What does combat balance mean to you?

Tasear

What's ideal balance in your definition?

BohnT

He who has more knowledge, player skill and experience wins a fight and not who just put on the latest broken thing.

No hardcounters at all they are bad, the game is more than rock, paper, scissors and it should never feel that way. If the best player using 1 thing loses to a new player that just picked up the hardcounter for this thing everytime or even once then combat balance is non existant.


Proc sets scaling like all other abilities if one set can replace the need for learning to play the game because it provides more damage than anything else combat balance is dead again.

When poisons and siphoner CP get removed completely.

GrigorijMalahevich

^

And it means everything. Remove cost poisons, remove sload, remove shieldbreaker, remove shieldstack, balance CP

Kikke

Personaly I like the 'rock vs paper vs scissors' tho with the possibility for a skilled scissor can beat a lesser rock xD hope this makes sense

Avran_Sylt

Assuming everyone is of the same skill-level:

You can't always win.

Each piece of equipment, each skill, has an inverse in some form.

There's a limit to the number of bar spaces you have, equipment slots you've got, and resources available to use them.
(BTW, I fully support proc sets scaling with max resource)

Each choice should try to have a similar number of things that it counters, that counter it.
(IE purge countering many things, but many things cause purge to drain your resource)

Depending on how many of each others abilities/items canceled out, dictates the victor.

In terms of different skill-level: The number of abilities/items canceled out, dictates the advantage an opponent has. And the victor is determined by this advantage being used or not.

VaranisArano

In PVE, the current balance is: this update, class A is king of the hill. Next update, something get changed, and "move on over, Class A, its class D's turn to be king of the hill!"

I understand why ZOS does that to keep us grinding and playing so we can be back on top again, but its tiresome to see it happen again and again and again.

I don't even have a real solution that balances class identity and class variety. But any sort of change would require ZOS to move away from the "shake it up, so players have to grind again" method of progression, and I think pigs might fly before that happens.

danno8

VaranisArano wrote: »

In PVE, the current balance is: this update, class A is king of the hill. Next update, something get changed, and "move on over, Class A, its class D's turn to be king of the hill!"

I understand why ZOS does that to keep us grinding and playing so we can be back on top again, but its tiresome to see it happen again and again and again.

I don't even have a real solution that balances class identity and class variety. But any sort of change would require ZOS to move away from the "shake it up, so players have to grind again" method of progression, and I think pigs might fly before that happens.

More like class A and B take turns. Class C, D and E have long been forgotten.

Valrien

I feel that balance was fine back before ZOS started homogenizing everything and taking away class identity for the sake of PvP.

Back in the day, each class had its niche and its counter. Nowadays the classes dont mean as much, especially in PvP when most of your toolkit is non-Class skills (this part is worst on Sorcs, they dont use many Sorc skills at all)

VaranisArano

danno8 wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

In PVE, the current balance is: this update, class A is king of the hill. Next update, something get changed, and "move on over, Class A, its class D's turn to be king of the hill!"

I understand why ZOS does that to keep us grinding and playing so we can be back on top again, but its tiresome to see it happen again and again and again.

I don't even have a real solution that balances class identity and class variety. But any sort of change would require ZOS to move away from the "shake it up, so players have to grind again" method of progression, and I think pigs might fly before that happens.

More like class A and B take turns. Class C, D and E have long been forgotten.

I mean, if we want to make it more accurate, I'd say its more like:

Class A and B take turns as king of the DPS hill, but whine that no one wants them to tank or heal.
Class C wants to be DPS, but they are the best healers by a hair, and since ZOS doesn't want to make them the BEST HEALERS forever and ever, amen, Class C will never get to be great DPS, but they might get a bone ever once and a while.
Class D gets the same treatment, because they are the best tanks, and ZOS doesn't want to make them the BEST TANKS forever and ever, amen. But on occasion, they'll get a bone and be on top for a single update.
Class E can't get buffed without players screaming pay-to-win, so they are just SOL.

But that got rather more specific than needed in my original description of how ZOS re-balances the game by changing up who's the king of the mountain and doesn't seem likely to change that strategy, unless they successfully homogenize the classes so they don't have to tiptoe around making certain classes the BEST tanks or healers.

Starlock

It means I can play many different characters with any skill combinations I want and enjoy the game - something that is already true and has been since years ago.

Put another way, those of us who are not competitive really do not care about this mythical beast called ‘balance.’ The only reason I care about it a little is because the folks chasing this white whale push for changes that sometimes ruin elements of the characters I am role playing. Fortunately that has been rare, but it has happened. The worst time was with the crossbow. I freaking loved the stun on daedra/vamps and how things would burst into blue flame. That was removed... probably because someone whined about balance in PvP. I only started using it again recently on that character because they added a pull to one of the morphs. I still deeply miss the old stun/knockdown crossbow.

usmguy1234

Valera Progib wrote: »

^

And it means everything. Remove cost poisons, remove sload, remove shieldbreaker, remove shieldstack, balance CP

Removing shield stack is not balance when that is one classes only form of survivability. It would be like completely removing cloak from the game. Though if that's what it took to remove cloak from the game, I'd do it in a millisecond.

Solariken

Definitely rock-paper-scissors design, but not quite to the point where one ability can shut down all types of ranged attacks indefinitely or one item set that can melt a shield user with only light attacks. Soft counters preferred.

Thannazzar

90% of `balance problems' are behind the keyboard issues!

ak_pvp

Whoever has the most skill wins. RNG kept to a minimum.

Everything requires similar level effort put in, no totally free damage like sloads, but instead investment based like eternal hunt or on paper skoria. No group squishy damage dealers immune to all damage because of their healbots, or healbots with no damage by damage dealers.

Everything has soft counters but not hard counters that can't be worked around. Soft counters for example are dots, or AoEs vs block/bleed builds. Hard counters would be rune and bleeds where you can't mitigate it in some way.

Better scaling, more "per person" mechanics and less per person caps. Less cooldowns, they just show lazy design that something is too easy to proc and too effective and have to be balanced artificially.

An elaboration on procs, they exist to offer boons through maintaining a certain playstyle, adapting towards it. 20% chance on any damage to drop some overly strong damage buff is bad. RNG is bad too. Which is my beef with skoria. If it was more predicatable every X dot ticks then a good player could time it, and a good player could also anticipate it. It would also scale better vs groups, being able to dot them more.

huschdeguddzje

What is this balance you speak of? All I have are distant memories

umagon

It means that the mathematical foundation for the game has base stats, cost of input vs output balance, the basis of skill or passives cost or function is weighted mathematically; and skill/set counterbalance. That there are logic mathematical formulations that function for all the skills, passives, items, and sets that control their cost, function and output values. Players should not have to guess why a skill with only two attributes has a cost of 3k while one that does more damage and has five attributes costs 2K. For example, power slam vs surprise attack.

Too many sets, skills, etc in this game are designed from a what is “cool” stand point which just leads to imbalance. It ends up with combinations of things that function outside their intended design. And people who can do math will always find these combinations then they get abused. Then the developers have to waste more time fixing those things than if they took the time balance it correctly the first time.

I mean look at sloads. They wanted an anti block, anti damage shield, anti tank set but used oblivion damage with no other control functions. Then they change it do a projectile and can be dodged forgetting that nightblade tanks have blur. So now there are two iterations one that everyone hits the mark with massive collateral damage and another that will only partially work. All this time wasted for some set in the larger scope of things that is not needed. There are already skills that go through block, bleed damage, sets that lower the amount of armor resistance, defile that effects healing/passive health regeneration and skills that ignore armor resistance.

Moonsorrow

To me balance means that i can have FUN on any class while on pvp.

And fun is when can do things with the class that make you feel it has an identity/purpose and it can compete against all other classes when the stars align for a measurable brawl with decent setups on both sides.

Might be an unpopular opinion, but i feel we are right now (next patch) rather close to a functional balance, well as close as can be. Perfect balance cannot happen without deleting classes. But we are close enough.

Yes there is always cheesy setups, but one can always make counter to those and hunt them down, imo its good fun to make anti-FOTM build and go hunting them, when like 60-70% of peeps at bg are on some youtuber build with same gear and skills and you just smash a huge rock on their scissors.

Many people that read forum might think the balance is not that well, because they dont really understand the situation especially unless they play ALL the classes. I suggest that to everyone. I know nerfs/changes feel more emotional when if you got a main character (or only 1) and it gets hit by a change..

A good player can make any class work on a 4vs4vs4 bgs right now and have fun there imo. Small adjustments instead of huge buffs and nerfs as someone else said too should be the way now. Combat team at ZOS is actually doing very good work lately. Yeah, i just said that.. *hides away from the angry forum mob*

DKsUnite

Basically not dying to some stupid cheese set that someone thought of while 3 days deep in a bender (lookingat you Sloads...)

NBrookus

umagon wrote: »

It means that the mathematical foundation for the game has base stats, cost of input vs output balance, the basis of skill or passives cost or function is weighted mathematically; and skill/set counterbalance. That there are logic mathematical formulations that function for all the skills, passives, items, and sets that control their cost, function and output values.

^This.

Too many skills and sets seemed to have been thrown in the game for "hurr durr this will be cool!" without thinking of the actual repercussions or how it fits into the greater design. It's almost like the game designers don't have the balance tools they need to do the math. Then when players point out exactly how something will be imbalanced or abused on PTS, they ignore the feedback.

Balance can be "different but equal" or "rock paper scissors." ESO says it wants to be "play how you want" and different-but-equal with the stated goal that any class can tank-heal-dps. But then it throws hard counter skills and rock-paper-scissors armor sets into the mix, which amplifies any of the inevitable discrepancies in the different-but-equal approach. So you have tanks in tank-killer sets, healers in defile sets and dps power creep goes higher and higher.

Plus PVE and PVP not being balance separately leads to a bigger snarl.

To me, the pre-requisites for balance are:
1) Designers clearing stating their intended vision for each class and skill line, with the desired pros and cons of each
2) Tooltips clearly and accurately stating what skills do and how they can be countered.
3) Skills functioning correctly (*cough* Pulsar) and a minimum amount of known exploits (*cough* redacted)

We don't even have the pre-requisites filled. Until we do, 90% of player complaints will continue to be "this isn't working the way I want it to" instead of "this isn't working correctly."

idk

Balance is a myth in any decent MMORPG and gaming forums are always full of complaints from players every time changes are made and most of the complaints are merely due to inexperience.

Many players confuse their own challenges against other classes as their being a tremendous balance issue when it is really excuses they provide. Think about the extreme posts we have seen here where a player claims skill x is OP yet ends up revealing they were attacked by 6 players using that skill.

paulychan

What combat balance, in eso, means to me is;
Pvp guided changes with a disregard for pve
Split pve and pvp already. I can’t play a game type that crashes and freezes a few times every hour. Many cannot, yet pvp guides most, if not all, the changes.
My console can’t take the crashing, it will explode

DoonerSeraph

In a PvE perspective

That all classes can perform all roles with similar performance but in different ways, keeping their identity.

That all content is balanced to account ranged and melee builds, that all defenses used by DPS characters have similar performance.

That all sets dont overperform or underperform too much, old sets need to be looked at and new and OP sets shouldnt be the reason to sell DLC and expansions, but the content itself.

In a PvP perspective

No hard counters to defensive and offensive abilities (oblivion damage, defile overtuning). But yes to soft counters (increased damage against shields could be a nice 5 piece effect for shieldbreaker instead of oblivion damage).

Changes to sets or skills must consider the most obvious impacts that would be caused (sloads designed to counter heavy armor builds, but wrecks everything but, why not scale the damage to max health and target resistances then?)

In general

Dont forget that the game is about fun, and balancing around something subjective is very hard. I think gutting sustain in Morrowind was a step i the wrong direction for example. Try your best to not limit your playerbase because the top 5% is overperforming or something like that.

Ragnarock41

Tasear wrote: »

What's ideal balance in your definition?

Risk and reward. So definitely not stamblades.

Elwendryll

As long as you don't fall down, you have an ideal balance!

...

I see this as an invisible build score, calculated based of pure stats, access to buffs, duration, applications, way of obtention, etc...

If set A has a 400 weapon damage bonus and set B has a 300 weapon damage bonus. Set B must be easier to proc, or have an higher uptime. Or set A must be harder to obtain. In my opinion, 9 trait crafted sets should be inherently better than any other crafted set, for exemple.

IAVITNI

Balance refers to 2 primary areas.

1. Class performance-that all classes possess a similar/equal level of utility, whether that utility take the form of raw damage, pure utility or somewhere in between. This does not mean that they perform equally in all fields. A magplar should be the best choice in terms of raw heals and a stamDK should be the tankiest class. However, a tankden should theoretically have a lesser level of tankiness relative to a DK but this is balanced out by the tankden offering off heals and other buffs. A sorc healer would have weaker heals than a healplar but it would provide a noticeably higher level of dps to compensate.

For PvE this is somewhat hard to balance as the highest DPS class will always be the best DPS, but this is largely due to mechanics.

Classes can outperform in certain areas, but they're overall rating needs to be the same.

2. Player performance-- what many seem to forget is that balance doesn't mean everyone has to perform the same. Skill is an important factor, so new players losing to vet players, even in outnumbered situations should still be possible. Having sets that play for you or emergency 1 press clutch buttons that are spammable is OK but only if they perform to a noticeably lesser degree than proper mechanics. For instance, proc sets should realistically scale with stats, require a greater difficulty of conditions to activate or even come at an opportunity cost such as % increased damage taken, reduced [stat] for [x] seconds on activation or even a passive cost of 800-1000 resource on use. The current delayed effect renders them useless in PvP. Examples of good proc sets are Grothdar, Kra'ghs, Ilambris and Kena.

Cloak should not be as spammable as it is now. Shield stacking is an issue. Cloak uptime needs to be addressed and shield stacking should be removed but the power needs to be redistributed somewhere. Healing from allies needs to be addressed in PvP, separately from PvE.

PvP and PvE can be balanced alongside each other for the most part, but there needs to be an acknowledgement that some skills should not perform the same in both game modes.

Major Defile debuff should not be attached to spammable skills that deal high damage. Solar Barrage and Snipe should not have this buff. These skills do indeed under perform, but giving them the most powerful debuff in the game does almost nothing to alleviate their uselessness in majority of situations and makes them incredibly powerful in outnumbered fights without any real skill required of the caster. Over-performing on one extreme and under-performing on the other is not balance.

Snares should not be attached to spammables. Snaring somebody should be a conscious effort, which isn't the case when Heroic Slash or Flying Blade are the primary damage skill for a lot of builds. Decreasing the duration of snares does not address uptime.

I think it is important to state that homogenization is not balance. Class identity is very weak right now, especially for stam classes.

Xvorg

Tasear wrote: »

What's ideal balance in your definition?

In simple, different classes, all build differently, but also all of them viable in some way.

For example, Permablocking meta on PvP was unbalanced to some classes. Once Permablocking was nerfed into uselessness, it became unviable, hurting mostly Templars and DKs. Balance would have been cuting the stamina regen on a 50%~75%. That should have worked perfectly with poisons, and even ZoS could have created a poison that decreased stamina regen while blocking.

Instead, they choose the extreme path, which leads to more unbalance, erases entire playing styles and forces all players to go on bursty builds, whitout giving the tools to those classes that received the main impact of the stupid nerf.

JobooAGS

While it is not the entireity of my vision, I would like to see competitiveness between ranged stam, ranged mag, melee mag, and melee stam

TheUndeadAmulet

If you die, you don't feel like you died because x player had x ability/set/class.

When you kill someone, it feels like you deserved that kill and not one ability/set/class carried you.

ATomiX96

VaranisArano wrote: »

In PVE, the current balance is: this update, class A is king of the hill. Next update, something get changed, and "move on over, Class A, its class D's turn to be king of the hill!"

I understand why ZOS does that to keep us grinding and playing so we can be back on top again, but its tiresome to see it happen again and again and again.

I don't even have a real solution that balances class identity and class variety. But any sort of change would require ZOS to move away from the "shake it up, so players have to grind again" method of progression, and I think pigs might fly before that happens.

so nightblade is king of the hill for over a year now :thinking: and it doesnt look its going away anytime soon either.

Waffennacht

Every class has an equal opportunity to win

Edit- not regardless of skill, but from a pure tool kit and ability availability view

Doctordarkspawn

Make stuff fun. No two ways about it.