PSA about update 24 and the negative response

DocFrost72

Imagine yourself in the shoes of a ZOS employee. When the subject of where to go in update 24 gets brought up, you are sitting in the room when the discussion turns to blanket nerfs for dots. "Make them 1.25x the damage of a spammable" is brought up. Agree or disagree, the consensus is this is where the game should go next.

Do you think anyone in the room has any illusions about what the player response on the forums will be? Memes aside, the people working here are not unintelligent. When they send the changes to Gina to turn into natch potes, when they send them as talking points for ESO live, they've already braced all hands and reinforced to survive the crashing wave of intense negative outcry. They've done it before, and if they ever want to push a patch to completion they quite honestly need to do so.

As players, there is no more useless thing to say right now than "omg terrible changes". That gets swept up in the "knee jerk reaction" pile, even if it were 100% correct.

So what should players do?

Well there would naturally be two camps. Those that agree with the changes, and those that do not. This can be in a broad sense, or a particular sense based on the bulk of the notes or any individual change. What I recommend for those that disagree with u24 notes? Provide positive feedback complete with data and if possible, videos showcasing why these changes are not healthy to the game. That will not be swept up as junk data, even if the changes remain. You can amplify your own voice by making sure there is more than conjecture behind it, and prove your points.

Even if you do not have the PTS (as is the case for consoles), help those that do by suggesting tests or running values. Ask those with pts access for tooltip values on cost, damage, and healing.

If you believe these changes are unhealthy, provide evidence. Zos is already set against ignoring opinions (at least until the patch drops), but they may very well take hard data and well reasoned points into consideration.

Major_Lag

DocFrost72 wrote: »

If you believe these changes are unhealthy, provide evidence. Zos is already set against ignoring opinions (at least until the patch drops), but they may very well take hard data and well reasoned points into consideration.

There, fixed that for you

PTS testers provided plenty of feedback before Scalebreaker hit Live. The feedback was ignored by ZOS.

Before that, PTS testers provided plenty of feedback before Elsweyr hit Live. The feedback was ignored by ZOS.

Before that... well, you get the point.

nafensoriel

Gaming Devs learn early to gain battleship grade skin. It sucks but its reality.
Also, some of the most well-received games and products of all time only exist because the developers ignored what their users wanted.

Sometimes mob rule is not ideal. Sometimes you have to *** people off to make more people happy.

Ackwalan

Last week people were complaining about dot damage, this week people are complaining about dot nerf. Who in their right mind would take the forums seriously?

TequilaFire

Dots needed a nerf, but it is the amount they and other abilities were nerfed that is in question.

jcm2606

Ackwalan wrote: »

Last week people were complaining about dot damage, this week people are complaining about dot nerf. Who in their right mind would take the forums seriously?

The devs, apparently.

https://clips.twitch.tv/SpicyThoughtfulFennelMVGame

Rave the Histborn

DocFrost72 wrote: »

Imagine yourself in the shoes of a ZOS employee. When the subject of where to go in update 24 gets brought up, you are sitting in the room when the discussion turns to blanket nerfs for dots. "Make them 1.25x the damage of a spammable" is brought up. Agree or disagree, the consensus is this is where the game should go next.

Do you think anyone in the room has any illusions about what the player response on the forums will be? Memes aside, the people working here are not unintelligent. When they send the changes to Gina to turn into natch potes, when they send them as talking points for ESO live, they've already braced all hands and reinforced to survive the crashing wave of intense negative outcry. They've done it before, and if they ever want to push a patch to completion they quite honestly need to do so.

As players, there is no more useless thing to say right now than "omg terrible changes". That gets swept up in the "knee jerk reaction" pile, even if it were 100% correct.

So what should players do?

Well there would naturally be two camps. Those that agree with the changes, and those that do not. This can be in a broad sense, or a particular sense based on the bulk of the notes or any individual change. What I recommend for those that disagree with u24 notes? Provide positive feedback complete with data and if possible, videos showcasing why these changes are not healthy to the game. That will not be swept up as junk data, even if the changes remain. You can amplify your own voice by making sure there is more than conjecture behind it, and prove your points.

Even if you do not have the PTS (as is the case for consoles), help those that do by suggesting tests or running values. Ask those with pts access for tooltip values on cost, damage, and healing.

If you believe these changes are unhealthy, provide evidence. Zos is already set against ignoring opinions (at least until the patch drops), but they may very well take hard data and well reasoned points into consideration.

Is this your first ZOS patch? ZOS is notorious for just ignoring player feed back then reverting all major changes a patch or 2 later. There isn't really a point to giving them feedback because it doesn't get used. I think I can count the amount of changes they've proposed the got significantly scaled back and that took a lot of outrage from more of the player base then they ever expected.

I understand that they are the ones in charge and they have a vision for the game, but that's also the problem with everything over time. They have a vision for the game. They have one and their player base has a different one. ZOS seems content with creating major changes to things in order to create a better atmosphere for their monetization. Skills that have been absolute garbage since launch suddenly get a major overhaul at the same time they start getting sold for real $$$. The players don't want this and the developers aren't holding hands hoping people don't say bad things.

Imagine defending people you've never met because they can't competently do their jobs. If they made good patches they would be received well. Intense negative reception for every ESO patch is standard at this point because of the job they do but this isn't the case for every MMO and this is the only one I've personally seen where the devs are so opposed to listening to any and all feedback. This is why MOBAs used to be the thing to play until patching like this started occuring and killed of their playerbases.

Dogzey

Dots were over performing from day 1 of the Scalebreaker pts cycles and they were made aware of this. They left it go live so they clearly ignored it and decide to fix it at a later date. That seems like ignoring a BIG problem until a later date and now their idea of fixing it is nerfing skills by 60%.

Rave the Histborn

Ackwalan wrote: »

Last week people were complaining about dot damage, this week people are complaining about dot nerf. Who in their right mind would take the forums seriously?

Dot damage was too high, no person in their right mind just drops it by 50% and goes problem solved. That's not how balancing works.

UrbanMonk

Ackwalan wrote: »

Last week people were complaining about dot damage, this week people are complaining about dot nerf. Who in their right mind would take the forums seriously?

Do not generalise the DOT nerf Then and Now. If you dont understand the difference between which dots were buffed before and which dots are nerfed now, and which ones people are crying about, then you have no clue what you are talking about.
So stop before you blame the whole forum if they should be taken seriously or not.

UrbanMonk

Rave the Histborn wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

Last week people were complaining about dot damage, this week people are complaining about dot nerf. Who in their right mind would take the forums seriously?

Dot damage was too high, no person in their right mind just drops it by 50% and goes problem solved. That's not how balancing works.

Last Patch ST dots were buffed. Nothing is changed to them much in terms of Damage. Damage reduction this patch is to another dots.
Stop mixing all Dots together.

WrathOfInnos

Adjusting relative power levels is fine. Personally I think 1.25X is a little too low, maybe 1.5X would be more acceptable, but nobody is complaining that their DoTs are too weak relative to their spammables. The problem is that to nearly equalize DoTs and spammables, every DoT was brought down to nearly the value of a spammable, and no spammables has their power increased. As a result, every build was drastically weakened, and unlike other patches (where we can shift around to utilize new or buffed skills and gear) there doesn’t seem to be any way to adapt without taking a massive DPS loss.

What should have been done is:
- Leave AoE DoTs as they were in Scalebreaker with no cost increase (or take them back to Elsweyr values if the cost increase is happening)
- Balance single target DoTs to approximately the AoE DoT damage (approx 25% nerf from Scalebreaker values)
- Increase spammable damage to achieve the desired DoT to spammable ratio (about 50% buff from Scalebreaker values)

Kagukan

DoT damage by nature is slow and easy to counter. Burst damage is fast and harder to counter. DoT damage should be way higher than burst damage. DoT's were fine. Bad PvP players couldn't counter.

carlos424

Well, one big issue I have is that they use language that is misleading. I’m too lazy to look up the quotes, but the impression they gave was that they were going to nerf dots (no problem) but they would adjust aoe damage to do the same damage of single target dots at a much higher cost. I think most people would see that as increasing aoe damage but giving it a much higher cost (or at least not nerfing it). But that is exactly what they did. Was it a lie? I guess not, but it was definitely misleading.
What we can take away from all this is that they simply want to nerf all damage, and have used language such as “adjust,” “re-work,” “audit,” to kind of mask the true intention.
Maybe if you just bite the bullet and say “Damage is too high, so we’re going to take the next few patches to bring it down.” You will have an initial uproar, but then people will know what to expect, instead of having every patch be the end of the world.

Rave the Histborn

ToxicPAWS wrote: »

Rave the Histborn wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

Last week people were complaining about dot damage, this week people are complaining about dot nerf. Who in their right mind would take the forums seriously?

Dot damage was too high, no person in their right mind just drops it by 50% and goes problem solved. That's not how balancing works.

Last Patch ST dots were buffed. Nothing is changed to them much in terms of Damage. Damage reduction this patch is to another dots.
Stop mixing all Dots together.

I understand which dots were buffed and which are getting nerfed. This doesn't change the fact that there's a ton of dots that do too much damage while you drop others by significant amounts. That isn't how you balance.

adree

ToxicPAWS wrote: »

Last Patch ST dots were buffed. Nothing is changed to them much in terms of Damage

Soul Trap Reduced the damage per tick of this ability and its morphs by 50%
Entropy Decreased the damage dealt of all 3 versions of this ability by 50%
Scalding Rune: Scalding Rune: Reduced the damage per tick of this morph by approximately 60%

thats how regular zo$ funboy comment looks like

Chicharron

DocFrost72 wrote: »

Imagine yourself in the shoes of a ZOS employee. When the subject of where to go in update 24 gets brought up, you are sitting in the room when the discussion turns to blanket nerfs for dots. "Make them 1.25x the damage of a spammable" is brought up. Agree or disagree, the consensus is this is where the game should go next.

Do you think anyone in the room has any illusions about what the player response on the forums will be? Memes aside, the people working here are not unintelligent. When they send the changes to Gina to turn into natch potes, when they send them as talking points for ESO live, they've already braced all hands and reinforced to survive the crashing wave of intense negative outcry. They've done it before, and if they ever want to push a patch to completion they quite honestly need to do so.

As players, there is no more useless thing to say right now than "omg terrible changes". That gets swept up in the "knee jerk reaction" pile, even if it were 100% correct.

So what should players do?

Well there would naturally be two camps. Those that agree with the changes, and those that do not. This can be in a broad sense, or a particular sense based on the bulk of the notes or any individual change. What I recommend for those that disagree with u24 notes? Provide positive feedback complete with data and if possible, videos showcasing why these changes are not healthy to the game. That will not be swept up as junk data, even if the changes remain. You can amplify your own voice by making sure there is more than conjecture behind it, and prove your points.

Even if you do not have the PTS (as is the case for consoles), help those that do by suggesting tests or running values. Ask those with pts access for tooltip values on cost, damage, and healing.

If you believe these changes are unhealthy, provide evidence. Zos is already set against ignoring opinions (at least until the patch drops), but they may very well take hard data and well reasoned points into consideration.

The developers are stubborn, and I don't think it's a bad thing.

The problem is that in a very short time they make very drastic changes based (in my opinion) only on statistics, I do not think they care about the feedback from the forum, that is marketing to keep the player happy.

In the last update they tried to make the magic players use Entropy (curiously just when they sold the skill in the store) and in this update Entropy is useless.

ZOS buff the dot and now nerf the dot, are very drastic things in a very short time.

I remember reading a few years ago that they were planning to make the heavy attack a little faster, but they were not sure because it was a very drastic change ...

I think his definition of drastic and mine are very different.

FrancisCrawford

nm

Vlad9425

Let’s cut the BS. Most of the people who love these changes either do not engage in much combat or high end content like vet trials and PvP or are just happy questing and crafting. There changes are completely garbage and are destroying this game. To come out to the forums and say you love these changes when half of your damage is nerfed or made no longer fun or engaging is insane.

MartiniDaniels

I am really sad for all the good changes added this patch and all the work done on new content been overshadowed by that 50% nerf to dots... and this is not 50% like 6.66 is 50% less then 10. It is 50% like 5 being 100% less then 10. This is hugest global nerf I ever saw..

So they should've expect such reaction.. and also they should've created ESO live today, when people already read and analyzed changes, not like yesterday when everybody was just shocked and no coherent feedback was possible.

WuffyCerulei

They’re making absolutely bull ideas, and I will raise Hell to make sure they know.

Hotel6

Dmg nerfs... well i flow with it,my problem is the sustain. It's hard enough for me (specialy for my new khajjit)

Girl_Number8

Vlad9425 wrote: »

Let’s cut the BS. Most of the people who love these changes either do not engage in much combat or high end content like vet trials and PvP or are just happy questing and crafting. There changes are completely garbage and are destroying this game. To come out to the forums and say you love these changes when half of your damage is nerfed or made no longer fun or engaging is insane.

This^^^^^

Zos has only one direction that they are going with and that is greed.

They don't care about long term players or even bothering to listen to the feedback of such players. They reduced the skill of PvP to a joke and destroyed anything remotely enjoyable about each class. Hell, they couldn't even get the long awaited Necromancer working right.

The only thing that seems to work is the crown store and crates, even over the content itself.

At this rate they should just copy The Sims.

The PTS feedback is barely ever listened to if at all.

max_only

DocFrost72 wrote: »

but they may very well take hard data and well reasoned points into consideration.

I got 2 examples at hand that disprove this.

89 pages including copies from their own archives, game pamphlets, and screenshots right on page one They absolutely do not look at hard data and well reasoned points.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/459007/wood-elf-bosmer-losing-stealth-passive-an-open-letter
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/453572/bosmer-racial-change-that-is-illogical-and-unnecessary

And what about Siphoning Attacks, still illogical after all this time? They went ahead and hired this guy but did they change it? No, they are too proud and stubborn.

Relevant demonstration on how important Siphoning Attacks WAS starts at 34 min or 43 min.

https://youtu.be/fK5D32QGsy0

They are too proud. They will never admit mistakes. Artic blast has been returned but they write the dev comment as if they solved a problem. They created that problem.

I’m glad they are proud of their work, it’s not easy. But there’s accomplishment pride and blind pride right off a cliff.

Dragonnord

Or you work for ZOS or you are a new player.

We have been giving feedback since? EVER?! And ZOS takes any path they like 99.9% of the time.

They buff dots, then nerf dots, then buff AoE, then nerf AoE, then buff single target, then nerf single target, then buff melee, then nerf melee, then buff range, then nerf range, then buff stam, then nerf stam, then buff mag, then nerf mag, then buff tanking, then nerf tanking, then buff healing, then nerf healgin, then buff dps, then nerf dps, then buff this, this, that and that class, then nerf, this, this, that and that class, then buff a, b and c skills, then nerf a, b and c skills, then buff x passives, then nerf those same x passives, then buff this set, then nerf the same set, then buff that weapon, then nerf that same weapon and so, non-stop, regardless our feedback.

Feedback = Wast of VALUABLE time.
 

quadraxis666

Regardless of any nerfs or changes, good players will be good. Only the crappy/average/casuals cry. They already can't get the max out of their builds so any change hurts them, they think being good at the game is based on their gear and skill bar alone, never accounting for the level of their own physical skill at timing, clicks & button presses to get the max out of a build.

A good player in crappy gear with bad traits & wrong enchants & even silly skill choices will out dps a crappy player in full gold optimal trait gear with the perfect bar setup.

All patches are a git gud & l2p issue.

Daedric_NB_187

quadraxis666 wrote: »

Regardless of any nerfs or changes, good players will be good. Only the crappy/average/casuals cry. They already can't get the max out of their builds so any change hurts them, they think being good at the game is based on their gear and skill bar alone, never accounting for the level of their own physical skill at timing, clicks & button presses to get the max out of a build.

A good player in crappy gear with bad traits & wrong enchants & even silly skill choices will out dps a crappy player in full gold optimal trait gear with the perfect bar setup.

All patches are a git gud & l2p issue.

Yeaaaahhh...... Okay...... 🙄

Somber97866

They nerf things every patch! They don't have to prepare anything! They're vets at this. It's Elder Nerfs Online! Wtf

Jaraal

It’s not the nerfs themselves, but rather the roller coaster of wildly aggressive changes that scream incompetence. Apparently nobody at ZOS understands that subtle, gradual adjustments work better than just pulling numbers out of a hat, and then three months later scrambling to not only undo the changes, but to go to the extreme in the other direction.

Players are getting tired of being jerked around and having to relearn the game every quarter.

MojaveHeld

If I were a ZOS employee, I would make sure that I understand my own game before bringing up such obviously braindead ideas as the ones in the current patch notes. ZOS showed an open disdain for their own playerbase with these changes, giving them intense blowback for it is the only way to get them to change and stop being such scumbags to their own players. You treat your playerbase with such obvious contempt, you deserve every bit of blowback you get. ZOS did a running leap into the "unacceptable behavior from the developer" category, no amount of politeness can change that. So making it abundantly clear to ZOS that their behavior is utterly unacceptable and has to change now is the only productive option the playerbase has.

Eirinin

How long should a person pay for a service they don't like, OP?

Put yourself in the consumers shoes here. How do they feel? What should they do when they get jerked back and forth by a company?

Swing a skill 5%? Fine. Shift it 50%? Are you drunk, dumb, or just cruel and capricious?