that from time to time ,we have seen posts requesting more choices. Some mistakenly thought that more choice meant more builds and variety.

That opinion is that more choices meant more variety, which could not be truer and more false. There will always be the best builds because of what we call math. Nothing developers can do to change that outside of making changes that merely change what builds perform best. No one needs to run the top-performing builds unless they want to perform at the highest level. Even then, most of us are not willing to put the effort into making the most of any top-performing builds because that takes time and practice.

Welcome to life in an MMORPG.

This is neither an endorsement for nor against subclassing.

heaven13

Amottica wrote: »

What is interesting is that from time to time ,we have seen posts requesting more choices. Some mistakenly thought that more choice meant more builds and variety.

That opinion is that more choices meant more variety, which could not be truer and more false. There will always be the best builds because of what we call math. Nothing developers can do to change that outside of making changes that merely change what builds perform best. No one needs to run the top-performing builds unless they want to perform at the highest level. Even then, most of us are not willing to put the effort into making the most of any top-performing builds because that takes time and practice.

Welcome to life in an MMORPG.

This is neither an endorsement for nor against subclassing.

Again, it's not about there being a meta and everything else. It's about the meta being SO FAR above everything else that you're left with no choice. Back when I still did trials, I ran off-meta classes/set-ups and still performed in the top couple DDs in my group. The meta existed, and has always existed, but the difference was more negligible which allowed people some wiggle room to play outside of it. That is no longer the case.

Malprave

The meta shouldn’t be the easiest way to play and it also shouldn’t be way ahead of more difficult to play alternatives. That seems pretty obvious to me.

But what do I know.

I just get tired of watching game companies ruin some of my favorite games and franchises. That’s been a real problem over the past decade. Hope ESO isn’t the next to fall.

Amottica

heaven13 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

What is interesting is that from time to time ,we have seen posts requesting more choices. Some mistakenly thought that more choice meant more builds and variety.

That opinion is that more choices meant more variety, which could not be truer and more false. There will always be the best builds because of what we call math. Nothing developers can do to change that outside of making changes that merely change what builds perform best. No one needs to run the top-performing builds unless they want to perform at the highest level. Even then, most of us are not willing to put the effort into making the most of any top-performing builds because that takes time and practice.

Welcome to life in an MMORPG.

This is neither an endorsement for nor against subclassing.

Again, it's not about there being a meta and everything else. It's about the meta being SO FAR above everything else that you're left with no choice. Back when I still did trials, I ran off-meta classes/set-ups and still performed in the top couple DDs in my group. The meta existed, and has always existed, but the difference was more negligible which allowed people some wiggle room to play outside of it. That is no longer the case.

I apologize. I should have been more specific.

Yes, crappy builds can and will happen. They have all along. Even in games with more rigid build systems, people can still create builds that very much underperform.

I recall helping a member of a casual guild I am in who was parsing and testing a new build. He was doing a fraction of the damage possible with the class he was in. I offered to connect him with the top player for his class to help him with his build. He declined, saying he was happy with what he had.

In other words, devs should not be held responsible for the choices we make that lead to poor performance of the builds we create. At some point, we need to look in the mirror. If a build is not performing as well as we would like and other players are doing better, we need to make changes to our builds to bring them closer to the damage we want.