Best Of
Re: Sloth Pet Should Hug/Hang On Your Character
While they're doing that they could give the birds a rest and let them land on your shoulder.
Re: Are Vitrified Souls drop rate working as intended?
Well, I stuck it out longer than I expected, but tonight I have officially given up on the Stirk Fellowship quests. And the reason for that is squarely on the utterly ridiculous situation with vitrified souls.
DC Undead essence? No problem - Sentinel Beach was devoid of unlife at first, but picked up quickly and I was soon done.
Vitrified Souls from Aldunz Delve? Almost gave up. 15 minutes of mostly just me doing the circuit where all the Daedra and Cultist spawns were, and getting absolutely nothing - over half of them had no loot whatsoever. A good chunk of the rest had only gold or junk.
I'm not questioning if the drop rates are working as intended. I'm questioning why they are so bad for an event that is obviously meant to have people running the same quests over and over? It is not engaging; it is unfun. It wouldn't be so bad if at least the golden coffer style drops were curated, but we don't even get that, and I'm tired of getting the same two items.
What's particularly galling is the inequity between crafting gear for the armourer and collecting vitrified souls. I can easily complete six of the former in less time than one of the latter. And, if I pair the souls with a provisioning quest, only one golden coffer between the two of them.
If ZOS truly want people to be engaged with this event, the reward has to be worth the effort. For me, this event is too stingy for the time required.
DC Undead essence? No problem - Sentinel Beach was devoid of unlife at first, but picked up quickly and I was soon done.
Vitrified Souls from Aldunz Delve? Almost gave up. 15 minutes of mostly just me doing the circuit where all the Daedra and Cultist spawns were, and getting absolutely nothing - over half of them had no loot whatsoever. A good chunk of the rest had only gold or junk.
I'm not questioning if the drop rates are working as intended. I'm questioning why they are so bad for an event that is obviously meant to have people running the same quests over and over? It is not engaging; it is unfun. It wouldn't be so bad if at least the golden coffer style drops were curated, but we don't even get that, and I'm tired of getting the same two items.
What's particularly galling is the inequity between crafting gear for the armourer and collecting vitrified souls. I can easily complete six of the former in less time than one of the latter. And, if I pair the souls with a provisioning quest, only one golden coffer between the two of them.
If ZOS truly want people to be engaged with this event, the reward has to be worth the effort. For me, this event is too stingy for the time required.
Re: What Ruined Combat In ESO?
I think the downfall of ESO's combat has been an unfortunate mixture of things from the start. It's not nearly as simple as a leadership position change. You also seem to be forgetting that hybridization and the standardized values that led to homogenization were largely part of Gilliam's design philosophy.
So first, I think part of the issue is an identity crisis. There's ESO as an MMORPG and ESO as an Elder Scrolls game. It seems like at some point the developers decided to lean more into the Elder Scrolls part. Over the years ESO has shifted into a more casual solo focused game that just happens to be in a shared world with others. They've really taken a step back from ESO's original MMORPG elements and embraced the "play as you want/you belong here" mantra. I think that scribing, subclassing, and hybridization were done in an attempt to make the game feel more like an Elder Scrolls game. Balance seems like a secondary concern or an afterthought to just getting those features added.
Another big part of all of this is accessibility gone wrong. ESO was in a pretty difficult position in terms of it's combat system. On one hand it had a faithful player base who loved the fast no cooldown combat with animation canceling and bar swapping. On the other hand there's a group of people who are used to slower cooldown based combat. Another thing to consider is that a large portion of gamers have gotten to the age where ESO's combat system is hard on their hands. I've ran into quite a few older ESO players who say that their hands just can't do it or they have arthritis/other joint issues. I truly think that there are people out there who want to participate, but just can't for physical reasons. ZOS rightfully doesn't want to leave people out.
To be fair to ZOS, keeping the high Actions Per Minute (APM) crowd happy while keeping the game accessible is hard, but I do think it's doable. Unfortunately, ZOS went about accessibility the wrong way. For example, Oakensoul was meant to allow for lower APM playstyles and eliminate the need for bar swapping. The Arcanist beam + Velothi also seems like it was meant to offer a lower APM play style for those who physically had trouble with ESO's combat. ZOS also tries to keep the game as easy as possible. I also think that the massive increase in DPS and ease of achieving it over the years was likely very intentional.
A lot of combat changes start to make sense when you look at it through the lens of ZOS trying to improve the game's accessibility and combat participation rates. It's a noble goal, but in my opinion accessibility has worsened in other ways due to their decisions. A lot of things that were intended to improve accessibility ended up completely over performing compared to everything else (look at the arcanist beam). Making things overly easy, nerfing combat and simplifying mechanics for everyone isn't a good approach to accessibility though. Instead they should've kept ESO's original core combat intact while offering a balanced alternative that still required skill, an understanding of mechanics, and good timing. Heavy attack builds were close, but missed the mark. Anyway, I could say much more about all of this, but I made a post about it in the past for those that are interested: Here.
Another big factor involved in the game's declining combat system is game performance. In the "year of performance" (2019) ZOS made some changes to block, block canceling, and more. Also in the next upcoming update ZOS made some animation changes to use less memory. Even though it's states that these things won't have an impact on the feel of the game, they do. Combat has felt much slower, less responsive, and different since 2019... it never quite recovered.
There's probably even more reasons that I'm forgetting right now. The current design philosophy from leadership has definitely played a big role though.
TLDR: The decline of ESO's combat comes from:
1. Trying to make the game more Elder Scrolls like
2. Attempts to make the combat more physically accessible with lower Actions Per Minute
3. Failed attempts to improve the game's performance
Probably more... but this post is too long.
It's funny to even compare eso's great combat to that of other tes games that barely have any combat at all.
If zos truly wanted to make the game more accessible and easy they would introduce a proper tutorial! I just can't stress enough how grave of an oversight it is. Beams, oakensouls, ha never made any difference because players don't know how to play the game. It's impossible for zos to have not noticed that over the years, so they obviously simply choose to ignore this subject. At the same time they supposedly still try to make the game more accessible by any means other than addressing the problem directly, it's baffling.
Eso is in desperate need of a tutorial, one that really teaches and explains combat. As well as more clear stats and calculations. Most players have no idea that most stuff in reality works totally different from what the tooltip says, and there's no way to learn such information other than by testing or amassing knowledge from other players that might be mistaken themselves.
As for "disabilities", in no other game players complain and blame everything on their real or supposed conditions nearly as much as in eso. It's almost difficult to find an eso player who would say they are healthy, which naturally leads one to question if all those claims are actually true and players don't just use it as an excuse to not improve. Just my observations
Re: What Ruined Combat In ESO?
It's not about dread of changes. It's about expectations. There is only so mamy times we can be disappointed before we stop being positive about anything that they're hyping.
Re: What Ruined Combat In ESO?
Do you remember when people were running 10 different DoT effects and no spammables, so they could get Valkyn Skoria to proc as often as possible?
Or when Sorcs in PVP could get 20s shields in the 100k health range?
Or when every patch 1 class would be far above any others, to a degree much larger than even the biggest gaps between Arcanist and Necro in 2023-2025?
Or when PVP performance was considerably worse, because of all the proc calculations?
This was all the fault of Eric Wrobel.
While you can argue that his tenure as lead combat designer had more varied and interesting build opportunities, it was also far less balanced, and far less sustainable for the performance and health of the game.
And yet, there were also periods of time during his tenure where things felt pretty good or like we were going in a good direction. This has not occurred once since his departure.
Simply put, the Wrobel era was marked by bad implementation of good ideas, while the Wheeler era has been marked by decent implementation of horrendous ideas.
Re: What Ruined Combat In ESO?
What ruined combat in eso?
The same thing what ruined combat in quite some other games - the players or at least some of them
.
Especially those who run after meta over and over again and exclude everyone else from group content because of some parsed numbers and not using meta setups.
In addition to that players who only want to do *pew pew*, rush through stuff and don't play mechanics also did their part in ruining the combat (forcing the devs to dumb it down).
The same thing what ruined combat in quite some other games - the players or at least some of them
.Especially those who run after meta over and over again and exclude everyone else from group content because of some parsed numbers and not using meta setups.
In addition to that players who only want to do *pew pew*, rush through stuff and don't play mechanics also did their part in ruining the combat (forcing the devs to dumb it down).
Re: Writhing Wall Event – Consolidated Messaging Thread
The update is appreciated. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed sooner than later. I'm limiting my event participation to once a day, at most.ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »We're working on getting you all an answer to the rewards question. I was hoping we'd have that for you today, but we need a bit more investigation in the morning to determine what is possible.
ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »While we do that, we'd like to ask a couple related questions for future event consideration. We've seen concerns about the rewards coffers drop rates and contents, and the Writhing Wall furnishings drop rates.
I feel like the existing feedback in this thread, this other thread, and PTS should have already answered your questions. Yet again, a fiasco could've been prevented if ZOS acted on PTS feedback.. I really don't get why you guys have PTS at this point.
ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »While we are still investigating options, if we were able to increase the drop rate for the Writhing Wall furnishings, would that help ease some of the frustrations?
Yes, that would. But it's not just furnishings, every reward associated with the event needs increased drop rates. I did the dailies on 5 toons a day, for about a week, and got only one style page. I've mostly gotten the zone set drops, and even then, those aren't curated. Those are wasted rewards.
The only thing that kept me doing the event was the guaranteed Stirk Motif drop in the Glorious Coffers. After doing the dailies for a few days, I decided just to go buy the motif pages and be done with the event. The quests themselves are not fun and I'm not going to slog through them for a miniscule chance at other rewards.
For me, the bigger frustration is the low drop rate for desirable items. People are going to want any item you guys put on a page with a cool picture. New styles, mounts, motifs - obvious stuff here. Not getting that within a reasonable timeframe is just discouraging.ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?
ZOS needs to better appreciate how your marketing excites us and how it also creates drama for all of us when a rewarding experience isn't delivered. I was absolutely furious when the Stirk Motif didn't drop initially. I had waited the whole year for that to come out, and it almost got bungled. Stuff like that really embitters people towards ZOS. With all of the "once-in-a-lifetime" messaging, you guys really primed us for disappointment.
ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »The "more desirable items" being the ones below under "a low chance at" from the event article.Rewards from the coffers available from Vitrified Souls quests include:
- A piece of gear from a Western Solstice set, with a chance of a second.
- A chance at a style item for the Fellowship of Stirk crafting style (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
- A low chance at one of the following items (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
- A page of a Wormwrithe armor outfit Style
- A page of a Wormwrithe weapon outfit Style (from Phase 2 onward)
- A fragment for the Wormwrithe Haj Mota pet
- A fragment of the Caltrops, Bone Skill Style (from Phase 2 onward)
- A chance for a sellable treasure of varying value (one is guaranteed in Glorious coffers)
- This reward has a very low chance to be replaced with the Coldharbour Surreal Estate if you do not already own it, or with a sellable treasure of exceptional value if you do.
None of these should be a low chance drop.
Here's my suggestions.
- Zone set drops should've been curated, double drops.
- The Coldharbour Surreal Estate should've been tied to either the Golden Pursuit or quest completion for the expansion.
- Stirk Motif guaranteed drops should've been working from day one. Being curated would be appreciated.
- Guaranteed Wormwrithe style drop in Glorious Coffers and from Daedra & cultists.
- Haj Mota fragment dropping from any Coldharbour-aligned mob.
- More abundant furnishing drops like we see in other events.
- A chance to get items like the current crown crates, Seals, transmutes and other attractive rewards. You'd see people flock to this event if there was a chance at getting crown crates.
You guys need to be far more generous with the rewards than you are. Your art teams put in so much great work, and it's a shame that so much content is left to either RNG or timed deals. When the rewards are earnable, it's usually a time-gated event like this where there's no guarantee of getting anything. That's not fun. That doesn't make me want to support the game.
Destai
12
Re: The pve meta is the worst I've ever seen in any MMO at any period
this is one of the new sets from U48
it's garbage. Don't bother getting it, it has no place in the game.
it's a group sustain set. as pointed out, we don't need group sustain in this manner since hybridization came out. no one should use this set. no one will use this set.
if i was in a group with someone using this set i'd say "that set sucks, you should use literally anything else"
whoever is responsible for putting this set in the game has literally no idea what they are doing. they don't play the game, they don't understand group content, they are just making up random stats and calling it a day.
honestly someone at ZoS needs to sit down with this person and ask them who is this set is for and why they think it's a good idea for it to be added.
it's garbage. Don't bother getting it, it has no place in the game.
it's a group sustain set. as pointed out, we don't need group sustain in this manner since hybridization came out. no one should use this set. no one will use this set.
if i was in a group with someone using this set i'd say "that set sucks, you should use literally anything else"
whoever is responsible for putting this set in the game has literally no idea what they are doing. they don't play the game, they don't understand group content, they are just making up random stats and calling it a day.
honestly someone at ZoS needs to sit down with this person and ask them who is this set is for and why they think it's a good idea for it to be added.
Tannus15
21
Re: Writhing Wall Event – Consolidated Messaging Thread
ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »For the rewards coffers, is the low drop rate for the more desirable items the biggest frustration, or are the items contained in the coffers not what you'd like to see? Or is it a combination of those two?
Speaking only for myself, I've found the drop rates for the desirable items to be fine, but the contents of the coffers are not what I'd like to see and are not in line with previous chapter events. I have plenty of extra haj mota fragments and the drop rate for the style pages and motifs seem in line with previous events. However, unlike in previous chapter events, the coffers only come as quest rewards and do not drop from bosses or from harvesting, which does make getting the style pages a little more difficult.
However, in the past, these event coffers would have also included furnishing recipes for the zone, as well as zone surveys and treasure maps. The treasure maps were a great way to make some progress on the zone's antiquities, the furnishing recipes gave players a way to make money (by selling them) and gave players that are into housing a way to get the newer furnishing recipes without tedious farming of containers. Having the maps and plans drop from event coffers also drove down their market price for those who are interested in buying them but didnt want to pay the premium prices that newer plans command on the market. In previous chapter events, coffers would have also included the other motifs associated with the zone (so in this case, tide-born and coldharbour dominator rather than just stirk fellowship).
Basically, the coffers in the current event don't offer any real ongoing incentive to farm them. As others have pointed out, once you've earned your daily gold coffers, there's little reason to keep going. The limited selection of event furnishing plans that drop from the crafting quest coffers gave that incentive for a short time, but there were so few that players were quick to earn them and their prices have dropped considerably.
Virenic
12
Re: The pve meta is the worst I've ever seen in any MMO at any period
The problem isn't the meta, the problem is that other classes do not have a main skill similar to fatecarver. Basically subclassing was released too soon, and should have only been released after making a main skill for every class first.
Fatecarver has three major advantages:
1: It is easy to make a build around, as you only have to look at one skill to build-up/empower in your gearing/skilling/CPing.
2: Fatecarver is a jack-of-all-trades and works in any situation. Be it long range or short range, aoe or single target.
3: Low APM, basically anyone can play this type of build as it is an accessible build to play. Meaning more players will use it, especially the ones that won't/can't dualbar/weave/animation cancel.
This is why I feel all classes should have a fatecarver-like skill as their main attack.
PS: There are builds that have some of the above already, just not all three things.
PPS: Don't balance anything, it is only a waste of time and frustrating to the players! (only fix broken/bugged)
Fatecarver has three major advantages:
1: It is easy to make a build around, as you only have to look at one skill to build-up/empower in your gearing/skilling/CPing.
2: Fatecarver is a jack-of-all-trades and works in any situation. Be it long range or short range, aoe or single target.
3: Low APM, basically anyone can play this type of build as it is an accessible build to play. Meaning more players will use it, especially the ones that won't/can't dualbar/weave/animation cancel.
This is why I feel all classes should have a fatecarver-like skill as their main attack.
PS: There are builds that have some of the above already, just not all three things.
PPS: Don't balance anything, it is only a waste of time and frustrating to the players! (only fix broken/bugged)
Sarannah
9