ZoS Please Help Us Understand The Problem

xEcthelionx

As a player, you get out of this game what you put into it. When we set foot into Tamriel our character is in most cases a symbol of everything we dream about if we all were living in a fantasy land. Nobody plays the game to be mediocre, everyone has aspirations of being a legend whether it is in PvE or PvP and those aspirations should not be unattainable due to time constraints, nor should they realistically include the ability to dominate groups of skilled players. This is the balance that it seems you seek to achieve: a realm in which, casual players are on relatively equal footing with hardcore players. Awesome.

There are unfortunately some flaws with the current state of the game but moreover the flaws have deeper roots and seemingly are unable to be addressed.

Balance or equilibrium is difficult to find. With every patch the hardcore players immediately find the abilities that do not work as intended i.e. as of recently CamoHunter + X/Y/Z and the ones with no regard for honor, use it. Other players inevitably find said mechanics and implement them as well i.e. Spambush. This is a surface issue, it changes with every patch. The deep underlying issue is this: there are no incremental patches. Why? Would it be more plausible to implement such a patching framework if the game went back to subscriptions? The bottom line: the community does not enjoy waiting upwards of 3-6 months for fixes to things such as 100% bleed on axes, reverb sliding, camo hunter double proccing, or spambush. While what we have seen in prior patches has been only moderately detrimental to the PvP and PvE environment the question looms: What if an ability becomes so broken that it completely destroys the PvP meta? Will you finally do your job, and fix the issue instead of designing camel mounts? As a quick aside, I can't wait to roll around in Cyrodiil with my CamelMafia.

Class imbalances. This is a subject that always sparks many debates. To further beneficial discussions it is best that we try to find common footing. There are class skills, weapon/armor skills, and miscellaneous skills. This trio is significantly imbalanced. Lets take four skills, one for each class and look at where they can be found in the other skills sections. Surprise attack? Conjured Ward? Reflective Scales? Blessing of Light? These four do not have substitutes if you agree that defensive posture doesn't count for reflective scales and mutagen for blessing of light. This creates the distinction between classes, if there were not class specific abilities then rolling a templar, sorcerer, etc. would be an arbitrary title. Adding substitutes does not create diversity. Each class should have risks and rewards. Imagine the extreme for both sides: a sorcerer running around Cyrodiil with heavy armor, shields, and huge burst like my arcane warrior from Dragon Age or Magicka Dragonknight this last patch (thanks for addressing some of the issues and shoutout to Jules). What is the goal here? Was it originally intended to have class abilities that actually distinguished one class from another? Why even add a skill like rapid strikes to the game when it is bad? You have the data and you know that nobody uses rapid strikes, cleave, trapping webs when those abilities are compared with flame lash, crystal frags, and surprise attack. If those former abilities are intended to be viable replacements for a Stam Sorc in the case of rapid strikes, then why are they so terrible and why has nothing been done to fix it?

Large group vs. small group and solo-play. Did anyone really dream about running in a 24man group ball group when they picked this game up? The 48 pages of people saying remove AoE caps said... No. At least the issue has been acknowledged but wow. There is one way to completely destroy a game and it is to require a single player to group up with 23 others to run around and fight because that affects not only hardcore players but casual players as well. On PS4 I see some great players in my guild constantly trying to run small group play and failing because they are outnumbered and have no substantial burst relative to opposing heals. The vicious death set is a bandaid and the changes to proxy are going to exacerbate the problem, not alleviate it. There is a group of 20+ DC that run sometimes more than 24 man groups via guildchat that operate with this strategy: "3, 2, 1, pop proxy, bats, and go in." They still get wiped but it is pretty hard when the action freezes the opposition's bars for a good 2-3 seconds while the damage is being calculated. This group style is getting buffed, not nerfed, with the changes being made to proxy and without the removal of AoE caps. Will removing AoE caps crash the servers constantly? If this is the case, then it needs to be disclosed but it won't be until we are reminiscing about the old days when MMO's like ESOTU were around. Regardless, when every ball group is running four barriers, grand healing, and proxy next patch you are going to have server issues, I can promise you that.

Bring the little man up. Arenas are coming to ESO and that is awesome but in the meantime, realm v. realm needs to go back to that instead of ballgroup with proxy vs. ballgroup with a little less proxy.

HansenPvP

Exactly I can't do small scale for *** without being run over and scrub DC zergs would proxy but still fail and camo hunter and the axes are broken, not as broken as shield breaker...I have to run around with blessing of protection playing healer simulator over here and trying to fight shield breaking scumbags. Stam dks BROKEN reverb bashing when I have cc immunity and getting flung off the bridge with magnum shot double ccing me...fix your stuff Zenimax seriously.

Zheg

HansenPvP wrote: »

Exactly I can't do small scale for *** without being run over and scrub DC zergs would proxy but still fail and camo hunter and the axes are broken, not as broken as shield breaker...I have to run around with blessing of protection playing healer simulator over here and trying to fight shield breaking scumbags. Stam dks BROKEN reverb bashing when I have cc immunity and getting flung off the bridge with magnum shot double ccing me...fix your stuff Zenimax seriously.

Was that english?

HansenPvP

Zheg wrote: »

HansenPvP wrote: »

Exactly I can't do small scale for *** without being run over and scrub DC zergs would proxy but still fail and camo hunter and the axes are broken, not as broken as shield breaker...I have to run around with blessing of protection playing healer simulator over here and trying to fight shield breaking scumbags. Stam dks BROKEN reverb bashing when I have cc immunity and getting flung off the bridge with magnum shot double ccing me...fix your stuff Zenimax seriously.

Was that english?

Nah it was Korean bro.

Scrippie10

Zheg wrote: »

HansenPvP wrote: »

Exactly I can't do small scale for *** without being run over and scrub DC zergs would proxy but still fail and camo hunter and the axes are broken, not as broken as shield breaker...I have to run around with blessing of protection playing healer simulator over here and trying to fight shield breaking scumbags. Stam dks BROKEN reverb bashing when I have cc immunity and getting flung off the bridge with magnum shot double ccing me...fix your stuff Zenimax seriously.

Was that english?

Out of everything that was written on this thread, that's what caught your attention the most? Nice.

I'm not sure what Zos' agenda is, but they made it pretty clear on their twitch stream this past Friday that they were trying to get rid of roles. They're taking the whole class balance thing a bit too serious, I think we can all agree that what made this game so great was the fact that each class had it's own role, and special set of skills that made them unique from the other classes.

Templars were intended to be a bit better than other classes when it came to heals, nightblades were intended to be stealthy assassins, dragonknights tanky, and sorcers were mages. I understand that Zos is trying to make it easier for people that hate their class to not feel like they're stuck playing it, the thing is they're not. There's 8 spaces for you to create 8 different characters - if John Doe did not enjoy playing the Templar they can always create a new character and they have 3 other classes to choose from.

If all classes could heal equally, tank, or even DPS equally then why would anyone bother leveling up multiple different characters in different classes? I'd like to believe that we level up different classes to get a different feel for the game. At least I personally do. If I want to play solo I'll log in to my NB, if I want to do more group play I'll play my Templar or DK.

I'm starting to believe that Zos doesn't really care for our opinion - and if they do they don't seem to acknowledge it. I think that they have their own personal agenda and if what we're asking for follows it then they'll do something about it - otherwise they'll just blow it off.

Why are AOE caps still a thing? Seriously. I was hoping this upcoming DLC would focus more on small group play again, but it's clear that they're OK with large ball groups rolling through everyone and everything and making PVP unplayable.

If I have to pay a subscription fee in order for you to listen and fix what's so obviously broken ASAP rather than 3-6 months later then so be it.

I was looking forward to this upcoming DLC - not so much for the content but for the class balance that it would bring and the fixes to the pvp performance. It looks like they'll be addressing all of that more next DLC, again we find ourselves playing the waiting game - hoping that this time ZOS gets it right.

Don't get me wrong, I like some of the things they're doing with the class balance - however what I don't like is the direction they're trying to take things.

Cody

Lag is now an ESO God. It is to be worshiped without question.

The-Baconator

xEcthelionx wrote: »

Large group vs. small group and solo-play. Did anyone really dream about running in a 24man group ball group when they picked this game up? The 48 pages of people saying remove AoE caps said... No. At least the issue has been acknowledged but wow. There is one way to completely destroy a game and it is to require a single player to group up with 23 others to run around and fight because that affects not only hardcore players but casual players as well. On PS4 I see some great players in my guild constantly trying to run small group play and failing because they are outnumbered and have no substantial burst relative to opposing heals. The vicious death set is a bandaid and the changes to proxy are going to exacerbate the problem, not alleviate it. There is a group of 20+ DC that run sometimes more than 24 man groups via guildchat that operate with this strategy: "3, 2, 1, pop proxy, bats, and go in." They still get wiped but it is pretty hard when the action freezes the opposition's bars for a good 2-3 seconds while the damage is being calculated. This group style is getting buffed, not nerfed, with the changes being made to proxy and without the removal of AoE caps. Will removing AoE caps crash the servers constantly? If this is the case, then it needs to be disclosed but it won't be until we are reminiscing about the old days when MMO's like ESOTU were around. Regardless, when every ball group is running four barriers, grand healing, and proxy next patch you are going to have server issues, I can promise you that.

Bring the little man up. Arenas are coming to ESO and that is awesome but in the meantime, realm v. realm needs to go back to that instead of ballgroup with proxy vs. ballgroup with a little less proxy.

I feel like I should start screenshotting my group UI after every wipe, we haven't even ran a full group since the Azura's campaign before last. You can make an "impact" without running 24, you just can't all be running a fotm 1vX build and expect to take on a larger group and win consistently. When I hear good players talk like this I can't help but lol a little bit, my guild can patch together a group of 6-8 with no healers and wipe most pug zergs (meaning 24-48 and POOR coordination) on console atm if we are on top of our game, and I think other guilds such as your's are as well.

Even then, I agree that the current ballgroup meta should be adjusted as I find the playstyle to be much less fun and engaging than the keep fights of old on console release (PC players envisions proxy with no nirn gear anywhere). However, the destruction of the ball group shouldn't be the only priority of the developers. What most fail to recognize is that balling up is the only real effective way to fight an enemy when you are drastically outnumbered because all they see is the big bad ball group running over them, not their 30-40 friends not too far away. You need all of your player bound AoEs (the only AoEs worth slotting save perhaps bombard) to hit the same targets if you want to make a sizable dent in an enemy group by overpowering their heals\breaking their barriers, which means you need to stand close to one another. In order to survive the inevitable meteor shower and other high burst AoE your getting hit with you need to maximize you're survivability, and I think its pretty obvious where you need to be relative to the caster in order to benefit the most from these abilities (nova, veil, barrier, etc). The issue is that in order for your group to be the most effective any any capacity, you HAVE to ball up. As a result we do so.

If they want to destroy the ball group, which from seeing the recent patch notes appears to at least partially be the case, they need to fundamentally change the way their game operates. And I don't mean by removing AoE caps, barrier\purge nerfs with det\vicious will do more than enough to bring time to kill to a stupid level. They need to add ways small groups with members that know their classes and game mechanics inside and out to mitigate enough damage so that they can survive more than three seconds against a larger group while providing avenues in which the larger group can be outplayed and ultimately beaten. With the naturally high ttk and lack of general resource constraints I'm not sure how this could be done. Though I fear without these considerations pvp will become more of a zergfest than it already is, except there will be no real effective way to deal with a larger amount of people, which would be even worst than the situation now where balling up is the only effective means of doing so.

And though a 12-16 man bomb group is getting a buff in fire power next update, their survivability is going down the toilet. I bet I could wipe the 16 or so people I had in my group today if I had a PERFECTLY timed ult\proxy bomb next update with my three best players. All it will take is 3 people out of that 40 man group to have a clue and its over, which is why I"m apprehensive about touching AoE caps. We'll adapt, you probably will. Numbers will have a major advantage, condensed numbers won't. I'm interested in how the changes play out, but honestly none of this matters if lag doesn't get better anyway.

KenaPKK

Such a long-winded thread for such a futile effort.

Manoekin

gonna need cliff notes

Galalin

HansenPvP wrote: »

Exactly I can't do small scale for *** without being run over and scrub DC zergs would proxy but still fail and camo hunter and the axes are broken, not as broken as shield breaker...I have to run around with blessing of protection playing healer simulator over here and trying to fight shield breaking scumbags. Stam dks BROKEN reverb bashing when I have cc immunity and getting flung off the bridge with magnum shot double ccing me...fix your stuff Zenimax seriously.

woah!!! woah!!! woah!!!.... don't going throwing Stam DK's under the bus like that bro. We prefer to ride on the short bus, not ride under it. Reverb is 1h/s skill not a stam DK nor any DK skill and is abused by all and I honestly wish as a Stam DK they just pull the skill until its fixed. Garbage players are gonna use every advantage they can. Like the 8 mundus stones I see all over the place these days. I just laugh and move along because you know everyone who see's it knows they are a garbage player too.

@Zheg hows my engrish bro? its Canadian Eh

DK SCRUB OUT

Etaniel

I agree that they need to start adding balance updates in incremental patches every week. I'm not talking about changing how skills work, but reworking the numbers. The most blatant example of a balance change that needed tweaking was the nirnhoned trait in 1.6. That took what, 6 months to fix? When it should have taken 2 weeks max?
The proxy det damage, isn't that something they could have changed a long time ago? Because we still don't know if the new values will be effective, and they aren't, we'll have to wait another 3 months for a change, it's ridiculous.

It's also way easier to balance a game if you make regular small tweaks, than if you change a ton of things every couple of months

OdinForge

Wrobel said it in ESO live, he's worried about PvE when it comes to PvP changes, there is no hope.

You cannot balance both PvP and PvE, PvE is indeed a joke currently also so wth.

As long as he thinks like this, there is no hope for PvP.

Galalin

Etaniel wrote: »

I agree that they need to start adding balance updates in incremental patches every week. I'm not talking about changing how skills work, but reworking the numbers. The most blatant example of a balance change that needed tweaking was the nirnhoned trait in 1.6. That took what, 6 months to fix? When it should have taken 2 weeks max?
The proxy det damage, isn't that something they could have changed a long time ago? Because we still don't know if the new values will be effective, and they aren't, we'll have to wait another 3 months for a change, it's ridiculous.

It's also way easier to balance a game if you make regular small tweaks, than if you change a ton of things every couple of months

^^^^
DK SCRUB OUT

Jura23

OdinForge wrote: »

Wrobel said it in ESO live, he's worried about PvE when it comes to PvP changes, there is no hope.

You cannot balance both PvP and PvE, PvE is indeed a joke currently also so wth.

As long as he thinks like this, there is no hope for PvP.

I cant think of anything they could do that would ruin PvE. That why I think its just an excuse.

Sure, you will see ppl crying about stam block, or Barrier nerf, but I dont take those complains seriously, because you can still do all PvE content with no problem after these "nerfs".

Sallington

Etaniel wrote: »

I agree that they need to start adding balance updates in incremental patches every week. I'm not talking about changing how skills work, but reworking the numbers. The most blatant example of a balance change that needed tweaking was the nirnhoned trait in 1.6. That took what, 6 months to fix? When it should have taken 2 weeks max?
The proxy det damage, isn't that something they could have changed a long time ago? Because we still don't know if the new values will be effective, and they aren't, we'll have to wait another 3 months for a change, it's ridiculous.

It's also way easier to balance a game if you make regular small tweaks, than if you change a ton of things every couple of months

I wouldn't be surprised if every little thing they change breaks at least 10 other things. The nirnhoned change could have taken SO long because they just had no idea how to fix it without breaking the rest of the game.

I'd almost prefer they have the worst spaghetti code around, rather than just not caring enough to worry about PvP balance.

pmn100b16_ESO

Etaniel wrote: »

I agree that they need to start adding balance updates in incremental patches every week. I'm not talking about changing how skills work, but reworking the numbers. The most blatant example of a balance change that needed tweaking was the nirnhoned trait in 1.6. That took what, 6 months to fix? When it should have taken 2 weeks max?
The proxy det damage, isn't that something they could have changed a long time ago? Because we still don't know if the new values will be effective, and they aren't, we'll have to wait another 3 months for a change, it's ridiculous.

It's also way easier to balance a game if you make regular small tweaks, than if you change a ton of things every couple of months

And yet a broken story quest or a new grind spot is revealed and its patched within days. Go figure.

xEcthelionx

The-Baconator wrote: »

The issue is that in order for your group to be the most effective any any capacity, you HAVE to ball up. As a result we do so.

They need to add ways small groups with members that know their classes and game mechanics inside and out to mitigate enough damage so that they can survive more than three seconds against a larger group while providing avenues in which the larger group can be outplayed and ultimately beaten. With the naturally high ttk and lack of general resource constraints I'm not sure how this could be done. Though I fear without these considerations pvp will become more of a zergfest than it already is, except there will be no real effective way to deal with a larger amount of people, which would be even worst than the situation now where balling up is the only effective means of doing so.

And though a 12-16 man bomb group is getting a buff in fire power next update, their survivability is going down the toilet. I bet I could wipe the 16 or so people I had in my group today if I had a PERFECTLY timed ult\proxy bomb next update with my three best players. All it will take is 3 people out of that 40 man group to have a clue and its over, which is why I"m apprehensive about touching AoE caps. We'll adapt, you probably will. Numbers will have a major advantage, condensed numbers won't. I'm interested in how the changes play out, but honestly none of this matters if lag doesn't get better anyway.

It is the truth. If we don't ball up and run over the enemy like a train they win due to sheer numbers. It will be interesting to see what the update brings but if the lag is not addressed it is all for nothing. Thanks for delivering your insight, good luck to you guys. Hope to see you back in a campaign we play at some point and you can fight us when we're motivated.

HansenPvP

When they released IC they wanted to "balance" classes...no they made it worse they should let some classes be overpowered and leave it alone and it should be if you chose the right class lucky you because all this new balancing stuff is breaking the game even more...

xEcthelionx

OdinForge wrote: »

Wrobel said it in ESO live, he's worried about PvE when it comes to PvP changes, there is no hope.

You cannot balance both PvP and PvE, PvE is indeed a joke currently also so wth.

As long as he thinks like this, there is no hope for PvP.

That is an issue they created because battle spirit makes the two atmospheres on completely different levels. Such a huge blunder imo. That is why they are probably leaving class rebalancing until next patch.

zyk

The problem is that Skyrim happened. It changed the target audience from MMO enthusiasts to extremely casual MMO newcomers.

It's not that ZOS can't do better. It's that our audience--gaming enthusiasts--is now extremely low priority to ZOS. This is part of a larger trend as gaming continues to become more mainstream.

KenaPKK

zyk wrote: »

The problem is that Skyrim happened. It changed the target audience from MMO enthusiasts to extremely casual MMO newcomers.

It's not that ZOS can't do better. It's that our audience--gaming enthusiasts--is now extremely low priority to ZOS. This is part of a larger trend as gaming continues to become more mainstream.

This is an interesting point.

Good thing we have non-high end PvE for single player oriented Skyrim players to do. Still shouldn't affect high end PvE content or PvP in the least.

Publius_Scipio

Make Tamriel great again!

Cody

i dont see any worshiping going on!!!!!

Darkonflare15

Scrippie10 wrote: »

Zheg wrote: »

HansenPvP wrote: »

Exactly I can't do small scale for *** without being run over and scrub DC zergs would proxy but still fail and camo hunter and the axes are broken, not as broken as shield breaker...I have to run around with blessing of protection playing healer simulator over here and trying to fight shield breaking scumbags. Stam dks BROKEN reverb bashing when I have cc immunity and getting flung off the bridge with magnum shot double ccing me...fix your stuff Zenimax seriously.

Was that english?

Out of everything that was written on this thread, that's what caught your attention the most? Nice.

I'm not sure what Zos' agenda is, but they made it pretty clear on their twitch stream this past Friday that they were trying to get rid of roles. They're taking the whole class balance thing a bit too serious, I think we can all agree that what made this game so great was the fact that each class had it's own role, and special set of skills that made them unique from the other classes.

Templars were intended to be a bit better than other classes when it came to heals, nightblades were intended to be stealthy assassins, dragonknights tanky, and sorcers were mages. I understand that Zos is trying to make it easier for people that hate their class to not feel like they're stuck playing it, the thing is they're not. There's 8 spaces for you to create 8 different characters - if John Doe did not enjoy playing the Templar they can always create a new character and they have 3 other classes to choose from.

If all classes could heal equally, tank, or even DPS equally then why would anyone bother leveling up multiple different characters in different classes? I'd like to believe that we level up different classes to get a different feel for the game. At least I personally do. If I want to play solo I'll log in to my NB, if I want to do more group play I'll play my Templar or DK.

I'm starting to believe that Zos doesn't really care for our opinion - and if they do they don't seem to acknowledge it. I think that they have their own personal agenda and if what we're asking for follows it then they'll do something about it - otherwise they'll just blow it off.

Why are AOE caps still a thing? Seriously. I was hoping this upcoming DLC would focus more on small group play again, but it's clear that they're OK with large ball groups rolling through everyone and everything and making PVP unplayable.

If I have to pay a subscription fee in order for you to listen and fix what's so obviously broken ASAP rather than 3-6 months later then so be it.

I was looking forward to this upcoming DLC - not so much for the content but for the class balance that it would bring and the fixes to the pvp performance. It looks like they'll be addressing all of that more next DLC, again we find ourselves playing the waiting game - hoping that this time ZOS gets it right.

Don't get me wrong, I like some of the things they're doing with the class balance - however what I don't like is the direction they're trying to take things.

They are not getting rid of roles. Every class was supose to be able to the do all roles from the beginning. The only difference was that some classes can do some roles easier than others. Every class can be a healer since resto is universal same as tank with sword and shield or dps with the other weapons. The whole point to change to other classes is to gain açcess to abilities and passives. I made a nightblade healer since the beginning since there was plenty of skill to help with that. Nightbladse had passives that increase health and lower the attack power of enemies perfect for tanks. The classes are just specializations for what type of character you want to build. Want a healer that attacks and heal self and others make a nightblade healer, want be true healer make a templar, and want to buff allies and heal them make a dk healer. I am so tired seeing templar players complain that they are not true healers anymore while they still have an ultimate that heals allies, can rez people faster than any other class with more health, can return stamina to other players and now can get increase healing from all sources. To be honest, it was getting boring only having templars as viable healers in end game content. We need more variety.

Draxys

Your underlying issue has another underlying issue: the developers, who appear to know f***all about their own game, who are either vastly understaffed or vastly incompetent (some of both I imagine), and who make extremely bad and ill-informed choices.

caeliusstarbreaker

It would be sweet if they didn't completely change the game every quarter.