From this:


To this:



I have no idea why it took ZOS roughly 6 months to figure this out, especially when players were pointing it out day 1 of the U46 PTS. Still, happy to see that apparently ''Class Identity'' is no longer going to be just a meme.

Hoping that they actually commit and don't do a 180° with this one, since it hyped me(more than the last few Chapters/Season tbh) enough to actually reinstall the game lol.

I gave it a 8, but under the following conditions:
I bought the pass in the Black Friday sale for €17.
I completely skipped the Writhing Wall event.
I don't play dungeons and I don't play PVP.
I ignore sub classing; for PVE my main char gets along fine with the pure class.

For €17, I spent a few enjoyable hours in Solstice.
I know some people are bothered by ZOS, constantly bringing back “old” characters, but for me, these old characters were the reason I decided to purchase the pass during the sale.
My favorite side quest was the one in Xor-Hist. I enjoyed the banter between the two characters Mani-Kai and Xica-Ilan. I would actually like to see them again.

I didn't find the writing in general as negative as others did. I don't expect world literature from an MMO. I had the impression that it was better than in the Necrom/Goldroad DLC. But maybe, because I liked the characters much more.

The original price of 50 .. no, it wouldn't be worth it to me, but 17 € was ok.

The best solution IMO is to just to by default make a challenging and engaging fight environment for both the MMO teamwork and soloing entusiasts. This is where ESO combat really has been fun and become a reason for welcoming the sight of other players and cooperating, instead of them being a bit of a nuisance as in overland and it's questing.

Then let players who want to opt out of the challenge increase their own power until they find their sweet spot. Maybe up to and including a full blown immortal story mode for instances with certain limitations so people don't just exploit it to cheese things.

I suppose this could be done in a number of ways. A menu toggle to set enemies neutral to the player maybe. Power sigils like in the arenas, but permanent like mundus stones. Stats scaling. Instances with tricky mechanics reduced or disabled. They could even let players have a companion with city guard level power for example (such as that bugged guard appearing at a Elsweyr dragon spot and one-shotting the thing).

Or maybe just world tiers. In fact this was my major disappointment with how Ithelia was simply discarded instead of being utilized for future content. I.e. giving ZOS creative license to insert events without those coming into conflict with the timeline of the franchise as a whole, as we entered conterfactual mirror realities where events played out differently. Who is to say you couldn't have an adventure-zone (e.g. original Craglorn) version of the entire overland. Though a public dungeon version would likely be the sweet spot for most players, but the point remains the same. Ithelia could have been a good world tier platform. Just enter the mirror she was building.

Unfortunately, I just don't see this happening. Too many within the current PvP community have a "win at all costs" mindset, even if it is to the detriment of the health of the game, which means it's up to ZOS to fix the balance issues and problematic sets/skills.

Too many players currently with this mentality means that anyone not at least using a very similar setup to the meta won't have the option to have fun (enjoyable fights, let alone actually win) outside of very niche situations such as dedicated off-meta PvP tournaments, etc. and it's even worse for those who are not at the peak of skills in this game, since they will only ever be cannon fodder unless they run those same meta builds/skills or simply zerg up due to the massive power disparity between the meta and everything else.

I'd love to be able to run more thematic builds, and do what I can by mixing in off-meta skills/sets into the builds to at least find some other options, but I am not a top 0.1% player who can make such a power disparity work (constantly losing is not fun for me, especially if the fights don't feel even remotely balanced), and my main PvP chars have been Sorc and Warden for a long time now (I play all classes, but those 2 are what I'm most comfortable on/mix best with how I play), so no matter what I do, I always end up on some variant of the current "meta" builds, no matter how much I switch them up or try new things.

I enjoyed the return of a fan favorite character in the Solstice main story, some of it's side quests, the addition of roleplaying options to the dialogue, and the writhing fortress. Also, Solstice and it's furniture were pretty. A lot of recycling though that was disappointing. Most of the dungeons were pretty good though!

I have mixed feelings about subclassing. I like the freedom it gives but hate the balance and it's unnecessarily grindy implementation.

There was also too many bugs and too little new things to do.

ETA

Also the rest of the Writhing Wall event was way too grindy. Like it sucked all the fun out of it.

I challenge you, put down the rallying cry, the monomyth, The charm, the rush of agony, the same 3 subclasses that 90% of cyrodil is using for like, and try something new.

Hear me out. We, as the community are the fix here.

I get it - When subclassing was released, we were all excited to be OP, our PVE DPS doubled overnight, we got instant insane PvP builds and felt stronger than emperors…

But it’s getting old now. I don’t think I’ve spoken to a single pvp regular who enjoys the current state of pvp, and ZOS clearly aren’t doing anything about it anytime soon;

The charm spam.
- It’s annoying and overpowered. No other class mastery performs this well. If Procs on healing soul (also overtuned) so can be used both offensively and defensively, to stun entire groups through block and dodge roll… without even slotting a stun. The AOE is also huge. If you use charm and deny how ridiculous this is, you’re in denial. Drop it for a week and I’ll see you back here. No one enjoys this trash.

Rush of agony
- I still have no idea why a set that has the best CC in the game, doesn’t grant CC immunity, and has an explosion attached to it afterwards because why not. It’s even got its own internal cooldown separate to regular CC, which I have to assume is harder to code than just making it obey the rules of normal CC?? It does nothing for pve, and all it does is ruin PvP with that ridiculous interaction. It’s a tool for ball groups to decimate solo / small groups, and large fights are almost always decided by this annoying set, often spammed every 8 seconds in tandem with charm. No one enjoys this.

The same subclasses
- Everyone is using assassination, with a combo of storm calling, animal companions, aedric spear or restoring light. Everyone. They are overtuned and it makes every player an infinite sustaining, speed machine TankHealsDeeps with no counter, no weakness, and everyone just bouncing off each others invincible builds, until you notice some poor soul trying something different in a group fight - and you go and 2 shot them, before getting back to being more survivable than a trials tank. It’s boring. No one likes this.

Monomyth / Rallying / Wretched
- I mean mostly Monomyth. It’s busted OP and it’s why we all use it. But the Same builds are everywhere. When sets like rallying over perform to such a level, build variety is dead.

Ball groups
- I mean where to start… I’ve played in a ball group and actively felt my brain cells melting away with how boring it was, spamming the same few skills around a pull spam every few seconds and causing the game to lag for everyone nearby. I’ve also played against them, and PvP is legit miserable for anyone not in a ball group right now.


My point?

It’s time for US, the player base to take some accountability here. Sure, we can rightfully blame ZOS for such god awful balance and ignoring things flagged on PTS, we can flame them for the current state and hope that they listen, and we can post feedback and tag them… But it’s been months, and all we have is a fleeting hope of this class balance in the near future… But the veterans amongst us know full well that won’t be the fix that pvp needs.

It’s on us, the players, to put down that trash that’s ruining the game, and try something different. Sure it’s nice to win all the time, and i know the ego players are gonna shudder at the thought of not being at their best…. But the alternative is killing the game.

I came from the dark souls community before playing eso from console release, and in that community, the playerbase got together and collectively decided that we weren’t going to all use the same broken OP stuff. We made news and made fun of people who did that. We tried new things and got creative, and as a result, the game lasted years after the developers stopped caring.

I don’t know how long eso has - Hopefully a while because we love this game right? But we currently have a community full of pvpers who know full well what the problems are, yet do nothing about it, in favour of remaining OP.

At the very least, don’t be one of the people complaining about how pvp sucks, before jumping on your rally / null arca / balorghs warden base with assassination and Storm calling.

Rant over, I am mad. I’m not chill. 12 years on eso and here we are, with the worst balance since release, and a playerbase that’s forcing each other into the very meta that is causing the need for vengeance campaign to take over (which most of us don’t want)

tell me what you think.

diamondo wrote: »

Can I just say good questions and answers here.

So glad to hear about dealing with cross healing and also maybe lowering the damage cap. Crit damage is beyond insane, also spec bow really needs to be sorted out it’s an on demand ultimate. Does more damage consistently than a dawn breaker.

If your taking votes, I think like a keep lord would be an amazing addition keeps are way to easy for a small group to take, having some kick arse dude patrolling the keep would be awesome.
The lord could be more powerful within zones of influence I.e. in home keeps he has far more abilities, makes the guards while alive deal more damage.

You could go a step further and increase their "power" based off the amount of daily crafting writs each alliance completes. A way to get the PvE crowd involved in the war.

SummersetCitizen wrote: »

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

After this years fubar, I expect the numbers will continue to decline.

ESO is going to need some heavy monetary investment to bring it back up, sadly the money makers most likely would rather not take the gamble and will just milk what they have.

Downward spirals are hard to get out of.

I agree.

The most likely path: release crown crates with cosmetics/styles behind steep paywalls. Drain the few remaining whales for their sunk-cost fallacy investments.

The better way to make the money: release new content that isn’t bugged and players want to pay for.

The writing was on the wall when U35 dropped and ZOS totally ignored all feedback and failed to course correct. That's when I dropped my ESO+ and haven't regretted it for a second. All indications are ZOS is focused on things not ESO related these days.

@Danse_Mayhem, maybe a better angle to tackle this would be to spread awareness on how to counter said builds.

Not many people are posting PvP builds anymore, and most veterans who understood the value of counterplay are no longer around to spread that knowledge. It’s on us… the people who have been around through all of these different metas to inform people that there are still options.

When that starts happening, just like in Dark Souls, the community will correct itself.

Instead of melee burst builds, people might pull up with a staff and wards, and then when people get sick of that... they counter it with a flood of DoTs and intermittent burst.

Melee burst builds can’t kill someone stacking wards correctly, but they can sure keep up with a flood of DoTs when built right.

That’s the beauty of it.

CatoUnchained wrote: »

The writing was on the wall when U35 dropped and ZOS totally ignored all feedback and failed to course correct.

Yeah Blackwood wasn't great but High Isle and going forward is the rough area of time when things really began taking a noticeable dive. Necrom seemed like it might indicate a better direction, but since then it has just been the same old stuff and more problems.

ESO had it's issues before too but the core product was at least somewhat coherent and functioning.

But it's kind of like the game never really had a stable kind of thing it was going for and has always been in a weird spiraling condition.

Launch fell flat and required some emergency rework in the One-Tamriel patch. Some nostalgia DLC releases utilized the ES fanbase to buy some time and the launch cycle going forward got stuck into a deadline-driven pace of decent but stale and formulaic content. A lot of the discontent around the U35 time was driven by that staleness; the combined pressure finally causing ZOS to announce they were going to change things going forward. Since then a lof of the issues the game has had can be attributed to the execution of those changes being faulty, and likely still deadline-driven rather than allowing quality and readiness to be the final arbiter.

The business is the crown store. The game exists to draw and keep players exposed to the storefront. It has to have some core qualities of a PVP MMO and a PVE MMO in order to compete on the market. Somehow it has instead become a single player adventure game without adventure, and the ES story and lore content watered down.

I think the real issue is ESO always had fundamental flaws in it's game design that were never addressed beyond some compensatory and superficial fixes here and there, plus the fact that new systems that are introduced get left half-implemented. It all has the uncontrolled and unplanned energy of someone attempting to steer a brakeless vehicle downhill without crashing into traffic. I really don't know if it is fixable unless real leadership emerges and does something very different from what has been going on up to now. It's too early to really tell from the stuff that was already in the pipeline but the change in management hopefully brings the possibility of that kind of change in trajectory going forward.

A gloomier possibility, and I don't know what it is like to work at ZOS, but I've been in spiraling corporate environments amid acquisitions and downsizings while globally scattered skeleton-crews herding outsourced help are attemting to firefight a conveyor belt of pre-doomed projects. Sometimes the simplest things become almost impossible to execute, or it gets done with many corners cut. I hope it isn't like this at ZOS but it seems almost endemic in companies these days across industries and the larger the companies involved, the worse it seems to get. In that case individuals and departments may get all kinds of blame, but they never had much of a chance against systemic collapse.