Skill experience/poins not balanced with leveling

shadoza

It was suggested that I share this (from an email) with the forum. So here it is...or at least the gaming part.

I love your game. I don’t want to hate it. However, there are issues I have that evolved from the One Tamriel (1T) update.

The first issue I realized was that I can no longer play with my currently build on any of my characters (but the duel weapon Nightblade was especially more difficult.) It was suggested to me that I had to respect for 1T. I had some gold in game and real dollars in life, so I did this and the game because easier to play.

As I progressed past the level 50 point I come to realize an issue that repeatedly caused frustration: the skill experience does not advance at the same speed as the levels. What this does is forces the player to play under geared or with low-end crafted items. I asked in chat how others were dealing with this issue and the responses were abusive. (Your community in game and in the fora is hostile and unsupportive.) Responses like “get gud (sic)” or “learn to play” is disheartening and only adds to an already frustrating moment. Other responses sounded helpful but missed my point: I cannot use dropped armor/weapons because the drop rate for medium armor was too low (33% chance to get something in my class and only 10% of that was actually higher than what I had on.) I looted a full set of purple armor in the heavy class and a near full blue set in the light class. Using armor other than medium lowers my stamina buff with is a bad thing because I am already running out of stamina before the target dies.

So I struggled through several Champion Point (CP) levels under geared and using provisions and pots that were as much as 20-50 levels below my character level because that is the best I could do with the skills I had available. (Even after resetting my specs a second time to free up skill points for my needed crafts. The closer I get to the CP160 level the more impact the lacking in the proper level gear became. I skipped quests and avoided public dungeons because I could not defeat the final boss.

Last night my frustrations festered to a serious point. In the Cold Harbor map, the last part of a story quest, Breaking the Shackles, there are waves of monsters. I could not defend the mage. I could not defend myself. The problem was I would run out of stamina too soon. I played with the strategy, with switching my now muted abilities, tried different potions and potted boosts. Nothing worked. I was running out of stamina, running out of magic, then…with no resources to fight or defend with…I ran out of health. I asked the community if I could progress without finishing this quest and the response was that I could not. I was stalled in a fight I could not win. I actually attempted the quest stage as many as 20 times after various tweeks and changes. Very frustrating.

I decided to skip the story line in Cold Harbor, (the only quest I had left in that area) and went to a DLC map. While there I chatted with the players and explained my frustrations. Again, I received the same hateful responses insulting me and my ability to play the game. One player sent me a whisper and asked if they could make armor for me. At first I declined the offer because I was actually believing that I could not play this game even thought I made it to level 47 with only a few grumps and bumps. They persisted and I finally agreed because I wanted to see for myself if gear of a proper level would make a difference. It did. I went back into the Breaking the Shackles quest and defended the mage without any problems. It is not my gaming skills; it is the lacking of proper level gear that stalls my progress. This is a continuous problem as I cannot improve my crafting skills without making progress or at least staying alive. (I am at CP140 currently and that beautiful purple set gear that was made is already outdated. So how long before I become seriously frustrated again? How much will the next guy charge me to make a set of gear so I can continue to play for another 10 levels?)

Since there is so few drops in my armor class, I am struggling to bring those skills up. I tried discussing this with the community…well, if you read this far, you should already know how that went. They said they did have a problem and my playing skills were [lacking.] However, I see what they are doing: grouping in masses and farming dolmens, dungeons, and quest areas to get material to break down to raise their crafting skills to a useful point. The groups contain one or two CP 300+ players and several low levels. They run into the area grab agro of everything (even targets that someone other is actively fighting) in the area and kill it. Then wait for it all to respawn before repeating the process.

The breakdown:
•The gear degrades with leveling

•The skill experience fails to keep pace with the increase of the CP levels and decrease in the gear stats. (That is actually a double hit. Since the degradation is progressing opposite of the leveling, a void opens up and continues to broaden as the player attempts to progress.)

•A 33% chance of gear dropping into a specific class cannot keep pace with need. (Lower levels cannot compete with the CP high-levels at public places because of the damage relation to loot.)

•Community assistance is unreliable as the vocal community is largely hostile.

•Player’s attempts to close this void themselves results in interference of the questing of others, which further restricts progress.

As I see the situation, there are few choices: grind like the rest of the struggling players, /sitchair until the grinders go away and continue only doing quests that are not challenging my gear, or stop playing until the issues are resolved and the game because fun rather than frustrating. When not on vacation, I have only a few hours at the end of the day to play a game (any game, I chose this one.) Grinding isn’t playing; it is pushing a character around a map hoping that soon I will be at the magic level of CP160 where everything balances out. If I am going to sit in a chair doing nothing, I’d rather have a movie in front of me rather than rabid gamers. So, I am thinking maybe I should put this game on a shelf somewhere and come back when the issues are resolved.

FoolishHuman

What I do is, I use the gold I get for completing quests and buy some gear from guild stores every time my gear rating goes below 3 stars.
Or if I can't find any in guild stores, buy white quality gear from vendors and upgrade the quality and enchant it myself. Upgrading and enchanting doesn't need skill points invested.

shadoza

Thank you for responding.

I checked with guild stores but found they rarely have items lower than CP160 and their prices out of my range.
The vendors only sell junk and I haven't the upgrade resources to upgrade them into something useful.
I cannot enchant at my level yet. I am currently at CP140 and my level of enchantment is still at CP50.

Mendacious

What class are you playing?
What weapons are you using?
How are your attributes distributed?
How are your skill points distributed?
What skills are you using?
Are you only using medium armor?

How do you typically fight monsters? Do you have a certain order you use your skills in?

STEVIL

@shadoza
(I am at CP140 currently..,)

How many skills does your cp140 have available?


You seem to have inadvertantly left out most solid stats in your description.

Am i correct that the character you are having trouble with has been run by you thru 50 then thru the cp ranks one by one to cp140 and you dont have sufficient skill points to gear your character at that level even with respecs?

Am i correct that it is now at cp140 you are trying the coldharbor quest?

My normal experience in leveling (not counting the later account-wide cp leap frog was that by the time one of my characters leveled to vet14 cp140 they would have completed their original 5 zones, quests, 81 skyshards not counting dungeons, coldharbor (15 skyshards), main questline, mages questline, fighters questline, a silver 5 zones (81 more skyshards) and be into gold content.

Thats just thru silver 59 skills from shards, 62 from levels (64 now) about 40 from zone quests, 9 from main quest thru 45, and likely a few i forget but thats about 215 skills.


Now of course thats from an older "typical" progression excluding group dungeons. It also ignores a couple gold zone runs - i typically finished silver at v10-v12 (eq to cp100 to 120) and needed some gold zones to get to 140. I saved DLC for post gold.

But without info on how many skills your character has, its hard to assess your skill point as a bug or a consequence of other factors.

shadoza

I was referencing the amount of experience or inspiration needed to raise the skills to the next group of mats.

Awakatanka

1T Made indeed a problem with Low lvl gear. You can almost not find complete sets for your lvl. To make the gear you need you earn not enough skills points.

But....

It is a mmo so my advice would be to join a guild that is friendly for you And that is willing to make a set for you for free. The Mats they need you can easly find.

shadoza

Awakatanka wrote: »

1T Made indeed a problem with Low lvl gear. You can almost not find complete sets for your lvl. To make the gear you need you earn not enough skills points.

But....

It is a mmo so my advice would be to join a guild that is friendly for you And that is willing to make a set for you for free. The Mats they need you can easly find.

I have the mats...mostly. however, I do not have the level to use the resources that I have because the craft skill cannot be upgraded until it gets to a certain level. I have deconstructed everything I wasn't using at the time. Made a few items and deconstructed that, but I am still behind. I just dropped some of the guilds I was in because they were inactive when I was on.

I am trying to say that it is frustrating for someone raising through the first CP160 levels because they cannot keep pace with the leveling...inspiration I believe it is called. Even if they respect the skills, having skill points doesn't help if the system doesn't unlock the next level until the experience/inspiration level is satisfied.

I tried purchasing gear at a guild store but all the stores I looked at had only CP160s.
Asking for help isn't always pleasant in game. It can be just as frustrating dealing with the nasty comments when asking for crafting help.

Someone was nice enough to wipe my "tears" of frustration with a full set of CP130 purple. Sadly it is under powered now, but I am holding it because of the perks that go with having a set. I also plan on leaving it in the bank so my next character can use it.

STEVIL

shadoza wrote: »

Awakatanka wrote: »

1T Made indeed a problem with Low lvl gear. You can almost not find complete sets for your lvl. To make the gear you need you earn not enough skills points.

But....

It is a mmo so my advice would be to join a guild that is friendly for you And that is willing to make a set for you for free. The Mats they need you can easly find.

I have the mats...mostly. however, I do not have the level to use the resources that I have because the craft skill cannot be upgraded until it gets to a certain level. I have deconstructed everything I wasn't using at the time. Made a few items and deconstructed that, but I am still behind. I just dropped some of the guilds I was in because they were inactive when I was on.

I am trying to say that it is frustrating for someone raising through the first CP160 levels because they cannot keep pace with the leveling...inspiration I believe it is called. Even if they respect the skills, having skill points doesn't help if the system doesn't unlock the next level until the experience/inspiration level is satisfied.

I tried purchasing gear at a guild store but all the stores I looked at had only CP160s.
Asking for help isn't always pleasant in game. It can be just as frustrating dealing with the nasty comments when asking for crafting help.

Someone was nice enough to wipe my "tears" of frustration with a full set of CP130 purple. Sadly it is under powered now, but I am holding it because of the perks that go with having a set. I also plan on leaving it in the bank so my next character can use it.

Were you by chance running the witch dbl xp thing during any or most of this period of advancement under 1T, given it started very soon after 1T dropped?

shadoza

STEVIL wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

Awakatanka wrote: »

1T Made indeed a problem with Low lvl gear. You can almost not find complete sets for your lvl. To make the gear you need you earn not enough skills points.

But....

It is a mmo so my advice would be to join a guild that is friendly for you And that is willing to make a set for you for free. The Mats they need you can easly find.

I have the mats...mostly. however, I do not have the level to use the resources that I have because the craft skill cannot be upgraded until it gets to a certain level. I have deconstructed everything I wasn't using at the time. Made a few items and deconstructed that, but I am still behind. I just dropped some of the guilds I was in because they were inactive when I was on.

I am trying to say that it is frustrating for someone raising through the first CP160 levels because they cannot keep pace with the leveling...inspiration I believe it is called. Even if they respect the skills, having skill points doesn't help if the system doesn't unlock the next level until the experience/inspiration level is satisfied.

I tried purchasing gear at a guild store but all the stores I looked at had only CP160s.
Asking for help isn't always pleasant in game. It can be just as frustrating dealing with the nasty comments when asking for crafting help.

Someone was nice enough to wipe my "tears" of frustration with a full set of CP130 purple. Sadly it is under powered now, but I am holding it because of the perks that go with having a set. I also plan on leaving it in the bank so my next character can use it.

Were you by chance running the witch dbl xp thing during any or most of this period of advancement under 1T, given it started very soon after 1T dropped?

I was. Keep in mind that the problem started before the update and became an issue with the 1T update even before the event. The difference was when I had not the gear or weapons power, before 1T, I could go back to a lower area and play until the skill level balanced out. Doubling the experience without doubling the skill experience/inspiration made it worse.
I did try hitting dolmen and dungeons to gain level gear in my class or at least some purples and blues to deconstruct, but another issue prevented that measure from functioning. Loot is scaled to the amount of damaged a character does compared to the total damage. I could not compete with players that are 3 to 5 times higher than my character. results: I was getting rings and no armor.

• The10% bonus XP from subscriptions also adds 10% to the skill experience/inspiration
• The double XP points from the event moves the levels faster than the skill experience/inspiration which made the issue more pronounced.
• The CP program is accelerated by design to move a character quickly out of that CP1-CP160 void. (First 10 levels are given to the character and went by in less than a second.) My character had the proper level gear and when the level meter stopped moving, he did not.

Perhaps when the XP is adjusted the inspiration rate should be adjusted as well.
The scaling of damage done should be changed to the number of attacks made which would allow hard-working lower levels to be properly rewarded without allowing leeching.

I understand that my situation has the unique quality of this being my first character. (Meaning there will be no issues with later characters because my first character can fill the void for them.) Knowing this does not make the situation any less painful now.

STEVIL

Dolmens reward jewels by design in 1T
Dungeons can iirc provide some armor but also jewels and weapons by design in 1T

Delves and overland quests provide exclusively armor in IT. SOme quests may give jeeels and some do give weapons actually but most seem armor.

That is for SETS. All can drop trash armor wespons rings etc.

If your goal was stuff for decon and sets to wear, delves, quests and dolmens are the better option esp since dungeons are now rebalanced for groups.

1T really does put more power in the player's hands to guide thrir gear acquisition by choosing the appropriate content to run based on what they want. OF course, that cuts both ways.

shadoza

I was attempting to gain trash to deconstruct but hoping for something useful. I got neither.

I agree that 1T does provide advantages. I am hoping to help remove what seems to be an "age penalty" for new and first time characters. I feel that if a new player gets too frustrated trying to break the first 160 CP levels, they may not stay long enough to create other characters, which would have an easier time since the CP are applied account wide.

I consider myself hardcore by the old standard: passionate, loyal, dedicated, and involved. The internet has changed that standard to button-mashing to the wee hours of the morn; elitist of a sort. I don't know what my standard is labeled anymore, but it doesn't change the way I feel about gaming or about this game specifically. I love this game concept and want to enjoy it; however, the seemingly endless frustrations and negativity is depleting my energy. I probably should give the game a break until the growing pains are cured; however, if I leave with the memories of "pain' and frustration still hot. that dark shadow may be the only thing I recall of the game. Then I would not return.

alexkdd99

shadoza wrote: »

I was attempting to gain trash to deconstruct but hoping for something useful. I got neither.

I agree that 1T does provide advantages. I am hoping to help remove what seems to be an "age penalty" for new and first time characters. I feel that if a new player gets too frustrated trying to break the first 160 CP levels, they may not stay long enough to create other characters, which would have an easier time since the CP are applied account wide.

I consider myself hardcore by the old standard: passionate, loyal, dedicated, and involved. The internet has changed that standard to button-mashing to the wee hours of the morn; elitist of a sort. I don't know what my standard is labeled anymore, but it doesn't change the way I feel about gaming or about this game specifically. I love this game concept and want to enjoy it; however, the seemingly endless frustrations and negativity is depleting my energy. I probably should give the game a break until the growing pains are cured; however, if I leave with the memories of "pain' and frustration still hot. that dark shadow may be the only thing I recall of the game. Then I would not return.

Honestly if you got a half decent crafted gear at 130 it should be fine until 160 as that is only 3 armor brackets away.

What do you play on? Xbox ps or pc? And are you us or eu server? I wouldn't mind at all giving you some more crafted gear now and once you reach 160. I am on xbox na.

Once I learned more about the game everything became much easier. Such as not placing any points in health and a few other things that most would not know right off bat.

If you are xbox na you can shoot me a massage on xbox gamer tag : nonLeadedbark8

shadoza

alexkdd99 wrote: »

shadoza wrote: »

I was attempting to gain trash to deconstruct but hoping for something useful. I got neither.

I agree that 1T does provide advantages. I am hoping to help remove what seems to be an "age penalty" for new and first time characters. I feel that if a new player gets too frustrated trying to break the first 160 CP levels, they may not stay long enough to create other characters, which would have an easier time since the CP are applied account wide.

I consider myself hardcore by the old standard: passionate, loyal, dedicated, and involved. The internet has changed that standard to button-mashing to the wee hours of the morn; elitist of a sort. I don't know what my standard is labeled anymore, but it doesn't change the way I feel about gaming or about this game specifically. I love this game concept and want to enjoy it; however, the seemingly endless frustrations and negativity is depleting my energy. I probably should give the game a break until the growing pains are cured; however, if I leave with the memories of "pain' and frustration still hot. that dark shadow may be the only thing I recall of the game. Then I would not return.

Honestly if you got a half decent crafted gear at 130 it should be fine until 160 as that is only 3 armor brackets away.

What do you play on? Xbox ps or pc? And are you us or eu server? I wouldn't mind at all giving you some more crafted gear now and once you reach 160. I am on xbox na.

Once I learned more about the game everything became much easier. Such as not placing any points in health and a few other things that most would not know right off bat.

If you are xbox na you can shoot me a massage on xbox gamer tag : nonLeadedbark8

Thanks but I play PC. I am at 157 now, still hanging on to that purple set that someone made me.

I do know that it is possible to make it past CP160, but should it be so frustrating that a player considers not playing?

Andohir

shadoza wrote: »

I have the mats...mostly. however, I do not have the level to use the resources that I have because the craft skill cannot be upgraded until it gets to a certain level. I have deconstructed everything I wasn't using at the time. Made a few items and deconstructed that, but I am still behind. I just dropped some of the guilds I was in because they were inactive when I was on.

It actually is the same I experience with my highest character. I completed the main story around the prophet at cp161 thanks to the festival buff. Now I'm doing Cadwell's Silver, but all my crafting skills are in the mid 30's or even 20's except Provisioning that I could max to 50. My gear has various cp levels, but I favored set bonuses (not necessarily 5 pieces, three or four also are good to increase resources or add more regeneration) over higher level items.

I guess it's not intended to max all skill trees at max level, even not at max item level (cp160), because there still are a lot of sky shards, quests and dungeons left to get more and enough skill points for both crafting and fighting skills. I recommend to focus on the few passives on top of each crafting skill tree to be able to learn the styles/recipes you find, but to have enough points left for fighting skills too.
You can always go to your factions capital city into the church to a shrine of stendarr to reskill and also redistribute attribute points at the other one.

Regarding problems with quest bosses: As a new player self heal + resistances > damage. Especially when you're soloing a lot and learning the mechanics. All classes have decent self heal skills. Also don't forget to block/dodge and to use your ultimates, they refill pretty fast. Note that you can block a lot more attacks than the yellow glowing ones only, to avoid status effects like being knocked back or stunned, aso. You can also mix armor classes, 5/1/1 is often used by players, e.g. 1 heavy, 1 light, 5 medium.

If you want to know about morphs before you actually decide to put a point there, go to http://www.eso-skillfactory.com/en/build-planer/ to take a look.