The CP Cap and How it Ruined Your Skill Gap

THEDKEXPERIENCE

Many moons ago ESO added a champion point cap. For most people it was a blessing because, while dealing with a 501, 531, or 561 CP player can be a nightmare, the pure terror of fighting someone with around 1000 CP can't really be accurately explained. One shot Meta? Nope, more like sneeze and you're dead Meta.

Anyway once it was introduced many of the most, I'll just call them famous, players still lorded over the masses but to a little more reasonable level. They could still dominate, but it usually took at least a small amount of work. Then as the calendar kept turning, the plebs kept getting incrementally more powerful a few hours a week at a time. The top players though, nope, you're capped. Now a year and a half after console launch, and 2.5 after PC it is very possible to be a "casual" with 500+ CP.

I bring this up because with all of the talk about procs and broken sets, I feel like the elephant in the room is that the "famous" players can't pull off their feats of strength any longer not solely due to proc sets, but very much due to the plebs finally, slowly, achieving a CP count near the level of many previously dominate players.

This isn't a complaint, or even a post cheering it on. I just wanted to point it out. It's possible many "skilled" players were not as good as they thought and now that the playing field has been leveled former "scrubs" can show that they were always better than some people thought.

Sorry for rambling. It's Friday. Haha.

KaleidoscopeEyz

Dedicating 8 hours or more every day from my mother's wood paneled basement doesn't give me the appearance of "skill"?

Argah

Glad I'm around now and not this period you speak of when time played equated to power, sounds like all it would do is give a false sense of purpose to people who have no life.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

Argah wrote: »

Glad I'm around now and not this period you speak of when time played equated to power, sounds like all it would do is give a false sense of purpose to people who have no life.

People were soloing Vet group dungeons like hot cakes. If I recall correctly a developer saw a video of someone soloing the vision of Molag Bal in the IC sewer and decided a cap had to come in.

Sallington

That's great and all, but proc sets as they are now are still terrible for the health of PvP

Minsc

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Argah wrote: »

Glad I'm around now and not this period you speak of when time played equated to power, sounds like all it would do is give a false sense of purpose to people who have no life.

People were soloing Vet group dungeons like hot cakes. If I recall correctly a developer saw a video of someone soloing the vision of Molag Bal in the IC sewer and decided a cap had to come in.

That developer was the lead game designer and he missed a crucial fact => the player who soloed M.Bal was emperor

THEDKEXPERIENCE

Minsc wrote: »

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Argah wrote: »

Glad I'm around now and not this period you speak of when time played equated to power, sounds like all it would do is give a false sense of purpose to people who have no life.

People were soloing Vet group dungeons like hot cakes. If I recall correctly a developer saw a video of someone soloing the vision of Molag Bal in the IC sewer and decided a cap had to come in.

That developer was the lead game designer and he missed a crucial fact => the player who soloed M.Bal was emperor

That's perfect ZOS. Hahaha.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

Sallington wrote: »

That's great and all, but proc sets as they are now are still terrible for the health of PvP

No doubt. Just been thinking about how the CP cap might be playing a part in all of it. Maybe it's only 5% or less, but I figured I'd mention it.

I'm also bored and need to kill 54 more minutes.

Lexxypwns

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Argah wrote: »

Glad I'm around now and not this period you speak of when time played equated to power, sounds like all it would do is give a false sense of purpose to people who have no life.

People were soloing Vet group dungeons like hot cakes. If I recall correctly a developer saw a video of someone soloing the vision of Molag Bal in the IC sewer and decided a cap had to come in.

They saw a video of methuselah as emp soloing molag Bal and weren't smart enough to figure out it was the emp buffs not the CP.

The cap is a good thing but the way it came about is from sheer incompetence

Grabmoore

So true ,OP.

Sypher f.e. admitted that he wins most of his duells ,but not by skill. He just runs a cheesier build.

That's why noone should be proud, if he wins a duell or even 1vX with cheese. Yeah I'm looking at you pos 1TF EU DC and pos 2 TF EU AD

Publius_Scipio

Well, my argument is more about why CP was needed at all in the first place. Why were so many all bent out of shape about this perceived end game necessity? Why couldn't a fantasy MMO survive on crafted gear, named legendary gear drops, and the thrill of the fight without CP?

But with CP the cap was necessary. There is no two ways about it. The more you play the more CP you accumulate. The devs had to step in to control the pace of their game. There has to be something for the players to work towards, but not a seemingly endless staircase where some players could sit down playing for many many hours in comparison to the general population, and then have the general population face these 1,000 CP+ players in pvp (and now dueling).

SirAndy

Clearly a l2p issue.

If you're a "famous" CP561 player you should have no trouble with a "casual" CP561 player.
If you do you're obviously not nearly as good as your "reputation" would suggest.

And if you don't know how to counter certain sets, you most certainly don't deserve the title of "famous" player.
Git gud or shut up ...

Ghost-Shot

Minsc wrote: »

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Argah wrote: »

Glad I'm around now and not this period you speak of when time played equated to power, sounds like all it would do is give a false sense of purpose to people who have no life.

People were soloing Vet group dungeons like hot cakes. If I recall correctly a developer saw a video of someone soloing the vision of Molag Bal in the IC sewer and decided a cap had to come in.

That developer was the lead game designer and he missed a crucial fact => the player who soloed M.Bal was emperor

He was also the scariest emp since the old days of the DK, he would streak into your group and before you knew what happened he'd hit you with a huge proxy and a 50k dawnbreaker. I still have nightmares...

hrothbern

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

I bring this up because with all of the talk about procs and broken sets, I feel like the elephant in the room is that the "famous" players can't pull off their feats of strength any longer not solely due to proc sets, but very much due to the plebs finally, slowly, achieving a CP count near the level of many previously dominate players.

+1

I guess ZOS does not want to frighten off new players or typical PVE players, with little experience in PVP, to join the Triple Alliance War.

The power difference was just too big, and I guess ZOS purposely adressed that:
a structural and permanent catch up was needed.
Not only for faster getting CP's, but also getting a faster basic level of technical playing power.

Capping CP's as quick fix.
Freezing Armor CP at 160
Adding proc sets
Health to become more valuable in one of the next updates.

An unexperienced player with enough CP's gathered in PVE can slot HA, some extra health, some proc sets.
Still an easy prey with low DPS,
but not anymore the canon fotter from before that could be 1vsX by the "famous"

And hey... if they have their lucky proc... they even kill !

THEDKEXPERIENCE

hrothbern wrote: »

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

I bring this up because with all of the talk about procs and broken sets, I feel like the elephant in the room is that the "famous" players can't pull off their feats of strength any longer not solely due to proc sets, but very much due to the plebs finally, slowly, achieving a CP count near the level of many previously dominate players.

+1

I guess ZOS does not want to frighten off new players or typical PVE players, with little experience in PVP, to join the Triple Alliance War.

The power difference was just too big, and I guess ZOS purposely adressed that:
a structural and permanent catch up was needed.
Not only for faster getting CP's, but also getting a faster basic level of technical playing power.

Capping CP's as quick fix.
Freezing Armor CP at 160
Adding proc sets
Health to become more valuable in one of the next updates.

An unexperienced player with enough CP's gathered in PVE can slot HA, some extra health, some proc sets.
Still an easy prey with low DPS,
but not anymore the canon fotter from before that could be 1vsX by the "famous"

And hey... if they have their lucky proc... they even kill !

Exactly. For all the current problems you just perfectly explained the good side to it.

Thelon

The-Baconator

CP is certainly involved for a handful of people but for the most part the game has just become far more forgiving for bad players. In 1.6\2.0 you could easily burst just about anybody on any class if they played poorly and now every other player I see on my mega server is either running around with +30k health in heavy (half of them with reactive) or 22-25k with a proctato setup when my post battle spirit damage on my sorc is down significantly from when I had 150cp the day before IC launched. The environment is simply not friendly toward solo players.

GreenSoup2HoT

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
-Bruce Lee

Sure CP carries but the amount of time a player has spent practicing a specific craft can be scary. For example, anyone can gank but the gankers who have been ganking since the game has released can be very scary.

ArchMikem

Lol like i care about the "famous" players losing their dominating status. This whole post sounded like someone bringing to light the poor and woe is they one percenters as they're forced to share their dominion with more of us commoner folk, and that someone should really look into setting things right again, by increasing the cap and giving the 1% their power over us back.

Yes i saw that you stated this wasnt a complaint thread, but the way you still worded this screamed of Elitist support.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

Haha. Yeah, I'm definitely not the 1%. I just got to the CP cap a week ago.

STEVIL

"The way i minmax choices to get advantage and kill" = good.
"The new way someone else minmax choices to get advantage and kill me in my current minmax choice" = bad.

Same tune, different lyrics.

Rohamad_Ali

The developers also ignored the amount of cheat engine use for two years in their calculations . It took an entire fiasco for them to finally acknowledge its existence and some of those "Top Players" got exposed as casuals with hacks .

alexkdd99

Argah wrote: »

Glad I'm around now and not this period you speak of when time played equated to power, sounds like all it would do is give a false sense of purpose to people who have no life.

Time played should equate to power to an extent. A person with 20 hours should not have the same gear or power as someone who has played 1000.

Someone who puts the time in should have somewhat of an edge. Not a 1000 cp edge, but they should not be on level ground otherwise what's the point in print the extra time into the game.

SaibotLiu

Everyone has their 5 minutes. Everyone can potentially be a "famous" player if future changes benefit their playstyle enough and they have the will and the notion to take advantage of it. You dont really need to be anything special, just have an abundance of free time.

SanTii.92

Lexxypwns wrote: »

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Argah wrote: »

Glad I'm around now and not this period you speak of when time played equated to power, sounds like all it would do is give a false sense of purpose to people who have no life.

People were soloing Vet group dungeons like hot cakes. If I recall correctly a developer saw a video of someone soloing the vision of Molag Bal in the IC sewer and decided a cap had to come in.

They saw a video of methuselah as emp soloing molag Bal and weren't smart enough to figure out it was the emp buffs not the CP.

The cap is a good thing but the way it came about is from sheer incompetence

Thinking they capped it just because of the video is pretty short-sighted honestly

Cathexis

danielpatrickkeaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Many moons ago ESO added a champion point cap. For most people it was a blessing because, while dealing with a 501, 531, or 561 CP player can be a nightmare, the pure terror of fighting someone with around 1000 CP can't really be accurately explained. One shot Meta? Nope, more like sneeze and you're dead Meta.

Anyway once it was introduced many of the most, I'll just call them famous, players still lorded over the masses but to a little more reasonable level. They could still dominate, but it usually took at least a small amount of work. Then as the calendar kept turning, the plebs kept getting incrementally more powerful a few hours a week at a time. The top players though, nope, you're capped. Now a year and a half after console launch, and 2.5 after PC it is very possible to be a "casual" with 500+ CP.

I bring this up because with all of the talk about procs and broken sets, I feel like the elephant in the room is that the "famous" players can't pull off their feats of strength any longer not solely due to proc sets, but very much due to the plebs finally, slowly, achieving a CP count near the level of many previously dominate players.

This isn't a complaint, or even a post cheering it on. I just wanted to point it out. It's possible many "skilled" players were not as good as they thought and now that the playing field has been leveled former "scrubs" can show that they were always better than some people thought.

Sorry for rambling. It's Friday. Haha.

CP without a cap was a plague on the game. I remember when CP was first introduced and forum users equated pvp skill with how many zombies you could farm.

The reality is that any time you have a system that creates a wide advantageous disparity between players, the more staged and false those feats of strength become. Mathematical advantages create a situation where players can effectively bypass some or all of the need to compete with active skill.

But at the same time what constitutes active skill can be hard to define. I mean for example, I look at healing and while it is clearly an active ability to heal, there are templars out there who can effectively instant heal to full indefinitely with a push of a button. There is no counter for that, and to me that is a situation where active skill creates an excessive, absolute mathematical advantage.

And a certain amount of mathematical advantage is also characteristic of mmo pvp. The interesting thing about what has happened in this game is that there is such a broad and diverse spectrum of equipment, skills, and cp allocations, that mathematical advantage is relative from build to build. But I think a CP cap was critical because it levelled the ridiculously unfair advantage you got for just being a veteran player (or someone who grinds zombies all day).

raidentenshu_ESO

What I want to know is how come Emperor Titus Mede II did not benefited from the passives of being an Emperor when the Thalmor came knocking on his door steps? Instead of taking an advantage of his passives he wand up surrendering to them after the Great war, and signed the White-Gold Concordat that pissed off a lot of people. It was the leading cause of the creation of the rebellious Stormcloaks who strive to have their homeland to be independent from the Empire.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

raidentenshu_ESO wrote: »

What I want to know is how come Emperor Titus Mede II did not benefited from the passives of being an Emperor when the Thalmor came knocking on his door steps? Instead of taking an advantage of his passives he wand up surrendering to them after the Great war, and signed the White-Gold Concordat that pissed off a lot of people. It was the leading cause of the creation of the rebellious Stormcloaks who strive to have their homeland to be independent from the Empire.

Because the Thalmor used proc sets.

scorpiodog

The hilarious thing is that many new players don't even know what CP are. I was one of them. I kept wondering how they were so good. Then when I got to about CP 160 I was like "Hey ... this CP stuff makes a big difference!"