Class balance and bug fixes are not DLC features

WalkingLegacy

Inarre wrote: »

Can you inagine if class balance changes were pushed out at rabdom every couple of days?

How would you ever track that? Things would be effed up my friend.

I agree 5 months is a bit extreme but i do understand there does need to be a period of testing to gather data and to ensure youre not tipping to the opposite end of the scale. Pushing out hotfixes for game balance issues every week would be chaos.

Skill fixes though, i can definitely get behind.

I don't think that is what we are really pushing.

They develop something in house. Once it has substance they push it to the PTS. Test on PTS once enough metric data is collected.

Then they see if what is collected closely matches what they were going for and push live, or take it back behind curtains, evolve it and push back to PTS.

This would require them to actually dedicate themselves to use the PTS and us. It would require them to use the data to actually fix things before it goes Live too.

No game is gonna survive balances and bug fixes saved for quarterly DLC though. And doubly so because they're on such a tight schedule, that things pushed to the PTS can't even be fixed in time for the dedicated time given and then everything broken is pushed Live anyways.

Edited: Nexus 6P likes to change my words automagically

EsoRecon

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

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Inarre wrote: »

Can you inagine if class balance changes were pushed out at rabdom every couple of days?

How would you ever track that? Things would be effed up my friend.

I agree 5 months is a bit extreme but i do understand there does need to be a period of testing to gather data and to ensure youre not tipping to the opposite end of the scale. Pushing out hotfixes for game balance issues every week would be chaos.

Skill fixes though, i can definitely get behind.

I don't think that is what we are really pushing.

They develop something in house. Once it has substance they push it to the PTS. Test on PTS once enough metric data is collected.

Then they see if what is collected closely matches what they were going for and push live, or take it back behind currents, evolve it and push back to PTS.

This would require them to actually dedicate themselves to use the PTS and us. It would require them to use the data to actually fix things before it goes Live too.

No game is gonna survive balances and bug fixes saved for quarterly DLC though. And doubly so because they're on such a tight schedule, that things pushed to the PTS can't even be fixed in time for the dedicated time given and then everything broken is pushed Live anyways.

PLS ZOS make my day and start doing these things!
....pls

sirrmattus

The problem with this game is the community, you guys accept failure. You are "ok" with bugs. You are "ok" with constant DLC and Crown Store items, yet there still have been so many bugs that persist from the beginning. You are "ok" with constantly being screwed and scammed by zos. I don't understand this. How can you be passionate about something but accept the constant failure from developers? Even down to the simplest things like free respec. This isn't something we should be begging for, there was a major overhaul, we need and deserve a free respec. Horse advancements; I've spent so many real $'s on horses, when I create a new toon, I have to do it again? How can you accept this? I understand some of you are kids, who don't work for the $ you spend on ESO but some of us are adults with families, and the $'s do count and do add up. Then you have a these classes, that don't even give me reminiscence of the old TES games. Who are these phony classes? DK? Templar? Yet the lore lovers scream and are never heard. Where is our option to choose the destiny of our champions like its always been in TES? This game is an utter failure, and a scam by zos. I've been searching the past 2 months for good pvp mmo because this game doesn't have what it offered. So many of these ftp games are miles ahead of ESO in terms of PVP, its unbelievable. The only reason I spent so much time and $ into ESO was for then end game PVP, only to find out its a disaster with no real goal or point. This game was supposed to be PVP focus, if not, why not just make another single player TES game? They have ruined the franchise with ESO. There is no turning back now.

MikeB

People are acting as if ZoS is the first company to do class (balance), bug, expoit and/or glitch changes. News flash, they're not, other companies push these out regularly, once every month or two or even sooner if it's a major issue.

I can understand updating once a DLC on console with the fee's they get charged by Microsoft and Sony if they do more than one update every 6 months. It was something like $20k every update after the first on X360 & PS3, they got one free update every 6 months. But on PC this is more than ridiculous. Bug, glitch, exploit and balance updates should be pushed live once available on PC, this allows for more testing and time to get it right for the once a DLC updates for console. It's a sad truth, but in a lot of cross platform games (I.e..on PC & Console) the PC players test all updates and fixes to make sure they get released to console in their best form; for whatever reason ZoS doesn't do this and it's hurt them a lot.

WalkingLegacy

sirrmattus wrote: »

The problem with this game is the community, you guys accept failure. You are "ok" with bugs. You are "ok" with constant DLC and Crown Store items, yet there still have been so many bugs that persist from the beginning. You are "ok" with constantly being screwed and scammed by zos. I don't understand this. How can you be passionate about something but accept the constant failure from developers? Even down to the simplest things like free respec. This isn't something we should be begging for, there was a major overhaul, we need and deserve a free respec. Horse advancements; I've spent so many real $'s on horses, when I create a new toon, I have to do it again? How can you accept this? I understand some of you are kids, who don't work for the $ you spend on ESO but some of us are adults with families, and the $'s do count and do add up. Then you have a these classes, that don't even give me reminiscence of the old TES games. Who are these phony classes? DK? Templar? Yet the lore lovers scream and are never heard. Where is our option to choose the destiny of our champions like its always been in TES? This game is an utter failure, and a scam by zos. I've been searching the past 2 months for good pvp mmo because this game doesn't have what it offered. So many of these ftp games are miles ahead of ESO in terms of PVP, its unbelievable. The only reason I spent so much time and $ into ESO was for then end game PVP, only to find out its a disaster with no real goal or point. This game was supposed to be PVP focus, if not, why not just make another single player TES game? They have ruined the franchise with ESO. There is no turning back now.

I think it's only the single-player gamers you're referring to. Veteran MMO players are already moving on. Once I finish all the content my friends and I will probably be moving on too. That is unless they get their rears in gear.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

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sirrmattus wrote: »

The problem with this game is the community, you guys accept failure. You are "ok" with bugs. You are "ok" with constant DLC and Crown Store items, yet there still have been so many bugs that persist from the beginning. You are "ok" with constantly being screwed and scammed by zos. I don't understand this. How can you be passionate about something but accept the constant failure from developers? Even down to the simplest things like free respec. This isn't something we should be begging for, there was a major overhaul, we need and deserve a free respec. Horse advancements; I've spent so many real $'s on horses, when I create a new toon, I have to do it again? How can you accept this? I understand some of you are kids, who don't work for the $ you spend on ESO but some of us are adults with families, and the $'s do count and do add up. Then you have a these classes, that don't even give me reminiscence of the old TES games. Who are these phony classes? DK? Templar? Yet the lore lovers scream and are never heard. Where is our option to choose the destiny of our champions like its always been in TES? This game is an utter failure, and a scam by zos. I've been searching the past 2 months for good pvp mmo because this game doesn't have what it offered. So many of these ftp games are miles ahead of ESO in terms of PVP, its unbelievable. The only reason I spent so much time and $ into ESO was for then end game PVP, only to find out its a disaster with no real goal or point. This game was supposed to be PVP focus, if not, why not just make another single player TES game? They have ruined the franchise with ESO. There is no turning back now.

I think it's only the single-player gamers you're referring to. Veteran MMO players are already moving on. Once I finish all the content my friends and I will probably be moving on too. That is unless they get their rears in gear.

I know a LOT of veteran MMO players that play this. Me among them. When I started playing "mmos" they cost money per hour to play. I just think if you come to an elder scrolls mmo looking for quality pvp then maybe you might not have the right game. There are lots of games who focus on the hardcore pvp crowd. Elder scrolls customers for the most part are casuals. Their money spends the same except the overhead drops drastically. Most of the pvp customers eat up their fees in time spent trying to deal with their issues.

So I wouldnt count us out just yet (us old timers I mean). For a game you say you hate I do like you plan to finish every bit of content before moving on.

Digiman

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

So why continue to make us wait months for bug fixes, and balance changes?

Why isn't the backend client set up to allow for more hotfixes and class changes when ever the team has something to push out

A handful of changes a week is a lot better than mass changes every 4 months and then anything found broken or not working takes the next DLC for fixes.

This ESO live he says they have stamina changes for Update 10 which is Dark Brotherhood. That is 5 amazing months away at the least to wait for fixes.

Wrobel's team should have priority on pushing patches and hotfixes to Live client. Class balances, combat balances, exploits and skills that are bugged are a pretty important thing to keep squared away in an action MMO.

Class changes need to be pushed to the PTS on a 'regular' basis for testing. Not just for DLC patches.

Matt Firor should be looking into this.

I completely agree with this. I have no idea what Wrobel is doing, but when he is about to announce something about combat gameplay I always shudder because it ends up being half a year of huge problems for particular classes.

Honestly ZoS needs to fix their team up more, Wrobel's team should be addressing these problems weekly and it doesn't help that our communication to the developers is limited to a 2 week live stream either.

Tomato

Remove the execute from Radiant Destruction

xellink

Tomato wrote: »

Remove the execute from Radiant Destruction

wuuutt? It needs a stamina morph!

Zanen

Been like this forever, I don't understand it. Something is very strange with the decision making process at ZOS, all these bizarre changes and the obvious stuff never does.

This is a fantastic game, they really have something with it. ESO could be a goliath, huge playerbase, if they'd just prioritize fixing what's broken and getting information to players.

Bad tooltips left in the game for two years and more, every update there's a "We're going to fix this tooltip that's been wrong since beta now". Defensive stance and its morphs were all wrong in different ways from early beta until 1.6 or so.

I keep coming back because I love the game but the only thing that changes is the meta because the meta is defined by what's broken this patch.

Incremental change is good. Something's broken, fix it. Tweak the balance a bit here and there, rework a skill. Instead we get the whole combat system turned upside down a couple times a year with a whole new set of problems and no way for people to adjust to the changes except to reroll.

Maybe that's the point, keep everyone rolling new characters every three months.

KhajiitiLizard

I'm currently playing GW2 and that game patches every Tuesday, mostly bug fixes, but sometimes balancing and new content even.

With ESO major changes I can see taking months but there is no reason bugs need to wait months to fix. One of my reasons for quitting was the lack of QA in the crown store as a costume was bugged and it took months to fix. Why would I give ZOS anymore money if they can't even get costumes right? Who in the right mind would buy a DLC after that?

Also releasing DLC every 3 months is not normal for a MMO. Yes there is new content but mostly stuff like a new dungeon or raid or something. I swear if ESO had dynamic events and even holidays there would not need to be as much DLC. They would be much better off only having one major DLC every year, then trying to shoehorn so much content development into 3 months.

Tdroid

The biggest problem with doing the balance changes by the patch, in my opinion, is that it means trying to balance many things at the same time. That is a recipe for unintended consequences. Fixing one thing at the time with hotfixes and smaller patches and seeing how each change affects the game seems to be a much more prudent way of ging about it. Easier to maintain overview of the impacts.

Elektrakosh

Would these patches be in the dlc only so you have to get it for the balancing?

MormondPayne_EP

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

So why continue to make us wait months for bug fixes, and balance changes?

Why isn't the backend client set up to allow for more hotfixes and class changes when ever the team has something to push out

A handful of changes a week is a lot better than mass changes every 4 months and then anything found broken or not working takes the next DLC for fixes.

This ESO live he says they have stamina changes for Update 10 which is Dark Brotherhood. That is 5 amazing months away at the least to wait for fixes.

Wrobel's team should have priority on pushing patches and hotfixes to Live client. Class balances, combat balances, exploits and skills that are bugged are a pretty important thing to keep squared away in an action MMO.

Class changes need to be pushed to the PTS on a 'regular' basis for testing. Not just for DLC patches.

Matt Firor should be looking into this.

Wrobel's team is a pack of drooling dummies lead by an even bigger drooling dummy.

Troneon

They would have to go through consoles "approval" crap before any hotfix or patch of any kind is applied... every single time...

Or just change PC and accept the fact consoles will always be months behind PC...

WalkingLegacy

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

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WalkingLegacy wrote: »

sirrmattus wrote: »

The problem with this game is the community, you guys accept failure. You are "ok" with bugs. You are "ok" with constant DLC and Crown Store items, yet there still have been so many bugs that persist from the beginning. You are "ok" with constantly being screwed and scammed by zos. I don't understand this. How can you be passionate about something but accept the constant failure from developers? Even down to the simplest things like free respec. This isn't something we should be begging for, there was a major overhaul, we need and deserve a free respec. Horse advancements; I've spent so many real $'s on horses, when I create a new toon, I have to do it again? How can you accept this? I understand some of you are kids, who don't work for the $ you spend on ESO but some of us are adults with families, and the $'s do count and do add up. Then you have a these classes, that don't even give me reminiscence of the old TES games. Who are these phony classes? DK? Templar? Yet the lore lovers scream and are never heard. Where is our option to choose the destiny of our champions like its always been in TES? This game is an utter failure, and a scam by zos. I've been searching the past 2 months for good pvp mmo because this game doesn't have what it offered. So many of these ftp games are miles ahead of ESO in terms of PVP, its unbelievable. The only reason I spent so much time and $ into ESO was for then end game PVP, only to find out its a disaster with no real goal or point. This game was supposed to be PVP focus, if not, why not just make another single player TES game? They have ruined the franchise with ESO. There is no turning back now.

I think it's only the single-player gamers you're referring to. Veteran MMO players are already moving on. Once I finish all the content my friends and I will probably be moving on too. That is unless they get their rears in gear.

I know a LOT of veteran MMO players that play this. Me among them. When I started playing "mmos" they cost money per hour to play. I just think if you come to an elder scrolls mmo looking for quality pvp then maybe you might not have the right game. There are lots of games who focus on the hardcore pvp crowd. Elder scrolls customers for the most part are casuals. Their money spends the same except the overhead drops drastically. Most of the pvp customers eat up their fees in time spent trying to deal with their issues.

So I wouldnt count us out just yet (us old timers I mean). For a game you say you hate I do like you plan to finish every bit of content before moving on.

I've never said I hate the game. Hence why I am giving feedback and still here playing.

This game was marketed as having full blown PvP, your idea of TES belongs in the singple player genre. Remember this team has DAoC devs and I think even some Warhammer devs?

I PvP and PvE equally. I love both. Both areas are suffering.

MrGigglypants

Moglijuana wrote: »

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Turelus wrote: »

He also said exactly why they're large releases and not small patches.

Because they go through extensive debate/testing both by ZOS and us before they go live. That wouldn't be as thorough is they were in the incremental patches.

LOL. I'm pretty sure ZOS doesn't debate anything and just does w.e the hell they want. Look at all the polls that have been blatantly ignored over this games life span. I've only been playing since console release and within a few months could already tell how un involved the Dev team really is with their community. Oh wait, I forgot they like listening to Trading Guilds and PvE Heros for their MASSIVE combat changes...smh

Most polls are ignorant wishlists voted on by preferential players outside the actual reality of gameplay. PvP is QQ L2p issues 9/10 times. There are nowhere near number the imbalances that people would like to speak of.

mr_wazzabi

Every other mmo balances the game and changes abilities in major updates separate from dlc.

Why must zos do it all at once? Do they think it's actually more efficient?

xellink

Spaghetti code. Fixing a skill breaks the game. Its easier to break the game each patch then find all the bugs than break the game every week.

Animal_Mother

xellink wrote: »

Spaghetti code. Fixing a skill breaks the game. Its easier to break the game each patch then find all the bugs than break the game every week.

For some attempts, fixing the skill, breaks the skill worse than before. (temps charge and eclipse come to mind)

WalkingLegacy

Animal_Mother wrote: »

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xellink wrote: »

Spaghetti code. Fixing a skill breaks the game. Its easier to break the game each patch then find all the bugs than break the game every week.

For some attempts, fixing the skill, breaks the skill worse than before. (temps charge and eclipse come to mind)

This is why they need to use the PTS constantly and not just for 'huge' DLC releases where they can't fix anything in time for the release date.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

mr_wazzabi wrote: »

Every other mmo balances the game and changes abilities in major updates separate from dlc.

Why must zos do it all at once? Do they think it's actually more efficient?

Really every other mmo only does balance changes and fixes outside of expansions or DLC? Thats amazing you know how every mmo in the entire world works.

Molag_Crow

True...

WalkingLegacy

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

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mr_wazzabi wrote: »

Every other mmo balances the game and changes abilities in major updates separate from dlc.

Why must zos do it all at once? Do they think it's actually more efficient?

Really every other mmo only does balance changes and fixes outside of expansions or DLC? Thats amazing you know how every mmo in the entire world works.

I'm sure they meant that they have played. I can say most of the ones I played did. And I have played too many to bother counting.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

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jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

mr_wazzabi wrote: »

Every other mmo balances the game and changes abilities in major updates separate from dlc.

Why must zos do it all at once? Do they think it's actually more efficient?

Really every other mmo only does balance changes and fixes outside of expansions or DLC? Thats amazing you know how every mmo in the entire world works.

I'm sure they meant that they have played. I can say most of the ones I played did. And I have played too many to bother counting.

Ive played SWTOR, UO, Neverwinter, Everquest 1 and 2, LOTRO, DaoC, STO and im sure afew ive forgotten. They all do bug fixes along with the expansions or DLC. Not exclusively but then neither does ZOS.

WalkingLegacy

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

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WalkingLegacy wrote: »

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

mr_wazzabi wrote: »

Every other mmo balances the game and changes abilities in major updates separate from dlc.

Why must zos do it all at once? Do they think it's actually more efficient?

Really every other mmo only does balance changes and fixes outside of expansions or DLC? Thats amazing you know how every mmo in the entire world works.

I'm sure they meant that they have played. I can say most of the ones I played did. And I have played too many to bother counting.

Ive played SWTOR, UO, Neverwinter, Everquest 1 and 2, LOTRO, DaoC, STO and im sure afew ive forgotten. They all do bug fixes along with the expansions or DLC. Not exclusively but then neither does ZOS.

SWTOR was pushing character balance pretty darn good in beta and would hotfix and change as needed when I played. Most recent one I've played in your list that I can remember.

GrumpyDuckling

One of the things that is also sad about class balancing being coupled with DLC is that I'm way more excited to read about the balancing fixes than I am about the actual DLC itself. So much time waiting for, not new content, but fixed/balanced content.

Ampnode

This is what finally made me quit the game. Honestly, the next DLC will probably bring me back. But that's the catch to it... "next DLC". They're promising very good changes in the upcoming DLC, but we have to have 3-5 months for it. For most players, that's a call for a 3-5 month vacation from ESO. I doubt this will ever change

GrumpyDuckling

Troneon wrote: »

They would have to go through consoles "approval" crap before any hotfix or patch of any kind is applied... every single time...

Or just change PC and accept the fact consoles will always be months behind PC...

Even though I am a console player, I wouldn't mind waiting. We wait anyway because PC is always first. The biggest thing is that I like to know what ZOS is planning on doing with each class because then it changes my potential ideas for builds.

Same goes for bugs - I just want to know what's in store. Console players have this glitch that occurs where an arrow sticks to the feet of your character model when you use skills while a bow is equipped. It's so annoying that I'm trying to move on from using the bow (which is my favorite weapon) because I can't take the annoying glitch anymore. If I knew it was being fixed in the future I would continue using it instead of abandoning it.

DaveMoeDee

Why would they not release patches until DB? In the past they release patches regularly.

Balance change should not be regular occurrences. If 30 skills will be changed, can you really test balance without testing the final state of all skills at the same time? It is bad enough that rebalances happen at all. If we have to suffer through them, at least make them rare as they are nothing more than a nuisance for a large part of the game's population.

Plus, unless you make all skills weak and identical, you really need to be able to test all the skill changes at the same time to see the net result for each class.

How many people play on PTS year round? Will they get numbers needed if they ask people to be there all year?