Combat Team News and Updates

Thorvarg

AhPook_Is_Here wrote: »

I missed DAOC but Warhammer Online was a blast, and one of my favorite PVP games ever, favorite as far as MMOs go. Might have to dust this game off at the next combat balancing PTS.

As you know Warhammer Online too had many problems and the producers have never gotten the game under control, but you are right that the concept was really nice.

Nebthet78

Jitterbug wrote: »

What will this mean for the term "wrobeled" going forward though? "you've been wheelered"?
Anyway, Wheeler is a super cool guy, so even though I admired Wrobel's conviction, I take this as good news.

In the future, it will be "We've been Wheeled-Over"

Universe

Eric Wrobel, May fortune and fame be yours in your new business venture
Balancing the combat system for a massive game like ESO must be an extremely difficult task and I presume you tried your best.

Brian Wheeler, Lord Sheogorath wish you the best of luck, but he recommends to eat cheese first!
Cheese for everyone!
P.S. - Best wishes to you as you progress from one stage in life to another.
While this can be a difficult time, the results that you will achieve are worth all of the hard work that you will put in.

Gnortranermara

Best wishes to Wrobel in his future endeavors, and to the new team.

Ohhgrizyyy

Why'd Wrobel leave?

Lettigall

"Look at me! I am the lead combat designer now!"
- @ZOS_BrianWheeler -

MilwaukeeScott

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

Why'd Wrobel leave?

Inquiring minds want to know

EvilAutoTech

Ohhgrizyyy wrote: »

Why'd Wrobel leave?

Maybe he was tired of the debate over whether TES dragons are really dragons.

Or, maybe there were other reasons. I doubt anyone is gonna share.

I do know he took a lot of flak for lots of things.

OtarTheMad

Good luck to him and whatever he does. Looking forward to what Brian Wheeler comes up with.

MartiniDaniels

Vaerth wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

I wanted to let everyone know that Eric Wrobel is no longer with the company. We appreciate his efforts over the years on ESO and wish him well in his future endeavors.

Going forward, we will be restructuring the team to encapsulate both PVE and PVP teams, with Brian Wheeler taking over as Lead Combat Designer. Brian has years of experience in MMOs and combat – on both Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online, he was heavily involved in class balance in both PVE and PVP. I know the team is in good hands and look forward to seeing what the future brings for that team.

PS - Bashing or trolling will NOT be tolerated at all in this thread. You have been warned…

PLEASE focus on combat animations / impact. Have him look at the stamina animations, like 1H&S Puncture. Just look at it, and he will hopefully notice what must be done lol. Beautiful game world, but man combat (at least melee) really needs some work.

What's problem with puncture? Imo it is most lightning fast, easy-to-weave and friendly-to-use skill in the game. I can peck 5 enemies in few seconds without animation cancelling. If you make it slow it will be huge nerf for tanks, since often you have just a second to taunt before you need to block again.

RedRook

Wow. I didn't believe it, so came to check, and here it really is.

Wow.

Ok then. Good luck, Wheeler. Full confidence you can do the job, and for the rest, well... you have some goodwill built up, you know. Maybe it'll keep things cordial even when people get frustrated. It could happen!

Banana

How come Gill didnt get a promotion

Ragnarock41

ScruffyWhiskers wrote: »

Yes. I wish Wrobel well. Hopefully this is what he wanted. He had a tough and often thankless job. I bet he has a skin of plate steel by now. It will serve him well. I know from personal experience how mean the game playing mob can be. I think I might have even grabbed a pitchfork myself once or twice.

I think the hurricane should be renamed Wrobel's Gift or something like that.

Did we treat him too harshly or not, only time will tell now.

While its true that it was a thankless job and often times he was the scapegoat for everything wrong with the game, deserved or not, even blamed for stuff he wasn't working on like server performance or ui bugs, he wasn't oh so perfect and innocent either.
some classes were more ''balanced'' than others, while others were ignored for literally years.

I don't know what he truly lacked, maybe it was creativity, or maybe he lacked time, funding, maybe combat team was understaffed and overworked , anything is possible. But the way balance changes went over the years, as a stamDK main, he didn't really gave me too many reasons to like him, even though he looked like a very cool guy.

Imagine suddenly having literally everything about your character taken away, with zero compensations, no alternative buffs to give you a new beginning or playstyle, just pure nerfs, all your time, love, effort... wasted. That was my experience with morrowind as a guy who purely played stamDK and sometimes stamplar. There was no damage control whatsoever for an entire year, and both classes were left in a broken state.

And even the hurricane he gifted to stamsorcs, was actually based on old inferno, a Dk ability that I loved so much before it was taken away, and turned into a boring ball of flame that tickles people every once in a while.

A gift that was ''stolen'' from Dks, But a ''gift'' nonetheless. I'm actually happy that it exists in a different form. I would be completely okay with it if the new inferno wasn't such a lackluster ability.

Go to 3:23 in this video, and tell me how is it fine to take away such an amazing looking ability from a class. And go check how inferno looks like now, tell me in complete honesty, if this isn't bias and hate towards Dks, then what is it? Tell me how should I feel okay against such treatment?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXlYxozQPLA


Anyways , for the first time after like 2 years, I'm truly excited for the future of ESO. I'm not saying I have full trust in @ZOS_BrianWheeler (seems like he has to work on way too many things now) , but maybe he can break my PTSD from reading patch notes all these years. After all he worked on two other games I loved to play: Daoc and warhammer online.

Moonsorrow

Great news, wishing @ZOS_BrianWheeler all the focus, patience and great wisdom in the work ahead.

Ohtimbar

Best of luck wherever you land

Nisekev

Does that mean that we may see actual combat overhaul?

alainjbrennanb16_ESO

Nisekev wrote: »

Does that mean that we may see actual combat overhaul?

probs more to the zerg stuff wheeler is on of the devs who run the zerg's

Svidrir

Daoc .. Warhammer ...

2 very good PvP game !

jediodyn_ESO

Both of those games balanced PvP more effectively and much more rapidly than ESO has recently. Also both of those games had (buggy) but engaging world PvP.

Best of luck to Wrobel, but happy to see this change.

Yay Wheeler. Can we call him “the new hope” or is that owned by Disney?

xenowarrior92eb17_ESO

@dogman u dont even play sorc bruh!

Fata1moose

I hope the combat team can improve the feel of combat, right now it doesn't feel visceral/contextual. Animations don't match up with damage, it doesn't feel like attacks are actually contacting enemies, etc. II would welcome an overhaul for improved combat.

Illuvatarr

This is exciting news. Mr. Wrobel had unnecessary bias towards limiting the sorcerer class. Glad to see him gone. Hopefully Mr. Wheeler makes the sorcerer class as close as possible to the warhammwr archmage.

Drdeath20

Brian has alot of work ahead of him

AhPook_Is_Here

Thorvarg wrote: »

AhPook_Is_Here wrote: »

I missed DAOC but Warhammer Online was a blast, and one of my favorite PVP games ever, favorite as far as MMOs go. Might have to dust this game off at the next combat balancing PTS.

As you know Warhammer Online too had many problems and the producers have never gotten the game under control, but you are right that the concept was really nice.

Sure it did, when the capitols unlocked it was a laggy mess almost always. But to stay positive, each class had very unique abilities, collision made keep battles far more interesting because after a door fell down tank walls with damage and support behind them determined who would win the keep. Having the ability to actually control space was very nice and made combat far more engaging than "stand inside your buddy, and be a good part of the Venn diagram while throwing bombs at your feet". The only MMO I could ever get my son to play was Warhammer, he liked how the game got you right into the fight. It would be really great to see those kind of changes in this game, particularly hostile player collision.

Rungar

its pretty obvious that the old combat regime has stagnated the game.

1) giving weapon and spell dmg for mag and stam is a prime suspect since in this type of scheme there can only be one type perceptions and thus the racial and related woes of this game. I think its run its course and needs to go to give way to not only hybrid playstyles but hybrid gameplay to go with it.

2) weaving is a failure mechanic that has also run its course and needs to go. It has dissociated the characters and players alike from the game combat wise. Putting light and heavy attacks on the global timer is the easy fix. The hard fix is making light attacks more useful and interesting.

3) dungeons: not that the dungeons are bad but they are all the same. There is no variety of objectives really so your stuck using one shots on bossfights to create challenge. Every dungeon in this game is exactly the same.(arenas being the exception).

Good luck in your new role and feel free to ruffle some feathers. Your gonna get blamed anyway so you might as well have some fun with it.

ezikeo

Combat system revamp please

WeyounTM

Call me a fanboy, but I bet this move is done to groom Gilliam to take over in the long run ;-) ! Since he has a huge background in actually playing the game on a highend level and he has "done the math" before....he might be ZOS' endgame for the position. But of course they couldn't put him in place so soon since he just joined the company.
All the upcoming race changes have his handwriting on them...it might have been his first huge assignment.

In any case...looking forward to upcoming changes....done by Wheeler or Gilliam

MakoFore

Gilliam has long banged the drum for additive rather than multiplative modifiers for skills, race, gear and skills - look at any of his class breakdown videos- saying that a lot of the balance issues were related to multiplicative approacehs- which lead to unwieldy numbers - . whilst wrobel was steadfast in his approach to percentage based modifiers. the fact that we now have race changes with flat stats- wrobel leaving- is a sign of gilliam's influence in combat approach now.

StarOfElyon

Where can I find his videos?

WeyounTM

This one can help you: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1tq9cpMI7uzD7zRakve3nw

He was basically the brain behind most of Deltias website way back when and he then started out doing his own videos. He really is a nice, intelligent down to earth guy and for a long time my favorite content creator for ESO.