Equalising bad and good players.

tunepunk

Posted this in another thread, but creating a new thread about because it was a bit off topic...

This is just some ideas for how to close the gap between good and "bad" players.

The definition of a bad player seems to be:
Someone that only uses one bar, and like light attack and skills spamming play style, especially during boss fights.

Let's face it. Not everyone is comfortable with upkeep 2 bars worth of skills dots and buffs, while staying mobile and and staying out of stupid.


The most equalising skill in game so far is Werewolf Ultimate.
Just trying out Werewolf for the first time on one of my characters yesterday I was surprised how potent this is. I was doing 30k + dps on dummy just light attacking, with some decent gear, and could stay in wolf form for the duration of the fight. I was clearing a normal dungeon solo way faster and easier than I do with any of my other characters.

As a VERY casual player I have a really hard time pushing 30k dps on a dummy on any of my characters. I REALLY suck at weapon swapping, keeping up buffs, dots and weaving, so the werewolf form was like a perfect match for me. It fit my play style like a glove. I'm surprised I never tried it before.

The whole mechanic of werewolf is quite interesting. Clicking that ultimate you opt out of using backbar, and get significant boost to your single werewolf bar in while in werewolf form.

Even if I geared up to the best of my potential, I could probably never reach dps equal to some of the best end game builds as a werewolf, but if felt REALLY good to be able to get some decent numbers without worrying too much about upkeep, dots, and weapon swapping.

But the point is. Werewolf does not fit all, in terms of Looks, and skills, mechanic.

Possible solution equalizing "bad" and good players?
What ZOS can learn from that is to come up with something similar that has a functionality similar to werewolf. Opting out of a backbar for a significant boost to your single bar is a great concept for equalising the difference in player skill, just like how werewolf works.

• They could even try to do it as a Potion to test it. Pop the potion pre boss fight. Locks your other bar, but gives you significant boost to your current bar. Pretty easy to balance as well. If max potential while using this potion was about 75-80% of what a good player utilising both bars would do, that would be a great start.
• Or they could try it as a 5 set bonus. 5th set piece prevents your from switching to your secondary bar but, significantly buffs your main bar. Let's say it would give you something like 1000 weapon/spell damage, or something along those lines. Not having a second bar would be a huge downside for some, but a good plus for some that has a decent 1 bar build.

Just by testing werewolf for one day, I found that this skill is a very good option for closing the gap between good and bad players, when it comes to DPS potential.

robpr

Switching bars is not that hard. The whole animation canceling while maintaining the flow of your abilities is. WW is bloody easy to play, because as you said, you deal good dps just light attacking with right gear. Using WW attacks even makes you deal LESS dps if we taking Blood Moon set into account.

To equalize players, ZOS would have to get rid of weaving, removing one of the notable features of the game and in my opinion will be opposed by majority of players. Whole weaving thing is kinda makes Eso unique and adds a little of skill factor to the game.

tunepunk

robpr wrote: »

Switching bars is not that hard. The whole animation canceling while maintaining the flow of your abilities is. WW is bloody easy to play, because as you said, you deal good dps just light attacking with right gear. Using WW attacks even makes you deal LESS dps if we taking Blood Moon set into account.

To equalize players, ZOS would have to get rid of weaving, removing one of the notable features of the game and in my opinion will be opposed by majority of players. Whole weaving thing is kinda makes Eso unique and adds a little of skill factor to the game.

Well in my opinion a bar of 5 skills+ulti+potion is enough for weaving. And I don't think that weaving 10 skills instead of 5 is a major skill factor. Learning mechanics is probably more of a skill factor than how many buffs and dots you can keep up. Learning when to use skills should be more of a factor than how many effects you can stack.

SaintSubwayy

robpr wrote: »

To equalize players, ZOS would have to get rid of weaving, removing one of the notable features of the game and in my opinion will be opposed by majority of players. Whole weaving thing is kinda makes Eso unique and adds a little of skill factor to the game.

ZOS has lowered the cieling and raised the floor many times, without adressing annimation cancelling, weaving and groupsupport.
Those things make the difference between good groups / players and "bad" players.

Keep in mind that the Endgame in this game revolvs arround these things since ESO is a Skillbased MMO, and not gear, or lvl based (Yes the make a difference in DPS, but you can have BIS gear if you dont know how to use it, you'll deal not as much dmg as someone with non BIS gear knowing how to play).
I wont even imagine what would happen to the playerbase if they change those things in any way. Just look whats happening atm with the shield change ideas from ZOS....more than 80% of ppl who joined the Polls said its a bad change.

Jierdanit

Some good ideas in general, but I have a question..... Why at all would you want to equalize bad and good players? Why should someone, who plays the game for a short time, doesnt play well and does not have much experience, be able to get so close to someone who played the game for several years and practiced a very long time to get the experience and skill he has now?
(Btw. I dont play much PvE and cant even get over 10k single target DPS.....)

Maryal

Very few players are 'bad' ... although there are a fair amount of players who don't have much experience, don't know much about game mechanics, have a fair amount of misinformation about the game. None of us started out as really good players, we all were noobs, fumbled a lot, made a lot of mistakes and the first skill we leveled quite high was 'dying'.

The way to 'equalize' is through experience, and that means dying a lot. Learn by your mistakes, figure out what you did wrong, or what you could have done better. There are a lot of content developers that are quite knowledgably, but there are also a lot who think they know a lot, but they don't. Figuring out which are which is not always easy.

You talk about animation cancelling, but all you really should be thinking about is weaving at this point. Practice doing that on a target dummy. Skill/ability > LA > skill/ability > LA > skill/ability > LA.

Buffs/debuffs are you friend ... try not to let them fall off (easier said than done when you are first starting out). Keeping those buffs/debuffs up will add a lot to your dps.

Get Combat Metrics (an add on if you are on PC) - useful when you practice on your target dummy. You will see how well you are weaving, how well you are keeping your buffs/debuffs up, etc. The information lets you know where you need to improve, and where you are doing pretty good.

It's not easy when you are starting out, but keep practicing and learning and you will improve.

kylewwefan

WW has no AoE. They do really strong single target damage with a rotation of LA LA LA LA LA LA etc.

You never tried it before because they weren’t always like that. Maybe the rotation if it’s safe to call it that, was the same but the output damage was not what it is now. They were tuned fittingly with wolfhunter.

I do like how it made Molag Kena worth using on something.

tunepunk

Well it depends on how you define a good and a bad player.

How good and bad is defined in PvE
Good player = Can stack 2 bars worth of effects, dots, and buffs.
Bad player = Can't do that.

How good and bad is defined in PvP
Good player = Can react to what's going on and survive/getting kills while doing so.
Bad player = Can't do that.

So weaving per say does not apply to PVP, because it's a completely different beast. You can't just put down your ground effects, and mindlessly start doing practiced weave rotation, A PvE player doing that in PvP would probably be a pretty terrible player.

PvP looks a lot different. Many have offensive bars and defensive bars, and switch over under pressure, escape, or you keep some utility on second bar.

PvE (especially boss fights) has evolved to becoming more and more of a mindless practiced weave race which I highly dislike. I would prefer if the PvP play style was viable in PvE, but that's currently not the case. It doesn't matter how fast you react, how well you time your skill, if you got the mechanics down. As long as you're not stacking 2 bars worth of effects you're a "bad" player in PvE. And that's what needs to change... Using more of a reactive play style in PvE should be viable, because I really don't like "weaving". It's mindlessly boring, and one of the reasons I don't do much trials at all.

DeadlyRecluse

tunepunk wrote: »

This is just some ideas for how to close the gap between good and "bad" players.

...and this is the goal because?

eliisra

Problem with bar swap is the fact that it can be unresponsive imo, not that it's hard to press an extra key.

ESO is fairly easy to learn. I'm a terrible gamer personally, as in I get completely rekt(by kids lol) in skill-based games where you have to use advanced multi-key combinations while aiming, changing angles etc simultaneously. I have no chance in hell.

But I never had any problems figuring out how to keep a few dots+buffs up and weapon swap in ESO.

So no, I don't think we need one hotbar options for "bad" players. Because pretty much anyone can learn to play with both, unless they have an actual physical disability.

Learning how to weave perfectly between skills for max dps, is the tricky part, not so much weap swap. Especially if you have mediocre performance or bad(real life) gaming equipment.

Kolache

My problem with DPS isn't that I can't weave, layer dots, etc. It's that each of my stamina characters dropping endless hail, razor calrops, poison injection and rearming trap before crushing weapon is borrrrriiiiiiiing...

The choice continues to be between content that is so easy that it doesn't matter what you use and content that is so hard that you can only use a fraction of the skills/sets in the game.

So my ongoing challenge is to find builds that don't handicap my group too much, can complete all the content I enjoy, and don't use skills/rotations that I find painfully boring. It's sort of worked out over time but I feel like I'm fighting the game more than I'm fighting the content.

Edderino

The difference between a good player and a bad player in ANY game is defined by how efficient the players are with the game's mechanics. A good player knows the game's mechanics, a bad player does not. It's as simple as that.

This applies to all games.
First person shooters: how well the player aims and how good they are at recoil control.
MMORPG: How well the player can understand combat mechanics.
etc.

Understanding a game's mechanics comes with time and practice. Giving players who do not learn ESO's game mechanics a crutch, by buffing them for only using a certain % of the game's mechanics, will result with them never really learning the game's mechanics. They will never become "good" players because this completely skips the whole time and practice process. Bad players would perform as well as somebody that actually learned the game's mechanics. At that point, what would be the point of learning the game mechanics at all?

tunepunk

Edderino wrote: »

The difference between a good player and a bad player in ANY game is defined by how efficient the players are with the game's mechanics. A good player knows the game's mechanics, a bad player does not. It's as simple as that.

This applies to all games.
First person shooters: how well the player aims and how good they are at recoil control.
MMORPG: How well the player can understand combat mechanics.
etc.

Understanding a game's mechanics comes with time and practice. Giving players who do not learn ESO's game mechanics a crutch, by buffing them for only using a certain % of the game's mechanics, will result with them never really learning the game's mechanics. They will never become "good" players because this completely skips the whole time and practice process. Bad players would perform as well as somebody that actually learned the game's mechanics. At that point, what would be the point of learning the game mechanics at all?

Well the mechanic is already in game. (instead of 2 bar rotation) In the form of Werewolf. If that fit some persons play styles more, what's the harm in adding more similar mechanics?

Anywyay.... trying PvE as Werewolf for the first time, I found the werewolf mechanic really fun to play... but only wish it could be extended so that you could play class specific skills using a similar method, by gimping yourself to only one bar. It does not negate the "traditional" weaving for those who prefer that type of gameplay....

BNOC

Why are we looking for solutions to bridge a gap between the base player and those that simply don't want to learn?

The game shouldn't be catering to everyone, just because.

If you aren't good at the game, that's fine, you don't need to be; Not everyone has to be able to complete and or compete.

RaptorRodeoGod

Jierdanit wrote: »

Some good ideas in general, but I have a question..... Why at all would you want to equalize bad and good players? Why should someone, who plays the game for a short time, doesnt play well and does not have much experience, be able to get so close to someone who played the game for several years and practiced a very long time to get the experience and skill he has now?
(Btw. I dont play much PvE and cant even get over 10k single target DPS.....)

Because bad players want to have fun too.

tunepunk

RaptorRodeoGod wrote: »

Jierdanit wrote: »

Some good ideas in general, but I have a question..... Why at all would you want to equalize bad and good players? Why should someone, who plays the game for a short time, doesnt play well and does not have much experience, be able to get so close to someone who played the game for several years and practiced a very long time to get the experience and skill he has now?
(Btw. I dont play much PvE and cant even get over 10k single target DPS.....)

Because bad players want to have fun too.

Exactly. Lot of people want to participate in things but never get the chance unless they practice, farm BiS gear.

It never happened to me but some are getting kicked from groups because they can't even pull their own weight.. Easy "spam" builds shouldn't be anywhere near meta, but should at least be viable enough to be able to participate. I wouldn't mind doing vet dungeons and normal trials with a whole group of pew pew-bow light attackers, and skill spammers, if they at least knew the mechanics, know when to step out of stupid, and did a fair ammount of dps.

I've seen people struggle to hit 20k on a skelly. Sure they might not get everything right. Bet when they feel ready, and have the time to practice and start to compete they could go for meta builds and practice complex rotations, or not.... if it's not their cup of tea, but they should at least be able to participate.

Prabooo

robpr wrote: »

Switching bars is not that hard.

It is when you have high internet latency

Mister_DMC

No, just like real life not everyone is equal. Participation awards need to go away.

Kikke

Prabooo wrote: »

robpr wrote: »

Switching bars is not that hard.

It is when you have high internet latency

Wierd I know people with near perfect rotarion with 999+ ping. Its all down to the timing.

Gilvoth

i do not want your ideas in eso, and i bet im not alone in that opinion.
many of us are satisfied with the way devs made eso, and want it stay that way.
please stop trying to make eso the way You think it should be, and let the developers do what they do best.

goldenflameslinger

If they over simplified combat, the “good” players would leave. It took me like 3 years to get “good” and I would be pretty salty if the game was cheesed to help noobs. They need to get on the grind train like I did and earn it.

flacidstone

Hah!

JinMori

How about this:

Game is balanced in a way that all classes can do pretty much the same dps, or as close as possible, they have defense in different ways and different buffs to keep the "feeling" of the class.

AS for the rest.... get good, if people like you were to balance the game everything would become a boring mess, you cannot remove the disparity between good and bad players, the good player will always be better, and it doesn't matter how much you try to close the gap, it will always result in gameplay being diluted because you don't wanna put a smidge of effort into it, skill cap should be high, because high skill cap, means a lot of chances to improve, and that;'s what keeps the gameplay interesting, learning new things, new mechanics, not having a 80 % buff because you don't want to bar swap (which is easy af), wtf is this garbage?

From what i read, it seems that either most bad players just don;t wanna put effort into anything, and that's fine, stay at that level, but then don;t complain when someone who is much better than you roflstomps you, what did you expect?

Get good, or stay bad, the choice is yours, and it's not like it;'s all that hard to get good anyway, that;s what most people seem to think. oh, you need to play 10 hours a day to become a good player, that is absolute bs, some of the most important things in becoming a good player, are awareness, which you should develop, for various reasons, memory, same thing, time perception (it helps with dots and timing skills), which is also nice to have in real life situations, reaction time, which is also nice to have in real life, notice how all these things can be trained in real life, and are useful.

What is your excuse now?

Sure you can pull 30 k dps la with ww, is it fun engaging combat? Of course not.

And good players will still pull much more than you, iv'e seen 50k+ dummy parses with ww.

tunepunk

JinMori wrote: »

How about this:

Game is balanced in a way that all classes can do pretty much the same dps, or as close as possible, they have defense in different ways and different buffs to keep the "feeling" of the class.

AS for the rest.... get good, if people like you were to balance the game everything would become a boring mess, you cannot remove the disparity between good and bad players, the good player will always be better, and it doesn't matter how much you try to close the gap, it will always result in gameplay being diluted because you don't wanna put a smidge of effort into it, skill cap should be high, because high skill cap, means a lot of chances to improve, and that;'s what keeps the gameplay interesting, learning new things, new mechanics, not having a 80 % buff because you don't want to bar swap (which is easy af), wtf is this garbage?

From what i read, it seems that either most bad players just don;t wanna put effort into anything, and that's fine, stay at that level, but then don;t complain when someone who is much better than you roflstomps you, what did you expect?

Get good, or stay bad, the choice is yours, and it's not like it;'s all that hard to get good anyway, that;s what most people seem to think. oh, you need to play 10 hours a day to become a good player, that is absolute bs, some of the most important things in becoming a good player, are awareness, which you should develop, for various reasons, memory, same thing, time perception (it helps with dots and timing skills), which is also nice to have in real life situations, reaction time, which is also nice to have in real life, notice how all these things can be trained in real life, and are useful.

What is your excuse now?

Sure you can pull 30 k dps la with ww, is it fun engaging combat? Of course not.

And good players will still pull much more than you, iv'e seen 50k+ dummy parses with ww.

Thanks for confirming what i've been saying since the start. A bad ww can pull 30. A good ww can pull 50+
A bad non ww does barely does 15k a good one 60.

So should ww be removed from the game so you can feel good about yourself?

JinMori

tunepunk wrote: »

JinMori wrote: »

How about this:

Game is balanced in a way that all classes can do pretty much the same dps, or as close as possible, they have defense in different ways and different buffs to keep the "feeling" of the class.

AS for the rest.... get good, if people like you were to balance the game everything would become a boring mess, you cannot remove the disparity between good and bad players, the good player will always be better, and it doesn't matter how much you try to close the gap, it will always result in gameplay being diluted because you don't wanna put a smidge of effort into it, skill cap should be high, because high skill cap, means a lot of chances to improve, and that;'s what keeps the gameplay interesting, learning new things, new mechanics, not having a 80 % buff because you don't want to bar swap (which is easy af), wtf is this garbage?

From what i read, it seems that either most bad players just don;t wanna put effort into anything, and that's fine, stay at that level, but then don;t complain when someone who is much better than you roflstomps you, what did you expect?

Get good, or stay bad, the choice is yours, and it's not like it;'s all that hard to get good anyway, that;s what most people seem to think. oh, you need to play 10 hours a day to become a good player, that is absolute bs, some of the most important things in becoming a good player, are awareness, which you should develop, for various reasons, memory, same thing, time perception (it helps with dots and timing skills), which is also nice to have in real life situations, reaction time, which is also nice to have in real life, notice how all these things can be trained in real life, and are useful.

What is your excuse now?

Sure you can pull 30 k dps la with ww, is it fun engaging combat? Of course not.

And good players will still pull much more than you, iv'e seen 50k+ dummy parses with ww.

Thanks for confirming what i've been saying since the start. A bad ww can pull 30. A good ww can pull 50+
A bad non ww does barely does 15k a good one 60.

So should ww be removed from the game so you can feel good about yourself?

You completely missed the point.

It's not about feeling good about yourself, it's about effort, players who put effort into doing stuff will always be rewarded more than players who don't.

This is a lesson not only for a game, but also real life, effort is rewarded with results.

End of story.

There is no magic that will make you do 50 k dps as a bad player, get good if you wanna do better.

If everything was balanced your way, the game would be boring, you don't balance based on the lower 10 % of players, unless you want a game with the depth of a puddle, gameplay wise.

Feel good about yourself, lol, wasn't even hinted, it was just a logical conclusion to the argument you made, because when logic is not on your side, emotions are.

Well, i feel i should be able to pull the same dps with no effort, well, make a game like that, and see how long it lasts.

If you can pull the same dps, or close to the same dps with 0 effort then why would people make other builds, but at the same time, you will ruin the gameplay, you can keep playing ww, but it should not be the standard.

And by the way, 50 k was relatively low balling, and it's still almost double your dps.

SquareSausage

The solution is for bad players to 'git gud'.

What's holding bad players back?

I wouldn't say it's mechanics, but more a players ability. Ability to lay down a repetitive rotation whilst light attacking inbetween. It's having the patience to learn and commit to muscle memory.
Another factor is players reaction times. To foresee danger and react, be that roll dodge, shield or heal.

Simplifying the game to some unnatural playing field will drive good players away all for the bad player to have their moment of substandard glory.

Not saying I'm a good or bad player but giving equality where it doesn't exist never works.

JinMori

SquareSausage wrote: »

The solution is for bad players to 'git gud'.

What's holding bad players back?

I wouldn't say it's mechanics, but more a players ability. Ability to lay down a repetitive rotation whilst light attacking inbetween. It's having the patience to learn and commit to muscle memory.
Another factor is players reaction times. To foresee danger and react, be that roll dodge, shield or heal.

Simplifying the game to some unnatural playing field will drive good players away all for the bad player to have their moment of substandard glory.

Not saying I'm a good or bad player but giving equality where it doesn't exist never works.

What is holding bad players back is effort, and not much effort by the way, you can get to 25k dps with just some easy adjustments, like using some more dots, using some light attacks in between skills, reducing the time you are not doing anything, all of these things can be learned fairly easily, but they don;t even wanna do that, they would prefer instead if everything would be brought to their standard, and everything would become mindless spamming of light attacks only, and get the same result, well, that would make for a very boring game.

You already have ww, to close the gap at least a little, take it and be done with it.

deLioncourt

robpr wrote: »

Switching bars is not that hard. The whole animation canceling while maintaining the flow of your abilities is. WW is bloody easy to play, because as you said, you deal good dps just light attacking with right gear. Using WW attacks even makes you deal LESS dps if we taking Blood Moon set into account.

To equalize players, ZOS would have to get rid of weaving, removing one of the notable features of the game and in my opinion will be opposed by majority of players. Whole weaving thing is kinda makes Eso unique and adds a little of skill factor to the game.

Back when the game first came out, they attempted to remove weaving and found that they couldn't do it, so they announced that they intended it to be that way from the start.

It's where the "working as intended" joke came from on these forums.

Illuvatarr

Stamina builds have made it to where you cant really tell good from bad. They just win if they get near you.

Its really *** dumb.

Sanctum74

There are more resources available now then there ever has been in the history of this game. Many of us had to figure out builds, rotations, and mechanics on our own and more importantly practice.

If people choose not to use the resources available to them then there is still plenty of content to enjoy in this game that will take years to finish.

Not wanting to take the time to learn the classes, mechanics, and practice is no excuse to try to bridge the gap between players.

Maryal

tunepunk wrote: »

JinMori wrote: »

How about this:

Game is balanced in a way that all classes can do pretty much the same dps, or as close as possible, they have defense in different ways and different buffs to keep the "feeling" of the class.

AS for the rest.... get good, if people like you were to balance the game everything would become a boring mess, you cannot remove the disparity between good and bad players, the good player will always be better, and it doesn't matter how much you try to close the gap, it will always result in gameplay being diluted because you don't wanna put a smidge of effort into it, skill cap should be high, because high skill cap, means a lot of chances to improve, and that;'s what keeps the gameplay interesting, learning new things, new mechanics, not having a 80 % buff because you don't want to bar swap (which is easy af), wtf is this garbage?

From what i read, it seems that either most bad players just don;t wanna put effort into anything, and that's fine, stay at that level, but then don;t complain when someone who is much better than you roflstomps you, what did you expect?

Get good, or stay bad, the choice is yours, and it's not like it;'s all that hard to get good anyway, that;s what most people seem to think. oh, you need to play 10 hours a day to become a good player, that is absolute bs, some of the most important things in becoming a good player, are awareness, which you should develop, for various reasons, memory, same thing, time perception (it helps with dots and timing skills), which is also nice to have in real life situations, reaction time, which is also nice to have in real life, notice how all these things can be trained in real life, and are useful.

What is your excuse now?

Sure you can pull 30 k dps la with ww, is it fun engaging combat? Of course not.

And good players will still pull much more than you, iv'e seen 50k+ dummy parses with ww.

Thanks for confirming what i've been saying since the start. A bad ww can pull 30. A good ww can pull 50+
A bad non ww does barely does 15k a good one 60.

So should ww be removed from the game so you can feel good about yourself?

How much DPS someone can pull depends on buffs/debuffs others in the group are providing (forget dummy parses, they DO NOT represent actual gameplay and they are way too easy to cheese). More importantly, or maybe just as important, is the gear are they using to get that dps? Enhanced weapons, gear from doing Vet Hard Mode, or weapons from VMA, DSA, all golded out weapons, armor, jewelry, customized jewelry, etc. -- it makes a difference in raw damage as well as sustain.

People need to get over this 'good player' 'bad player' notion based on dps. There are players who get carried through some of the most difficult content in the game and get perfected weapons and gear ... gear that allows them to increase their dps. They didn't 'earn' that gear, they were carried, but nevertheless, they now have enhanced weapons/gear that allows them to increase their dps. How can we say they are 'good players' ? Why aren't the high dps people not 'tutoring' the lower dps people (in guilds for example). Many 'forum warriors' do little to help the game or individual gamers improve. Bragging doesn't help, labeling people as 'bad players' isn't helpful in the least! Where are the guilds with 'high dps' players -- are they willing to take lower dps players to observe them, help them improve, etc.? I'm not seeing them in these forums advocating their services. I'm so tired of seeing meaningless labels tossed back and forth 'only good players do this or that' ... or ... 'only bad players do this or that' -- pffft ... these labels create an atmosphere of 'haves' and 'have nots' ... and THAT doesn't do anything to help the game or gamers.