What's the deal with wrobel?

huschdeguddzje

Community seems not very fond of him, just curious if it's justified

anitajoneb17_ESO

Eric Wrobel is the lead combat designer.
Many ESO players are combat-oriented (especially high level PVE-players and PVP players) and know the combat system inside-out, because they do a lot of theorycrafting and play a lot.
They blame Wrobel for :
- every aspect of combat they personally dislike,
- every change in the combat system that's aimed at casuals (and thus do good players a disservice of some kind)
- every change that force them to change their way of playing

In general they tend to think that they know the combat system in ESO better than Wrobel himself. I can't tell whether that's true or not (it's most probably wrong) but one thing is quite certain : hardcore players spend more time playing the game than Wrobel (for obvious timetable reasons).

I tend to think that, no matter their opinion, some players should be more respectful of Eric Wrobel as a person.

idk

Gaming communities are generally not fond of the one who brings change to their gaming world. That is it in a nutshell. Yes, some changes do not make sense, but mostly we adapt and move on.

Voxicity

A poor guy just doing his job. And a pretty damn good job compared to some of the completely imbalanced MMO's I've played in the past

Mic1007

He’s the Lead of the Combat Design team, so people tend to flame him for any Combat-related changes that they don’t like.

Whether it’s justified is up to debate.

Minalan

Whomever is in charge gets the blame for what’s wrong, and to some extent it IS Wrobels problem. These patch notes are coming across his desk, not anyone else’s.

In the past he’s said some really wrong and silly things (like the whole ‘crit tank’ thing lol) to justify exceptionally poor balance decisions. His answers to the community on the few times he did so were rude and dismissive. He doesn’t really take feedback like Rich did during Homestead. In short? There’s nothing to ‘like’. He’s some dude we see on eso live ruining our classes for dumb reasons.

People saying we don’t know enough about the combat system to comment aren’t playing the game day in and out. You probably don’t remember putting up with malubeth Templars. You probably don’t remember when proc sets crit, the damage was instant and front-loaded, and nightblades were instant death one button killers. Let’s discuss how long it took them to fix the macro slice issue in dark brotherhood. Or how long radiant oppression was Instant death from half health. These problems sat around for MONTHS unfixed. Now God knows how long stamdens are going to be meta, but they decided to fix it by nerfing BIRDS!

Ragnarock41

Samadhi wrote: »

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

...
''this is a buff if you fight with naked fists''
...

omg, they finally announced a Monk class?!?!

I would actually play one if it existed.

Like, you know, I always wondered why there isn't enough martial arts in this game, like, you can't kick,punch or headbutt people.

Those kind of stuff would fit really well to the theme of stamDk but... oh well..

Cadbury

idk wrote: »

Gaming communities are generally not fond of the one who brings change to their gaming world. That is it in a nutshell. Yes, some changes do not make sense, but mostly we adapt and move on.

Pretty much this

In all the online game communities I've been a part of, there's always a scapegoat. It could be a dev or even a Community Manager.

Flaminir

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

I tend to think that, no matter their opinion, some players should be more respectful of Eric Wrobel as a person.

Agree.

He's actually a really nice guy when you meet him

ArchMikem

I dunno, whats the deal with airline food?

Tandor

idk wrote: »

Gaming communities are generally not fond of the one who brings change to their gaming world. That is it in a nutshell. Yes, some changes do not make sense, but mostly we adapt and move on.

Agreed. Plus, players can only speak from their own personal experience and playstyle while a lead combat designer has the complete data logs from the game and the need to balance things across all the playstyles. It would be surprising if everyone agreed with all that he did all of the time.

Epona222

Does no-one else feel uncomfortable blaming one person for all their ESO woes?

I mean it's not like he was running the company or anything

Thogard

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Eric Wrobel is the lead combat designer.
Many ESO players are combat-oriented (especially high level PVE-players and PVP players) and know the combat system inside-out, because they do a lot of theorycrafting and play a lot.
They blame Wrobel for :
- every aspect of combat they personally dislike,
- every change in the combat system that's aimed at casuals (and thus do good players a disservice of some kind)
- every change that force them to change their way of playing

In general they tend to think that they know the combat system in ESO better than Wrobel himself. I can't tell whether that's true or not (it's most probably wrong) but one thing is quite certain : hardcore players spend more time playing the game than Wrobel (for obvious timetable reasons).

I tend to think that, no matter their opinion, some players should be more respectful of Eric Wrobel as a person.

I personally think he’s doing a great job. Having two people fight each other in most MMOs 10 years ago, the first thing you’d look at is class. In this game that’s hardly a factor.

Combine that with the fact that that holds true at various skill levels makes me very impressed with wrobel. Many games have “balance” in the sense that class A usually wins when two bad players fight but class B usually wins when two great players fight... but not ESO.

Perfect balance is impossible, but wrobel is balancing among so many different spectrums that it is very impressive that he’s done what he’s done.

All of my hatred is reserved for the people who do the servers, and even more importantly, the people who do the net code. This game is not optimized for large scale PvP or raiding with most variables being held server-side - a change they made about three years ago? Combine that with the *** show that was clock work city launch and I can’t help but think that the programming team that designed this game has been let go and replaced with a skeleton crew that’s not familiar with the engine and a boat load of artists to generate new content.

Ragnarock41

I used to actually like him,

then one day he took a class that was working fine, and absolutely destroyed it. a.k.a. stamDK.

''this is a buff if you fight with naked fists''

Then released another one that did the same thing, but 3 times better. a.k.a stamina warden.

10/10.

Thogard

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

I used to actually like him,

then one day he took a class that was working fine, and absolutely destroyed it. a.k.a. stamDK.

''this is a buff if you fight with naked fists''

Then released another one that did the same thing, but 3 times better. a.k.a stamina warden.

10/10.

To be fair, it’d be hard to balance Stam DK until we see how the synergy changes play out.

Wardens AFAIK don’t have any skills that do synergies, other than that AOE heal, and now that synergies are not part of the GCD and basically free DPS, Stam DKs will be able to boost DPS for the whole group in both PvE and PvP in ways that a warden can’t.

I think we should see how that plays out. I can foresee “synergy rotations” becoming a think, especially because of the undaunted passive that returns BOTH stat pools.

Samadhi

Ragnarock41 wrote: »

...
''this is a buff if you fight with naked fists''
...

omg, they finally announced a Monk class?!?!

Tandor

Epona222 wrote: »

Does no-one else feel uncomfortable blaming one person for all their ESO woes?

I mean it's not like he was running the company or anything

Well I don't have any ESO woes (apart from the trading system of course lest anyone label me a fanboi), but then it's seemed to me on many an occasion that I'm playing a totally different game to the couple of hundred people who regularly post critically on the forum. Perhaps I'm playing the same game that the other hundreds of thousands who don't post critically on the forum are playing !

Nemesis7884

I heard Wrobel stole all the moon sugar - ALL OF IT

DoctorESO

There will always be people who like and dislike anyone who fills the position of Lead Combat Designer

ak_pvp

Wrobel stole my mum and killed my cat.

IDK, He seems like a decent guy with a cool beard, but gets a lot of flack for the total combat teams ideas, which are admittedly awful. Remember the PTS Dragon blood scaling off missing mag, to the point where it was literally useless with good sustain. Even if not to live, how did that go though conceptually.

TheNuminous1

i certainly dont think he deserves all the blame. but for anyone following from the beginning knows how ignored some things are and how idiotic things that get "fixed" are. read through all the patch notes ever and see some of the inane changes that occur. and when you lived in the game before and after those changes you FEEL how bad his choices were and are.

NyassaV

Unlike some of the other people at ZoS he doesn't play the game as much. Many of us on the forums might very well know more about the game than he does. He is trying to do his job but hasn't spent the time and effort to understand the game to do it well

Wrubius_Coronaria

One thing is sure, Eric Wrobel does not deserve all the hate we can read on the forum.

DoctorESO

I would think that the Lead Combat Designer knows more about balancing the game than any single player does here.

Izaki

I like the guy

DoctorESO

If people actually met Eric in person, I'm sure they would not then come here and bash like there's no tomorrow. Just like when you meet any person. Until you meet them, you've dehumanized them.

ak_pvp

DoctorESO wrote: »

If people actually met Eric in person, I'm sure they would not then come here and bash like there's no tomorrow. Just like when you meet any person. Until you meet them, you've dehumanized them.

Its the internet. Do you reckon any of us, even the most salted would say some of the things that have been said if we knew the person IRL? Its just a game and its easy to let tensions rise when there is less consequences or limits to what we say, because everyone else is just a bunch of words with no real face behind them.

Its why I hate the "fire X" [server managers, bug fixers, devs, higher ups etc] posts. No reason to *** over someones life over a game decision you disagree with. Hell, no reason to even say some actual bad stuff.

Rohamad_Ali

Which Wrobel ? Pre TU Wrobel was still in training and to be seeking the lost wisdom of Monk Nickolas Konkel atop The Mountain of Secrets and Wisdom . After ascending the perilous cliffs and defeating never ending waves of necro threads and deafing echo box attacks , Bearded Wrobel decended the mountain with new found power and wisdom after obtaining the tight rope beam of balance from the forefathers of YinYang . Now robed in the rainbow fox cloak of insight he scratches his beard of knowledge before crafting the next set of ability class challenges . Bearded Wrobel is to be admired while young wrobel is fading away with adolesence ...

The truth is in the

Skooma !

ADarklore

Here is the problem... the Lead Combat Designer struggles to explain various changes that were made and then refuses to address counter points to his explanation. If you cannot thoroughly and completely understand and explain reasons WHY a change was made, then it shouldn't be made, period.

Rohamad_Ali

If we all just relax with a little Skooma and wear the rainbow fox robes then the game is perfectly blanced @Ch4mpTW

Ohtimbar

I disagree with some of the changes he has made, but it doesn't go any further than that. The day I begin personally insulting the developers is the day I've lost all sense of reality. At that point it would be best to step away and reevaluate my own life.