Lumsdenml wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

. I, on the other hand, the other 95% of the playerbase, cannot do that. So now my off meta build that I was able to have decent fun with in some midgame challenging content, am now locked out of that due to sledgehammer balance philosophies from the combat team,

Just curious, but what is your dps on the pts? You said you are around 50k on live, what is your parse on pts?

Youyouz06 wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

Just to wrap up my thoughts, this game is extremely frustrating and I, and many others, are tired of it. Between sledghehammer changes, damage reductions without adjusting content, constant developer micromanagement of things that don't need to be micromanaged, arbitrary changes, and arbitrary design philosophies. It's a perfect storm all at once with U35 and I, and a lot of other people, are just exhausted with it.

I totally hear you. My breaking point was U33. It is everything that you summed up quite thoroughly, as well as the degree of blatant, glaring contempt towards the community that ended that toxic relationship.

At the end of the day, you are the master of what you do. Your loyalty is to you, not a business entity that just wants your money.

The gaming industry is lacking someone with foresight at the moment.
Perhaps with some luck, a person who wants to put the product first will appear again and we'll at least have 10 years of 'good gaming'.

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

. I, on the other hand, the other 95% of the playerbase, cannot do that. So now my off meta build that I was able to have decent fun with in some midgame challenging content, am now locked out of that due to sledgehammer balance philosophies from the combat team,

Just curious, but what is your dps on the pts? You said you are around 50k on live, what is your parse on pts?

I'll be honest, I haven't tested on the PTS yet because both the classes I play, Sorc and Warden, git hit the hardest, and I was just really apathetic about it that I didn't even want to see what state they were in.

50k on my ice warden, 52k to be exact but only after dummy humping for like 2 hours trying to optimize as best as I could.

I was able to reach 80k on my magsorc current Live patch with crystal weapon, which was very nice and the first time I've gotten that high. But that was ignoring my RP preferences and just optimizing best I could. Realistically my dps on my magsorc is about 60k since I hate pets.

I was holding out hope for week 3 that the light attack changes would be reversed and that sorc and warden would be brought back to life, but neither of those things happened. I may log in to do some tests but the apathy has set in for me. Plenty of people are there testing now that I trust to honestly relay the extent of the damage that was done to damage.

You know, it is possible that your dps will not change as much as you think. Everyone's playstyle is different, and you won't really know how these changes will affect you until you, personally, test your character in that environment.

Vylaera wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

. I, on the other hand, the other 95% of the playerbase, cannot do that. So now my off meta build that I was able to have decent fun with in some midgame challenging content, am now locked out of that due to sledgehammer balance philosophies from the combat team,

Just curious, but what is your dps on the pts? You said you are around 50k on live, what is your parse on pts?

I'll be honest, I haven't tested on the PTS yet because both the classes I play, Sorc and Warden, git hit the hardest, and I was just really apathetic about it that I didn't even want to see what state they were in.

50k on my ice warden, 52k to be exact but only after dummy humping for like 2 hours trying to optimize as best as I could.

I was able to reach 80k on my magsorc current Live patch with crystal weapon, which was very nice and the first time I've gotten that high. But that was ignoring my RP preferences and just optimizing best I could. Realistically my dps on my magsorc is about 60k since I hate pets.

I was holding out hope for week 3 that the light attack changes would be reversed and that sorc and warden would be brought back to life, but neither of those things happened. I may log in to do some tests but the apathy has set in for me. Plenty of people are there testing now that I trust to honestly relay the extent of the damage that was done to damage.

You know, it is possible that your dps will not change as much as you think. Everyone's playstyle is different, and you won't really know how these changes will affect you until you, personally, test your character in that environment.

That's true. However, half my damage on my warden came from DOTs, which were nerfed into the ground. Another big chunk was from weaving LAs, which also were nerfed into the ground. U35 basically targeted specifically everything that I use to source my damage and nerfed it.

My sorcs also use DOTs, and of course, big chunk of damage from LA weaving.

Hawco10 wrote: »

Agree with the OP. I have played since beta. I’m casual and I have zero issue with end game players who are really good at this game. Good for them I say.
It’s like ZOS devs are saying “You think you know what you want, but you don’t, we do”
I’m at my limit with this game. I really am. Tired and fed up of the constant tinkering with my quality of life in game. Why can’t you leave us alone to play the game ? Instead, every few months, nerf this, change that, drop this, add that.
Honestly, enough is enough.

Jazraena wrote: »

Parasaurolophus wrote: »

Hawco10 wrote: »

Agree with the OP. I have played since beta. I’m casual and I have zero issue with end game players who are really good at this game. Good for them I say.
It’s like ZOS devs are saying “You think you know what you want, but you don’t, we do”
I’m at my limit with this game. I really am. Tired and fed up of the constant tinkering with my quality of life in game. Why can’t you leave us alone to play the game ? Instead, every few months, nerf this, change that, drop this, add that.
Honestly, enough is enough.

Can you give an example of what changes you were affected by?

Mate.

Every. Single. Major. Change. They often affect thematic off-meta builds far harder than meta setups, in particular if some seemingly irrelevant niche set that you build around suddenly has it's entire functionality changed.

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Taking away light attack weaving means most players will be producing about 1/2 the attacks in the same time frame, so less server needed to calculate the combat. ...sure, it will increase performance, but the cost is just WAY WAY too high for the player.

psychotrip wrote: »

Vylaera wrote: »

But for some reason, ZOS is so hyperfixated on the 5% of the playerbase that can reach obscene levels of damage, that everyone else has to get punished to try to reel the top tier in.

As a lifelong WoW player, I have some bad news for you:

This is how WoW began to die, mechanically speaking anyway (dont get me started on the narrative!):

Focusing all their attention on the high end mythic raiders, balancing the entire game around content almost no one is going to see, at the expense of literally every other type of player (casuals, overworld explorers, roleplayers).

It happens slowly at first, until the "world" takes a backseat to a series of instances that suck out all the flavor of the game and replace it with cold, hard number crunching.

This is how MMOs die, but thankfully its not too late yet. This is just the beginning. Buckle up.

. We don't endgame because we don't want to endgame. We are totally satisfied staying in our corner of the game.

But then how else are they gonna keep you on that sweet, sweet ENGAGEMENT treadmill if you're not constantly being pushed into endgame? How else are they gonna cut costs by focusing only on the most ENGAGING content possible? [snip]

Vylaera wrote: »

I'm so frustrated with this game as a long time Elder Scrolls fan. I started playing ES back in 2011 when Skyrim came out. I got it for Christmas, and fell in love with the game. I sunk easily 8000 or more hours into it over the next few years, and I fell in love with its lore, story, worldbuilding, books, quests, enemies, combat, races, etc.

Then I went back to play Oblivion, and I loved it just as much. Sunk several thousand more hours into it, and loved its world, lore, characters, I fell in love with the Empire and really started learning earnestly the lore of the series and started digging much much deeper and became an absolute superfan of the series.

Then I played Morrowind. What a stunningly mastercrafted game. Though that admittedly wasn't my first impression, as I didn't know its mechanics and genuinely thought my flea market xbox edition copy of the game was messed up, and that I should try to get it refunded, because I couldn't land a hit on the kwama forager, which killed me, on my way to Balmora from Seyda Neen. But I learned more about it, came back, and fell in love with it too, and it's still my absolute favorite single player RPG game of all time, no question.

And then, in 2015, ESO came out for the Xbox One, and I purchased my copy and played it with a friend from high school. I initially didn't understand anything about the game, as I had never played an MMO and didn't understand some of the really weird design decisions like how magic was totally relegated to staff types and class specific abilities. I never liked that, I still don't, but ESO was the only ES game in town, as Skyrim had basically exhausted its fun-ness to me, having replayed it countless times, so I learned to deal with ESO's arbitrary MMO-y design.

But now 7 years later, and thousands of dollars spent on new DLC, Chapters, ESO Plus, Crown purchases, etc. Update 35 comes to me as a total slap in the face, as not just a more casually focused player of the game, but as a member of the game's community. I don't play ESO to meta chase, I don't play ESO to scorepush in competitive PvE, - admittedly I do PvP, however - but I'm not the type that finds the endgame really fun, and I was comfortable with my 50k dps that I could pull on a trial dummy which sufficed for most vet DLC dungeons, and more than enough for random normals to get transmute crystals.

But for some reason, ZOS is so hyperfixated on the 5% of the playerbase that can reach obscene levels of damage, that everyone else has to get punished to try to reel the top tier in. This sledgehammer balancing is so totally unneccesary. If, like, a thousand people who play endgame content can hit 100k+ DPS, good for them. They have fun doing that, and they should be allowed to. I, on the other hand, the other 95% of the playerbase, cannot do that. So now my off meta build that I was able to have decent fun with in some midgame challenging content, am now locked out of that due to sledgehammer balance philosophies from the combat team, and the insistence that the top tier has to be brought down - and as a result of either negligence, outright intentionality, or simply not understanding how their own game works and how their own players play - us along with them, but to a much more punitive degree, because we do not have such already huge numbers to compensate with, and if our damage goes down, it hits the floor.

Something has to give.

I don't do trials with my off-meta cryomancer warden, nor do I expect to. Trial content exists for people who meta chase and power game. And they should have their end of the game left unmolested. That is what they find fun. That's not what casual players find fun. Not being able to do trials with our roleplay builds is not the contention casual fans have with the game. We do not want the endgame community to be kneecapped and treated like class enemies so that we can then be told that this is being done in our name to lower the ceiling so that we aren't so disparate in power from the endgame. We don't endgame because we don't want to endgame. We are totally satisfied staying in our corner of the game.

Moving on from there, even as a mostly casual player, the constant changes every three months is so frustrating to me when all I want to do is log in, roleplay, furnish a house, make some new outfits for my character, do some quests, take some screenshots. Maybe I log in to my Altmer Magicka Templar who spanks in PvP for some competitive fun (who I also roleplay as a thalmor agent when I'm in the mood for that flavor of RP). As a result, I have to spend a month of my time preparing for each new update because all of my builds on all 10 of my characters are garbage every time the dev team decides to change things for the sake of changing things. And I have to re-itemize, I have to improve my new gear, farm dungeons incessantly for transmute crystals, I have to take time out of my day to plan out a build that fits with my characters' aesthetics and in-universe RP skillsets. It's so frustrating as a loyal player who's been subbed nonstop for the past 2 years, and a consistent player for the past 7 years.

When does it end? When can each corner of the community be left unmolested to play how they want to? Why do the devs insist on constant micromanagement to make sure that no one is having actual carefree fun from patch to patch. This game feels like a responsibility now and I'm so tired of it. I want to play an Elder Scrolls game. That's why I'm here.


On top of this, I'm someone who only uses a quarter of her available toolkit - because I'm roleplaying a character with an in-universe skillset and have been shoehorned, as an example, into playing warden in order to do frost damage, and not even very good frost damage at that. I do not use the animal skills, because I'm not a druid, and using mushrooms and vines to heal is not what a standard mage does. Furthermore, in ESO, if I want to deal frost damage most effectively, I'm gimping myself on several layers. I have druid skills I do not use because that's not what my character uses in-universe, and ice magic is inherently less powerful than fire in ESO due to MMO balance decisions. This is extremely frustrating for me as well.

If I wanted to play a frost mage in Skyrim or Oblivion or Morrowind, I would spec into Destruction, and use frost spells. They did the same amount of damage as fire and lightning, with some notable exceptions like Nords' frost resistance combined with their prevalence in Skyrim, making Ice maybe a less than ideal choice in TES V, but that was a world issue that you could compensate for, not an innate quality of frost magic. In Oblivion, Cyrodiil, Ice magic was just as viable of an option. And I was not forced to pick a predefined class with druid skills tacked on along with it. I could spec into restoration and Alteration, conjuration too, and make a standard pure mage who would fit right in with the mages guild. Each damage component did the exact same damage, with some added tertiary bonus, such as fire costing less magicka, Lightning draining magicka from the target, and frost draining stamina from the target. They were actually balanced. They are not in ESO.

I'm not necessarily saying that classes should be done away with, though I personally would like that, but players shouldn't be shoehorned into playing specific classes in order to be good in certain niches like frost damage with warden and lightning with Sorcerer. It's arbitrary. Physical weapons no not have these problems and class limitations.

However, I do think if classes were to be opened up to be customized, where you pick three class skill lines at character creation rather than picking a predefined class, the classes could be balanced much healthier and easily. If the dev team needs something to spend their time on, perhaps looking at an overhaul of the class system would be a good idea. It would of course get a ton of blowback, but it could absolutely be done in a way in which players retain their current playstyles and choices and aesthetics, and the game, nor its playerbase, would be harmed. But getting into those kinds of what-ifs is not really the point of this post. That's something for another day.


Just to wrap up my thoughts, this game is extremely frustrating and I, and many others, are tired of it. Between sledghehammer changes, damage reductions without adjusting content, constant developer micromanagement of things that don't need to be micromanaged, arbitrary changes, and arbitrary design philosophies. It's a perfect storm all at once with U35 and I, and a lot of other people, are just exhausted with it.