We need soft caps

Bashev

PvP only
ZoS how will you balance next patch builds as:
50k+ magicka/stamina
or
5k+ weapon damage/spell damage
or
100% crit healer builds (increased critical healing cannot be counter)
or
10k+ health recovery builds
or
blazing shield builds with swarm mother sets
or
100% penetration builds
etc

Some of the values can be achieved now but you sacrifice all the rest. In the next patch these values will be very common for any decent player.

@ZOS_RichLambert , @ZOS_BrianWheeler will you try to bandaid the balance by increasing the battle spirit?

dsalter

Bashev wrote: »

PvP only
ZoS how will you balance next patch builds as:
50k+ magicka/stamina
or
5k+ weapon damage/spell damage
or
100% crit healer builds (increased critical healing cannot be counter)
or
10k+ health recovery builds
or
blazing shield builds with swarm mother sets
or
100% penetration builds
etc

Some of the values can be achieved now but you sacrifice all the rest. In the next patch these values will be very common for any decent player.

@ZOS_RichLambert , @ZOS_BrianWheeler will you try to bandaid the balance by increasing the battle spirit?

i agree. we need them back, higher than before but defo need them back, these uber builds are absurd

SantieClaws

Khajiit has seen that a lovely soft fur hat can be obtained during the New Life Festival yes.

Santie is thus very much in favour of lovely warm soft caps. This one prefers the ears to wave free in the breeze in warmer climates though.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

BurritoESO

If only they realized what they are doing to this game...

PS4_ZeColmeia

I'm not worried about overly specific builds if the sacrifice is large enough. My concern is that certain :: cough :: stamina :: cough :: types of players don't have to sacrifice much at all.

If you take out soft caps, then the developer team has to manage soft capping our options. One or the other needs to be implemented. To balance stat stacking to have a detriment for maxing a stat.

susmitds

I already have 7k+ weapon damage on my Stamina Templar, 64k+ magicka on my Magicka Nightblade without Imperial Physique, 100%+ crit chance on my Stamina Nightblade without even using Thief. 100% penetration is not possible even with all penetration sets (5280 Sharpened+3180 Sunderflame+3700 new set+2000 to 6000 from maces+5160 Major Fracture+1800 from a new monster art, that's a maximum of 25120 penetration).

Bashev

susmitds wrote: »

I already have 7k+ weapon damage on my Stamina Templar, 64k+ magicka on my Magicka Nightblade without Imperial Physique, 100%+ crit chance on my Stamina Nightblade without even using Thief. 100% penetration is not possible even with all penetration sets (5280 Sharpened+3180 Sunderflame+3700 new set+2000 to 6000 from maces+5160 Major Fracture+1800 from a new monster art, that's a maximum of 25120 penetration).

You really missed my point. I already said that some of the values that I listed can be achieved now. But these values are reached by sacrificing everything else. These values will be the average for every player in the futrure patch. It means that the damage will increase but at the same time our armor rating is the same.

100% crit build is op for healing, not for dps because I cannot reduce your increased critical damage/healing as you can increase it with CP.

Liofa

Everyone supported Maelstrom weapons nerf because it was causing ''Power Creep'' but no one seems to say anything about soft caps which is the main reason of Power Creep in this game . Also , Champion Points was a huge mistake as well but way too late for that now ^^ If only ZOS could bring back soft caps back just for 1 month and everyone could see how competitive and balanced each class would be . No more one-shotting , no more infinite-sustaining , no more cancer builds , no more lasting-through-eternity fights , no more burn n continue in dungeons . If soft caps were in this game , we would actually be able to enjoy mechanics and tactics . Now , PvE is just about doing the most DPS and PvP is all about full tankiness with a little DPS or full burst damage . Not fun most of the part

PS4_ZeColmeia

Personally I like cp, but yeah if they don't want to balance sets (hard to do) aoe cap removal and soft caps are needed.

Rilmarshim

Attribute stacking sets with full jewelry are total ***. First of all this is a lack of ideas but most important you giving stamina users and HP-players resources for nothing. Necropotence set was interesting and very specific and now ZoS just did it's duplicates with no requirements. Just stack your favorite attribute, put on Black Rose (still best set in PVP if you don't go full burst) and your amazing original build is ready.

Volrion

@Dr_Talos Yup... Black rose + viper + Veledreth = cancer

Thank you very much

Rilmarshim

SourishWhale wrote: »

@Dr_Talos Yup... Black rose + viper + Veledreth = cancer

Thank you very much

Setup for sword&shield stamblade ganker?

contact.opiumb16_ESO

I don't play this game since months because of those ridiculous "no cap" mechanism. The game was more fun before 1.6 because of caps. Now with the balance between armor types etc, with caps, we would have fantastic variety builds, but with stacking possiblilities, their is no sense to not do those stacks. Result : poor boring builds and game play

stevepdodson_ESO888

SantieClaws wrote: »

Khajiit has seen that a lovely soft fur hat can be obtained during the New Life Festival yes.

Santie is thus very much in favour of lovely warm soft caps. This one prefers the ears to wave free in the breeze in warmer climates though.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

you have been at the cat-nip again with this one Santie...but it is a clever response I'll grant you that

andreasranasen

susmitds wrote: »

I already have 7k+ weapon damage on my Stamina Templar, 64k+ magicka on my Magicka Nightblade without Imperial Physique, 100%+ crit chance on my Stamina Nightblade without even using Thief. 100% penetration is not possible even with all penetration sets (5280 Sharpened+3180 Sunderflame+3700 new set+2000 to 6000 from maces+5160 Major Fracture+1800 from a new monster art, that's a maximum of 25120 penetration).

I call BS on your post. If you have 64k magicka on your NB your NB must be weak as ***. You can't have a super high number in something without sacrificing other stats. And if you have 100% crit on your stam nightblade his stam must be extremely low meaning you hit like a wet noodle. If your Stamplar has 7k weapon dmg, your stam recovery must be *** and your stam average. Show proof.

Rykmaar

Funny isn't it? Most people were begging for softcap removal back in 1.5, only to see that ten patches later the decision has rendered the game broken (almost to the point of no return).

There's a balance patch coming after 1T, but honestly I don't know how much they're going to do to fix this mess. They need to not only buff magicka and redesign light armor passives, but balance overperforming stats, sets, and builds. That can't happen unless they take a sledgehammer to the game.

Don't get me wrong, I'll be super impressed if they pull it off. But that seems like a tall order for any developer.

Memnock

How would you implement a softcap in the game right now ? With the CP system in place that provides us 30 point every quarter if we go by how it has been up til now and with each CP spend you receive some stats as well , which provide a direct boost to one of the 3 stats , on top of the bonuses from the constelations , i do not see this happening in any meaningful way that still provides the element of progression through the CP system.

Birdovic

Memnock wrote: »

How would you implement a softcap in the game right now ? With the CP system in place that provides us 30 point every quarter if we go by how it has been up til now and with each CP spend you receive some stats as well , which provide a direct boost to one of the 3 stats , on top of the bonuses from the constelations , i do not see this happening in any meaningful way that still provides the element of progression through the CP system.

Well they kept unbalancing the game more and more, returning to Softcaps is still possible, but they made it harder for sure.
CP shouldnt cap at 3600, they should stop at maybe 1800 or something, allowing some build variety, not just the possibility to be ahead of others.

Lord_Eomer

No way to be in the cage again..

Bashev

Memnock wrote: »

How would you implement a softcap in the game right now ? With the CP system in place that provides us 30 point every quarter if we go by how it has been up til now and with each CP spend you receive some stats as well , which provide a direct boost to one of the 3 stats , on top of the bonuses from the constelations , i do not see this happening in any meaningful way that still provides the element of progression through the CP system.

PVP wise
Possible solution can be 4 armor traits (we have so many useless ones which can be changed).
Reduce weapon damage of your attacker when he does damage on you (10% gold item)
Reduce spell damage of your attacker when he does damage on you (10% gold item)
Reduce magicka pool damage of your attacker when he does damage on you (10% gold item)
Reduce stamina pool damage of your attacker when he does damage on you (10% gold item)

Example:
Stam NB attacks you and he has 40k stamina and 4k weapon damage. You have 2 golden armors with reduce weapon damage trait and 2 golden armors with reduce stamina pool damege.
Stam NB with 40k stamina and 4k wepon damage does 8448 damage
because of the 4 trait that you have he will attack you as 32k stmaina and 3.2k weapon damage (20% reduction from traits) he will have 32k stamina pool and 3.2k weapon damage vs you. The damage is 6759 . The mitigation will be roughly 25%.
Calculations are based on http://esolog.uesp.net/viewSkills.php

Still the healing spells are too strong and they should be adjusted. Another drawback of such solution is that with the time, the values of the traits should be improved because people receive more spell damage and magicka so you should be able to reduce more. The same issue is the armor and spell resistance. They are capped at 50% but players become stronger and stronger each patch.

Mettaricana

Soft caps are easy just put in the caps on resources and dmg cp isn't even a factor if cp is putting you close to the soft cap pull a few attribute or an enchant out of that stat amd add some to another stat you round out your build abit and don't hit soft caps and they can raise the soft cap a bit to compensate the increases in max cp caps. Offer a free respec on stats and skills for like a month after a soft cap is added in and walla done.

Soris

CP have diminishing returns. Stats can have too!

I believe it's perfectly fine to raise the cyrodiil raw stats for base regen to 750, base magicka/stamina to 15k and health to 20k.
Then add a threshold at 30k magic/stamina, 1800 regen and 35k health. After that threshold, any further additions on X stat gets diminished returns, being as effective as 90%, 75%, 50%, 25% and so on.

CasNation

They really do need to bring them back. They removed them because try wanted the CP system to feel rewarding or something...but I would rather have balance. Problem is that they have started balancing content around not having soft caps (including OT) so it will be much harder to change now...

...or maybe not? I guess with OT everything is balanced the same, so they don't have to deal with edge cases based on lower levels.

Vereaux078

CasNation wrote: »

They really do need to bring them back. They removed them because try wanted the CP system to feel rewarding or something...but I would rather have balance. Problem is that they have started balancing content around not having soft caps (including OT) so it will be much harder to change now...

...or maybe not? I guess with OT everything is balanced the same, so they don't have to deal with edge cases based on lower levels.

Then we all end up in the NO CP campaign I guess. I have to deal with a lot of lag on ps4 atm, which bother me more then OP sets in CP campaigns.

Docmandu

Soft caps? Nope... hard caps is what we need! and a bunch more stats.. internally it looks like they once had that, ie. there seemed to have been separate fire, cold, lightning, poison, ... resists at one point (beta? alpha?)... wonder why that was scrapped.

edit: oh and we also need somebody else to do this job.. the current team clearly has no clue about pvp balance

Bashev

Docmandu wrote: »

Soft caps? Nope... hard caps is what we need! and a bunch more stats.. internally it looks like they once had that, ie. there seemed to have been separate fire, cold, lightning, poison, ... resists at one point (beta? alpha?)... wonder why that was scrapped.

edit: oh and we also need somebody else to do this job.. the current team clearly has no clue about pvp balance

I agree that if we had 10 more stats to balance, then we will not have issues with the soft caps right now. ESO combat is great but combat stats mechanic are very very bad.The game in this direction is too simple.

Soris

Bashev wrote: »

Docmandu wrote: »

Soft caps? Nope... hard caps is what we need! and a bunch more stats.. internally it looks like they once had that, ie. there seemed to have been separate fire, cold, lightning, poison, ... resists at one point (beta? alpha?)... wonder why that was scrapped.

edit: oh and we also need somebody else to do this job.. the current team clearly has no clue about pvp balance

I agree that if we had 10 more stats to balance, then we will not have issues with the soft caps right now. ESO combat is great but combat stats mechanic are very very bad.The game in this direction is too simple.

Stat mechanic is strange. There is hard cap on mitigation but there is no any caps on damage. Makes no sense. I constantly being hit by 9k incaps with 28k armor. Like wtf? Armor should balance the damage but often it being debuffed to like 10k armor at most while you cant debuff their damage at the same rate or it's limited to one or two abilities which are not widely open for all builds, especially for magicka builds. Stamina builds could spam heroic slash and have 15% dmg debuff on enemy with 100% uptime while magicka have to eat the dmg or use those stupid health based shields. I see no reason why magicka shouldn't have similar skill for all classes. Also blocking is irrelevant here since it's over costly for 90% of builds outside of stamina builds.
And here we met again with the infamous stamina-magicka imbalance.

There is no logical reasoning behind it. Oh wait, I guess maybe it's 'let the kids be happy' reasoning. Whatever is it, it's just so wrong.

Minno

Soris wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

Docmandu wrote: »

Soft caps? Nope... hard caps is what we need! and a bunch more stats.. internally it looks like they once had that, ie. there seemed to have been separate fire, cold, lightning, poison, ... resists at one point (beta? alpha?)... wonder why that was scrapped.

edit: oh and we also need somebody else to do this job.. the current team clearly has no clue about pvp balance

I agree that if we had 10 more stats to balance, then we will not have issues with the soft caps right now. ESO combat is great but combat stats mechanic are very very bad.The game in this direction is too simple.

Stat mechanic is strange. There is hard cap on mitigation but there is no any caps on damage. Makes no sense. I constantly being hit by 9k incaps with 28k armor. Armor should balance the damage but often it being debuffed to like 10k armor at most while you cant debuff their damage at the same rate or it's limited to one or two abilities which are not widely open for all builds. Blocking is irrelevant here since it's over costly for 90% of builds outside of stamina builds.

There is no logical reasoning behind it. Oh wait, I guess maybe it's 'let the kids be happy' reasoning. Whatever is it, it's just so wrong.

Well I can assume their thoughts is that healing+ armor = damage + penetration. Shield, dodge, and block being factors that make the balance complex, it seems you can see some balance on paper.

But currently dodge > block > shield in effective dmg mitigation. Armor is completely negated by easily obtained penetration unless you stack as a full tank. Healing is more effective as stam > Templar only because as stamina your damage and weapon crit directly effect your healing. Templar comes close second only because of easy major mending and BoL instant cast.

So ZoS needs to find a way to make this all balanced as a merry-go-round or a ballet of dynamic pvp. I get that certain classes or sets shouldn't work well in some areas if they are strong in others. But it shouldn't feel like a struggle or that certain build are way too OP.

cazlonb16_ESO

Liofa wrote: »

Everyone supported Maelstrom weapons nerf because it was causing ''Power Creep'' but no one seems to say anything about soft caps which is the main reason of Power Creep in this game . Also , Champion Points was a huge mistake as well but way too late for that now ^^

Both points have been brought up numerous times actually, they just don't make for good clickbait so they got swamped amoung the myriad other ( real or imaginary ) issues. ZOS themselves didn't comment at all of course, they seem to have realized what they've done regarding the CP system to at least some extent though judging by the rigid cap and it's very slow rise so far and in the future.

MalakithAlamahdi

I honestly think it would also help if damage didn't scale off of max stat anymore and just your spell and weapon damage like it should have. I have no idea why they made it like that to begin with.

Asardes

I wasn't playing when soft caps were in force and I don't know how they worked in practice, but I can guess there were plenty of people back then complaining about them, and them not being able to burst the other folks. So they got removed and other people started complaining, the ones with the tankier builds mainly. So they buffed heavy armor regeneration passives and then the first crowd started complaining again. Same with stamina and magicka. This is a never ending merry-go-round. From my experience there are plenty of good and plenty of bad players, both magicka and stamina. I can't burst some of the heavy armor players alone, and I can't burst some of the ones with strong self heals and/or shields.

But I don't go around asking for heavy armor to be nerfed, or shields and heals to be nerfed . There has to be some smarter solution to the problems, that won't upset of the other half of the crowd. Balance can't be achieved with constant change, and I can't even think that it exists in an objective manner, since everyone's perception is subjective. As a company looking to make money ZoS tries to keep as many people happy as possible. The fact that they haven't talked about these soft caps or made any move to implement them again shows that probably they consider that it won't please more players than it will *** off. Forum posts may not be relevant to the customer base overall.