Why I think the IC's 50% Battle Spirit is flawed.

Joy_Division

I won't say ZoS didn't try to make the game better or ZoS doesn't listen to us because you did and you do. I appreciate the work and effort put into trying to make this game better. The process and end result are, however, open to criticism.

1.6 had issues that were very real and, no matter what people who are unhappy with the update might claim today, were widely criticized. There was a significant majority of people who loudly and repeatedly asserted that the time to kill [TTK] was too low. The 50% Battle Spirit reduction was developed in an attempt to alleviate these concerns.

My main problem is the Battle Spirit adjustment was devised under conditions that remind me of the old Soviet Union. There was zero transparency and it was tested not by us, but your internal staff. This meant the process effectively shut off any contact with the customers it is supposed to service. ZoS has no outside perspective that can identify any flaws that its inner circle does not see and thus lack the ability to correct them before implementation. It would be different if this system gave us a sustainable solution that did not adversely affect other aspects of the game. However, that is not the case.

If people claim problems have been mitigated, let alone solved, I would counter that the artificial means in doing so are not sustainable and there are unintended and undesirable consequences that have marred the appeal of playing ESO.

The TTK was undesirably low because in 1.6, we had relatively a lot less health - which also meant subsequent less effective defenses such as Sun Shield that scaled off health - and we were capable of doing a lot more damage due to the removal of soft caps and the introduction of the Champion system. That was the fundamental problem and not only is it still there, it is worse. In 1.6 I had 20000 health, 2000 spellpower and 1500 regen. My character now has 3000 spellpower and 2000 regen and yet still only has 20000 health. So if ZoS "solved" the TTK problem, this will not last. Eventually we will all be properly geared out, new builds, combinations, exploits will be found, the TTK will continue to fall. When Orsinium comes out and ZoS yet again send us on another gear grind, we will have even more spell damage, more sustain and the problem will revisit itself all over again. What is ZoS going to do, nerf Battle Spirit to 75%? ZoS has created the TTK problem by (needlessly) nerfing what was already the weakest and least desirable of the attributes, health, and given us no viable choices in terms of gear or utility except stack our main attribute and spell/weapon power.

Also straight percentage nerfs are undesirable because they affect skills differently. When my Templar needs to heal herself, she casts breath of life which scales off her spell damage and magicka. Her heals have gotten stronger as I have (painfully) grinded. When my Dragonknight needs to heal herself, she used to cast Green Dragon Blood, which scales off missing health. Because her health, unlike spell damage, has not changed, its raw amount healed has remained stagnant and this is before the Battle Sprit nerf, which cuts that in half. Result: a signature class skill is ruined and those DKs who bravely try to play their eviscerated class are using restoration staffs instead of their own skills.

If I appreciate the temporary reprieve from getting one-shotted, well sort of, the best NBs can still kill me with a combo before I can react, I am not grateful for the gameplay reality that my DK has to carry a restoration staff (or did, I do not play her anymore) or the artificial way in which combat is dragged out. The TTK no longer flows organically from a reasonably balanced relationship between character health, damage, and healing. There is a fine distinction between getting one-shotted and a sensible time to finish off a weakened opponent who has put themselves at a disadvantage; the latter desirable feature of ESO gameplay no longer exists and has been sacrificed for the (temporary) sake of the former.

None of this means I liked 1.6 insta-kill mechanics. I did not and in fact hated it and feel it needs to die a permanent death. I will acknowledge that if I am in all vr16 gear, my opponent is not a shield/mitigation stacker, and I use the few effective skills left in the game, the TTK is actually decent within these narrow parameters. My point is this is artificially created and not sustainable. The modifications made in 1.6 have destabilized what was a relatively functioning foundation that governed ESO's gameplay.

What to do?

• Make health more desirable. I am of the opinion that health is a poor investment for anyone who is a non-tank (and even then, minimal investment is preferred). It is not only possible to complete all the PvE content in the game with zero investment in health, but also an advantage to do so during DPS checks, let alone competing for a position on the leaderboard (well, if there were any trials worth competing for that is). In PvP, would you rather have 35K health and 20K magicka or 20K health and 35K magicka? Perhaps in ZoS's development process, it came to the conclusion that these were roughly equivalent. But just about every player has opted for the latter. And why not? When I am asked to run a trial, I don't have to respec, my 35k magicka gives me better sustain, and I can trade that resource for health pretty easy via mitigation/shields/healing, whereas health does little more than keep me alive (temporarily).
• Introduce more desirable equipment bonuses than +main attribute / damage. Specifically, utility bonuses that are not quantifiable and thus make what is best in slot ambiguous. +4% healing received or + token spell resistance is utterly uncompetitive. But what if a trait/bonus allowed me to generate ultimate quicker? Hmmm... now not so obvious. Or granted me a special movement bonus? I might value that more than just damage. Or bestowed the user with unique effects such as a Dragon Shouts from Skyrim? Build diversity would increase and players would have to eschew tangible and real power, that is pay a price, in their effort to chase maximum damage.
• The ability to proc multiple hit bonuses from stealth needs to be addressed.
• Our resources are out of control. It requires little sacrifice to invest in a high damage build with virtual infinite sustain.
• Instead of a "Battle Spirit" mechanic that blanket reduces everything by 50%, you should try to reconfigure your formulas so that the Meta approximates the ratios between health and damage that were regulated by the softcaps before 1.6, a process that was developed under a long testing process by many players. We can determine what percentage of health a wrecking blow should do. Tweak and adjust accordingly.

Most of all, communicate to us what it is you are thinking of and let us test this stuff on the PTS before you invest so heavily and present it to us as a fait accompli.

Ishammael

Really, really excellent post. Hope this makes its way to ZOS.

A simple start might be to restore the 1.5:1:1 hp:mag:stam ratio of patch 1.5

eventide03b14a_ESO

That's too much to read. Can you sum it up in one sentence please?

krim

Most of all, communicate to us what it is you are thinking of and let us test this stuff on the PTS before you invest so heavily and present it to us as a fait accompli.

Emma_Overload

I don't like Battle Spirit, but soft caps are not the solution.

Firstly, soft caps unfairly gimped solo players and will make 1vX even harder than it is now if re-introduced. Does nobody remember the evil of Spell Symmetry? It was tricky to use if you played in a group, but it was downright suicidal if you tried to use it by yourself. What about chugging expensive crafted tri-pots every few seconds? No thanks! I have no desire to spend a couple hours a day picking flowers in Coldharbour.

Secondly, soft caps would completely destroy many of the benefits of the Champion System. This would be bad for everyone who has played the game for a long time, but it would be terrible for theorycrafters and tinkerers who enjoy fiddling with the math to optimize their build. Soft caps were a mathematical straight jacket that made it impossible to push the limits of the game with "edge case" builds.

Joy_Division

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

That's too much to read. Can you sum it up in one sentence please?

I could but then I would be guilty of precisely of what I am criticizing ZoS for, providing an overly simplistic solution that does not address the root problems of the game.

BigTone

Very well written and thought out. Not only does having more magicka mean more sustain, it also means hitting harder as well. I would be very supportive of more creative set bonuses that encourage build diversity. The ttk needed to be addressed but that could have been done in much better ways.

PhatGrimReaper

What if soft caps were reintroduced, but Champion Points allowed you to raise the cap of a specific stat....

eg. the soft cap for Spell Damage was 185 approx(can't quite remember the exact number) in 1.5, so 1800-2000 now, let's say every point into X constellation raised the cap. The champion point wouldn't directly give you the extra spell damage, but it would increase the amount of spell damage you could stack without diminishing returns. If the new soft cap was 2000 for spell power and the max cap increase via champion points was 25%, you could still achieve 2500 spell damage without encountering diminishing returns if you invested 100 points in that stat.

Make this apply to HP, Mag, stam, spell/weapon damage, spell/weapon crit and physical/spell resist and you have the best of both worlds... soft caps and diversity.

Armitas

That always frustrated me about PTS. You get there and they want you to try out all these new changes but the only feedback they care to hear about is if you experienced a bug or not. By the time you download PTS it is already to late to do anything about the changes no matter how bad they are. They could have an idea to give DK's rainbow colored clown wigs and baring any bugs it will get released no mater how many people say they hate it on the PTS.

leepalmer95

PhatGrimReaper wrote: »

What if soft caps were reintroduced, but Champion Points allowed you to raise the cap of a specific stat....

eg. the soft cap for Spell Damage was 185 approx(can't quite remember the exact number) in 1.5, so 1800-2000 now, let's say every point into X constellation raised the cap. The champion point wouldn't directly give you the extra spell damage, but it would increase the amount of spell damage you could stack without diminishing returns. If the new soft cap was 2000 for spell power and the max cap increase via champion points was 25%, you could still achieve 2500 spell damage without encountering diminishing returns if you invested 100 points in that stat.

Make this apply to HP, Mag, stam, spell/weapon damage, spell/weapon crit and physical/spell resist and you have the best of both worlds... soft caps and diversity.

Problem is higher cp players already have such advantage, giving them higher stat caps would make the gap wider.

krim

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

I don't like Battle Spirit, but soft caps are not the solution.

Firstly, soft caps unfairly gimped solo players and will make 1vX even harder than it is now if re-introduced. Does nobody remember the evil of Spell Symmetry? It was tricky to use if you played in a group, but it was downright suicidal if you tried to use it by yourself. What about chugging expensive crafted tri-pots every few seconds? No thanks! I have no desire to spend a couple hours a day picking flowers in Coldharbour.

Secondly, soft caps would completely destroy many of the benefits of the Champion System. This would be bad for everyone who has played the game for a long time, but it would be terrible for theorycrafters and tinkerers who enjoy fiddling with the math to optimize their build. Soft caps were a mathematical straight jacket that made it impossible to push the limits of the game with "edge case" builds.

Im trying to understand how soft caps unfairly gimped solo players.

PhatGrimReaper

leepalmer95 wrote: »

PhatGrimReaper wrote: »

What if soft caps were reintroduced, but Champion Points allowed you to raise the cap of a specific stat....

eg. the soft cap for Spell Damage was 185 approx(can't quite remember the exact number) in 1.5, so 1800-2000 now, let's say every point into X constellation raised the cap. The champion point wouldn't directly give you the extra spell damage, but it would increase the amount of spell damage you could stack without diminishing returns. If the new soft cap was 2000 for spell power and the max cap increase via champion points was 25%, you could still achieve 2500 spell damage without encountering diminishing returns if you invested 100 points in that stat.

Make this apply to HP, Mag, stam, spell/weapon damage, spell/weapon crit and physical/spell resist and you have the best of both worlds... soft caps and diversity.

Problem is higher cp players already have such advantage, giving them higher stat caps would make the gap wider.

Should more CP not be an advantage?.... should better gear also not be advantageous?..... what about Vet Rank?

The idea is to restrict the ridiculous amount of stacking of a single stat while keeping enough scope for unique/niche builds.

Yonkit

+100 with everything you've pointed at, as many already know I've taken a permanent hiatus from ESO until PvP is worth playing again. (Black & White Quadrupedal Bear)

Lord_Hev

Yonkit wrote: »

+100 with everything you've pointed at, as many already know I've taken a permanent hiatus from ESO until PvP is worth playing again. (Black & White Quadrupedal Bear)

ur face is a quadrupedal

Lucky28

Personally. for the time being i would wish they rolled back Cyrodiil to 1.6 with a few adjustments. Minor Damage reduction, keeping the fixes to known exploits etc. the current battle spirit only applying in IC (as that makes sense) but people are supposed to die in Cyrodiil I shouldn't be able to literally jog away from multiple people who are trying to kill me and hardly even paying them any attention. this takes a lot of enjoyment out of Cyrodiil when combat has so little exhilaration. I feel more threatened when fighting NPC as apposed to other players which is not a good atmosphere for Cyrodiil.

FriedEggSandwich

Nice write-up, interesting read. I've no idea if zos already do this but I really with they would employ some people to just pvp on live and report back to them with frustrations or findings of trends etc. Maybe 4 employees; 1 for each class. Maybe that's not economically beneficial idk, but I think it would put the combat designers and devs more in touch with reality.

Yonkit

Lord_Hev wrote: »

Yonkit wrote: »

+100 with everything you've pointed at, as many already know I've taken a permanent hiatus from ESO until PvP is worth playing again. (Black & White Quadrupedal Bear)

ur face is a quadrupedal

@Lord_Hev nu u

r.jan_emailb16_ESO

Nice post, good writeup.

But let's be honest here, those problems have been discussed for way more than half a year now. Do you really think they change major parts of their game, openly admitting that they had no clue at all how to do it right in the first place? That they didn't listen to all the concerns being brought up for months?

With the next DLC, they'll probably release stronger gear. Throw in the removal of VR that might or might not happen during the next half year, and it'll get really nasty. Oh, and in the meanwhile a lot of players will reach 1k CP, rendering any type of CP "seasons" and catch-up mechanics useless. And don't forget the odd gamebreaking bug that stays for half a year or so, because why not? It's not important for the lore anyway, and we can have nice articles to read while being stuck in loading screens.

eliisra

Agreed as well. The blanket nerf only means one thing, one or to major patches ahead we will have the same problems all over again.

What will they do than, decrease heals, shields and dmg with -75% lol?

You will already notice this, when facing a player with high enough CP to max out all dps signs and VR16 gear. The dmg is all of a sudden sort of "normal". Meaning it's back to 1.6 TTK soon enough. But this time around we wont be able to dodge and block those random hits taking half our health, much fun

Like how they still haven't fixed the crap mechanics that let's you instagib from sneak, taking advantage of Snipe travelling time, hitting players with 3 different attacks simultaneously and *** Camo Hunter procs x1000 if you're vamp. That will be back soon enough, some dmg nerf makes no difference, when the fail design is still here.

Yolokin_Swagonborn

eliisra wrote: »

Agreed as well. The blanket nerf only means one thing, one or to major patches ahead we will have the same problems all over again.

Agree 100%

These nerfs to damage, blocking, dodge rolling and even skills like bolt escape are just treating the symptoms and not the cause.

The root cause of all these issues is the removal of softcaps and increased influence of the champion system slowly unbalancing the game.


Here are the casualties of the champion system/removal of softcaps so far.

Shield nerf - was never an issue in 1.5. Would have never been a problem without bastion/magicka stacking
Dodge rolling nerf - Stamina cost reduction, tumbling passive, mooncalf - all in champion system.
Block nerf - Permablock was fixed in early 1.6 would have been fine if not for champion system
Bolt escape nerf - same thing with dodge roll nerf but with magicka cost/regen.
Gear diversity - Now limited by ZOS (i.e. willpower/agility/endurance) because the champion system gives so much extra damage/resources


To avoid ridiculous extreme builds, the controls have to go somewhere. But ZOS removed all the controls that were on attributes (softcaps), so now, they have to individually put arbitrary controls on game mechanics (dodge, block), and individual skills (shields, bolt), and even gear!!! Have you ever wondered why there are only three V16 jewelry sets in the game? Now even our gear diversity is suffering due to the champion system.

The champion system is only going to become more influencial as people grind more CP. They will have to put more and more controls on abilities and mechanics and restrict gear choice even further. This is only going to get worse until the MMO without cooldowns becomes another MMO with cooldowns. All because of the champion system.


Which do you want? The champion system? Complete with continual nerfs on game mechanics and skill/ability cooldowns?

Or a limited amount of resources/damage/regen and the ability to build for whatever roll you want (which is already limited by 7 armor slots, 3 jewelry slots, and up to 2 weapon slots(per bar).

Robbmrp

Excellent points and hopefully @ZOS will listen. IC has been out for all of 3 weeks now and we're back to less than 5 second kills if not one shots. Wasn't the whole 50% reduction supposed to address just that?! Well, in theory it worked, in reality it doesn't.

Top that off with the added delay that it takes spells .5-2 seconds longer to actually hit from what are supposed to be instant casts, the end result is a battlefield full of dead people.

When you can spam Breath of Life until you run out of magicka and the health levels of those in your group do nothing but steadily fall making your efforts amount to little or no difference then what's the point? Healing in PVP is a joke right now, even reviving barrier is pointless. Everyone's dead long before 10 seconds of healing has been done from it at all.

Right now it's more fun to PVE than to PVP. And with no new PVE content, people are going to stop playing period.

@ZOS needs to stop redesigning the game in order to resolve the issues/bugs/exploits that come up. Fix the core problems, not redesign the whole thing.

@ZOS needs to remove the Battle Spirit crap. Tone down the shield breaker set to 1 proc. Remove Shield Stacking all together and give the highest shield available and at the most, reduce damage by 15-25%. Get rid of the multiple hits from stealth as the OP mentioned among other things.

Emma_Overload

krim wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

I don't like Battle Spirit, but soft caps are not the solution.

Firstly, soft caps unfairly gimped solo players and will make 1vX even harder than it is now if re-introduced. Does nobody remember the evil of Spell Symmetry? It was tricky to use if you played in a group, but it was downright suicidal if you tried to use it by yourself. What about chugging expensive crafted tri-pots every few seconds? No thanks! I have no desire to spend a couple hours a day picking flowers in Coldharbour.

Secondly, soft caps would completely destroy many of the benefits of the Champion System. This would be bad for everyone who has played the game for a long time, but it would be terrible for theorycrafters and tinkerers who enjoy fiddling with the math to optimize their build. Soft caps were a mathematical straight jacket that made it impossible to push the limits of the game with "edge case" builds.

Im trying to understand how soft caps unfairly gimped solo players.

Groupers have the benefit of healers and tanks to give them time to recover resources during intense battles. Solo players have to spam endlessly until the enemy is dead or they are. Soft caps restricted resource regeneration to the point that many encounters were simply unwinnable.

ToRelax

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

krim wrote: »

Emma_Eunjung wrote: »

I don't like Battle Spirit, but soft caps are not the solution.

Firstly, soft caps unfairly gimped solo players and will make 1vX even harder than it is now if re-introduced. Does nobody remember the evil of Spell Symmetry? It was tricky to use if you played in a group, but it was downright suicidal if you tried to use it by yourself. What about chugging expensive crafted tri-pots every few seconds? No thanks! I have no desire to spend a couple hours a day picking flowers in Coldharbour.

Secondly, soft caps would completely destroy many of the benefits of the Champion System. This would be bad for everyone who has played the game for a long time, but it would be terrible for theorycrafters and tinkerers who enjoy fiddling with the math to optimize their build. Soft caps were a mathematical straight jacket that made it impossible to push the limits of the game with "edge case" builds.

Im trying to understand how soft caps unfairly gimped solo players.

Groupers have the benefit of healers and tanks to give them time to recover resources during intense battles. Solo players have to spam endlessly until the enemy is dead or they are. Soft caps restricted resource regeneration to the point that many encounters were simply unwinnable.

With smart gameplay you could run the enemy out of resources, even outnumbered. Now if you are outnumbered, the enemy won't run out.
Besides, what do you mean by "tanks"? I'd be the last one to say a healing or utility tank wouldn't be useful, but only in small groups. In fact, I was most of the time playing in a duo with a DK tank who wouldn't do a lot of damage but cc enemies, stay in their face, complement my evasive playstyle, so I could heal and deal damage. That worked well against all but the best groups or more than ~15 enemies.
Granted, DKs lost a lot of their resource management capabilities with 1.6, and especially this build, but I am quite sure we could still sustain much better than most enemies if resource management mattered more again, allowing for heavier outnumbered victories.

Mojomonkeyman

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

eliisra wrote: »

Agreed as well. The blanket nerf only means one thing, one or to major patches ahead we will have the same problems all over again.

Agree 100%

These nerfs to damage, blocking, dodge rolling and even skills like bolt escape are just treating the symptoms and not the cause.

The root cause of all these issues is the removal of softcaps and increased influence of the champion system slowly unbalancing the game.


Here are the casualties of the champion system/removal of softcaps so far.

Shield nerf - was never an issue in 1.5. Would have never been a problem without bastion/magicka stacking
Dodge rolling nerf - Stamina cost reduction, tumbling passive, mooncalf - all in champion system.
Block nerf - Permablock was fixed in early 1.6 would have been fine if not for champion system
Bolt escape nerf - same thing with dodge roll nerf but with magicka cost/regen.
Gear diversity - Now limited by ZOS (i.e. willpower/agility/endurance) because the champion system gives so much extra damage/resources


To avoid ridiculous extreme builds, the controls have to go somewhere. But ZOS removed all the controls that were on attributes (softcaps), so now, they have to individually put arbitrary controls on game mechanics (dodge, block), and individual skills (shields, bolt), and even gear!!! Have you ever wondered why there are only three V16 jewelry sets in the game? Now even our gear diversity is suffering due to the champion system.

The champion system is only going to become more influencial as people grind more CP. They will have to put more and more controls on abilities and mechanics and restrict gear choice even further. This is only going to get worse until the MMO without cooldowns becomes another MMO with cooldowns. All because of the champion system.


Which do you want? The champion system? Complete with continual nerfs on game mechanics and skill/ability cooldowns?

Or a limited amount of resources/damage/regen and the ability to build for whatever roll you want (which is already limited by 7 armor slots, 3 jewelry slots, and up to 2 weapon slots(per bar).

Thank you for this post. Haven`t read such a clear and well worded analysis on these forums for quite while. I think most people don`t even understand that the price we pay for the CP system is huge. The price is one of the things that made this game wonderful - choices that are not CP (grind) bound.

Yolokin_Swagonborn

Mojomonkeyman wrote: »

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

eliisra wrote: »

Agreed as well. The blanket nerf only means one thing, one or to major patches ahead we will have the same problems all over again.

Agree 100%

These nerfs to damage, blocking, dodge rolling and even skills like bolt escape are just treating the symptoms and not the cause.

The root cause of all these issues is the removal of softcaps and increased influence of the champion system slowly unbalancing the game.


Here are the casualties of the champion system/removal of softcaps so far.

Shield nerf - was never an issue in 1.5. Would have never been a problem without bastion/magicka stacking
Dodge rolling nerf - Stamina cost reduction, tumbling passive, mooncalf - all in champion system.
Block nerf - Permablock was fixed in early 1.6 would have been fine if not for champion system
Bolt escape nerf - same thing with dodge roll nerf but with magicka cost/regen.
Gear diversity - Now limited by ZOS (i.e. willpower/agility/endurance) because the champion system gives so much extra damage/resources


To avoid ridiculous extreme builds, the controls have to go somewhere. But ZOS removed all the controls that were on attributes (softcaps), so now, they have to individually put arbitrary controls on game mechanics (dodge, block), and individual skills (shields, bolt), and even gear!!! Have you ever wondered why there are only three V16 jewelry sets in the game? Now even our gear diversity is suffering due to the champion system.

The champion system is only going to become more influencial as people grind more CP. They will have to put more and more controls on abilities and mechanics and restrict gear choice even further. This is only going to get worse until the MMO without cooldowns becomes another MMO with cooldowns. All because of the champion system.


Which do you want? The champion system? Complete with continual nerfs on game mechanics and skill/ability cooldowns?

Or a limited amount of resources/damage/regen and the ability to build for whatever roll you want (which is already limited by 7 armor slots, 3 jewelry slots, and up to 2 weapon slots(per bar).

Thank you for this post. Haven`t read such a clear and well worded analysis on these forums for quite while. I think most people don`t even understand that the price we pay for the CP system is huge. The price is one of the things that made this game wonderful - choices that are not CP (grind) bound.

Thanks. I am just glad that more people are finally seeing the big picture and the writing on the wall. @DeanTheCat also has a great post about the champion system here.

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/219283/the-root-of-the-problem-a-lack-of-limits/p1

He brings up a few points I didn't even know. For instance, I didn't know that ZOS changed the power increments between V14 and V16 so much that a V16 weapon is equivalent in power to what a V20 weapon would be using the old increments. It's all in his recent post. We need more awareness of this. It's breaking the game.

Robbmrp

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

eliisra wrote: »

Agreed as well. The blanket nerf only means one thing, one or to major patches ahead we will have the same problems all over again.

Agree 100%

These nerfs to damage, blocking, dodge rolling and even skills like bolt escape are just treating the symptoms and not the cause.

The root cause of all these issues is the removal of softcaps and increased influence of the champion system slowly unbalancing the game.


Here are the casualties of the champion system/removal of softcaps so far.

Shield nerf - was never an issue in 1.5. Would have never been a problem without bastion/magicka stacking
Dodge rolling nerf - Stamina cost reduction, tumbling passive, mooncalf - all in champion system.
Block nerf - Permablock was fixed in early 1.6 would have been fine if not for champion system
Bolt escape nerf - same thing with dodge roll nerf but with magicka cost/regen.
Gear diversity - Now limited by ZOS (i.e. willpower/agility/endurance) because the champion system gives so much extra damage/resources


To avoid ridiculous extreme builds, the controls have to go somewhere. But ZOS removed all the controls that were on attributes (softcaps), so now, they have to individually put arbitrary controls on game mechanics (dodge, block), and individual skills (shields, bolt), and even gear!!! Have you ever wondered why there are only three V16 jewelry sets in the game? Now even our gear diversity is suffering due to the champion system.

The champion system is only going to become more influencial as people grind more CP. They will have to put more and more controls on abilities and mechanics and restrict gear choice even further. This is only going to get worse until the MMO without cooldowns becomes another MMO with cooldowns. All because of the champion system.


Which do you want? The champion system? Complete with continual nerfs on game mechanics and skill/ability cooldowns?

Or a limited amount of resources/damage/regen and the ability to build for whatever roll you want (which is already limited by 7 armor slots, 3 jewelry slots, and up to 2 weapon slots(per bar).

Well said. I vote to remove the Champion System and bring back 1.5. IMO Champion points completely take away from the skill of a 1v1 fight.

rb2001

Nice post.

I think ZOS have gone the route of chasing their own tails in some ways with combat.

I feel like things should approximate reality and drive from that, instead of drive from arbitrary numbers and concepts, as this usually ends up in tweaking things back and forth, until we arrive where we are now.

Skinzz

Great post. Since the launch of IC, I started to play this game less and less. The huge reduction from the new battle spirit absolutely ruins pvp. Basically removed solo ganking and took the fun out of being a night blade. Good bye to solo ganking a group of players sieging a keep. I think the reductions should have been around 25% for each category instead. This game is all mindless zerging now.

Garion

The reality is that ZOS just keep adding band aids to issues over and over to keep the game together. Eventually it's going to get too much and the whole thing is going to fall apart and, you know what, I don't think they care. ESO was a flop from day one and now it's a case of keep milking out the cash for as long as possible while keeping costs as low for as long as possible. When it collapses they will shrug their shoulders and move on, pleased that they covered costs and managed a small return on their previously angry investors. All the while they will tell us how disappointed things had to end but it had become necessary.

Yes, I am very cynical!

Etaniel

The most disapointing thing for me is that ZOS only makes balance changes during major updates. If balance updates were regularly pushed out, we would have time to see how they work out, especially if skills/passives were changed one by one.

In every major update, ZOS has tried to somewhat listen to their player base by attempting to fix skills that were overpowered/complained about. The problem is that with the rest of the changes, those skills may not have required a change. Example : nerfing the stacking of wall of elements, when the only problem was that purging it would deal the entire dmg at once. Fixing purge would have been enough, but noooooo they didn't even try to see if it was enough, they went ahead and nerfed wall anyways. Instead of that 4 months dissapointment, they could have fixed purge earlier, see how that went and if wall was still too strong nerf it then.

Making 4000 changes every 6 months will never ever ever produce a balanced game because as we all know ZOS is clueless as to how their game is played. The balance ideas must come from the player discussions and suggestions on the forums, and when issues are so big that they end up producing a 50 page thread, MAYBE they might want to push the change sooner than every big update.

Farorin

My biggest gripe is with the increased time to kill. It makes it very boring, and further strengthens and reinforces zerging. I never wanted the increased time to kill, and I really enjoyed the quick kills and deaths, it made the fight feel more real, and it made fighting feel more risky. Now you can literally just jump a group of 2-4 people by yourself, then run away with little risk of actually dying. To be fair, you have literally no chance of killing any one of those four people anymore either.

It just feels like a lot of the skill has been taken out of the game.