You making wayyyyy too much assumptions comrade. Step back little bit and wait what's going to happen.

Also, ESO is already too much casual-solo oriented, so cut the slack a little bit would you? MMORPG's are always moving, this is what keeps them interesting for soo long time.

ESO is a very casual friendly MMO, as someone with 12 characters and plays this game way too much (over 200 days playtime) do you define me as casual or hardcore?
I'm currently playing this game for the end-game PvE (vMoL HM) and PvP, but I've done all the quests and and got all the skyshards.

I look forward to the upcoming balance changes, Dragonknights are getting some buffs for PvP (I can see them being over buffed but we'll see) and proc sets should be getting reworked at some point.

I'm hoping that they'll buff Magicka Nightblade at some point in the next patch, too.

What does alarm me, is the plan to make the health attribute more important, this doesn't sound good to me but we'll see what they do.

I think it's often a good idea when skills behave differently in PvE and PvP and are balanced accordingly.

That's about it.

No.
When I see people complaining about lag I say... Do to the PC society, it will no longer be called lag. It will hence forth be known as difficulty enhancement modifications.

And while I dont like working toward something only to have it taken away making the work I put into it pointless, I do see the need to keep excessively OP toons from dominating the game. If Im a game maker, I dont want to see everyone playing one class/race. I want them to experience the ability to do well with all characters. And I prefer nerfing the one over enhancing the others.

But this is an after-the-fact mentality I would like to end at the development stage. Alpha and Beta test the hell out of the game so you can make those changes BEFORE you release the game. And dont release it until you have at least one expansion included. Then all you have to deal with is minor maintenance and bugs.

This upcoming 'balance' patch is pretty much just going to ruin everyone's character(s) again.

What is your reasoning here? Do you already know the changes being made, because isn't it possible your favorite class gets buffed instead of ruined?

Also to me it's fun to come up with new builds that might work instead of doing the same thing all the time.

What are you talking about? Almost every patch we had made the existing content easier (which isn't bad in my opinion, that way everyone gets to play everything at some point). The only patch I can think of that screwed over a lot of builds was 1.6. And believe me, there are a lot of "hardcore" players who were not happy about all the changes that were made in 1.6.

I am definitely a casual PvEr and I think I've only noticed a difference in my damage output once with all of these patches. Like a lot of people are stating, the changes they make are probably only noticable to min-maxers.

I haven't messed around with dropped or proc sets yet because I am too busy trying to finish Cadwell's Gold. Maybe I'll farm a set after, I just craft my sets for now. And even with crafted sets, I have had to "nerf" myself. I soloed a dolmen even after they got a buff from One T so i decided to switch it up a little. It had nothing to do with anything ZOS implemented.

I do think that they constantly buff and nerf things to keep people on their toes and have to farm new sets every once in a while. It keeps people busy in game.

Your poll is quite unbalanced.

Also, are you really complaining about balance for ROLEPLAYING? C'mon man. You have nothing remotely factual in this post and it's just 7 paragraphs of "waaaaaa".

In 7 years of FFXI, 4 years of FFXIV, 3 years of ESO, and a couple months in CoD, GW2 & Neverwinter: It has always been the PVP players complaining about balance and that is what ruins MMOs. This is not a biased statement, but a simple acknowledgement of what i have seen across my gaming history.

It really is the fault of the company, the greed and desire to make money leads them to try to entice multiple audiences. This has the repetitive and foreseeable flaw of trying to force two otherwise incompatible groups in the same game: PVE & PVP.

The simple reality is that i have never heard any PVE player cry that they did too much damage, or that they were too strong. It has always been about RNG, Bugs and general bickering about a quest or etc.

On the other hand, it is the PVP player that gets butt hurt when they get killed, so magically whatever killed them is 'too op' and they cry and cry until the nerfs. This is a natural, however childish reaction that causes nerfs to abilities to try to stop the tears. Of course once the nerf goes through, those impacted are legitimately upset and they start crying. Nothing more then a downward spiral that leads to the closure of the game after a long period of nerfs.

You end up, as is even the case in ESO, where abilities get changed so often, you don't even know what they do and half the time they end up with worse bugs/exploits then the original issue.

Some examples:
Shields, aka wards were all reduced to 6 seconds which makes them almost useless. They went from being a proactive buff to becoming reactive: IE before you would put up the shield to prevent damage before the big hit, and now its more for covering while you wait for a heal. Truly pathetic

Puncturing sweep, This used to be a decent damage. Even if your doing 2k per tool tip, it is still not decent damage in comparison to other abilities and the damage they perform with the same gear. The knock back was removed and it has been changed at least 3 times. I know this one personally as i actually quit until it was reversed, as in not logging in, not paying and evangelizing against this product for several months.


With these upcoming changes, i feel that there is a higher likelihood of it ruining my build then helping it. Basically after spending however long to get the 'right gear' or the rotation, they will change it all because someone was crying in PVP.

Considering the lack of new content, the level of greed needed to implement the cash crates, the fact that cyrodil still doesnt have a PVE version, and the level of bugs still in the game, i am losing interest and simply will stop playing (and more importantly stop PAYING) if they break my build (yet again). People vote with their wallets, and it is these types of changes that causes games to go from Subscription to B2P/F2P/P2W.

Bottom line is i am paying ZOS to be entertained, not for them to give me a second job by always having to update gear/builds. I want story, fun and things to do other then having to farm gear with RNG based & over-polluted loot tables.

PvP and PvE are too different.

With no open world PvP it should not be too difficult to adjust some skills for PvP only, and it will be much easier to balance PvP and PvE separately. I would rather struggle with PvP behaviour of my skills when I farm IC than deal with PvP affecting PvE in general.

For example, proc sets have very obvious niche in PvE: casual mostly solo gamers, especially with low CP. They don't min/maxing, they do not have access to BIS, proc sets can be a lot of fun for them. On the other hand, PvP... all of us already sick of all (rightful, mind you) whining.

Your poll options are heavily loaded. No this doesn't affect me since I play my characters with what I'm given. If the upcoming balance changes somehow affects the way my characters handle in a fight, then I just need to adapt somehow, but my characters themselves are just fine. Just because stat and or mechanic changes alters how my characters fight doesn't mean I have to reroll a brand new one and respec all over again.

Every once in a while, there's a tweak that changes a build I had in mind for one of my girls. So yeah, it is a bit annoying when that happens. Even worse when it's an ability that build leaned pretty heavily on, either for survivability or for playstyle.

Worse, balance patches are a problem of infinite regression. Nerf the biggest problem, and the thing that was the second-biggest problem suddenly becomes the biggest problem. Do that ad infinitum, because hardcore pvp players are always looking for that one thing that gives them the edge. There is no end to that cycle, ever.

But that said... I don't think that not balancing the skills is the answer either... the pvp side of the game would have gone dead long ago if that were the case. Even though I don't pvp myself, I understand that it's a lot of fun for a lot of people, so it's their right to want it balanced. Balance is much, much more important in pvp than pve, so they should have the power to point out imbalances. They feel it more than we do.

But yeah, still a little annoying. It's something I can live with, but I reserve the right to roll my eyes when I have to restat because one of the skills I was using for a particular purpose suddenly doesn't do the thing I was using it for.

AuldWolf wrote: »

... So if you had a character you liked and something was working for you (even if it wasn't min-maxed), you're now screwed...

You do realize that it probably "worked for you" because it was so much OP it was broken and had to be fixed?

If you are "screwed" by changes to a single skill, it was most probably OP to begin with.

I find that they keep adding new over powered sets, and force people to grind them out. Only the hard core players can grind fast enough and then they become super powered and can wipe anyone else out. Repeat every 6 or so months.