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The DLC had so much promise, but did not deliver. Who shaped it?
TerraHawk
✭✭
I held off writing this topic until I had spent a significant period of time in the new content.
First, the good news. I love the look and feel of the new content. It is obvious that there was an enormous amount of time and effort put into the Imperial City. The architecture is immersive and the monsters look great. The idea of forced PvE inside PvP is interesting but was always going to be difficult to pull off.
After many hours playing in Imperial City, I do not look forward to going back. This is a sentiment shared by many people in our guild. The failure is at the top. What were the goals of the DLC? Clearly, somebody wanted to give the long suffering PvP crowd some long needed attention. But if there ever was a top level design meeting, it must have gone something like this...
"What should be the main focus of our first major DLC patch?"
"We should give a huge boost to the long suffering under-served players"
"Who would that be?"
"Isn't it obvious? Three groups are clearly not feeling the love. You know, the gankers, the zerg and the macro users".
"So, how do we make them feel better about the game?"
"First, the gankers have to work way too hard. Cyrodiil so big that a ganker can misjudge the reinforcement path and not get to kill an unsuspecting player for 10 minutes."
"How do we fix that?"
"I know, lets make all PvP players go through tiny corridors and only have one route to get back into their one base from the sewers. Where the upper levels are bigger, lets only have two entrances to the lower level. That will save the gankers a lot of time."
"Anything else?"
"Yea, when people have been out questing for an hour, lets take 48 minutes of that work and give it to the ganker. We should only leave 12 minutes of work for the player. That sounds fair. Oh, and when players use the sewer entrance from above, lets make them vulnerable to ganker while they are waiting for our servers."
...
OK, I doubt it went exactly like that. But a question remains, How could you possibly not see that if a ganker can collect 4 hours worth of effort in less than 5 minutes of work, ganking will become a huge issue. This brings me to my second point:
The only way to minimize your chances of being ganked is to join a zerg. Groups of 2, 3 and 4 are not big enough. When a small group takes on some of the stronger mobs, a single ganker can just wait and strike near the end of the fight. The ganker draws no aggro on the mobs and if the players turn their attention from the mobs, they are dead. To be reasonably safe from a couple of gankers, you need at least 6 in your group. If you don't have that many people, you just go join the zerg. Did you not see that coming? Seems obvious from the reward system.
Finally, the damage reduction in PvP along with the corresponding protection nerfs were a great idea. No more riding 15 minutes in Cyrodiil just to die to a single skill. However, that is not the core problem.
The core problem is and always was allowing the ability for a player to effectively perma-CC another player from full health to death. This is still happening. It really doesn't matter if you get killed with a single gigantic attack or 4 big attacks if you can never break free. There are combinations of skills that do not allow you to break free using dodge rolling, interrupting or spells that are suppose to make you CC immune. That needs to change. It is impossible to comprehend how a game developer could fail to understand that no-option deaths will drive players away. Yet no-option deaths have been in ESO since beta.
Reducing the maximum damage really only caused one thing to happen, many players that could kill with a single attack and now must use multiple attacks are turning to macros. I take snapshots of combat statistics and my death recap and in the Imperial City where you often get killed several times by the same player, it is obvious that they are using macros. By the terms of service agreement, these players should be banned. Yet, I have never heard of a player banned for using macros.
If you are not going to ban macro players, you need to declare macros legal for the entire player base. If you have no way of enforcing the ban on macros, you need to make macros legal for the entire player base. Even footing is the only option.
I find it hard to believe that a major undertaking like this was not evaluated for unintended consequences. If it was, maybe a different group needs to do it next time.
First, the good news. I love the look and feel of the new content. It is obvious that there was an enormous amount of time and effort put into the Imperial City. The architecture is immersive and the monsters look great. The idea of forced PvE inside PvP is interesting but was always going to be difficult to pull off.
After many hours playing in Imperial City, I do not look forward to going back. This is a sentiment shared by many people in our guild. The failure is at the top. What were the goals of the DLC? Clearly, somebody wanted to give the long suffering PvP crowd some long needed attention. But if there ever was a top level design meeting, it must have gone something like this...
"What should be the main focus of our first major DLC patch?"
"We should give a huge boost to the long suffering under-served players"
"Who would that be?"
"Isn't it obvious? Three groups are clearly not feeling the love. You know, the gankers, the zerg and the macro users".
"So, how do we make them feel better about the game?"
"First, the gankers have to work way too hard. Cyrodiil so big that a ganker can misjudge the reinforcement path and not get to kill an unsuspecting player for 10 minutes."
"How do we fix that?"
"I know, lets make all PvP players go through tiny corridors and only have one route to get back into their one base from the sewers. Where the upper levels are bigger, lets only have two entrances to the lower level. That will save the gankers a lot of time."
"Anything else?"
"Yea, when people have been out questing for an hour, lets take 48 minutes of that work and give it to the ganker. We should only leave 12 minutes of work for the player. That sounds fair. Oh, and when players use the sewer entrance from above, lets make them vulnerable to ganker while they are waiting for our servers."
...
OK, I doubt it went exactly like that. But a question remains, How could you possibly not see that if a ganker can collect 4 hours worth of effort in less than 5 minutes of work, ganking will become a huge issue. This brings me to my second point:
The only way to minimize your chances of being ganked is to join a zerg. Groups of 2, 3 and 4 are not big enough. When a small group takes on some of the stronger mobs, a single ganker can just wait and strike near the end of the fight. The ganker draws no aggro on the mobs and if the players turn their attention from the mobs, they are dead. To be reasonably safe from a couple of gankers, you need at least 6 in your group. If you don't have that many people, you just go join the zerg. Did you not see that coming? Seems obvious from the reward system.
Finally, the damage reduction in PvP along with the corresponding protection nerfs were a great idea. No more riding 15 minutes in Cyrodiil just to die to a single skill. However, that is not the core problem.
The core problem is and always was allowing the ability for a player to effectively perma-CC another player from full health to death. This is still happening. It really doesn't matter if you get killed with a single gigantic attack or 4 big attacks if you can never break free. There are combinations of skills that do not allow you to break free using dodge rolling, interrupting or spells that are suppose to make you CC immune. That needs to change. It is impossible to comprehend how a game developer could fail to understand that no-option deaths will drive players away. Yet no-option deaths have been in ESO since beta.
Reducing the maximum damage really only caused one thing to happen, many players that could kill with a single attack and now must use multiple attacks are turning to macros. I take snapshots of combat statistics and my death recap and in the Imperial City where you often get killed several times by the same player, it is obvious that they are using macros. By the terms of service agreement, these players should be banned. Yet, I have never heard of a player banned for using macros.
If you are not going to ban macro players, you need to declare macros legal for the entire player base. If you have no way of enforcing the ban on macros, you need to make macros legal for the entire player base. Even footing is the only option.
I find it hard to believe that a major undertaking like this was not evaluated for unintended consequences. If it was, maybe a different group needs to do it next time.
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