Endgame Balance ?

Sprinkles28

With the recent decision from ZOS to reward 5CP per VR rank up to 70 for VR14 on the launch day of 1.6, plus many more CP after that via XP, how does ZOS plan on balancing this so called "endgame?"

Veteran Ranks are a disaster, hence the Champion System. But with the current "stated" implementation of said system, it is only going to compound the issue considerably.

What veteran rank are dungeons going to be set to? The current 'scaled' dungeons are completely screwed up. What CP are they going to aim for? I don't even want to think about how bad PvP is going to be.

By increasing the gap between endgame players, all ZOS has done is made it that much harder to balance endgame. Way to make it harder for yourselves. Not to mention the raging and QQ coming down the pipeline.

I understand VR14 players feel they deserve "more" than others. I can't argue that, but there is another way then this. Surely ZOS could do better than this cluster f--k.

ZOS had a perfect opportunity to bridge the gap between all endgame players (including alts), to balance dungeons a cross the board and alleviate some PvP issues, but instead they do this? They are making the original problem considerably worse.

There are a million other solutions. Here's a few off the top of my head.

-Give a different reward for VR14 rather than more Champion Points. Unique weapons and armor, special mounts only they can get, etc. Something to allow them to show off their hard work that no one else will ever be able to get. Hell, give them a super mount faster than anything else, make it a tiger and give them some sick armor, super custom dye, and allow their characters to permanently be on fire. Something to this effect. All VR characters start with same CP.

-Take the opportunity to close the gap, if even a little. VR1 get 20 while VR14 get 35. Or something like that. VR1 get 0, VR14 get 70.... mmm lets make that gap bigger why dont you?

-Remove veteran ranks and just call it a level cap of 64. Then at least people at VR1, now named level 50 realize they are not at "endgame." Balance all dungeons accordingly to new level cap of 64. Remove the stupid *** power grind from level 50 to 64 and keep it consistent with 1-50. Don't give CP at all. Only Lvl64 can earn. So they can go out and earn CP immediately while those not quite at lvl 64 still have to level.

-Do not add Champion points until Veteran Ranks are removed completely. Though this still leaves the initial problem of imbalance between "endgame" players, its certainly not compounding the issue as the current "stated" solution will.

It took me less than 2 minutes to think of 4 ideas (and type them). I'm sure the team over at ZOS can think of something.

nerevarine1138

So what happens when someone new picks up the game after 1.6? Should they get to complain because other people have progressed farther than they have and get an instant boost to 70 Champion Points?

The point of the Champion System is the make the endgame about horizontal progression, rather than a vertical leveling system. Champion points will influence how effective you are, but you're no longer going to be cut off from content by how many points you've already invested.

Sprinkles28

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

So what happens when someone new picks up the game after 1.6? Should they get to complain because other people have progressed farther than they have and get an instant boost to 70 Champion Points?

The point of the Champion System is the make the endgame about horizontal progression, rather than a vertical leveling system. Champion points will influence how effective you are, but you're no longer going to be cut off from content by how many points you've already invested.

Tell me how this is "horizontal" progression? You will not be capable of doing X dungeons until a certain amount of CP. PvP is still completely imbalanced. This is not horizontal at all. Not even close. Instead of raising the level cap, you're just calling it Champion Points.

But still, the problem is not the CP system, its the CP system coupled with the VR system. And if the current "stated" implementation of CP happens, it will make the massive gap at so called endgame even larger. Currently VR1 is not "endgame" (though ZOS claims it is) and its worse than just having a higher level cap, say 64, because the grind is considerably higher from VR to VR compared to levels 1 - 50.

nerevarine1138

Sprinkles28 wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

So what happens when someone new picks up the game after 1.6? Should they get to complain because other people have progressed farther than they have and get an instant boost to 70 Champion Points?

The point of the Champion System is the make the endgame about horizontal progression, rather than a vertical leveling system. Champion points will influence how effective you are, but you're no longer going to be cut off from content by how many points you've already invested.

Tell me how this is "horizontal" progression? You will not be capable of doing X dungeons until a certain amount of CP. PvP is still completely imbalanced. This is not horizontal at all. Not even close. Instead of raising the level cap, you're just calling it Champion Points.

But still, the problem is not the CP system, its the CP system coupled with the VR system. And if the current "stated" implementation of CP happens, it will make the massive gap at so called endgame even larger. Currently VR1 is not "endgame" (though ZOS claims it is) and its worse than just having a higher level cap, say 64, because the grind is considerably higher from VR to VR compared to levels 1 - 50.

They have never once said that dungeons will be gated to players with a certain number of Champion Points. And yes, it's going to be a bit of a pain while the VR system is still in place, but I'd rather they implement this in chunks so they can balance the new system. It's not an ideal state, but it's the only practical way to make sure that the system is balanced on a wider scale.

Think of it as paragon levels in Diablo III. You aren't actually a higher level, but they let you clear content with much more ease.

Morshire

So @Sprinkles28 - This was hotly debated for months now. I notice you didn't chime in when the change benefited you (30CP) but now you want things to change since you are getting "shafted". Is this system the best, nope. Is it better than what they planned, yes. No one is ever going to "close the gap" unless they actually put in the time to earn those CP. Are the VR14 going to have a huge advantage with VR and CP, yep. (I need to point out "huge advantage" was a smart arse answer) but when that it taken away those same people are basically getting shafted out of XP, content, and VR levels and gear. So kind of works out. Screaming for ZOS to "stop them before they get away" is not even a discussion worth having. And before you flame me, I have one VR6 (just got to VR6) and I would have benefited more from the 30CP. I however advocated for this new system because it seemed much better than what they proposed. There is always going to be room for players to gain the advantage, and they will. Don't lay down and cry when it happens. Turn on the game, put in the effort, and close the gap. Dungeons won't be scaled to CP. What will happen is those with more CP will have faster/easier times in said dungeons. Those with CP will have a slight advantage in PVP (The kind that two good players could negate with some team work). And in PVE, they will be running through the mobs that you have to work your way through. My suggestion, tip your hat to them and wave as they pass you by, then focus on closing that dolmen before the mobs kill you.

kongkim

Yah it took you 2 min. to come up with all boring ideers that don't make any progress after max level.

A player with one CP is not supposed to be as strong as one with many.
If you a lucky you run into on who you are better then. Or maybe you ran into one who is stronger then you but not better. Its life and i like it.

PVP is not always ment to be fair.

Rydik

So people still wants get everything by doing nothing...

Tyr

Ridiculous.
You think a difference of 70 CP in a system that has a max of 3600 and all the power you earn from the whole system will only add up to a fraction of the power you gain from gear or abilities will be a significant difference.

You think being less than 2% more powerful than another player is going to be a problem for balance?

A player that has 1000CP won't even be twice as powerful as a player with 0 wearing the same gear and abilities.

Of course if they are wearing different gear specific to their build a player with only 100-200CP will be much more effective in burst dps with 2H axes or aoe heals with resto staff or single target tanking with OH&S

That's why it's horizontal progression.

Ommamar

It is an interesting dilemma this whole balance thing. On one hand you want to be fair to those who have put in the time to get to the "end game" level but on the other you don't want it to be just an easy button game. I do think that the ability to get 7 passives compared to 2 or 3 is going to be significant but so what. I just made VR3 if I go to Cyrodill currently and try to go head on with anyone VR8 or above I will lose. That makes sense as they are naturally more powerful then I am. I think the only thing the CP system will do is make it harder to immediately tell how strong someone is. This isn't to say I can't be useful in PvP, shoot even a level 10 can be if they are smart about it. Remember it is about the war not the individual battle.
One thing that has me wondering and is already an issue in game some mobs of the same level are just way more difficult then others. Spiders come to mind, things like Orcs and Gargoyles where even if you win your equipment still takes massive damage. The wasps in Craglorn are another mob that comes to mind. So if everything is level 50 will it be trial and error to see if you can defeat some mobs or will have to come back/get help?

Emma_Overload

In the long run, 70 CP is barely anything - just enough to keep VR14s like me from freaking out. In the amount of time the OP spent writing his angsty post, he probably could have grinded 200K XP in Craglorn and made it one point closer to 70 himself!

The CP 0-70 gap "problem" is not a problem at all... there's SUPPOSED to be a gap in progress between experienced players and newbies. When I started playing in June, there were already VR12 guys standing around in cool Daedric armor making everyone jealous. Should I have rushed to the forum to beg ZoS to "rebalance" the game? No, I used those guys as inspiration to begin my own journey of character progression.

TL;DR: Stop whining and start grinding.

Sprinkles28

First starters I'm not crying or yelling, I'm pointing out a valid issue and asking ZOS how they plan on balancing this so called endgame.

Why do we have Veteran Ranks? Why are veteran ranks being removed? Because they were a crappy way to extend endgame. There was massive complaining and crying about veteran ranks before the champion system was announced and rightfully so. PvE imbalance as well as PvP.

ZOS realized the imbalance and tried to help by stated they will remove veteran ranks and start all CP at 30. But enough whining and QQers showed up that they back peddled. They gave in to the criers. Yet, now when I point out the imbalance, those same QQers want to scream at me? Mmmm ok.

@tyr Where does ZOS say the cap is 3600? I honestly have never heard this before.

@Emma_Eunjung‌ Would just like to point out that you need to be high level VR to survive in Craglorn, so yeah, that doesn't help at all. And you missed my point completely. I'm not so much concerned with with 70cp vs 0cp, but the compound affect with veteran ranks. You are also assuming that just because someone is low VR that they are "newbies." While there are plenty of players that have multiple low level VR that have significant time invested in the game. Also, please take a VR1 into a veteran dungeon with other VR1 and come back to me about game imbalances.

This has nothing to do with crying about 0cp vs 70cp. I'm pointing out that fact that ZOS originally came up with the idea of the champion system because so many players raged about veteran ranks (and rightfully so). Yet now they are using said champion system to compound the issue. The easiest solution would be to remove the veteran system completely when they introduce the champion system. Reward current VR14 with more CP than those that aren't.

The key aspect here is once the VR ranks are removed, you can then balance dungeons accordingly. Some dungeons should require more CP and better gear. A solid progression of what fresh 50s should be doing and what experienced veteran players with more CP should be doing.

Joejudas

They answered this during the ESO live yesterday by saying.....play the game. Lol

nerevarine1138

OP, the cap was mentioned way back when they first started talking about the system. They also stated that an inordinate amount of time would need to be spent playing to max out your champion points, so it ain't happening any time soon, especially since these are only starting points. I'm sure stars will be added to the system as they add content to the game.

Tyr

Sprinkles28 wrote: »

@tyr Where does ZOS say the cap is 3600? I honestly have never heard this .

The previous ESO live as well as several other posts since then.
It breaks down to 9 constellations with 4 stars to put points in and 100 max points per star.
They also stated that they are balancing gaining 1 CP to about 1 enlightened hour of average play, so it's going to be thousands of hours for average player to max out all possible CP.

Morshire

Sprinkles28 wrote: »

@tyr Where does ZOS say the cap is 3600? I honestly have never heard this before.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

A second thing we learned is that each Champion Point needs to have more impact on the stats it is altering than originally planned. This came up frequently in our internal feedback sessions. Responding to that feedback, we decreased the number of overall points in the system (14,400 to 3,600), but kept the range of what they could alter the same. Because each point is more valuable there are less points overall in the system. Thus we can’t give out as many points with the introduction of the system as originally believed....

The full thread is here:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/143784/champion-system-clarification/p1

The fact that you didn't even have this one fact @Sprinkles28 makes me wonder if you are following the conversation. So I will start by apologizing in advance for sounding "smartarse'ish" but I did defend this and have since had it rubbed in my face by the people that supposedly were getting "shafted". (Still mad about that)

The fact is that you are pointing something out that is "flawed" with the system, but the problem is not one that will really matter for the reasons you are addressing. Saying that VR + CP is going to give players an even bigger advantage:
1) Will be so temporary that it will be forgotten faster than it was argued.
2) A few CP and some good gear is not why that gap exists. Take it all away and the players you are worried about will still have that "advantage" due to X.
3) Even from 0CP for all and no VR ranks, the gap you ask to narrow will be back in the matter of hours/days.

ZOS should not have allowed people to gain XP towards a system they didn't even test run, true. However, back pedaling all the way to now would not solve the issue. The "flaw" in this is from ZOS not managing the new aspects of the game correctly. And there should have not been VR levels to remove. I think they wanted to keep the game interesting, but ended up chopping off their noses to spite their face.

People followed the advice of ZOS by continuing to level for a system that hadn't been tested. Short of ZOS resetting all that content (which honestly, people would complain that they had to do it over anyway) and not ever letting people get gear from a system they planned on removing would have been the right thing. Continuing to remove stuff (XP, gear, skills, etc) is not going to solve this for all. I think they made a good choice with what they decided to do and now we should just get through 1.6 and 1.7 keeping our fingers crossed that we do not have to endure said debacle again. Asking them to go back, yet again, has not worked out to everyone's liking, why tempt fate now.

pmn100b16_ESO

I think the OP is asking how end game dungeons/trials etc are going to be balanced. An example, a year down the line, there are going to be players with say 1000 CPs and lv50, and you're going to have new players hit lv 50 with 1 CP point.

If these people are to play the same endgame content (lv 50), how will the dungeons etc be balanced to cater for the gulf in CPs between these two players?

jeevin

pmn100b16_ESO wrote: »

I think the OP is asking how end game dungeons/trials etc are going to be balanced. An example, a year down the line, there are going to be players with say 1000 CPs and lv50, and you're going to have new players hit lv 50 with 1 CP point.

If these people are to play the same endgame content (lv 50), how will the dungeons etc be balanced to cater for the gulf in CPs between these two players?

To add to this, didn't Zos recently concede that each Champion Point will be more powerful than originally planned? So until we get our hands on them any claim that CP is horizontal progression have just as much hot air as claims that CP will be imbalanced. We don't know yet. I doubt the devs truly know yet either.

Morshire

I am not sure how that will play out. There are a ton of threads with people's "speculation" about X hours = X CP, etc. Add in the fact of "diminishing returns" stated by ZOS, and I don't know that even ZOS themselves could answer that. I understand that all the CP will be used for passives, and since no one knows what those passives will give, I think it will be hard to speculate as to the "gap" size or how dungeon will overcome this. Who knows, in a year from now, they may have raised the level cap and changed the system again. Some threads have "shown" the best guess to be 1% increase for first point, .9% second, .8% third, etc. Divide that by having to distribute the points in 3 areas...meaning the 1% to .9% change would require 4 points to go around. We may be talking ridiculously small changes like 4.9% X if you spent 1/3 of the 1000CP on just that one passive. I thought I even read that 100 or 300 CP to max each trait star? Have to look that up.
Sorry, if I missed the topic in my responses. I need to start really reading cause that is not what I got from the OP's original comment. But I can "speculate" all day long on how it will play out, but the truth is that PTS will be the time to "test" the Champion System and then we all will have a better understanding of what to expect.

These 2 might help:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/143784/champion-system-clarification/p1

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/145544/feedback-to-the-champion-system/p1

They have a lot of comments and thread leads that you can go into that may answer the questions. But I personally doubt that we can do more than "speculate" until it goes live on PTS.

Emma_Overload

pmn100b16_ESO wrote: »

I think the OP is asking how end game dungeons/trials etc are going to be balanced. An example, a year down the line, there are going to be players with say 1000 CPs and lv50, and you're going to have new players hit lv 50 with 1 CP point.

If these people are to play the same endgame content (lv 50), how will the dungeons etc be balanced to cater for the gulf in CPs between these two players?

The idea, as I understand it, is that the guy with 1000 CPs won't be overpowered because most of his points (the more recent ones) will have diminished benefit compared to the earliest points he earned. The new player will still be weaker than the veteran when he reaches 100 CPs after a couple weeks, but he won't be abysmally weak because his 100 points got him "more bang for the buck", so to speak.

In other words, to address your point (and the OP), they're not balancing the endgame in relation to old and new players, instead they're balancing the new players against the old players by making it so they can (mostly) catch up in power in just a couple weeks of leveling/grinding. How well that works in practice remains to be seen....

NotSo

I could sit here and crunch some numbers but I think the best guess will be that a player with maxed CPs will be 24% more powerful than a player with 0 CPs and a player with 500 CPs might be 15% more powerful.
Also keep in mind that there will be a number of passives here that will not be combat oriented.

Joejudas

So older players and new players aren't supposed to be even....if you want that instant gratification go get a level 90 wow account.

Sasky

The champion system is supposed to replace veteran ranks. Veteran ranks are going away to be replaced by something. Whether that's levels 51-63 or just CP hasn't been announced. Nevertheless, this 'widening' of the gap is temporary.

Ideally, ZOS would have tied removing VR to awarding the CP conversion at the same time. However, they indicated they didn't want to move that much in one (already large) patch.

Next best would be if they could record the CP conversion when 1.6 goes live but not award those points until VR are removed (presumably 1.7). Whatever reason, that didn't work.

So they need some sort of conversion. If you sit and look at the numbers, 70CP really isn't that much. The time spent pre-1.5 to get a character to VR14 could easily have netted twice that amount, since the VR per rank went up unlike the flat 1mil/VR currently. Add on top of it that additional CP provide diminishing returns and (once the final removal phase hits) it ultimately reduces the gap substantially.

The full impact of this conversion to new player vs old player won't be realized until 1.7 hits PTS. My speculation is that it helps new players catch up quicker but still helps keep experienced players invested by making it cheaper to roll an additional character.

daemonios

I never understood what was wrong with VR levels. It makes sense to me - as the game progresses, so does the highest attainable character level. If the problem was that it took too long to reach VR14, then it would be best to decrease the XP requirements.

I don't have any strong feelings for or against the champion system. It's wait and see for me. Hell, I wouldn't have anything against not giving any CP to anyone when it's introduced. It was ZOS who went ahead and promised people that if they kept playing their VR14 characters, they would get free CP from the start. As it is, I find the new "up to 70 CP" system better than the old "everyone gets 30 CP" system.

As for other rewards, #1 I think that's out of the question since ZOS already went ahead and changed the CP award numbers in response to players' feedback and #2 I'm totally against giving away any kind of game-altering bonuses (such as the super fast horses someone suggested) to some people, while others will never be able to get them.

Sprinkles28

@Tyr‌ and @morshire Thank you for the clarification and link to the 3600 CP cap. With that in mind, 0cp vs 70cp doesn't matter at all. I read misinformation claiming cap was 100.

My concern has always been about balancing dungeons and PvP. I do understand that ZOS "stated" they will remove veteran ranks in 1.7. But my concerns are two fold.

ZOS has "stated" a lot of s--t, who knows if they will follow through.

And do they plan on addressing the current imbalances? I'm mainly referring to the dungeon scaling of 1.5. I speak from a lower VR reference when I say dungeons are all out of whack. Some bosses are crazy easy, while others being OP with crazy static 4k hits (no red to stand in, so don't scream at me) and adds with way too much HP.

I suppose they will do nothing. In the mean time I'll just keep plugging away.