Microsoft recently stated they are still commited to Xbox as a platform and not just game pass, so I assume ZOS are under orders to make sure a Xbox server wins to help show it's still an active platform. (I'd have picked NA personally because I think Xboxes always sell better in America than Europe, but maybe EU has more ESO players.)

I assume they want PS servers close behind so both get the update around the same time, and put PCEU ahead of NA because it's said to be more active so it seems more believable.

Alternatively maybe it's all really real and the servers expected to do the worst and so given lower targets were so inspired by the competitive nature of the competition and ZOS enforced "Server Pride"(tm) that they've been going all out, with guilds ensuring everyone does all the dailies every day and players messaging their friends to come back to the game just for the event so they can have the honour of saying "I was there" and the glory of being first to claim the great prize of content pass owners finally getting the rest of the zone they've already paid for. That will be the official version anyway.

Hello thumb, meet scale.

nude normal trial is fun

The thresholds are different by server. They also can and have moved the goalposts as necessary

It does seem strange that they are setting it so that all EU is further than all NA. I understand the desire to have a console “win” because that means for once a console will get the zone before PC, but the fact that the regions are spaced that way makes it look contrived.

And for every “but but but EU always has maintenance extend into primetime,” there’s a “NA hasn’t gotten an ESO specific in-person event since before the pandemic, NA only gets 4h for the last set of event tickets every round, and NA doesn’t get much time on PTS and it’s only the most unpolished of the patches.” Every server gets screwed in different ways, and we all are really only good at seeing how we have it worse and not how we have it better.

We don’t have numbers, but it has been said that PC EU is slightly more populated, but not overly so. However, the EU server is much more concentrated around CET primetime, while NA is a lot more spread out over all timezones.

I don’t like the idea of making this a competition though. It seems like a hollow way to force engagement, when the other community events have been about working together instead.

But really, all this means is that the ‘slower’ servers (aka the ones they chose to lose) get more gold boxes since they have the event go longer. It’s not like any server is not going to get the content they paid for.
(Unless you play in French, in which case you don’t get the content you paid for because they can’t be bothered to hire French VAs or even give updates on that missing voiceover)

I couldn't disagree more: the planemeld between the PC-NA server and the PTS was a legendary event.
I'll be laughing at this for years after the current event has been forgotten.

Is it though? At least when you pulled one of those it was a trip…

percept wrote: »

Classic wow had more variety in dps choices.

ATM almost every single build utilizes arcanist as their dps. You're either beam or runeblades. That's literally it. That's the meta, 2 builds from 1 class.

If there's any cleave you need at all, you play beam, which means beam dominates. If you're in an optimized group, you may get to play runeblades, or if you're in a pug and don't care about cleave, but almost every fight requires cleave.

2 builds. That's it. That's insane.

Healers are basically the same too, you only really have 2 builds as well. Spc and rojo lol.

Tanks have ton of builds, which is why I think I've gravitated towards tanking.

It's mad that this hasn't been addressed yet. This is the worst build variety I've ever seen in an mmo at any point.

There's a reason why rosters require 4/5/6 arc dps for their comp. The rest are support dps. Absolutely mad.

Just check out ESO logs. It's all arcanist. Even other base classes are either beam or runeblades. Crazy

We all told them this would be the result if they went ahead with subclassing.

They knew this would happen.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PapaTankers wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

PapaTankers wrote: »

I dont know about guild wars 2 as I havent played it, but I do know skinnycheeks spent months to rebalance every old set in the game. Only for zos to reject him.

... because it's a really silly idea. All sets are not supposed to be all used at end-game. Most of the sets in the game are progression sets, used to get you to the next tier.

This would become far more apparent if ZOS were to, for example, lock later content until you complete the earlier content. But obviously they don't so anyone can go to any content and get the latest desired set. If people played in chronolgically order, waiting a year before going on to the next Chapter/DLC then the sets as they are hold up.

That's not to say there aren't bumps in that road, with SPC (a fairly early set) still being the king of healing sets, but that's more to do with later sets not progressing like tank and DD sets do.

Im not asking to for every set to be meta. Im asking every set to serve a purpose other than just being bloat.

Even if we were to follow chronological order then what excuse would be adding useless sets to new trials and dungeon?

All those sets we have in the game now and there are still very little actually decent options. There is almost no need for theorycrafting because all alternatives are nothing more than bloatwear.

They do serve a purpose. They are progression sets or they fulfill a niche role or playstyle, which is in keeping with ZOS' diversity design intention. Example: A bleed damage build isn't meta, but some people like to play that way, so we have Aegis Caller.

This is quite the opposite to what zos themselves claim to be the case. According to them it's all about horizontal progression and not vertical, and all sets have a place.
Which is plainly not true as many sets are both straight up stronger and at the same time easier to get than others: eg order's wrath, tide-born are crafted sets (easiest to get). Ow is a direct upgrade over sets like mother's sorrow/leviathan/medusa (2 of them have to be farmed in dungeons btw) etc as all give flat values but order's wrath simply gives more, those sets don't have a niche. There are extremely niche sets like unleashed ritualist that are outperformed by same general use sets even in their tiny niche (meta sets noticeably outperform ritualist on a dedicated full pet build) and there are plenty of similar examples.

And the argument of vertical progression is not valid because you can aquire stronger sets much earlier than some weaker ones like from dungeons/trials/pvp. And ofc zos themselves said that it is not the case lol