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

Jameliel

Where are the Bosmer toons created by all the people saying the new skills are a "buff"? ESO has some annoying hypocrites playing. Always talking about no counterplay to snipe and playstyles they dislike. Meanwhile they all stay on the same races and melee builds. Thus change was totally stupid and made with utter disregard to players who have a stealthy wood elf playstyle. zos lost all credibility by going through with it. Its my firm belief that whoever was in charge of these changes needs to be fired. They have no place in what is supposed to be a TES game.

BlueRaven

Jameliel wrote: »

Where are the Bosmer toons created by all the people saying the new skills are a "buff"? ESO has some annoying hypocrites playing. Always talking about no counterplay to snipe and playstyles they dislike. Meanwhile they all stay on the same races and melee builds. Thus change was totally stupid and made with utter disregard to players who have a stealthy wood elf playstyle. zos lost all credibility by going through with it. Its my firm belief that whoever was in charge of these changes needs to be fired. They have no place in what is supposed to be a TES game.

I am not sure where I heard it before, but whenever I read about PvP players wanting to nerf others I think of the old PvP forum Mantra;

Scissors says; "Nerf Rock, paper is fine."

The wood elf change has "We did it for PvP reasons!" written all over it.

JadeCoin

BlueRaven wrote: »

Jameliel wrote: »

Where are the Bosmer toons created by all the people saying the new skills are a "buff"? ESO has some annoying hypocrites playing. Always talking about no counterplay to snipe and playstyles they dislike. Meanwhile they all stay on the same races and melee builds. Thus change was totally stupid and made with utter disregard to players who have a stealthy wood elf playstyle. zos lost all credibility by going through with it. Its my firm belief that whoever was in charge of these changes needs to be fired. They have no place in what is supposed to be a TES game.

I am not sure where I heard it before, but whenever I read about PvP players wanting to nerf others I think of the old PvP forum Mantra;

Scissors says; "Nerf Rock, paper is fine."

The wood elf change has "We did it for PvP reasons!" written all over it.

From a PvP balance perspective, what makes it all the more nonsensical is that they didn't get rid of the stealth playstyle. They just gave it to another race.

If you set aside the bonus damage from stealth (which isn't the primary focus of this thread), it's not even about nerfing something that's allegedly OP. If it was, no race in the game would have kept the reduced detection radius in stealth. The reasoning here must have to do with other factors, most likely their definition of what it is for races to be "distinct," or for the player's choice between Wood Elf and Khajiit to be "significant" or "consequential." Whatever the guiding principles and goals were that they outlined when they planned their racial passive overhaul.

Zoltan_117

I am personally very happy that dunmer are now more viable archer or assassin race, but leaving the stealth bonus on any race seems to still be unfair to wood elves. On the other hand, having more then one race with the stealth bonus makes it unfair to everyone else who would want an assassin or stealth archer (when its just Khajit its more understandable). This is a hard situation and I would personally just remove the bonus from all races.

wedgebert

Zoltan_117 wrote: »

I am personally very happy that dunmer are now more viable archer or assassin race, but leaving the stealth bonus on any race seems to still be unfair to wood elves. On the other hand, having more then one race with the stealth bonus makes it unfair to everyone else who would want an assassin or stealth archer (when its just Khajit its more understandable). This is a hard situation and I would personally just remove the bonus from all races.

By that logic we should remove the Orc's sprint bonus because it's unfair to people who want to make a tireless warrior but don't want to play Orc.

There's a point where lore/flavor has to trump gameplay. Not every race has to be perfectly balanced otherwise you might has well have racial appearance be something you pick from your Appearances tab and have no gameplay effects at all.

Lore is what gives the game its character and helps immerse you into the world. If that means that Bosmer are the best at stealthing, but below average in most combat skills, that's ok. It opens up playstyles. Meta BiS gamers can go be Orc and Breton to do the most deeps, while people looking for justice gameplay can pick Bosmer or Khajiit.

Jaraal

Lol, they just added a 3 second Silence to Incapacitating Strike on test. Now every magicka toon is gonna want to roll a Bosmer so they can get that extra 10% speed while roll dodging away before they die from being unable to shield or purge!

max_only

Jaraal wrote: »

Lol, they just added a 3 second Silence to Incapacitating Strike on test. Now every magicka toon is gonna want to roll a Bosmer so they can get that extra 10% speed while roll dodging away before they die from being unable to shield or purge!

Doubtful. Even if that were the case they need to stop robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Eiron77

Ok, so I took a long break from all of this and I'm not surprised there is no new information--other than more and more speculation. It's sad to hear, as I enjoyed this game but I no longer do because my wood elf was gutted by a ludicrous change.

Now, in the PTS they've made some severe changes to snipe,dw aoe, and nightblades. Apparently I was playing some super OP character or something...

All that aside though, these updates are getting more comical each patch. So nightblades' Grim Focus summons a bow for a devastating attack, but you don't get the full return of the heal morph unless you... run up close to the target to fire a bow--that you summon!... Lol, What?

And necromancer has tons of stamina morphs while other classes are still overloaded with magicka... but magicka builds can still only effectively use staves as a weapon?

What are they smoking there? So glad I'm not giving them money anymore.

Anyways, hang in there you guys. I still keep harboring some hope for Bosmer stealth. It'd be enough to bring me back, even with all that other ridiculousness.

Jaraal

Eiron77 wrote: »

All that aside though, these updates are getting more comical each patch.

Agreed. Most gameplay changes in the past had some sort of logic, even if they were slightly biased one way or another. But ever since they started taking our speed away because unskilled or minimum system/connection folks were unable to target in PvP due to server lag, everything has been snowballing downhill. It's like a chain of nerfs to make up for other nerfs, and add the puzzling disregard for long established lore and racial and class identity.... and it certainly gives one pause.

Tommy_The_Gun

Wood Elf/ Bosmer & Argonian were shafted pretty hard. Tbh. those are the 2 worst races in game right now when it comes to racial passives.

NotaDaedraWorshipper

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Wood Elf/ Bosmer & Argonian were shafted pretty hard. Tbh. those are the 2 worst races in game right now when it comes to racial passives.

Not only worst. But also a complete butchering of the lore and race identity of both.

Bosmer- Lore everywhere how sneaky and stealthy they are. Passive gone.
Argonians- Lore everywhere how they are almost immune to all poisons. Passive gone.

Cundu_Ertur

Yeah, I think people with Bosmer and/or Argonian mains wince every time someone from ZoS pats themself on the back for how amazingly true to the lore these changes are.

Seriously, if the Devs are paying attention to this:
YOU
DROPPED
THE
BALL

burglar

lawl

Heady

Don’t touch my Bosmer insane sustain pls keep how it is k thnx ❤️

Jaraal

Heady wrote: »

Don’t touch my Bosmer insane sustain pls keep how it is k thnx ❤️

We aren't really talking about those two Bosmer passives, they are fine. And we don't really care about the roly-poly portion of Hunter's Eye, either. Just the loss of the Bosmer core identity skill: being stealthy.

Heady

Jaraal wrote: »

Heady wrote: »

Don’t touch my Bosmer insane sustain pls keep how it is k thnx ❤️

We aren't really talking about those two Bosmer passives, they are fine. And we don't really care about the roly-poly portion of Hunter's Eye, either. Just the loss of the Bosmer core identity skill: being stealthy.

Okay all is good then, will go back to lurking like a pre nerfed bosmer

Eiron77

Jaraal wrote: »

Eiron77 wrote: »

All that aside though, these updates are getting more comical each patch.

Agreed. Most gameplay changes in the past had some sort of logic, even if they were slightly biased one way or another. But ever since they started taking our speed away because unskilled or minimum system/connection folks were unable to target in PvP due to server lag, everything has been snowballing downhill. It's like a chain of nerfs to make up for other nerfs, and add the puzzling disregard for long established lore and racial and class identity.... and it certainly gives one pause.

I have noticed this trend as well.

Jaraal

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Yeah, I think people with Bosmer and/or Argonian mains wince every time someone from ZoS pats themself on the back for how amazingly true to the lore these changes are.

Yes, I see statements like that, and I picture a bunch of guys and gals in an office high fiving and patting each other on the back...... totally "killing it" in the office. Unfortunately, that doesn't translate into the player experience at all, where if you look at these forums, the majority of actual players are dissatisfied with the recent changes. And with nobody around to hold these developers to canon (I heard there was a Loremaster, but he himself must be a true Bosmer master of stealth, as he has effectively disappeared into the shadows)..... then any lore is irrelevant and subject to revision.

I thought it was interesting that the previous Loremaster, in his parting letter, said that lore is what we the players interpret it to be, to enhance our own personal experience. But I'm having a hard time convincing the guards to look the other way when I steal. I told them I'm a Bosmer and shouldn't be getting caught all the time, but they just laughed at me as they were killing me, shouting "Where is your lore god now, fake Bosmer!"

rfennell_ESO

The whole debate misses the real problem imo.

ZOS never uses a chisel, it's always the sledgehammer.

Mythx88

100% agree with OP.

Undo the nerf to stealth & stealth damage. Totally uncalled for!

FrancisCrawford

Mechanically he's fine, but even so I stopped enjoying my thief after changing him to Khajit.

max_only

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

The whole debate misses the real problem imo.

ZOS never uses a chisel, it's always the sledgehammer.

Truer words have never been written.

Also dissenters act like we are asking to trash the whole thing. A little goes a long way when it comes to fans.

Uryel

Just occured to me yesterday... Better late than never... but they really, really have no idea how to balance anything. Look at that.

This is essentially the same passive racial trait, for different races. Only difference is the resist it is focused on, and the ressource it improves.

Argonians : Gain Immunity to the diseased status effect / Increases Max Health by 1000 and Disease Resistance by 2310

Bosmers : Gain immunity to the poisoned effect / Increases your Max Stamina by 2000 and Poison Resistance by 2310

(note that, lore-wise, if you keep only one resist per race, argonians and bosmers should be switched)

Dunmers : Gain immunity to the burning status effect / Increases Max Health by 600 and Flame Resistance by 2310

Nords : Gain immunity to the Chilled status effect / Increases your Max Health by 1000 and Cold Resistance by 2310

So, how balanced is that ? This is the same passive, with the same amount of one resist being buffed, the same immunity effect to one type of effect being buffed, but the amount of ressource being buffed varies greatly from race to race. One gets +2000 (I suppose it's to make up for the terrible racial passive that has no use in PvE whatsoever ), one gets 600, others get 1000. And then, you have the Imperials and Redguards, which get +2000 to some ressource, but without any immunity or resist.

That's not balanced at all. And don't even start me on how the lore was *** when Bosmers became guards and Altmers began regenerating stamina with something called SPELL recharge.

Uryel

Tasear wrote: »

Business wise I just don't they could at this point back out of it at least for 2 more years. To them they did give bosmers stealth but missed contation of that in lore that makes them better theives. This is my assumption on current situation.

I think though if bosmers really were more conhevise in their desires for changes that don't overlap with khajitt then might have a chance at change, but right now I see it as too big of risk. This is just my assumption.

Business wise, they lost all support from me. I am no longer subed, I am not purchasing any more crowns, and I may or may not purchase Elsweyr, dependin on my wife's take on that. If she plays a Necromancer at launch, so will I. Else, I'll just wait.

They gutted my main. I have lost most of my interest for the game. Making players so disgruntled with the game that they will stop playing it, or at least stop investing in it, is not a good business decision. And I did invest quite a lot in the past. Would still if I had any reason to do so.

However, acknowledging a mistake and making up for it, that goes a LONG way in reedeeming a company in the eyes of their customers.

rfennell_ESO

max_only wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

The whole debate misses the real problem imo.

ZOS never uses a chisel, it's always the sledgehammer.

Truer words have never been written.

Also dissenters act like we are asking to trash the whole thing. A little goes a long way when it comes to fans.

It's been ZOS' modus operandi on dealing with issues (particularly pvp issues) since they started.

First victim was magicka dragonknights.

It's like the only recourse they are willing to take when "a problem" shows up on their radar is the elimination of it entirely.

Zathras

Sylvermynx wrote: »

I actually never expected the devs to comment on this. Initially I was shocked after 50 or so pages that they hadn't acknowledged this thread

To be fair, it is a small handful of people repeating the same message, and bumping a thread. What is there to say? Everyone else has moved on. The only reason why this thread is still alive is to keep the people that want to talk about it in one place, otherwise another thread will pop up and it will begin again, but with added salt due to the thread lock.

I mean, I get it. I still hate the last major Warden nerf, and left the game for a couple months because of that. Currently, I'm subbed to another game as well, but will pop back in to check out the Necro class to see if that draws me back for a while. For myself, the milk has been soured, as I've (like you guys) seen that there are a lot of changes that get rolled out that simply don't make sense.

They listen to $$$, not threads like this. If this was on anyone's radar, like the Warden nerf, it would have been mentioned somewhere, by anyone, but it hasn't. They've simply moved on.

Cundu_Ertur

Uryel wrote: »

So, how balanced is that ? This is the same passive, with the same amount of one resist being buffed, the same immunity effect to one type of effect being buffed, but the amount of ressource being buffed varies greatly from race to race. One gets +2000 (I suppose it's to make up for the terrible racial passive that has no use in PvE whatsoever ), one gets 600, others get 1000. And then, you have the Imperials and Redguards, which get +2000 to some ressource, but without any immunity or resist.

In most cases there's another buff in another skill not tied to a resistance, like Argonians getting +1000 magic or Dunmer getting 1875 magic and stamina. So it's not as bad as it seems once you look at all of them together.

Ratzkifal

Uryel wrote: »

Just occured to me yesterday... Better late than never... but they really, really have no idea how to balance anything. Look at that.

This is essentially the same passive racial trait, for different races. Only difference is the resist it is focused on, and the ressource it improves.

Argonians : Gain Immunity to the diseased status effect / Increases Max Health by 1000 and Disease Resistance by 2310

Bosmers : Gain immunity to the poisoned effect / Increases your Max Stamina by 2000 and Poison Resistance by 2310

(note that, lore-wise, if you keep only one resist per race, argonians and bosmers should be switched)

Dunmers : Gain immunity to the burning status effect / Increases Max Health by 600 and Flame Resistance by 2310

Nords : Gain immunity to the Chilled status effect / Increases your Max Health by 1000 and Cold Resistance by 2310

So, how balanced is that ? This is the same passive, with the same amount of one resist being buffed, the same immunity effect to one type of effect being buffed, but the amount of ressource being buffed varies greatly from race to race. One gets +2000 (I suppose it's to make up for the terrible racial passive that has no use in PvE whatsoever ), one gets 600, others get 1000. And then, you have the Imperials and Redguards, which get +2000 to some ressource, but without any immunity or resist.

That's not balanced at all. And don't even start me on how the lore was *** when Bosmers became guards and Altmers began regenerating stamina with something called SPELL recharge.

@Uryel Can we please stop throwing around wrong numbers? It's making us look like idiots who have no idea of balance and what is actually going on ingame. Dunmer DO NOT GET 600 HEALTH! Their passive just reads "Increases your Flame Resistance by 2310. Gain immunity to the burning status effect."

You also have to view these passives as a whole. Argonians have a much stronger potion passive than the Bosmer regeneration because they also have 1000 magicka on it. In ZOS' mind the healing done is also worth more, so yeah, it's "balanced" under their assumptions, just differently distributed over the three passives.
I can't check Nord passives but I believe it was 2000 or 1500 health and not 1000. I just remember that Orcs and Argonians have less health than Imperials, but I don't know about Nords.

And no, if you have to get rid of one resistance, it doesn't matter which one you remove from Argonians because the lore clearly states that they are immune to both and you will always be in conflict with it one way or another. Skyrim set a precedent for the poison resistance removal, so that's what ZOS went with. In general they seem to get most of their racial balance ideas from Skyrim.

Uryel

Ratzkifal wrote: »

@Uryel Can we please stop throwing around wrong numbers? It's making us look like idiots who have no idea of balance and what is actually going on ingame. Dunmer DO NOT GET 600 HEALTH! Their passive just reads "Increases your Flame Resistance by 2310. Gain immunity to the burning status effect."

Sorry mate, didn't check ingame. My source was the wiki, and it is apparently as "accurate" as ever... I've spotted the mistake where it still says Altmers regenerate their higher ressource pool with spell recharge, while they do restore the lower one, but that one about Dunmers eluded me.

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Racial+Skills

Ratzkifal wrote: »

You also have to view these passives as a whole.

Well, maybe we should, but copy-pasting the same racial skill to several races while merely shifting the element doesn't help taking things as a whole. And personnaly, I don't think we should anyway. It's easier to balance a whole if each building block is balanced by itself. Not doing it is a flaw of concept to start with.

But as it happens that the very concept is flawed anyway, to the point that removing stealth from Bosmers apparently "fits the lore", then you're probably right.

I'll check the numbers in game later on and edit accordingly. Can't for anything about Orcs, I don't have one, but Nords, Dunmers and Imperial, I will. Or if someone want to verify the values and correct me, I'm fine with that too

Ratzkifal wrote: »

And no, if you have to get rid of one resistance, it doesn't matter which one you remove from Argonians because the lore clearly states that they are immune to both and you will always be in conflict with it one way or another. Skyrim set a precedent for the poison resistance removal, so that's what ZOS went with. In general they seem to get most of their racial balance ideas from Skyrim.

Well, using Skyrim as the main source of lore is yet another flaw of concept, but hey... Can't blame them for using their best seller as an inspiration. Still, if you MUST remove one resist, disease it should be. There are lots of dialogues in which argonians mention eating poisonous things, especially in Murkmire, but I can also think of Green-Venom-Tongue in dark Brotherhood. I don't remember so much for illness. On the other hand, there is a questline in Grahtwood where (spoilers !) Bosmers poison themselves so that when their enemies kill them and eat their corpses, they will die of poisoning. So, they are not immune to poison at all. Giving them immunity to disease wouldn't contradict that.

TokenIntellect

My very first ESO character was a Bosmer nightblade. The choice to play a Bosmer nightblade, as opposed to something else, used to mean something both for my chosen play-style and the role I wanted to play in the broader story of ESO. Reading this thread, it's obvious how many people recognize that the changes to the Bosmer break lore. Playing any TES game other than ESO, it's also obvious. It seems like no one at ZOS actually played TES other than maybe Skyrim or plays ESO, though.

So, my question is does ZOS understands how to balance:

• play as you want
  with
• every race has a unique flavor?

Part of the problem is that we don't have individual D&D or D20 type player stats (rather than 'attributes') and instead have a system that rewards shoving everything into one resource and allows you to reset attributes as needed. The reason why this matters is because of how 'racial' differences work IRL (I'm going to use nationality instead of race just to avoid stirring the pot too much, but even with traditionally designated racial groups it'd work the same way):

• First, how big are the differences? The average height of adult Canadian men is 175.1 cm and of adult American men is 175.5 cm. There just isn't that much of a difference to begin with.
• Second, if the variation within a group is greater than the variation between groups, the difference is essentially meaningless. It's only when the variation between groups is greater that variation within them that we seem to have a racial trait. That little .4cm difference between Canadians and Americans is nothing when compared to the ~36 cm range between the first and 99th percentiles within each population.
• Third, there may be other factors that better explain differences. In the case of Canadian and American heights, gender correlates much more than nationality. Even then, however, the difference in heights between 50th percentile men and women (~13cm in Canada and ~14cm in the United States) is still much less than the height variation within genders (~36 cm for men and ~33cm for women in the US, ~36cm for men and ~35 cm for women in Canada). So, even though gender does a better job explaining difference, we have plenty of short guys and tall women, enough to make those averages still more-or-less meaningless.

So why does this matter to ESO? Because there is essentially zero variation within races (most of which comes from gear, consumables, and class-based skills). That means that the there is no possibility of playing a clumsy Khajit, a physically weak Orc, a magically attuned Nord, or a beefy Altmer— even though our real-life experience (and ton of examples from the game and the lore) insist that must be possible.

We cannot play as we want; we can only play as we want within the constraints that ZOS provides. If race provided a starting point but we also had individual stats that allowed greater variation within than between races, we'd have a situation where each race would still have a unique flavor but you could also play as you wanted to. Because we don't have individual stats, ZOS has tried to make every race capable of playing both stamina and magicka versions of every class. Sure we can play as we want as far as combat roles, but all it has done is wipe out one of the only viable sources of identity.

Yes, IRL, supposed racial differences are usually complete BS, but in a game without stats what are we left with when that identity is stripped away? Is it now all about class and gear?

And what if ZOS were to wield the nerfhammer to strip away class identity? What then?