Wood Elf/ Bosmer losing stealth passive, An open letter.

max_only

I was working and missed the live stream. Did they say anything about any racials whatsoever? Also where is a link? Please and thanks.

BlueRaven

max_only wrote: »

I was working and missed the live stream. Did they say anything about any racials whatsoever? Also where is a link? Please and thanks.

Nope they did not.

https://youtu.be/XAkfoIphJ7w

They talked a bit about the update, but they narrow focused on the guild store changes and the map completion screen.

For the loremaster bit they did not talk about the race changes at all, nor did they talk about any lore topics in depth.

They had some fun talking about how hard it was to pronounce some things, and that there is a dwemer naming guide.

The one bit I found interesting is that as loremaster he absolutely has a veto power over content, but that they rarely use it. Rather they help the designers get where they want to go via lore.

To me it sounded more like, “Let me give you a better way to justify that change via lore.” And not “Lore says otherwise, so reverse the change.”

I suspect that the loremaster will NOT have our backs on the stealth thing.

EDIT: I am doing this from my phone, so the YouTube link I provided above looks a bit odd.
In case it did not work, here is a back up twitch link.

https://m.twitch.tv/videos/396042802

Cundu_Ertur

BlueRaven wrote: »

I suspect that the loremaster will NOT have our backs on the stealth thing.

Lore as inconvenience.
What a world.

BlueRaven

Just a reminder, a bunch of content creators like Dottz Gaming were invited down to Bethesda to try out Elsweyr recently. (And to provide feedback.)

https://youtu.be/KPBwwKYiJgU

For now they are under a NDA, but I believe that lifts on March 25th 28th. I am really hoping that at least one of them mentioned the whole stealth/Bosmer thing to them. And that there is a response (even if it’s via a 3rd party YouTube video).

I suspect that until then, we will NOT get any word from ZOS about the stealth issue as any changes (or possibly even justifications) would be under that new content blanket.

EDIT: Fixed date. Thank you @anadandy !

anadandy

BlueRaven wrote: »

The one bit I found interesting is that as loremaster he absolutely has a veto power over content, but that they rarely use it. Rather they help the designers get where they want to go via lore.

To me it sounded more like, “Let me give you a better way to justify that change via lore.” And not “Lore says otherwise, so reverse the change.”

That was how it sounded to me as well. I kind of feel for the guy, he started right in a mine field of questionable changes.

Also, the embargo lift has been pushed back to the 28th - I believe that was in the sticky thread about the event. (yes thats where it was)

Shimmer wrote: »

Embargo has changed to March 28. Could change again. At that time any press that reviewed it, or players that reviewed it can dilvulge details of the new chapter.

A_Silverius

43:23, I wish this was true.
https://youtu.be/XAkfoIphJ7w?t=2602

anadandy

"A lot of opportunities to make mistakes."

If only this was the door opener I wish it would be in regards to the "universal mechanic" blunder. Just admitting it would go a long way for me.

Ratzkifal

I am honestly glad he answered my question on the VETO right at all and it's pretty much what I suspected. But he also said, his words do have weight and that he technically has this kind of power, but shouldn't use it like a hammer.

So what I am getting from this is that he could be the one to tell the devs to change the Altmer passive to be a physiological difference instead of "Alteration magic" and then making it so that the passive doesn't restore magicka on stam users and explain it with magic casting being more relaxing for Altmer than for other races. It would fit the same niche and work better within lore (although requiring new lore) and thus completely possible for him to give this kind of response.

But it also sounds like he would need to make up a reason why Bosmer are better at detection if balance calls for it (fortunately we also have arguments against balance calling for that, so it's not like they can just shoot us down with that response).

Night_Wolf2112

Basically they tossed him softballs and hit them.... absolutely 0 hard questions. They acted like there were no problems and it sounded like they will just tweak the lore to cover up the huge diversion they took from it.

Seraphayel

BlueRaven wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

I was working and missed the live stream. Did they say anything about any racials whatsoever? Also where is a link? Please and thanks.

Nope they did not.

For the loremaster bit they did not talk about the race changes at all, nor did they talk about any lore topics in depth.

There was no indication that they would talk about racial changes, so nothing to be disappointed about honestly. They talked about them in detail during the first round of the PTS and then onwards in the developer comments.

wedgebert

Seraphayel wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

I was working and missed the live stream. Did they say anything about any racials whatsoever? Also where is a link? Please and thanks.

Nope they did not.

For the loremaster bit they did not talk about the race changes at all, nor did they talk about any lore topics in depth.

I mean, I already said it multiple times but...

There was no need to talk about the racial changes. They talked about them in detail during the first round of the PTS and then onwards in the developer comments.

They came in and said "here are our goals", made some changes that basically said "we lied about our goals and couldn't care less about the lore", made some tweaks and said "we know you have some concerns, but we're going to ignore them and pretend everything is great" and then disappeared.

There was no discussion or even real acknowledgement of what anyone raised. Not just regarding Bosmer, but also Altmer, Khajiit, and Argonian, plus others I'm sure.

Issues were raised from the moment the proposed racial changes were announced and they completely ignored us. They barely even explained why they made most of changes. Sure, they gave good reasons for switching from +% to +flat values, but pretty much everything else came across as them making changes on a whim.

Ratzkifal

Night_Wolf2112 wrote: »

Basically they tossed him softballs and hit them.... absolutely 0 hard questions. They acted like there were no problems and it sounded like they will just tweak the lore to cover up the huge diversion they took from it.

To be fair, he was only there to introduce himself and talk about the job rather than talk about actual job-related topics since he just got the job and had probably no influence on any current changes nor had the time to talk to people involved.

BlueRaven

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Night_Wolf2112 wrote: »

Basically they tossed him softballs and hit them.... absolutely 0 hard questions. They acted like there were no problems and it sounded like they will just tweak the lore to cover up the huge diversion they took from it.

To be fair, he was only there to introduce himself and talk about the job rather than talk about actual job-related topics since he just got the job and had probably no influence on any current changes nor had the time to talk to people involved.

I wonder how many of these changes happened in the “gap” between loremasters.

jarydf

Dear ZOS The solution is simple. Change the stealth detection passive back to reducimg your detection radius by 3m amd keep everything else the same.and we are done. There is enough difference in the other racial passives to make it still a different choice than the cats. Problem solved. Everyone back to happy. Thanks.

Ratzkifal

BlueRaven wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Night_Wolf2112 wrote: »

Basically they tossed him softballs and hit them.... absolutely 0 hard questions. They acted like there were no problems and it sounded like they will just tweak the lore to cover up the huge diversion they took from it.

To be fair, he was only there to introduce himself and talk about the job rather than talk about actual job-related topics since he just got the job and had probably no influence on any current changes nor had the time to talk to people involved.

I wonder how many of these changes happened in the “gap” between loremasters.

I'm not even sure these changes actually happened "in" the gap. It's entirely possible that these were sanctioned by Schick, although I don't think this is actually what ZOS was doing. Sounds impractical too.

More likely, combat devs had a meeting with the reps and came up with pain points and goals, then went to the lore team to get a summary from them what the different races are about (probably not too detailed and I think in the case of Bosmer too focused on agility alone) and then the combat devs went back to their workplace and started crunching numbers, discussing and evaluating how much item-set-boni something is worth and so on until they were happy without checking back with the lore team. Then they put that onto PTS and after that it wasn't in the hands of the lore team anymore.

There could also have been some miscommunication here and there, like the lore team saying...

"stealth is important" and then the combat devs say "yeah, you're right, but the current stealth passive is just way too strong on gankers and we can't make it powerful and universal and be strictly sneak-related because nobody sneaks in trials."
(For everyone who doesn't immediately see the flaw in this argumentation - stealth could still be represented in the sneak radius reduction without harming combat balance or limiting a power boost to a niche mechanic.)
That convinces the lore guy to stop pushing and the combat guy tells that to this combat friends and they go "okay, so we can scrap stealth. That's perfect, because we can make another distinction to Khajiit there, because they were too similar before". Basically everyone just got a severe case of routine blindness and tunnel vision where they focus too much on the numbers and forget the bigger picture.

Obviously I am interpreting things with a lot more good will than the creators of crown crates and 100$ houses deserve, but to be fair, they also made the game I loved playing for four years.

Wildbloom

ZoS wants the racials to be different. Key word: ZoS. Things like extra power from potions, ulti when struck, stealth increase, and resource recovering when doing damage all all little quirks that are different per-race. Each race has one, ontop of varying flat stat bonuses. I'm sure they saw khajit and bosmer having the same perk and thought they should do something unique with them to differentiate the races.

So, khajit get crit damage and stealth bonus, bosmer get roll boost and...well, they can't have stealth bonus too, cause they gave that to khajit. So, they give bosmer something to fill their natural stealth niche while staying unique: stealth detection. Whee....

I'm fairly sure that this is their logic, as much as it sucks. But, alls we can do is disagree. I've said before that I don't think they'll change anything at this point and I stand by this. I'm disappointed like everyone else, but there's only so much we as players can do.

wedgebert

Wildbloom wrote: »

I'm fairly sure that this is their logic, as much as it sucks. But, alls we can do is disagree. I've said before that I don't think they'll change anything at this point and I stand by this. I'm disappointed like everyone else, but there's only so much we as players can do.

We can keep bringing it up. At the very least let ZOS know that if they can just ignore us for a couple of weeks everything will be fine.

The initial outrage was to the terrible Bosmer (and other races) changes. However some of the longer lasting anger/worry is that they'll just keep doing this and eventually we won't recognize the world we're playing in.

Alucardmike

The more I am playing, the more I want to stop playing.
Great work...

Ogou

Night_Wolf2112 wrote: »

Basically they tossed him softballs and hit them.... absolutely 0 hard questions. They acted like there were no problems and it sounded like they will just tweak the lore to cover up the huge diversion they took from it.

To be fair, @ZOS_GinaBruno did say in another thread, before the stream, that they were not going to discuss the racial passives. I was surprised that she still asked him about the process even if it was indirectly.

ibeprofun

Wood elf went from designated nightblade class to the least used class.

How is the shortest class not great at stealth? No one's going to want to play the smallest class unless there's something good about it.

Personal comment directly to those responsible for this change: you are wrong.

Ratzkifal

ibeprofun wrote: »

Wood elf went from designated nightblade class to the least used class.

How is the shortest class not great at stealth? No one's going to want to play the smallest class unless there's something good about it.

Personal comment directly to those responsible for this change: you are wrong.

*race

Jaraal

Ogou wrote: »

Night_Wolf2112 wrote: »

Basically they tossed him softballs and hit them.... absolutely 0 hard questions. They acted like there were no problems and it sounded like they will just tweak the lore to cover up the huge diversion they took from it.

To be fair, @ZOS_GinaBruno did say in another thread, before the stream, that they were not going to discuss the racial passives. I was surprised that she still asked him about the process even if it was indirectly.

Well of course they wouldn't discuss it, it's a lose / lose situation. Defending the eradication of lore is not a winnable argument. Too many people expect the Elder Scrolls world to be logical and reliable, and those people aren't here to play Deathmatch Flavor Of The Day. I mean, there's probably a couple devs and players that like the changes, so they'll just say they don't want to keep moving the bar and upset the "balance."

They've already lost players over this, so they'll just have to determine how much collateral damage is acceptable. Most of us would rather play in a TESO world that doesn't make sense than to not play at all. I mean, soon we'll be having dragons in the Age of Heroes that weren't there before. The thing about the fantasy genre is, the standard of believability is way lower than games based on actual history. Anybody can say, "Oh, the guy in charge of lore before me was wrong, here's how stuff is really supposed to be," and we shrug our shoulders and say, "Uh.... ok. It's your imaginary world, pal." But we may always regard the new standard with skepticism, and our faith that future lore will make sense is irreparably shaken. I'm at the point where I no longer say why, but rather, what's next?

Whether I play or not hasn't changed, but how I play will. I resent all the time I spent into making my Bosmer a master thief, only to have him become crippled and ineffective at the type of gameplay I prefer. He's happy with his racial identity, he's not going to change that, but then again, I'm not a min/maxer who will make any changes necessary to be 1 or 2 percent better, if it doesn't make sense lorewise. But the real effect of the change is to make me regard Zenimax less favorably, and every time I'm at the character select screen, I'm reminded of what my guy used to be capable of, and that somebody didn't care about that, so it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. And it becomes something to where when I'm looking at stuff in the crown store or considering buying a new DLC, I'm thinking to myself, do I really want to give these guys more of my money? What inexplicable changes are they going to make next.... and will it be enough to make me look for a better game with a vision that doesn't change from patch to patch?

ibeprofun

Bottom line... You have a LOT of pissed off people over this. Are there ANY really excited people? They made a change that straight up pissed people off. One, or a few devs decided to do this and you have literally hundreds of pissed off players. Great job.

ZOS NEEDS TO TAKE A LOOK AT WHOS MAKING THE DECISIONS OVER THERE.

It doesn't take a college degree to realize pissing off your clients is a bad business decision.

A_Silverius

ibeprofun wrote: »

Wood elf went from designated nightblade class to the least used class.

How is the shortest class not great at stealth? No one's going to want to play the smallest class unless there's something good about it.

Personal comment directly to those responsible for this change: you are wrong.

Wood elves are bis at cheese rolling now I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNj67kwWBoQ

Night_Wolf2112

Not to derail... but adding dragons is another mistake! Are we to believe that a giant creature(s) with the ability to fly will only stay in Elswyr? Dragons should be; roaming, hoarding, or sleeping.... unless he's training the Grey Beards.

Ratzkifal

Jaraal wrote: »

I mean, soon we'll be having dragons in the Age of Heroes that weren't there before.

@Jaraal
I mean, were they really not? Thurvokun went into hiding too and nobody knows how he died and that dragon was already canon since Arena. Tiber Septim had a dragon general if we take Elder Scrolls Adventures as canon, which generally is being regarded as such. That's a second era dragon. Paarthunax has been alive since the dragon war too and you can assume the same is true for the dragon of blackreach - Vulthuryol. Honestly that dragons have been a rarity after that despite some going into hiding might be explained through Elsweyr better than previous lore did, because we killed them all. I just hope we get a story for each dragon that explains where they've been hiding or where they came from to join the "three troublemakers".

Obviously you have a point about how loosely canon is being handled when a new writer takes over. Best supporting example would be what happened to Star Wars, where lightspeed ramming is now a thing and we need to ask ourselves every time "why not lightspeed ram it?"
Sure, there are things that we previously take as canon that then get retconned, like the tongues wearing the literal tongues of their enemies around their necks and shouting gate doors in during a siege, which we don't see in Skyrim at all, or the glass like architecture of Summerset (which we could even say is still canon as the source for that is from the 3rd era and the Altmer might invent that architecture later down the line). What I am trying to say is, so far these issues have not been severely enough for me to be bothered by.

Oh and, I get the same feeling when logging onto my Bosmer and just end up doing mount training and nothing else.

Ratzkifal

Night_Wolf2112 wrote: »

Not to derail... but adding dragons is another mistake! Are we to believe that a giant creature(s) with the ability to fly will only stay in Elswyr? Dragons should be; roaming, hoarding, or sleeping.... unless he's training the Grey Beards.

@Night_Wolf2112 My guess is that there is something about Rimmen and the Akaviri that has them all go there, but since the expansion is only Q2 but the year of the dragon is longer and will add another zone, we may be getting to see more places in Tamriel that are important to dragons. Perhaps Sky Haven Temple in Skyrim, perhaps just south of Cyrodiil. It all kind of depends on how many dragons we are actually talking about. We got three confirmed dragons, a trial full of dragons, a dungeon DLC with presumably one more dragon, and probably around three dragon attack "world events" that must have a dragon each (or perhaps the same one fleeing from the encounter once he is outmatched)?

To stop this from derailing and to get this train back on track, I'll have to ask some important questions. Is the reason that Bosmer got better detection, that the presumed dead dragons have been hiding and only Bosmer can spot them thanks to their new passive? Will dragons be sneaker than Bosmer in The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr? Is there any chance we can actually hide from dragons when we are not Khajiit?

Ruckly

max_only wrote: »

Major Points/TLDR for entire thread:

Ratzkifal wrote: »

• We want more diverse race choices for characters that are focused on justice interactions. Having Khajiit be the only one with a sneaking advantage is very limiting.
• Stealth detect has no benefits in PvE, making this an exclusively PvP oriented passive component, which is counter to the original goals (goal number 2 - universal applicability) of the racial balance change. Since stealth detection is only beneficial in PvP environments it also does not line up with the original reasoning given behind the removal of stealth - that only a player that stealths (in this case, detects other players) can benefit from this (part of the) passive. As of now, PvE players only benefit from 10% speed after dodging at the cost of three skill points and ~3.6k stamina cost, as the penetration will either be wasted due to the cap or result in a DPS loss from the lack of uptime. Returning the reduced sneak radius or a similar passive component that improves sneaking helps players across the board as everyone can choose to take advantage of that in the Overworld as well as Dungeons and PvP by sneaking past enemies or sneaking into an advantageous position to strike.
  Furthermore the additional stealth detect in PvP is not in line with existing forms of detection as it reveals cloaked enemies without an indicator. It also gives away the existence of a hidden Bosmer to other sneaking enemies as it also increases the "danger" radius with the half opened eye indicator in which enemies can tell they are about to be revealed before the sneaking Bosmer is even made aware of the existence of their sneaking enemy. These intransparent and counterintuitive issues would need to be addressed and resolved if the passive was kept in its current form, which is why we would be willing to give up this component of the passive to regain improved sneaking.
• Doesn't fit lore
  Bosmer have been described as great sneak thieves in every Elder Scrolls game starting with Arena.

Race description direct from Elder Scrolls game manuals throughout the years:

BlueRaven wrote: »

I just went ahead and took some screen shots of what the various manuals say about Wood Elves.

(Hopefully got the order correct.)

Elder Scrolls 1 Arena



Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall



Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind



Elder scrolls 4 Oblivion



(There appears to be no race descriptions in the Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim manual.)

Full manuals can be found here;

https://manuals.bethsoft.com

To submit feedback to your Class Reps:

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Brought up here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/416444/eso-class-representative-program-feedback-channels

Link is this: https://goo.gl/forms/gGFVynPcDcZn5yiH2

The official thread:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/453551/upcoming-racial-balance-changes-for-update-21/p1

Other threads of feedback:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/458816/once-again-im-underwhelmed-bosmers-hunter-eye/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/459778/wood-elf-racial-changes-zos-please-stop-ignoring-your-community/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/458645/as-a-wood-elf-what-utility-racial-passive-is-the-best/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/460648/which-of-the-racial-changes-do-you-dislike-the-most/p1
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/460182/save-the-bosmer/p1

Previous passive: Reduces your detection radius in stealth by 3 meters. Increases your damage done while in stealth by 10%.

On live as of Feb 26 2019: Increases your stealth detection radius by 3 meters. Increases your movement speed by 10% and your Physical and Spell Penetration by 1500 for 6 seconds after you use Roll Dodge.

Our suggestion: Reduces your detection radius in stealth by 3 meters. Increases your movement speed by 10% and your Physical and Spell Penetration by 1500 for 6 seconds after you use Roll Dodge.

If a Star Trek game took intellect away from Vulcans after 5 years (and 5 previous games worth of history), Trekkies would be rightfully upset. Even if you made your Vulcan to be a Pon Farr Gladiator and not a scientist, it doesn’t negate that the whole story/fantasy universe has had a defining trait for that race for years.

Ruckly

Based on numbers from this site:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Special:EsoBuildEditor

Base sneak detection for bosmer with Hunter's Eye passive is 9.5m and base sneak range in 7 medium armor is 4.5m. So in theory you would detect someone who just entered melee range(5 meters). It might be good for dodging wrecking blow but that is about it. But many people use Night Mother's Embrace which would reduce the range to 3m which is less that melee range. And Khajiit with any 7 piece medium would be at 2m.

Maybe my numbers are wrong.

That thing about giving your position away to another sneaked person based on proximity detection is dumb. I assume they can use the fighters/mages guild skill and find you right away.

In order for this passive to be maybe useful you would have to use Way of Air and you might have time to block an Incapacitating Strike. Passives that requires a specific set to be useful is imo a bad idea. And it is only seems useful against nightblades that want to hit you with melee. It doesn't seem a good tool for finding nightblades because they move quick with cloak and major expedition. It is easy for them to evade your radius.

wishlist14

I'm done!!

I've wanted to play one character of each race for a while and finally got close, I was just missing a nord but I don't tank. Today, I did a bit of research on what would be the best build for my lil wood elf and apparantly found out she would only be good to rp Lolita. It disturbed me so much I decided to race and name change her to a redguard.

So all these changes to see Redguards and orcs best race for stamina builds
Altmer best race for Magicka builds?

Thank you for dumbing it down to 3 race choices