Gabriel_H wrote: »

heaven13 wrote: »

The player matters, yes. I don't disagree. But throwing some numbers at it and saying "see, it's not that bad" doesn't fit this particular conversation.

You wildly missed the point. You are still basing it on a spreadsheet and not actual. The only way to see is to allow players to use their non-meta in content and see the difference.

It's also worth remembering content is not designed around 100% damage potential with 100% efficiency.

Ok, and how do you propose to fix this? To force all groups to bring everyone regardless of their build? How do you propose to enforce this?

Yes, there are a lot of players who play off-meta setups reasonably well. The fact still remains that the average and maximum potential of an off-meta build are still significantly lower than the average and maximum potential of an Arcbladeplar. And that’s just numbers.

I know people who run trials and allow off-meta builds. Heck, one of my friends raid-led a vAS+2 last weekend in a social guild and told them to bring Oakensoul builds and it cleared, giving 9 of the 12 people in group their first vAS HM. But raid leads like that who are willing to really work with groups are few and far between, especially since ESO’s balance is chasing a lot of those people off. And I even know people who claim that the guy who got a whole team of Oakenbuilds through a vAS HM is “toxic” because he made any suggestion to their builds whatsoever.

To be honest, a lot of these “gatekeepy” players have been burned by people with off-meta builds before - I’ve seen plenty of people who proudly proclaim that “it’s okay that they have low DPS as long as they know mechanics!” while proceeding to botch every mechanic. Not to mention that there are a number of people who are convinced that their solo-everything build is perfect because they need their self heals and armor, conveniently forgetting that the point of group content is to have healers and tanks taking care of that for you so you can focus on damage.

How would you feel if someone came up to you and said “Hi, I’ve never met you but I don’t trust that you can do your job to heal me so I’m slotting self heals to keep myslef alive. Also I’m offended that people don’t trust me to do my job and are implying my damage is low.”

Numbers also say that for the highest echelons of content (hard mode trials after Kyne’s), there honestly isn’t much wiggle room either - they’re balanced around groups which are able to put out obscene amounts of damage. And there, that “7 seconds of difference” is also the difference between a group wipe from Taleria’s mages being up too long and a clear.

You’re never going to get rid of toxicity. Ever. But if there wasn’t such a huge gap between the top build and the next one, then people would be more used to seeing other ways than what the 0.0001% of players do. If the balance were better, people would be less gatekeepy.

JHartEllis wrote: »

1) In hunting new lore books, the glow is often hard to tell apart from other light sources. A player-friendly fix for this is some sort of bonus (Mythic gear item?) to magnify the glow. A Mora-themed wisdom-seeker bright green fire aura would work well for this. Other tools could potentially indicate if there are nearby unread books.

2) All readable books glow in the Vengeance campaign, and the Lore Library acts like you haven't read anything. This is probably for performance reasons, which leads to a suggestion for an Interface toggle to just keep book glow on perpetually. Until a book is actually read, this would skip a check of which books to highlight and which to not. There would be a lot of player benefits to this in better being able to re-find puzzle instructions, point out books for group members to collect, or stop to read things that may have been quickly dismissed before.

The best ones are the "book" clutters that randomly glow in some delve, etc. If ya cant interact with it, dont make it glow!

Have the last mages perk give us a book scrying tool like the cartoklep map for scriveners dungeon. But plz make it a toggle being stuck in animations all the time is Not Fun.

Blood_again wrote: »

Sorry, your topic is "Discrimination and Gatekeeping".
Correct me if I'm wrong. You had a random group, and one dd left the group motivating it with others' play style.
Who was gatekept in this situation? If the player left the group, they did their choice, the rest of the group is free to keep playing. The player that left mocked themself, whatever they said. Because you keep running the dungeon and that player doesn't.
The group didn't exclude you for your playstyle and didn't require you to play another way. Did I miss something?

The other side of the situation is: what do you offer the player that doesn't like the group for some reason? Stay and struggle?
Nobody called to kick others or change their playstyle. No. The player just left.
Leaving the group you don't like is a fair part of "Play how you want". You pay the price like 15m of queuing timeout, but God save any game from prohibiting the option to leave the group.
So what do you offer? Stay in group and love whatever the group do?

This weekend I offered the lvl 48 fake tank in dlc dungeon, that he shouldn't hesitate to pull the stack.
Probably I discriminated against him for playing how he wanted. Way more than in your situation, because I offered to change his playstyle. What do you think?

You did miss something: it’s not about one random leaving, it’s about why this happens so often. The design funnels everyone into one meta, so the moment someone plays differently, they’re mocked, excluded, or written off as ‘unviable.’ That’s not just a player leaving, that’s a culture created by the way sets and scaling are designed. If ‘Play how you want’ was actually true, this wouldn’t even be a discussion.

Its one example, it happens every day in many forms.

The group I run with, all of us, have noticed the delay in things loading in (NPCs, quest-givers, environmental assets, etc), as well as the delay in synergizing with NPCs, environment, and objects, skills firing, etc.

No acknowledgement from ZOS that there's an issue, though, which is frustrating since they continue to state that they are going to improve communication.

its the silent cutbacks to the servers, they dont acknowledge... the other things that keep happening too, having to hit potion/ability/breakfree 3-4 times to get it to register... its neither my connection or harware causing it.

I've noticed this as well, lately it tales a couple of minutes for daily quest givers to load, or even for quest markers on things like writ boards to appear.

SilverBride wrote: »

I understand why no helmets or changing their hairstyles or body markings, but why not everything else? We can already dress them how we want so skill styles should be accessible, too.

I don’t. We’ve seen time and again that with good writing and voice acting, even with a helmet, you can grow to appreciate a character’s personality.

Look at Destiny, in the expansion before the last one, our AI helper robot dies and you can find SEVERAL reaction videos of people crying to it…

A heroic champion of Stendarr doesn’t need visible scars on their face as much as our blue DK needs their colored hair, for me to understand who they are or what they stand for, their voice dialogue establishes that entirely. It would be great if their actions did too, but they have no inclinations whatsoever.

All that said, I agree that your OP is a good idea, but I would put it behind Companion Helmets in the need department, what kind of a Knight doesn’t wear a helmet into battle anyway?

Asdara wrote: »

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

I wonder how much of this is due to the general decline in the skill level of the playerbase?
There seems to be a much higher number of players these days who are doing hard modes in dlc dungeons with only 300 CP on arcanists.

Yeah, i think theres a plague of "i can parse high on dummy, so i must be good" going on.

I am seeing a lot of high value parses from new players. But their build is like pure single target. I believe it is a bit misleading for player understanding of damage because most of the latest raids relies on area damage to clear easily. So this single target builds will not do much. Where some raid setup does less damage then this pure single target in dummy.

Edit: Grammar