In my opinion, they did a really good job in general with the update...

But, they missed one point by including the scaling system. In their communication with the gaming media, they explain a lot how they want to slowly give more controls (choices) to the players and that's an awesome hard-to-do thing.

The scaling system is, in my opinion, only a patch over a wound and the bad thing is that the said wound is of different size from players to players. Some only needed a plaster while other needed a whole lot of bandages.

In my opinion, they went a bit too sideways with the scaling system and could have use something much more simple and efficient that has been proven as a working feature in every other Elder Scrolls games of the series.

It's not badly made in any way... but it's mostly locking away players who still want a real challenge... By automatically making it easier to everyone to travel everywhere, they're making it so that people who wanted to discover new area with dangers to, now, only discover new area without much danger. (Not counting how much wrong the dialogue/lore can gets now... when a NPC warn the play of a local threat and that threat is leveled down to the player's level... that's kinda bad and makes the NPC seems like overly-weaklings.)

The solution exist since, from what I have played, the Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind. That is... a difficulty option.
Yup! As I haven't played Elder Scrolls I and II, I can't write if they had the same system, but since Morrowind, all Elder Scrolls had this slider/selection in the Gameplay tab that allowed the player to select the difficulty level. The result of that option was acting as a multiplier of the enemies stats. Easy (lowest) was making even the last-game boss as something that could be beaten with the every-day equipment while the Hard (highest) difficulty was making even the giant rat as deadly threat that required evasion and dozen of strikes.

Now, the usual way people who act regarding this is that "Well everyone would play on Easy"... And yeah... everyone would try it to see how easy it can get... like we all did in every Elder Scrolls games. We could call it literally "stroll mode". That would fit exactly in the way they described as "everyone can go everywhere" and the results would be similar to the scaling system, but manually adjustable. Then, people gets bored by things being too easy... they would crank up the difficulty until they feel satisfied of the challenge. Nobody would have any more reason to call the "This boss/event is too OP." or "This thing is a walk in a park. Buff it up." comments.

The players who crank up the difficulty, obviously, would gain more out of their success. As in every ES, the skills gains is relative to how many time the player make use of it... and that's already the case in ESO... so from that point, no need to change anything. Hard difficulty would allows player to raise their skills faster (as they would get hit and hit more each monsters). The only part that could requires adjustment would be Exp gain from kills. (Think of it as many RPGs where the difficulty affect the Exp gain). The drops rate wouldn't need any change so it's more like the difficulty only affects the Exp gain.

When counting PvP, the difficulty would not affect each players so things wouldn't matter on that side. (So an "Easy" player wouldn't be stronger than a "Hard" player with the same level and equipment.) The difficulty would only act onto the environment NPCs (including guards, hostile NPCs, monsters, etc.)

What would happens if an "Easy" player join the party of an "Hard" player? Simple... Each would play at their own difficulty. Communication would be a key in party as, for example, the party leader could specify that every member must play at X difficulty level. People who are looking for a party for something harder could simply say "LFG - Hard". Some party might not care for the difficulty settings of each of their members so they might mix it up as they wish (healer on Easy, tank on normal, DPS on hard, etc.)

This would give the choice to every single player of what kind of game they want to play when playing ESO.

They already made a scaling system so it wouldn't be even that much harder to upgrade to a difficulty system. Adding a kind of multiplicative number to the NPCs/Monsters' damage dealt to the player and from the player to the NPCs/Monsters that act onto that scaling system so that Easy scale stats down while hard scales things up.

All the Elder Scrolls have worked with a dual system where the player's level affect what kind of monster appears and the difficulty affect their minimal and maximal stats. Obviously, we can't really ask for such a system in a MMO since it would make it strange if a monster appears relative to the player level and another player doesn't see that monster and instead see another monster.

Even if the stats would be too hard to modify based on the settings, just adding a Damage*X to the damage function of the game where X is determined by the difficulty setting of the client wouldn't be hard to add. (So, Easy = Damage*0.5 while Hard = Damage *2 or something like that). This would even allow the player to have a slider as a difficulty setting which would allow the multiplicative number to range between the minimum and maximum (for example 0.5 to 3). As easy as that. This would not requires any change in actual NPCs/Monsters stats themselves... only to the result of the interactions (attacks one way and the other way) with each individual players.

This is my "little" 2 cents on the scaling system. The rest is awesome! Keep it up guys!

From the article" "This mechanic creates a truly open world for all characters no matter how long you have been playing or what alliance you chose. Your character's level will scale to the zone in which they're adventuring."

It is my opinion that the mechanics is failing the lower levels. Where I was able to hold my own in a dungeon, I die every dungeon at least once due to lack of resources. I put most of my points into stamina, then drop a health pot. I can kill two at a time and sometimes three, but most times, the third one puts me down. Those quests with waves of 1, then 2, then 3, and finally the boss, can't do them alone even though they are only quests and not public dungeons.

I know I am not that good at creating a build or hitting the right button at the right time; however, I was good enough to get by before...now, I am not. I have 8 characters of different races and classes, all are below vet level. I dread dragging those characters up to a level where I won't die for the want of resources or resistance. I love this game but this complication might be enough to cause me to play less often.

I wanted to see how things faired before making a judgement on One Tamriel.

The problem I see at the moment is not with the concept of scaling as such.
Its the range of power which exists within that scaling.
This explains the difficulty for many players and ease for others.
Some bosses require 4 average players to take down vs 1 hardcore player shall we say.

This is the problem....the range.
Without fixing this gulf in range....new player will find this content much harder to tolerate than veteran and hardcore players.
The elite players put this down to skill....when in reality its all about the ability to stack buffs.
Food
Potions
Gear quality
Gear trait
Gear enchantment/poisons
Gear set bonuses
All passives
Champion point and passives
Buff stacking when using certain skills.
Buff stack skill combos and rotations
Remove these from a player...ie a new player...and they will fair miserably.
Much of this is locked behind a time wall or grind wall

The requirement of reactive combat skill takes second place to your skills with a spreadsheet and access to multiple buff stacking.
Some combinations are far more devastating than others...as stacking combos dont necessarily directly counter each other in an equally effective way.
Tell a hardcore player to take down the world boss solo without all these buffs.
Tell a hardcore players to solo any vet content without all these buffs
Tell a hardcore player to top the leaderboards without all these buffs.
Git Gud has little to do with skill and lots to do with buff stacking.
Do you think the person who stack stamina regen will beat the person that stacked weapon damage in a straight up fight ?

We have 3 sources of performance now. RNG, Skill, Buff stacking
I dont know what ZOS infatuation with RNG is. But it has no place in combat other than indirect effects and making mistakes.
ie random RNG should be simply events because sh#t happens and player concentration.
I think everyone agrees reactive combat skill should be paramount...even if they do mistake skill for buffs.
The problem then, is buff stacking is having too much of a dominant role on game play.
But fixing that has pitfalls.

1. How do you have strong meaningful varitation in build types without allowing high stacking ?
2. How do you make all builds viable (hybrids) without crippling that extreme stacking variation with soft caps ?
Its a conundrum that has been with games for many many years....hence the persistence of softcaps throughout.
It took me a while but i finally understand the root of the problem.

We always look at the problem from the view of two extreme build players that counter each other.
We never actually look at the view of the third normal player.
As soon as we acknowledge the lack of the missing 3rd normal player....everything thats wrong with buff stacking falls into place.
The solution to the sticky problem presents itself.
Max Mean Min. Duality. That is what the game(s) is/are missing.
The 3rd normal player has to be a mean/normalised/average aspect.
In contrast to the maximum and minimum players

Imagine +3000 penetration = -3000 armour
Imagine +5000 weapon damage = -5000 physical resist
Without instantly and directly counter buffing any buffs.....the average/mean/normalised player cant exist
You simply get a hybrid with no stats sitting at minimum thats good for nothing.
The only way to fix that is to apply all kinds of weird and wonderful passive buffs to try and fix the broken hybrid.
None of which are directly comparable or equally effective requiring a never ending roundabout of 'tweaks' that never actually solve the problem.

In other words what we need is to acknowledge that extreme builds are variants of the normal.
And any variants of the normal have to have pros countered with cons...otherwise the normal ceases to be.

Now that extreme DD also has to suffer a massive loss in damage mitigation.
Something the hybrid can now work against as although they lost x% damage they also have x% more resist (by default).
Now that extreme Tank also has to suffer a massive loss in damage.
Something the hybrid can now work against as although they lost x% resist they also have x% more damage (by default).
Now when it comes to balancing content.....the playing filed is levelled for all kinds of build...rather than compromise between too easy for buff stackers and too hard for non buff stackers.

Thus game difficulty is normalised by the buff stacking penalties and the range of effectiveness is minimised to skill.
Any player of any level is not hampered by grind walls as all it does is enable more extreme variation without effecting relative power.
In other words play as you want becomes a reality instead of a pipe dream.

Mandragora wrote: »

You know what is a problem? I don't use min-max set until max level - I do use what is available, and what is available is mostly get xx gold and xx experience traits in sets - so should I use non set piece of equipment with a good trait, or set without good traits? So I guess most of the new players do the same (they just have less of that), so they will be always weak?

And if you do understand to it - please tell me, why they have damage based on stamina/magicka pool? It wasn't in Skyrim, so why is it here? Why, if they copied the system of Skyrim, they didn't copy the whole system, or didn't create something ordinary - like system of classes. Isn't that the problem here? If you combine system of classes with skill system?

because magicka users were envisioned to be more powerful with magic
and stamina users were envisioned to be more powerful with weapons.
Hence focusing into magicka or stamina made you more powerful in said aspect.
Alas stamina builds werent intended to heal unfortunately.

In the beginning class,mages,vampire skills were all magicka based.
In the beginning weapon,fighters,werewolf skills were all stamina based.

Attributes thus become a biasing system to let you specialise into a specific build.
The problem is with the way it is implemented, it doesnt allow you to be powerful mixing 50/50 magicka stamina like it should.
Its more like an on/off switch instead of adjustable range.
There shouldnt really be any barriers to using weapons with powerful magical damage attached.
Doing fire damage with a flaming sword, or lightning damage with daggers.
The formulas used prevent such things from happening though.

Anyway yes. Typically attributes = class and class = attribute allocation.
I think the class in this context was supposed to add unique flavours of hybrid that could also be dd/heal/tank.
More of a style than a class as such.
Thats why you have 3 class trees instead of one.
It just so happened that DK was more suited skill wise to tanking and templar to healing.
So we have always had this identity crisis between class,role,style,attributes
/shrugs

ZOS having been trying to rejig everything in a fashion that makes sense to everyone ever since.