Overall this was a great stream. I'm really happy with all of the effort you guys are putting into communication now. You guys have some really cool personalities there. Jason, Kira, and even Alec really are enjoyable too watch. Finn's got a great personality too. I like seeing the passion that goes into the game. Those kinds of things stave off burn out, at least for me.

Honestly, my only point of concern is still PTS. It sounds like it's still too late to make really big changes. That's fine for most things, but I worry if we get another U35 or U46 where the core assumptions or solutions are flawed. Ultimately, bigger changes need to be exposed to us sooner and vetted.

I've asked this a few times, and haven't seen a response, but will a release be pulled if it's completely maligned on PTS? Right now, all of the changes sound really promising. I just think it'd be good to know your teams can now recognize when their internal ideas aren't matching up to expectations or player wants.

Again, I'm really happy with how things are turning out. Class mastery sounds like an attractive feature. I'm glad some nuanced thought has gone into it making sure both subclassing and pure classing should be viable. I appreciate that careful treatment. I have 18 characters, having both options viable is really valuable. Having this come out sooner or later helps reduce some of imbalances in the current subclassing implementation.

Night Market sounds like a good feature. I wonder if it will eventually replace trials as the main larger group endgame PVE content. I'm not terribly interested in at the moment, but I'm sure I'll eventually come around to it.

I'm more interested in the base game zone refreshes. Having new activities to do there is going to keep me engaged - provided the rewards are worth it. I have one TG/DB themed character, so it'll be cool to revisit them.

Keep up the good work guys!

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Vet players didn't benefit from Oakensoul. And in some ways they felt they were being taken away from. I didn't agree with that mindset not going to defend it but it was factually a common opinion that existed at the time.

Giving vet players something to sell ensures that the rising tide is able to lift all the boats.

Oakensoul wasn’t created to benefit only veteran or elite players. It was designed to help a large portion of the player base, new players, casual players, and even veterans who don’t enjoy or can’t consistently weaving for whatever reason. And it worked. ZOS created an item that allowed more people to participate in content and feel effective in groups.
More players could contribute, learn mechanics, and complete content. That’s good for the health of the game as a whole.

When people say “vets didn’t benefit,” what that really shows is the core issue: player attitude. If something helps the community but isn’t optimal for the top 1%, it gets rejected. That’s not a loot problem, it’s a mindset problem.

So when we talk about adding new rewards just to motivate veteran players, I think we’re looking at the wrong solution. The game doesn’t need more exclusive loot to function, it needs a healthier community environment that encourages participation, learning, and cooperation across all skill levels.

twisttop138 wrote: »

Neither is hm really.

The ogres have only normal and vet difficulty. Only Zaan has HM.

Just looking at that screenshot, you can see the same three lines are there. It’s unlikely that they’re going to just change an entire line.

DK’s poison was an anomaly - DK never had a “Toxic Blood” line, it’s just that poison was a stamina-focused version of flame damage (DK also didn’t have poison at release, it was only added in U10 because they wanted stam equivalents to skills, but then hybridization made that redundant). As such, poison wasn’t really tied to DK as frost and animals are to Warden (or summons and lightning are tied to Sorc).

They will definitely make some of the Winter’s Embrace skills damaging (already done for some) and add some damage to Green Balance and support to Animals in the refresh. I do expect a unification of damage types though. The big question will be if they do go all frost with the animals and plants (unlikely), or if Warden splits to animals and plants having a different damage type (most Animal skills currently lean Bleed, but Fetcher is poison now and the plants could go poison so I could see them going that way instead and giving Bleed to NB).

Still, I am not expecting any Class to drop an entire skill line, so Wardens as frost mages or as Animal rangers (or my Skaal barbarian who fits all three lines simultaneously) should all still be possible.

Trying to balance the teams right now is like balancing scales using elephants and mice. Chances are it doesnt matter at all what the mice weigh and itll come down to the elephants...........You need to start by fixing the general ovararching MMR issue which is that high skilled high KDA players are being MMR RESET back into low skilled low KDA player matches. We should be only putting mice or only putting elephants on the scales in the first place. Then go about shuffling them around.

Until the MMR reset gets fixed, no mmr system matters. We need to focus on pressing zos about this issue first. THEN we can go and discuss which issue is important next, whether it be team balancing, spawncamping because the spawns are too high and cause fall animations, Spawn timers not being long enough to help regroup teams, ETC.

Its cool to talk about ideas......but for zos to hear anything we need everyone on the same page screaming the same thing at them. Talking about these other topics dilutes out the thread and undermines the primary issue that has to be handled first. Yall are going 3 or 4 steps ahead of zos.

MMR rank reset has to be removed or replaced

aetherix8 wrote: »

@SneaK
Player’s behavior does make things worse, I agree, but what can be done about it? Not that long ago, someone opened a thread asking vet PvPers to stop using meta builds for the sake of the game’s health. Nobody volunteered. You can’t just ask trolls to become decent people all of a sudden, this is why IRL we have laws and law enforcement - because asking ppl to respect some norms is pointless if there are no consequences for crossing the line. And those morning cappers aren’t even trolls, they’re just guildies PvDooring together. That’s why I’m saying it all goes back to ZOS - fix the balance so populations recover, and only then see if anything else has to change.

I was pretty much agreeing with you. But your statements above aren’t really factual. It’s not guildies PvDooring together that’s a problem. It’s troll squads picking apart below average defenders in homekeeps. The players trying to defend against this are the ones that get a bad taste in their mouth about Cyrodiil and it’s a large reason why PvP population is low. It does come down to balance, yes.

And there really needs to be more incentive to fight in the ring aside from emp. Rank/AP is all anyone cares about now, make offensive AP gain inside the ring count for more maybe, make emp faction defense AP count for more, I dunno.

The solo modes are coming so it will probably get easier. I just hope that even after the solo mode it will be possible to go solo to the old group mode. Like, sure, make it easier for those who want it, but leave the more difficult mode as it is for those who enjoy harder content.

Morvan wrote: »

You can even easily solo it on a ranged build with a heal.

If you look at Lucht's sub 10 min trifecta, that run would earn him the third place in speedrun dot com. As in, only two 4 player groups are faster than that run.