Tessitura wrote: »

Unfortunately this is just a fact of this games life you will have to deal with. That or give up the freedom everyone claims to love about this game. ( Yet constantly complains about indirectly, me included. ) There is a balance to be found somewhere between restrictions and freedom I am sure, but I don't think ZOS is capable of finding it as their track record with it is not great.

It's not ZOS that can't find the balance per se, it's that that freedom lets you create whole different concepts for doing the same job. Things people never would have dreamed up suddenly pop up and catches attention, sometimes becoming the meta and sometimes not. A werewolf tank viable for vet dlc dungeons, a dk stam/mag hybrid dps that works for the same, a night blade that can stay in stealth infinitely and outrun most mounted players while doing it, a viable sorc stampire that never dies...

You can balance the majority of things around X standards, but someone (usually in the top 1% or just the glass ceiling types) will come up with a new way to min/max around a specific conceptual idea and make it work. Unless you can think up every single possible combinations of race/class/skills/gear/cp setup NO ONE can find the balance you speak of.

That would be like a DM for tabletop rpg's being able to anticipate everything every player can think of to do for all scenarios and write them all out. Sooooo....who wants a lesson in quantum physics and temporal mechanics?

HyekAr wrote: »

There should be defined line between tank/healer/dd/¿why not? Also create some buffer class. This will create real need for party playing.

The whole concept of ESO is that every class can be every role. Some might be more leaning towards some roles than others, but you can make viable nightblade tanks and healers, templars that are better dps than healers, DK's that can heal with the best of them. Defining a class to a role would completely kill that concept and the game along with it. If you think people throw tantrums and quit now because they make one change that forces them to change their build to better maximize what they are doing imagine what would happen if suddenly they couldn't even do that role anymore because someone decided arbitrarily that templars could only ever heal, dk's could only ever tank or necros could only ever dps. You would see a mass exodus because a fundamental part of this game and the series it was born from would be destroyed.

The class is not meant to be a role, it is just the magic toybox you get to play with that goes beyond what you can do with just weapons and armor.

They could just add a "float" role, or even a float queue where there are no assigned roles and it's come as you are. Policing how other people game is not what TES is about, and for all the flawed attempts at re-balancing that don't seem to favor this mindset, ZOS publicly states they want to keep the philosophy of "play your way". Locking any skill or class or race into a role is contradictory to this.

With a "float" role, you could put yourself in as a floater, or if you want to be a DPS but don't mind having anyone fill any role, you could toggle an option that says "accept float for any role/the following roles".

This seems like a blindingly obvious solution that wouldn't actually be that difficult to implement. The people who don't care and just want a short queue will have their way of doing things, without actually taking anything away from the set-role folks. In fact, it might mean that there will be more healers and tanks for the DPS who want dedicated/specialized builds filling those roles.

Personally, though, I think if you're not willing to specialize and fill the role, it's silly to complain when no one else wants to either.

insignismemoria wrote: »

They could just add a "float" role, or even a float queue where there are no assigned roles and it's come as you are. Policing how other people game is not what TES is about, and for all the flawed attempts at re-balancing that don't seem to favor this mindset, ZOS publicly states they want to keep the philosophy of "play your way". Locking any skill or class or race into a role is contradictory to this.

With a "float" role, you could put yourself in as a floater, or if you want to be a DPS but don't mind having anyone fill any role, you could toggle an option that says "accept float for any role/the following roles".

This seems like a blindingly obvious solution that wouldn't actually be that difficult to implement. The people who don't care and just want a short queue will have their way of doing things, without actually taking anything away from the set-role folks. In fact, it might mean that there will be more healers and tanks for the DPS who want dedicated/specialized builds filling those roles.

Personally, though, I think if you're not willing to specialize and fill the role, it's silly to complain when no one else wants to either.

3 things here

1) Your thrown in as a floater would then have to be able to fill every role because you could be thrown into any of them and might well find yourself in a group that needs all of them.
2) Everyone would go floater, making your queues for people who are dedicating to specific roles even longer.
3) What development experience do you have to back up the claim that it would be easy to implement? You realize you are talking about completely rebuilding and redesigning group finder right?

On your last point though I agree. Be versatile if you know how and are confident enough to know you can do it, but make your focus be in one area and use the other as a 'break glass in case of emergency' thing.

Warstory wrote: »

Every other MMO that has a queue system for dungeons/raids has a way to deal with this. It's to the point now where almost half of the lfg/pugs I do has a fake tank or healer in it, and a lot of the times it's just straight up 4 dps (no taunts and zero heals). I can accept they are bad tanks and healers, no problem. What I can't or won't accept is a dps queuing as a tank or healer just because they somehow think that their time is more valuable and don't want to wait in the queue that dps deal with right now. Vote to kick is not the answer because a fast kick and replacement almost never happens and people would rather just die a whole bunch instead of having to kick/replace/wait for the role to be filled properly. There is no risk or downside to the person queuing into the wrong role other than a slight chance of getting kicked, but even then they can just log onto another character, re-queue (in the wrong role) and end up right back in the group they were just kicked from further wasting the everyone's time... (Why is the kicked timer not account wide, [snip]?)

Now before a Captain Obvious stats the obvious...
(Yes, I know I can form my own groups and do.)
(Yes, I do tank and heal and not just dps in pugs.)
(Yes, I know I can leave the group at any time.)
(Yes, I know you can and I have successfully ran 3 and even 4 dps in vet dungeons.)
These are all band aid solutions to a broken system that only rewards the people who are breaking it.

So what can be done to fix the problem? I don't know, I'm not a developer and don't know what is and isn't technically possible with the HeroEngine. If possible, the queue system for LFG needs to have a criteria to look for before allowing someone to queue into a certain role.
Does the person have a taunt on their bar? Check
Does the person have sufficient health to tank the content that was queued for? Check
Does the person have the appropriate armor/armor buffs/shields/and cp talents? Check
If all checks pass, lock the gear/skills/talents in place required for the content and add them to the queue.
A system like this would allow extra rewards for filling and completing certain roles that are badly needed need in the queue like tank, thus speeding up everyone queue.

I know there are a lot of different play-styles and builds out there but there needs to be a bare minimum criteria in place to allow someone to queue for certain roles, otherwise little Timmy Turbo is just going to keep abusing the queue and wasting everyone's time. The only other options are to allow reporting and banning of people abusing the queue (first report a warning, second report 24 hour ban), but this would likely be abused it's self. The other option? Just leave it as it is and dumb down all lfg/pug content to allow for a random 4 dps to clear. What I can say for sure is that the LFG experience has progressively gotten worse over the past couple of years and it needs fixed right now.

Oh I agree Op, except you have to check for "fake" dps too, you know the ones that do barely any damage, stand in every enemy aoe, runs halfway through the dungeon leaving the tank and healer behind, then dies and complains blaming the tank and healer, even sometimes going to the forums to keep complaining about "fake" tanks and healers.

[edited to remove quote]

Bloodraven187 wrote: »

Tessitura wrote: »

Unfortunately this is just a fact of this games life you will have to deal with. That or give up the freedom everyone claims to love about this game. ( Yet constantly complains about indirectly, me included. ) There is a balance to be found somewhere between restrictions and freedom I am sure, but I don't think ZOS is capable of finding it as their track record with it is not great.

It's not ZOS that can't find the balance per se, it's that that freedom lets you create whole different concepts for doing the same job. Things people never would have dreamed up suddenly pop up and catches attention, sometimes becoming the meta and sometimes not. A werewolf tank viable for vet dlc dungeons, a dk stam/mag hybrid dps that works for the same, a night blade that can stay in stealth infinitely and outrun most mounted players while doing it, a viable sorc stampire that never dies...

You can balance the majority of things around X standards, but someone (usually in the top 1% or just the glass ceiling types) will come up with a new way to min/max around a specific conceptual idea and make it work. Unless you can think up every single possible combinations of race/class/skills/gear/cp setup NO ONE can find the balance you speak of.

That would be like a DM for tabletop rpg's being able to anticipate everything every player can think of to do for all scenarios and write them all out. Sooooo....who wants a lesson in quantum physics and temporal mechanics?

Thats not true, not even close. Your hyperbole is missing the entire point of what was being said. Limitations are a big part of "Balancing" a game. The less of them you have the harder it becomes. No, there is no -perfect- balance even in the most restrictive of games. ZOS -could- choose to take a look at the systems and tools that make available to players and choose to limit or restrict things more. A big example of a limitation that would go a long way is separating the way abilities and sets perform based on content. I.E. PVP or PVE, they refuse, thats on them, and the more issues that arise from it is their failure to find that "balance".

I never said they NEEDED to drop this freedom they give to the players, nor did I offer a solution. I only said that with it the control over their game lessens. and with that so does their ability to balance things and ZOS is clearly struggling with that. We sacrifice one for the other, you either love it or hate, sometimes both. ( Like in my case. )

Also to be clear I am not a fan of hyper balance in games at the cost of fun. But its also arguable for a lot of people as to how fun the freedom here really is with the shot in the dark number swings that have been happening recently.

It's not that they refuse, it's that they don't have the available funds and resources for it.

Money men. they have to ok everything, from office supplies to paying people. If they only give X budget to work with for X project, that is all they have to work with, even if the larger company has all the money in the world to throw at it.

if zos want my tank tanking pugs queue... they have to give me better rewards

I see these threads a lot, but they seem to be people saying that fake tanks are a plague, and then that people are fake tanking to get into proper content. A fake tank will never survive later vet DLCs as the one-hits are too heavy and too many to constantly dodge. What is a fake tank in this context? I have absolutely no issue at all with dps queuing as tanks in normal content and some vet non-DLCs though, as long as they have the decency to slot a taunt (undaunted), preferably chains (FG) and some kind of CC (caltrops).

If I'm farming a lead (like in nCoH2 right now) I'm not going to queue as DPS, and if I go on my real tank it takes 3 times longer. I can group and hold the ads, do >50% of damage most of the time on a pug, and I've got a PO ring so the healer can damage if he wants.

I see this all the time, but I don't see any fake tanks in vet DLCs, ever.

Just give me more than one build option to toggle so I can switch to something needed when it's needed. Don't make me stand in front of a shrine and spend gold to MAYBE need to. If I get put into DLC and the fake tank leaves, let me change to real tank so 3 ppl can move on with life.

insignismemoria wrote: »

Bloodraven187 wrote: »

1) Your thrown in as a floater would then have to be able to fill every role because you could be thrown into any of them and might well find yourself in a group that needs all of them.

For the type of content most people "fake" roles for, this wouldn't be a problem. People who want to float or who would allow a floating role in their group would be deciding they don't care about this risk by allowing them. If this worries or bothers you, then you just wouldn't queue to allow floaters. Also, you could have an option to only float within certain roles. This already exists in an unofficial capacity in tanks who off-heal, etc.

Bloodraven187 wrote: »

2) Everyone would go floater, making your queues for people who are dedicating to specific roles even longer.

I definitely disagree with this. The bottleneck 90% of the time is tanks. I've never waited longer than 2 minutes when I tank, but always at least 20 minutes when I heal or DPS. As someone who likes and enjoys tanking, as is the case with most tanks, I would never go into a floating queue as a tank. However, I feel many DPS would, because many are capable with self-heals, etc. This would decrease the amount of DPS in the dedicated queue and shorten the number of DPS who need tanks and healers.

This is also remedied if you could just select a single role that you'd be okay to fill with a floater. If you have a tank, and have a couple of DPS confident in their self-heals, you could toggle the healer role to float.

Bloodraven187 wrote: »

3) What development experience do you have to back up the claim that it would be easy to implement? You realize you are talking about completely rebuilding and redesigning group finder right?

Admittedly, I don't know about implementing things on such a scale, but even basic Boolean operators make it seem like it wouldn't be too bad, especially considering that they've already told us they're redesigning the group finder from the bottom up. With basic logic operators, it is currently DPS ∧ DPS ∧ Healer ∧ Tank, but a toggle would make it DPS ∧ DPS ∧ (DPS v DPS v Healer v Tank iff float=true) ∧ Tank. Tacking on a new variable role could certainly be a big logistic challenge, but they keep saying they already plan to redesign it so I am operating under that assumption.

1)That goes back to one of my other posts where I asked what people are doing. Are they just doing normals? Ok, why do they need a tank or healer, because they are taking too much damage and dying? Ok, why are they doing that? Are they standing in red, letting things just pound on them without damage shields/self heals? Running ahead and getting agro on everything before the tank is even in the room? But if you go in as a floater and find you are in the group that actually DOES need a healer and tank, and no one can do either because everyone is a floater then what? Give up, eat the timer and hope for better luck on the next draw? Kick someone and pray the next floater can fill the role? These considerations alone would add a whole new problem, not solve an existing one.

2) Let's say they do this floater idea. The proposed problem is dps who don't want to wait in a queue right? Ok, so let's take away the need to. Let's say for the sake of argument that they don't and all go in as floaters. but what is the flipside? How many times have you not wanted to deal with the hassle of getting a *** group and being thrown all kinds of rage because they suck and you as the tank can't compensate? How much do you want to risk as the healer being kicked because you can't heal through one shots? If you've done those roles with any regularity you know these things happen. So what happens if you can go in and then when the group turns out bad and you can't keep them from dying you can just turn around and say 'hey, i only queued as a floater'? How many healers and tanks would relish the ability to do what they do without the added stress and drama? See where I am going with this? For all the dps that would use it, so would a large number of tanks and healers because they just want to get it over as quickly and quietly as possible.

3)Comparing 'basic' development with enterprise level software development used by millions every hour of every day 24/7 would be like comparing radio controlled airplane design/maintenance with that of a 747. I know someone who is using basic graphic design tools to make characters and it still takes him weeks to make a single character, not even dealing with systems or environments. And this is at least 8 hours a day of work, just for that. So this might give you a better idea of scope of what you are talking about doing. I have yet to even hear about an MMO with a formalized group finder tool with a floater role or anything similar. MMO's aren't balanced around that concept, their thought is always the 3 basic roles of tank, heal, dps. They are designed with having those in mind. If no game company is doing a thing, you might want to ask yourself if there is a very good reason they are not doing it. Logistics aside, what is the point of designing things around a concept and then turning around and say 'yeah but that concept doesn't really matter anyway so you can just ignore it?

I get where you are coming from. on paper it's a nice idea that the player base is practically doing on its own now. But but I don't think you really have a thought out grasp of both how it would be done or the consequences of doing it. The desired goal is there, but not really looking at the consequences long term if that makes sense.

While OP is only talking about vet, I'l lsay that normal shouldn't be treated differently. How do you intend to know what to do in your role, if you just cheese through normal stuff ? You're supposed to learn your role by not playing your role ?

I don't do dungeons, unless as a duo with my wife, or the rare occasions when I can muster the courage the face the frustration of a band of random idiots unwilling to cooperate together, all of which being damage dealers of course. Truth is, I do get pleasant surprises, as it happens not everyone is one such idiot. But sometimes, my expectations are matched. I still don't know how my wife puts up with my constant swearing in that case.

It isn't about the difficulty. Baring mechanics that prevent it, I can solo any non DLC dungeon in normal. It just isn't fun. There is some pleasure in meeting random folks and getting things done. But not when they just don't even try. People play this game as an efficiency simulator : dungeon shouldn't take more than X minutes, so let's fake the role to enter the dungeon fast, then rush through it, story be damned, other people be damned. The Elder Selfish Online.

Special awards to those who fake-take the role of tank or healer but aren't even good at dealing damage, which can get the group killed in some situations. For instance, Darkshade caverns 2, final boss. Either you rip him a new one in a matter of seconds, or you need some heals. When your fake healer is a worse damage dealer than the tank, expect issues, even in normal, unless you have someone else deal the damage for them, that is.


Honestly, I'm fine with a group of missfits, what I'm not fine with is the dishonesty that comes with the faking. But it shouldn't have to be fake to start with.

There could very easily be TWO queue modes : "find me the perfect group" and "fill the group with any 4 people available". First one will be what we have now, second one will not try to find people of each role, just 4 available folks, which should also be alot faster. You may end up with 4 tanks, or 3 healers and a damage dealer, or more likely, 4 DD. But it's ok, you subscribed to that.

This would remove so many problems. People who want to cheese through content can do it, those who want to play by the book can too, and there would be no point in being a fake heale or fake tank because you would have the fast mode for that.

Iccotak wrote: »

Except that ZOS has acknowledged and said that not all classes excel at all roles - some classes are better at certain roles than others. That is how they are designed.

Certain Classes are more optimal at certain roles than other classes are - Templars are better healers than Dragonknights but Dragonknights are better tanks than Templars.

One of our mantras for ESO is "play the way you want," and in this case, it means any class can fulfill any role (tank, dps, support/healer).

To better achieve this ideal while also maintaining the unique fantasy flavor of each class, all class kits need to include the basic tools required to fulfill each role.

To be clear, our goal is for every class to be viable, not necessarily optimal, in any role without heavily relying on non-class skill lines.

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/57025

I am missing how this applies to the "fake tanks/healer plague". Yeah, any class can do any role, and yeah, some classes are better at certain roles. What of it?