Dear ZOS

ddejonghprb19_ESO

I want to write to you an open letter about my concerns with EsO pvp at this moment.
I have to say sorry for my English since it isn't my main language. I will try to write the best I can.

I am a veteran pvp player who started to enjoy it in Asherons call player killer and then moved on to DAoC about 1 month after it got released.
Although the levelling in DAoC was harsh I enjoyed the pvp I encountered in that game ALOT.
I played a hib ranger and I was spotted in thid a lot, and later in Darknes falls and even the enemy pvp zones. I had to sneak in stealth for hours and hours to get to the places where mids and albs grinded mobs to level up.
Nothing more fun to try and kill them. Mostly it worked, sometimes I failed.
No matter what....it was always fun.

I also enjoyed the relic attacks and defending. CTA, CTA (call to arms) was shouted sometimes in alliance (group of liked guilds that could talk to each otter in alliance chat) when albs or mids tried to take our relics and everyone stopped what they was doing. Hundreds and hundreds of players pored into the rvr zone trying to reach the relic keep in time, or they moved to the gates trying to stop the enemy of leaving the zone with the relics. Every one helped....lvls 5 to
Realm pride was very high.

I was happy to see your name connected to EsO and stepped in the beta.
Although the pve in Elders scroll is very bad due to the fact its nearly impossible to level with friends I work my way trough it.
After I reached 10 in beta, but also now, I went into pvp. Pvp is my only reason to play EsO, and with me I can speak for me small guild.

My guild is made of the same team I play with since 2003. We met in DAoC and since then we tried out loads of games in search of the best pvp fights.
We don't like the arena styles like in WoW although at first the pvp servers there had fun moments. We did Warhammer, Aion, Guild wars 2 and some others.

I have to ask you what went wrong with pvp in EsO?
How could a guy with so much knowledge of pvp, and who helped design the best pvp ever in mmo history lost his way so much?

I explain what I mean...
Imagine you are a lvl 10 or 25 player who never did pvp in an mmo, but would like to try it. What will you find?
Cyrodiil is a huge and nice area. Good designed with loads of stuff that can be done. Good keeps, bridges and stuff. So far no issues.
Offcourse they understand they need to be careful what they fight. They might be boosted up, they are not 50 and cant take on a real 50.
So they stick to the zerg or maybe small guild groups.

they work hard to get 50 only to find out its still not enough to do stuff solo in pvp...nope you need to get to vet 10. If working up to 50 isn't hard enough you now need to work even harder to get vet 10.
At vet 10 they cheer and dance and cry on each other shoulders. They made it.
So back to pvp...
to find...they didn't make a sorc or DK. And so they fail.

My biggest worries with EsO pvp is that vet ranks and vamps got added waaaaay to soon. They now spoil pvp so much, that even for hard-core players like me and my guild the fun isn't there anymore .
We see entire zergs made up out of aoe spamming sorcs that run round like the botters in dungeons (I am not saying they are botting, they look the same)
Everywhere you see vet 10, and unless you are vet 10 your self your have no shot of winning at all.
The "best" fights we seen last week. 2 dominion vet 10 got attacked by at least 15 of our side. Highest we had was a vet 3, lowest was lvl 35.
We attacked with all we could, and got help from more and more. two us us stopped and started to count. In total the vet 10 killed over 60 players of our side. wave after wave they killed and we hardly see the health bars move. If it moved they plopped away, only to return seconds later full health.
The fight was just outside a keep so players who died could respawn quick and rush back into the fight.
In the end more and more high vet ranks rushed in and we got them down. respect to the enemy..but this never should have happened.
They could do this because of the insane bugs with the vamp styles. Plopping ability of the sorc, and DK shield slam.

after 1 month we can conclude pvp is no place to go unless you are at least lvl 50 vet 5.
If you are not a sorc or DK don't go solo.

Aren't you guys worried about this?
Why did you put vet ranks in so early? it should have been the first expansion after 6 months or so.
Why added the vampires so early? should have been the 2nd expansion after 1 year or so.
Why add the plop ability for sorcs? Every game since 2001 show it will ruin the fighting in pvp.
Why the to powerfull shield ability on DK. Its a dps tank and all these players do is put stuff in health and none in damage so they can do the best damage in pvp....read it again. All in health and NONE in stam for best damage in pvp?????
Why cant we lvl nice in pvp?
Why not make lvl 50 highest in the game until so also new players could learn pvp normaly?
Why no battle grounds like in DAoC for each 10 lvls to learn pvp in the game? so 10-20 in one open zone. 21-30, 31-40 etc etc.

Now you guys will ad the DF dungeon in this game. DF in DAoC was awesome because of the relation it handed between pve and pvp.
PvP had to open it...and after that players from pve could port in for awesome lvling. Pvp players went there to kill the eney players inside.
Are you going to add the same thing?
How can pve players go there?
Can pve players go there?
Why would a none vet10 vamp go there?
What are you trying to do there?

I am worried because we players get the idea you guys are not listening to the pvp players at all.
all we see is pve, pve and more pve.
Bug fixes are for pve.
New content is pve.
Q&A is just for pve.

and why? there is no pve end game in EsO AT ALL.
All players can do at highest lvl is go pvp....and you guys don't care about it...or at least don't show it.

Pvp lag since 4th april is insane.
Forums and internet explode on zoning issues.
To powerfull one button skills.

And we don't hear at all from you.

talk to us pvp players.
Show us that you care and that you listen.

We respect you a lot but respect can be lost.
Talk to us and help us enjoy the game. Even if you can solve the issues now...talk to us and let us know you care.

Don't just listen to marketing people because you guys make more cash of the pve minded players.

EsO could be the next best thing after DAoC in pvp. But seeing so many alrdy cancel accounts after only 1 month worries me.
I know it also worries you guys, but the answer isn't in add more pve.
The answer is in improve pvp for all lvls. THERE is the true gold.

Hope to hear soon of you.
best regards
Pyltje
Myrmidon guild

Mod edit: removed developer name, as per our "Names in Thread Titles" policy in the Code of Conduct.

Sharee

From what i understand the issue was bats hitting unlimited number of targets, draining health from all of them, and being so cheap they could be up all the time. So the more enemies around, the more powerful it got.

They fixed this.

As for sorcs AOEing, i don't think it's that much different from enchanter PBAOE spam. And if it's overpowered it will get nerfed. Remember animist mushroom fields? I know we tend to look at our gaming youth through rose-tinted glasses, but DAoC had it's share of same stuff you complain about in TESo. Warlocks instablowing people up with balls of death, unkillable vamps, overpowered TOA relics, yada yada.

Give it time.

Teevesnacks

So basically nerf V10, sorcs and dks and remake DAoC

Kaiem

DAoC wasn't exactly great for balance so I wouldn't try and use that as an example. They have already taken action to balance vampires and there is more coming up, they are also making changes to bash, all because of the abilities effectiveness in pvp. Have you even looked at the patch notes for the stuff on pts?

I don't get all the complaining that VR makes you more powerful than a non-VR, of course it does! that's like complaining in DAoC that your lvl 40 was weaker than a lvl 50. You can still pvp as a lower level it just takes more planning and tactics, once the above mentioned issues are fixed it will be even easier. Besides which they are looking to drastically increase exp gains in pvp to make leveling there viable, this was stated in the reddit AMA which you maybe didn't read because the first two questions were about pve.

They clearly are looking at pvp and making changes based upon it. It's boring reading threads in pvp sections of the forums saying all the changes they make are for pve and then reading threads on pve sections saying all changes are pvp based. They are clearly working on both sides of the game so stop making this pointless complaint.

Igolbug

I can pvp with current balance.

It is the bugs that are pissing me off, camp dissapearing on map 2 seconds after spwaning it, 8k AP down the drain and can't drop another camp there for hours because it sits there giving you a friendly graveyard.

Avidus

The best thing developers can do is make a good game, wait for the players to find some way to abuse something, then fix it.
They are on top of it, don't worry!

limeli8

LOL are people are even aware that sorcs don't have any good aoe skills? I mean there is lightning splash but almost nobody uses it because its only good for synergy and in pvp hardly anyone activates it. So most sorcs use good old Impulse from destro that is available to every class even night blade (NB actually can do the most damage with it if used with drain power)

FayaSDL

The 2 only imbalanced things, in my opinion, are emperor passive skill line and impulse.
There is a growing BG of former emps from AD ruining each map they guesting to, to the point people dont come back.
If you dont want us to PvP say so and we will just unsub.

lao

Kaiem wrote: »

DAoC wasn't exactly great for balance so I wouldn't try and use that as an example. They have already taken action to balance vampires and there is more coming up, they are also making changes to bash, all because of the abilities effectiveness in pvp. Have you even looked at the patch notes for the stuff on pts?

???

DAoC has been extremely balanced ever since TOA. what are you talking about?

sure there was a couple of expansion classes that were OP in their first iteration but most of those were barely used in competitive 8v8.

there is not a single mmo in history that got closer to "perfect balance" than DAoC.

lao

Teevesnacks wrote: »

So basically nerf V10, sorcs and dks and remake DAoC

yes please. remove everything related to eso from the game and remake DAoC with old frontiers on ESO engine. voila mmo market saturated for the next 20 years.

your welcome matt.

now get to it.

thank you!

popatiberiuoneb18_ESO

The intention is good and you have both good and bad points, most of them good though. Being misinformed about some skill exploits and general mechanics lowers your credibility.

I am a PvP-er myself and would want nothing less from ESO then to be the best PvP game ever created and when i saw how smooth some 100+ people fights were going back into beta and in people's videos i just had to try it out. I could barely wait to get ito it. i was even willing to go ignore the poorly designed console oriented skill sistem. The sad truth is not nearly as smooth and for EU players is even whorse since the server is in US, the freezes are for all though, i can only assume that is becouse they are cutting on expenses with the servers.

Anyway back on topic. The game has (had?) the potential to become one of the best pvp mmos out there but with nearly every change they made, it became clear that this is not their aim. They want to make as much cash as possible on the short run and wont bother nurturing a faithful pbase, their fixes are not intended to solve problems, they are clumsy patches to shut people's mouths.

The "star" developers and their promises were used as a smart marketing gimmick and it worked extremly well, at least amongst the veteran players. I doubt they have any saying in many things involving the general direction where ESO is heading. This doese not mean though that it will not hurt their reputation, but who cares as long as the money keep rolling in...sad

jpp

There is very simple fix to all balancing problems - just let players decide and choose the class.
In case player thinks some class is better and he wants to play it.. why force him to repeat all quests to create new character? Anyway they still would have to train skills for this class and assign skill points.
I see no reason the class is only assigned at beggining and can not be changed later - same as everyone can choose armor the classes could be selected.