Combat Update in U21 - A New Approach

Weps

All nice and cool on paper.
Looking forward to know what are you planning to do with the combat in the next year.


But now fix the damn trials, otherwise all of this will be wasted effort

Aluneth

John_Falstaff wrote: »

@Aluneth , yes, you're definitely not playing any sort of competitive side of this game. ^^ Explains. You're lucky, you have such an easy time saying 'let's keep racial passives, they're lore friendly'.

@ZarkingFrued , it's officially a roleplaying game. Guess what 'RPG' in MMORPG stands for. There's that other part too, though, have to cater to both. And races are self-sufficient. If you like being a khajiit, you don't need numbers for deeper immersion.

WoW is competitive, LoL is competitive, ESO is not. The majority of people aren't playing this game to be competitive. I would be comfortable to say that most people play ESO because of the world, and the lore is a big part of that. If it hadn't been Elder Scrolls, this game wouldn't have had the playerbase that it did.

I'm not going to discuss with you anymore, as you've done nothing but attack what I enjoy, and the way I play the game. The moment you started to focus on me, you lost that argument.

Illuvatarr

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/profile/ZOS_RobGarrett

Still listening to wrong people and/or wrong ideas. Focus should be on class balance and amping up pve to deal with CP power enhancements. CP has done a great deal to being mag classes back into balance with stam but there are still things that need to be done. Racial passives are a part of it, but classes/weapon abilities themselves need to be looked at. Adding wands/tomes/orbs for magicka classes is an idea. Server lag, especially on Vivek, needs to be looked at. Animation cancelling needs to be looked at as well as the ability to use third party programs to make it easier (it’s necessary for Sorc and other mag classes right now and bypassing game mechanics should not be an answer to balance issues).

Yes racial passives need a look. However, it might be best to do them alongside other necessary changes as opposed to putting them on the back burner.

John_Falstaff

@Aluneth , just don't let things you enjoy provoke you to prevent other people from enjoying too, and you won't get heat from anyone. You know, like it happened here. Otherwise I also don't care much for opinion of a stamina healer who thinks he knows everything about competitive side of ESO.

Minno

BigBadVolk wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

old list of race ultimates:
- argonian: Histskin - Health regeneration increased by 100 for 15 sec. Activated elite ability.
- dark elf: Ancestral Guardian - 15 seconds, activated, can taunt.
- nord: Battle Cry - 7% AE damage increase anyone in area, activated.
- breton: Dragon Skin – Damage shielded is absorbed as magicka during this period.
- orc: Berserker Rage – Increase damage done by 20% and reduce damage taken by 10%.
- redguard: Power Charge – Increase power by 20% for 15 seconds.
- high elf: Highborn – Increase magicka recovery by 100 for 15 seconds.
- bosmer: Summon Bear – (Instant / Self / 100 Ultimate) Summon a Bear to attack nearby enemies for 15 seconds.
- kitty: Eye of Fear – (Instant / 36 meter range / 120 Ultimate) Fear target and cause it to take 5% additional damage from all attacks for 5 seconds.
- imperial - ?

source:
https://eldersouls.com/_/elder-scrolls-online/news/racial-skills-daggerfall-covenant-r159

I wonder how some of these will change, like the Dark Elf prob gonna be a discount destro ult or they are all gonna be totally reworked

those are from 2013 though, and the game has changed ALOT since then. I wouldn't expect them to drop those ultimates without reviewing with the class reps first.

And that assumes we are getting those ultimates. But based on Rob's roadmap, I see no other item that might be for chapter release./

Sygil05

I appreciate the effort that this post seems to indicate that ZOS is making, but it's pretty scary to me that they don't have a long term vision they were working from and have to spend time putting this together. That seems like confirmation that they really had no real plan on where they were going with all the changes they're making, which is what has led to the constant problems with each successive update.

I hope the focus on 'racial passives' was just due to a lack of detail regarding other changes that are needed. Racial passives seem pretty far down the list when you look at all the other deficiencies within the classes themselves, but maybe they're the easiest things to change and will serve as the basis for changing the classes, which is going to be a larger undertaking.

That's my hope, at least. That, and that we don't have to wait 6 months for a follow up on this post.

Kessra

I hope ZOS will rethink their position towards LA-weaving a bit. Currently fluent LA-weaving is just to important. LAs deal roughly 15-20% (if not even more) of the overall damage of a player besides providing certain buffs that further increase damage of abilities. New players or players with low internet-bandwith or PC-hardware usually have big troubles with it and are therefore in a clera disadvantage. Don't get me wrong, it still should be benefitial to weave LA correctly, but as it is now, it is just too rewarding.

The game in addition doesn't even teach new players how to weave and are therefore usually more surprised when told they should do a light attack and when it is about to fire off press an ability to cancel the LA animation. Most just play this game like a WoW clone only doing their abilities and just LA/HAing when their resources are depleted.

The game should alos let the players decide whether they want to perform a LA or a HA rotation, in it's current form HA are only useful to regain some resources, which by lore doesn't make much sense IMO. If a player has the time to perform a HA it should be rewarding IMO and put on a debuff on the enemy mob/player as penalty for not interrupting/putting preassure onto the player.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against LA-weaving at all and correct weaving should increase the overall dmg by a certain factor but currently the damage-output it currently is able to deliver is just way to high IMO and therefore a necessity. Especially with sets boosting LA's even more numbers quickly go out of hand and the differences between good to decent to casual players is just to extreme. Especially in vet-dungeons I quite often see players that struggle with killing mobs. Usually they don't perform any LAs in between their abilities and keep spamming one of their abilities until they are out of resources. That's when they start doing LA, sometimes also HAs.

What I'd like to see would be to increase the overall buff-duration obtained through LA/HA and reducing the dmg-output of LAs significantly. Players weaving fluently will still have a dmg boost (i.e. 3-5k) while players having some (technical or motoric) problems aren't pennalized that much. Also, some system should be implemented that informs new players on how they weave.

Zeromaz

I’m impressed. This post wins a cookie. Thanks

Bashev

Kessra wrote: »

I hope ZOS will rethink their position towards LA-weaving a bit. Currently fluent LA-weaving is just to important. LAs deal roughly 15-20% (if not even more) of the overall damage of a player besides providing certain buffs that further increase damage of abilities. New players or players with low internet-bandwith or PC-hardware usually have big troubles with it and are therefore in a clera disadvantage. Don't get me wrong, it still should be benefitial to weave LA correctly, but as it is now, it is just too rewarding.

Actually I have the feeling that LA damage was increased so much because a lot of new players or Skyrim fans play mainly with LA. And ZoS wants them to have better DPS.

But as everything the pro players take always better advantage of such mechanics. It was the same issue with every anti ball group tool designed in PvP. It works vs them but it works better when they use it.

SpiderKnight

Maybe I'm alone in this, but we really don't need more sets every single dlc drop. Where are the fixes or improvements to current crafted sets? Mainly 8-9 trait sets that make the time we put into research seem like a wasted effort.
*cough* TBS *cough*

Minno

SpiderKnight wrote: »

Maybe I'm alone in this, but we really don't need more sets every single dlc drop. Where are the fixes or improvements to current crafted sets? Mainly 8-9 trait sets that make the time we put into research seem like a wasted effort.
*cough* TBS *cough*

I don't mind the sets. I remember when we all had just seducers, healers habit, hundings rage and farming nirn traits lol

Arato

Royaji wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

I see a nerf to redguards and a lot of angry sorcs in our future.

No way, Redguard has been nerfed over and over. As it stands, Redguard has a slight advantage in PvE while being a very balanced race in PvP. The better route would be to buff the PvE sustain of some other races. Redguard is ideally the power level other races should be at.

The only races which are actually overloaded when it comes to stats, especially in a PvP context, are Orc and Argonian.

This is how I personally see racial strength:

Overtuned- Orc, Argonian
Well tuned- Redguard, High Elf, Dark Elf, Khajiit, Wood Elf, Breton
Undertuned- Imperial, Nord

We've heard the same story with class balance. "NB is fine, just buff other classes to their level." Yeah, let's see how that went. Redguard, High Elf and probably Argonian are all getting nerfs. This is going to be the sad truth.

Why nerf Altmer when Dunmer is already recommended over them for magicka DPS? The only time Altmer has an arguable advantage over Dunmer is for pet sorcs that use almost exclusively lightning damage and their pets do more damage based on altmer's higher magicka. Otherwise even for non pet magicka sorc everyone recommends Dunmer.

Merlin13KAGL

Relatively eloquent way of saying "Damage Control."

Sandman929

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Relatively eloquent way of saying "Damage Control."

I thought it was saying "we haven't really given much thought to having a vision for ESO combat, but we're going to start soon. Pinky promise."

DHale

That’s a long post but let me do my best to summarize. ZOS you don’t tweak it boom from firecracker to nuclear mushroom cloud. So my best advise quit nerfing stuff... let players get better or die quickly. The end and thank you for fixing the 1 mill bugs.

Merlin13KAGL

Sandman929 wrote: »

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Relatively eloquent way of saying "Damage Control."

I thought it was saying "we haven't really given much thought to having a vision for ESO combat, but we're going to start soon. Pinky promise."

It'll be interesting to see how they try to un-wreck a train enough to hopefully get another years' worth of have anything left to balance. (All while introducing must-have OP sets to get people to buy pending DLC along the way.)

"Just keep paying hang in there 'till the first of the year."

Arato

Just whatever you do with races.. don't make any races change roles in what they're good at like what was initially tried the last time there was a racials tweak and you tried to turn Argonians from a good tank race to a good healer race screwing over those who had rolled argonian tanks based on the available bonuses at launch. I'm glad there ended up being a workable compromise but it doesn't bode well for the future if they try to do stuff like say "well we're going to take dunmer from a magicka race to a stamina race, because of their dual wield passive"

Suddwrath

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

To that effect, the team is currently investing a portion of its time into codifying our vision and long-term strategy for combat.

In time we’ll also want to share more about the vision and strategy that will drive future combat updates.

The lack of sharing the vision and long term goals for combat has always bothered me, so thank you for mentioning this. Knowing the long-term vision will definitely help alleviate some of my previous worries about the game.

Minno

Sandman929 wrote: »

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Relatively eloquent way of saying "Damage Control."

I thought it was saying "we haven't really given much thought to having a vision for ESO combat, but we're going to start soon. Pinky promise."

I read it as "i didnt join ESO to play around with sandbox bugs and baby-sets every DLC. Expect a shakeup soon and better pvp balancing"

tamrielwinner

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

• When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role.
• The combat power provided by each race should be more equalized.
• Players should feel a stronger sense of power progression through racial passives as they level up.
• The unique feeling and flavor each race provides should be retained and enhanced where possible, and remain faithful to established lore.

please don't make all the races the same, they're really pretty good atm. weaker races like nords could use some help. making all the races viable for all gameplay roles is a really bad idea and not fun. their unique ability to fill roles is what makes them great and powerful.

Ramber

the game was balanced fine before Summerset and its well enough now, why, for the love of all that is holy ,will you not just take this time to improve overall performance? PvE and PvE have just taken a dump with lag spikes and FPS drop, freezes, DCs...... ? heh???

dimensional

Jake1576 wrote: »

you guys need to also take a look at how much time it takes for console player's to get a patch for bugs you introduce into the game after each update it's ridiculous we have to wait weeks or months for a fix for such game breaking bugs you guys cause

blame the console companies, not ZOS.

BigBadVolk

Minno wrote: »

BigBadVolk wrote: »

Minno wrote: »

old list of race ultimates:
- argonian: Histskin - Health regeneration increased by 100 for 15 sec. Activated elite ability.
- dark elf: Ancestral Guardian - 15 seconds, activated, can taunt.
- nord: Battle Cry - 7% AE damage increase anyone in area, activated.
- breton: Dragon Skin – Damage shielded is absorbed as magicka during this period.
- orc: Berserker Rage – Increase damage done by 20% and reduce damage taken by 10%.
- redguard: Power Charge – Increase power by 20% for 15 seconds.
- high elf: Highborn – Increase magicka recovery by 100 for 15 seconds.
- bosmer: Summon Bear – (Instant / Self / 100 Ultimate) Summon a Bear to attack nearby enemies for 15 seconds.
- kitty: Eye of Fear – (Instant / 36 meter range / 120 Ultimate) Fear target and cause it to take 5% additional damage from all attacks for 5 seconds.
- imperial - ?

source:
https://eldersouls.com/_/elder-scrolls-online/news/racial-skills-daggerfall-covenant-r159

I wonder how some of these will change, like the Dark Elf prob gonna be a discount destro ult or they are all gonna be totally reworked

those are from 2013 though, and the game has changed ALOT since then. I wouldn't expect them to drop those ultimates without reviewing with the class reps first.

And that assumes we are getting those ultimates. But based on Rob's roadmap, I see no other item that might be for chapter release./

well either new wep skill lines or new class for the chapter, I'd say the racial thing comes with the dungeon one and a class balance will be the chapter

Gnortranermara

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

I’m guessing many of you will be interested to know more about the racial balance changes. While we aren’t ready to share specific details yet, here’s a peek at the goals driving the team’s effort:

• When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role.
• The combat power provided by each race should be more equalized.
• Players should feel a stronger sense of power progression through racial passives as they level up.
• The unique feeling and flavor each race provides should be retained and enhanced where possible, and remain faithful to established lore.

That's all for now. Feedback, as always, is welcome.

For years players have been proposing a solution to this that is very popular with fans, very easy to implement, and very monetizable for the company:

1. Separate the racial "flavor passive" (the first, free one) from the other three passives.
2. Make the other three passives available to any race. Brand them as "Birth Signs" or "Divine Blessings" or whatever. Maybe make them customizable.
3. Sell stones to change passives in the Crown Store. Make money.

Sandman929

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

I’m guessing many of you will be interested to know more about the racial balance changes. While we aren’t ready to share specific details yet, here’s a peek at the goals driving the team’s effort:

• When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role.
• The combat power provided by each race should be more equalized.
• Players should feel a stronger sense of power progression through racial passives as they level up.
• The unique feeling and flavor each race provides should be retained and enhanced where possible, and remain faithful to established lore.

That's all for now. Feedback, as always, is welcome.

For years players have been proposing a solution to this that is very popular with fans, very easy to implement, and very monetizable for the company:

1. Separate the racial "flavor passive" (the first, free one) from the other three passives.
2. Make the other three passives available to any race. Brand them as "Birth Signs" or "Divine Blessings" or whatever. Maybe make them customizable.
3. Sell stones to change passives in the Crown Store. Make money.

Please let this happen.

flguy147ub17_ESO

Sandman929 wrote: »

Racial passives, useless sets and bug fixes are all fine uses of time, but if you're really doing a deep dive on combat for the next year+, it might be a good idea to take a good long look at the area of the game that ZOS chooses to exclude in portions of their own game because of the imbalance that it creates: The Champion Point system.

CP System was a horrible idea. Its one reason there are nerfs. You cant keep passively buffing damage, survivability, resistances, healing, etc without nerfing it somewhere else. Also you cant balance a game for players who are CP 160 and CP 810. The difference in both those characters is ridiculous in strength but the game is basically designed around both of them being "end game" characters.

Royaji

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

I’m guessing many of you will be interested to know more about the racial balance changes. While we aren’t ready to share specific details yet, here’s a peek at the goals driving the team’s effort:

• When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role.
• The combat power provided by each race should be more equalized.
• Players should feel a stronger sense of power progression through racial passives as they level up.
• The unique feeling and flavor each race provides should be retained and enhanced where possible, and remain faithful to established lore.

That's all for now. Feedback, as always, is welcome.

For years players have been proposing a solution to this that is very popular with fans, very easy to implement, and very monetizable for the company:

1. Separate the racial "flavor passive" (the first, free one) from the other three passives.
2. Make the other three passives available to any race. Brand them as "Birth Signs" or "Divine Blessings" or whatever. Maybe make them customizable.
3. Sell stones to change passives in the Crown Store. Make money.

Luckily, this is not happening.

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

The unique feeling and flavor each race provides should be retained and enhanced where possible, and remain faithful to established lore.

flguy147ub17_ESO

SaltySudd wrote: »

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

To that effect, the team is currently investing a portion of its time into codifying our vision and long-term strategy for combat.

In time we’ll also want to share more about the vision and strategy that will drive future combat updates.

The lack of sharing the vision and long term goals for combat has always bothered me, so thank you for mentioning this. Knowing the long-term vision will definitely help alleviate some of my previous worries about the game.

Agreed man, Have to give a little more detail instead of "we have plans or a vision". To me that is kinda like saying, we dont know what we are doing but going to try and figure something out but it make take a few years lol.

jknight201

•An assortment of bug fixes

@ZOS_RobGarrett

To be honest, it better be more than just an "assortment" of bug fixed. It better be a plethora of bug fixes. With the current state of the game, so much content is unplayable (or can't be played with any semblance of fun) - nobody is going to care about new content. There are so many serious bugs that have gone unaddressed, unfixed for so long. Just a random sampling of how the game is broken now:

- Constant crashing in many (most?) trials. vCR and vMOL are particularly bad - not fixed
- Constant load screens just about everywhere - entering a dungeon, entering a BG, entering Cyrodiil, using a portal in dungeons/trials, using doors in dungeons/trials, porting with a wayshrine, sometimes randomly just wandering around the overworld - never fixed
- Sprint bug - still not fixed
- Heavy attack/channel bug (where the staff won't fire unless you release then press the mouse button again) with lightning/resto staves - still not fixed (despite zos' claims)
- Unable to use some abilities at random, usually ground effect abilities - not fixed
- Bar swap bug where you see your weapons from back bar when on your front bar or vice/versa - not fixed
- Continuing lag in Cyrodiil and lag spikes (or whole groups) in dungeons/trials - not fixed
- Disappearing effects in trials - ground effects not rendering, mechanics/adds not rendering, player abilities not rendering. Possibly related to events not being created for mechanics (breaking addons like Raid Notifier) - not fixed.
- Wildly variable and often unacceptably low FPS, particularly in trials, even on high(er) end computers. 15 fps with CPU/GPU usage less than 20% is not uncommon. Poor use of system resources - not fixed.
- Stuttering and minor freezeups when switching shards (try running around Rawl) - not fixed

And that's just off the top of my head.

I'm as excited as anyone else to see new areas, new zones and new things we haven't seen before in the game world, honestly, we need a bug fix pass - not another "we've added content and a bunch of bugs" pass on the game. Without that, ESO is going to continue hemorrhaging players and people aren't going to be interested in new content they can't play when the base game is very buggy.

Tommy_The_Gun

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

• When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role.
• The combat power provided by each race should be more equalized.
• Players should feel a stronger sense of power progression through racial passives as they level up.
• The unique feeling and flavor each race provides should be retained and enhanced where possible, and remain faithful to established lore.

I really, really hope that it does not mean nerfs.

ZOS_RobGarrett wrote: »

We’re currently in the process of sharing the details of these changes with the Class Reps to get feedback ahead of PTS, which won’t start until the new year.

Looking at what class reps program has done so far... I would dare to say that it is biased towards DPS. I hope I am wrong but seeing all those posts in class reps threads and what were the actual changes.... It is really hard to me not to get a feeling that it is not biased towards DPS. But hey ! Time will tell. Maybe some future changes will prove me wrong (I hope !)