PSA about update 24 and the negative response

DocFrost72

Eirinin wrote: »

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

Not any more time than it takes to click unsubscribe. If you do not enjoy a game, why are you paying for it? That is silly.

Put yourself in the consumers shoes here.

Already there, I am ESO plus at this moment.

How do they feel?

Dunno, I don't speak for others often on principle. I'm comfortable assuming there are quite a few upset with the changes, based on the forums. They were the intended audience of this.

What should they do when they get jerked back and forth by a company?

I made that abundantly clear in my first post. Explain why you feel the changes are unhealthy, exploitative, harmful to you in constructive posts with as much data as you can cram into it. If you feel the game will continue to be these things and that the vision and direction of the game is not something you're interested in, find a game that will be fun for you to play.

Huyen

Rave the Histborn wrote: »

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.

About the $$$ part: people are still spending their money in the crownstore so its working. Its the main problem in the gamingindustry for at least the past 10 years. The only way it will end if people stop buying that stuff that is gone when the server dies down. They dont care about players, but only about their net gain and shareholders, who threaten to pull the plug if they dont get paid enough (money wich from my point of view didnt do anything for to earn it).

itscompton

Kagukan wrote: »

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.

This, my single target DOTs melt bad players but only serve to put me in a competitive place when facing a good player, and if they are on a class with a strong burst combo the smallest slip up leads to getting stunned and hit with 30K+ damage in 1-2 GCD's.
If these changes go through no one is going to use single target dots at all and maybe a couple of players in ball groups will be tasked with running AOE dots but the cost v damage of those will be way too detrimental for anyone playing solo/small group to use them. Play in PvP is going to be "come with direct damage skills lined up in a burst combo or don't come at all".
Play your way my a**.

Eirinin

DocFrost72 wrote: »

Eirinin wrote: »

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

Not any more time than it takes to click unsubscribe. If you do not enjoy a game, why are you paying for it? That is silly.

Put yourself in the consumers shoes here.

Already there, I am ESO plus at this moment.

How do they feel?

Dunno, I don't speak for others often on principle. I'm comfortable assuming there are quite a few upset with the changes, based on the forums. They were the intended audience of this.

What should they do when they get jerked back and forth by a company?

I made that abundantly clear in my first post. Explain why you feel the changes are unhealthy, exploitative, harmful to you in constructive posts with as much data as you can cram into it. If you feel the game will continue to be these things and that the vision and direction of the game is not something you're interested in, find a game that will be fun for you to play.

I think any swing of 20-50% in not one, but many, skills/spells is going to be a little annoying to the average person. Ymmv.

And I already installed a different game and spent some time today checking it out. I will continue to try a few out while the dust settles here but I don't see myself paying money for swings this wide and encompassing.

nafensoriel

Huyen wrote: »

About the $$$ part: people are still spending their money in the crownstore so its working. Its the main problem in the gamingindustry for at least the past 10 years. The only way it will end if people stop buying that stuff that is gone when the server dies down. They dont care about players, but only about their net gain and shareholders, who threaten to pull the plug if they dont get paid enough (money wich from my point of view didnt do anything for to earn it).

Just playing devil's advocate here...

If the system is working for the developers...
and people keep paying them for their product...
Isn't it time to admit maybe the developers are just providing what the majority of their user base wants and the ideology that we should just "not pay for it" is no longer factual or correct?

People are paying for it. They obviously enjoy what they get for their money. Regardless of where you or I stand in our opinions on balancing or direction we are the minority now and should start acting like it.

RoninOfNight

Players are already leaving, if the patch notes hold up more will leave.

Moloch1514

nafensoriel wrote: »

Huyen wrote: »

About the $$$ part: people are still spending their money in the crownstore so its working. Its the main problem in the gamingindustry for at least the past 10 years. The only way it will end if people stop buying that stuff that is gone when the server dies down. They dont care about players, but only about their net gain and shareholders, who threaten to pull the plug if they dont get paid enough (money wich from my point of view didnt do anything for to earn it).

Just playing devil's advocate here...

If the system is working for the developers...
and people keep paying them for their product...
Isn't it time to admit maybe the developers are just providing what the majority of their user base wants and the ideology that we should just "not pay for it" is no longer factual or correct?

People are paying for it. They obviously enjoy what they get for their money. Regardless of where you or I stand in our opinions on balancing or direction we are the minority now and should start acting like it.

The problem is that most folks paying $$ to ZOS are doing fashion, questing, and housing. None of those need any skill other than spamming a light attack and an ability or 2. So those folks love each patch and dont care that their potential DPS just went down 33% and costs went up 200%. They will love the new Crown Crate season and all the furnishings coming with the new zone. ZOS makes little money off end gamers, so the suits dont care what the combat dev team does. Combat doesnt pay the bills sadly.

jadarock

Dragonnord wrote: »

THE GAME= Waste of VALUABLE time.
 

Fixed it for you

nafensoriel

Moloch1514 wrote: »

The problem is that most folks paying $$ to ZOS are doing fashion, questing, and housing. None of those need any skill other than spamming a light attack and an ability or 2. So those folks love each patch and dont care that their potential DPS just went down 33% and costs went up 200%. They will love the new Crown Crate season and all the furnishings coming with the new zone. ZOS makes little money off end gamers, so the suits dont care what the combat dev team does. Combat doesnt pay the bills sadly.

That was fundamentally my point.
People who play competitively or want a pure challenge are the minority now for many market sectors. Even fortnight is mostly casual.

Which maybe means we need to grow up a bit and accept that we are a minority sector and should start requesting changes in a more mature manner rather than climbing the walls threatening developers like our segment has any power.

Sorry. Its reality that we play the game our way on the sufferance of casual players. Casual players control the market now. We need to accept that. No one will miss us if we go away and if we keep acting like *** it's only going to get worse design-wise for us.

Jhalin

Feedback is ignored

We once had a patch where every major player agreed things were well balanced, most builds hit within 3-5k of each other, and multiple builds had useful utility to bring to a group.

What they pushed to live was an unbalanced mess and it removed unique utility brought by certain group compositions.

They will never listen to feedback unless it includes putting something in the Crown Store for “it’s convenience” suckers

Jaraal

DocFrost72 wrote: »

If you feel the game will continue to be these things and that the vision and direction of the game is not something you're interested in, find a game that will be fun for you to play.

And that's the rub. There aren't any games truly competitive with ESO in design or features. If there were, folks would be leaving in droves for a more stable product. The game is like a Lamborghini with a 12 year old at the wheel. Nothing quite like it, but if you want a fun ride, you have to get in with the kid driving and take your chances.

Cadbury

"The only way to win, is not to play"

jcm2606

Jaraal wrote: »

DocFrost72 wrote: »

If you feel the game will continue to be these things and that the vision and direction of the game is not something you're interested in, find a game that will be fun for you to play.

And that's the rub. There aren't any games truly competitive with ESO in design or features. If there were, folks would be leaving in droves for a more stable product. The game is like a Lamborghini with a 12 year old at the wheel. Nothing quite like it, but if you want a fun ride, you have to get in with the kid driving and take your chances.

This. Give me an MMORPG, or really any long term online game, with an action-based combat system that is as fluid as ESO's, with buildcraft that is as rich and deep as ESO's, that isn't completely egregious with its monetisation, and I'd quit ESO and move over to that in a heartbeat.

Everything I've tried fulfills one or two of these things, but not all three. GW2 and Path of Exile are the two closest I've found, for different reasons, but they're not as good as ESO as far as core combat is concerned. (I do prefer Path of Exile's combat, but it's obviously not an MMORPG, so GW2 wins as far as MMO features are concerned.)

This is what really upsets me the most. ESO has so much *** potential, it could be the best MMO on the market with some love and the right management, but it isn't receiving that. Each patch is going the complete opposite direction it should be as far as combat and balance is concerned, while the core game is very quickly deteriorating as far as performance and stability is concerned.

If they really knuckled down on fixing bug that deeply affect core gameplay, and just not being moronic when it comes to balance, ESO would be the best MMO on the market today. But it seems like they don't want to, it seems like they're interested on knee jerk reaction after knee jerk reaction, and investing as little resources into the game as possible, to maximise profit and new player traffic, while not caring about the experience of existing players.

Canned_Apples

Only good changes where those to BG queues... only took 5 years... and reducing the visual clutter.

Everything else was them breaking more things and changes things they ought not to.

Swarm change is nice, but the damage is garbage.

MaleAmazon

Seems to me they are putting the hammer down to equalize everything to a baseline which they can then work from.

This isn't really bad. It does mean you can expect a rocky ride until the dust settles.

Sometimes small adjustments are needed. And sometimes you need to absolutely clean house, to rein in a system that has gotten out of hand, in order to be able to have a decent point from which to go forward.

Seems like they go for the latter.

Now their boost-immediate nerf fuckups are infuriating. But they in no way deserve the knee-jerk hate they get, and of course it will make them listen even less. And don't say they never listen; shield cast times never came to fruition, soldier of anguish was nerfed after the outcry, same for Sload's, and stuff like bleeds as well.

If they go for '1.25x spammable damage + secondary effect' for STDoTs that doesn't seem outrageous. I hope they will change it to at least 1.5x spammable damage but I can adapt. If you don't think a DoT is worth it, put another skill there instead.

And this might come as a shock to some people - you are not entitled to your DPS number.

Jaraal

MaleAmazon wrote: »

Seems to me they are putting the hammer down to equalize everything to a baseline which they can then work from.

This isn't really bad.

Ahhh, but the net result will be everybody can do the exact same things, it's just that their costume and spell particle effects may be a little bit different.

Destroying class and race identity so you can be lazy and make one sweeping change every three months instead of actually fine tuning individual skills makes for a boring, unchallenging game. What's next? Removing the Tank, Healer, and DPS categories in the group finder? People already ignore the preconcieved roles and queue as whatever will get them in a group fastest..... because roles already hardly matter. Once everyone becomes "baselined", it will matter even less.

JumpmanLane

There comes a point when a man must be judged by the work he produces. Judging by the nerf-buff-nerf-buff swings of patches within the last year...I’d say the combat team is just showing up for work, drinking coffee, eating donuts, READING the forums and making judgments from what they’ve read.
No matter what you call the meta this patch, I’m pretty sure no one at ZOS coined the phrase “dot meta.”

They read it in the forums and proceeded to suggest changes based on the stuff they read. They don’t play this game. If they do at all, it’s not on a high level.

If they set foot in Cyro, they’d get mopped without a carry. If they dueled the folks I duel just about every day they’d get mopped. If they ran the dungeons they designed they’d wipe. If they ran their own trials without a solid community carry, they’d WIPE.

BUT forget all that. If the devs actually played this game, so many things wouldn’t have gone live:

1. Sloads
2. Glyph Meta
3. Dot Meta

Just to name a few. If they did actually play the game would just THOSE three things be nerfed to uselessness. Sloads? DW Enchants, DOTS. LOL.

I remain UNCONVINCED that the devs play this game on a level anywhere beyond a casual level. Maybe, just MAYBE someone who used to refer to PvP as “the dark side,” suddenly got good over night. OR, maybe just maybe, he’s still a potato lol.

Joxer61

so people will have to actually work at something to receive the reward....omg....what a concept! Seriously, do (did) we need to have 100k+ dps?? Why?
maybe look at the game as a lover...I mean we all do spend a lot of time with it so......I would much rather make love (ya know, Barry White slow and steady) than be a "hit it and quit it" ….just makes it all the more enjoyable (it is a game, remember, fun?) for all involved.
But....if that's not your thing....simply leave. Or better yet do what the OP suggests and submit constructive feedback and data. Will it get seen.....keep at it and I'd say yea. Can but try....instead of cry.

MaleAmazon

Ahhh, but the net result will be everybody can do the exact same things, it's just that their costume and spell particle effects may be a little bit different.

Well, this is to some extent true, though I would say there is enough difference between searing strike and swarm, for example, to give a little identity, and anyway class identity shouldn't really come from DoTs which have always been kind of same-y.

However, more importantly if you nerfhammer everything to a baseline that means you can carve out class identity from that baseline in subsequent patches. You just have to put in earplugs to block out the screaming from people who feel entitled to their overperforming skills first.

ruengdet2515

...
Oh no, not I, I will survive
Oh, as long as I know how to play, I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live
And I've got all my love to play and I'll survive
I will survive, ... hey, hey!!!
...

No matter any nerf I still play ESO, I like to learn new thing, I can adapt for you.

LadyNalcarya

I do not justify personal attacks and stuff, but there's certainly something unhealthy going on.
Games exist to be fun to play, right? And when your players are not excited for new content anymore, when they think that new updates make the game less and less enjoyable, then you're doing something seriously wrong. It's simple as that.
And it's a shame that this "balancing" whack-a-mole completely overshadows the actual content. The content itself is pretty good, but then again, how can I be excited when I have to prepare to "adapt" every patch? Having to "adapt" this often is a chore, especially after you've done it many times already. No wonder it leaves so many players bitter and disheartened.

SirDopey

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.

Normally I would agree with you, but this time there is no escaping that Zos has royally F'd up. They either F'd up with update 23 or they are about to F up with 24. You can't go from increasing the damage of dots from 17 - 37% in 1 patch to nerfing them 60% the next without F'ing up some where.....

Drako_Ei

I tried a lot of rotations and setups, and the best that i could do on a magplar was 73k dps with a 100% dynamic rotation.

I hope liko or alcast come up with a better setup i can use because 73k sucks

Daedric_NB_187

Just as your are entitled to your opinion in your OP. People are entitled to voice their opinion on hating the changes. Simple as that. Just as you tell people that if they don't like the changes, leave. Well you have the option of not reading their opinions. Look in the mirror first before casting stones.

DocFrost72

Daedric_NB_187 wrote: »

Just as your are entitled to your opinion in your OP. People are entitled to voice their opinion on hating the changes. Simple as that. Just as you tell people that if they don't like the changes, leave. Well you have the option of not reading their opinions. Look in the mirror first before casting stones.

I never made my opinion known.

Reread the leave comment, the context around it is incredibly important. Here, for convenience;

Explain why you feel the changes are unhealthy, exploitative, harmful to you in constructive posts with as much data as you can cram into it. If you feel the game will continue to be these things and that the vision and direction of the game is not something you're interested in, find a game that will be fun for you to play.

PapaWeeb

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?

Yes, because DoT damage was too high. Now it's too low. It's not the forums being fussy, ZoS manages the scales of "balance" with a sledgehammer

mague

DocFrost72 wrote: »

So what should players do?

...

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.

a) What players should do ? The best you can do is to ask for 1.33 instead of 1.25. They obviously have a definition what the threshold of DoT should be. A DoT should be a background damage while doing LA/HA and using skills. Well, no "should" ever survived the first contact with the min-max crowd. And so they turn all and anything into meta and not into "should" or "as intended".

b) Hard data ? It is very time consuming to verify other peoples data and results and differentiate between self-lobbyists and real flaws. I would ignore them too.

JumpmanLane

SirDopey wrote: »

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.

Normally I would agree with you, but this time there is no escaping that Zos has royally F'd up. They either F'd up with update 23 or they are about to F up with 24. You can't go from increasing the damage of dots from 17 - 37% in 1 patch to nerfing them 60% the next without F'ing up some where.....

You forgot one thing, WHEN NO ONE ASKED FOR DOTS TO BE BUFFED LIKE THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE! lol.

Philtho

A simplified way of looking how DoTs typically work in other games are

DD does 10 damage per 1 mana instantly.
DoT does 20 damage per 1 mana over 20 seconds.
AoE DD does 5 dmg to all in area per 1 mana instantly.
AoE DoT does 10 damage to all in area per 1 mana over 20 seconds.

Now that is a baseline that can be adjusted to as needed, but you get the idea. You adjust the recast of the DD to either make it slightly overperform the DoT depending if the class is more DD focused, or have it underperform otherwise. Same with DoTs. You also have to consider DoTs typically stack (OR NOT!). You pay for the big damage, but you have to wait for it. Players will generally kite because of this, which is fine, it's a valid playstyle.

Then you also introduce resistances.

DD does 20 damage per 1 mana instantly but is highly resisted.
DoT does 40 damage per 1 mana over 10 seconds but it highly resisted.

These are meant to be used in conjunction of debuffs which prep a mob, causing the mana cost to go up. Again, DoTs stack, but these is part of the balancing act. Do some stack while others do not?

PvP is balanced by allowing players to dispell DoTs somehow. Some classes have skills that might make it easier, some might not. Devs may only allow 1 or 2 dots max per player for example.

But at the end of the day this is the most simplified explanation of how DoTs are SUPPOSED to be applied to any RPG. Right now it seems like the devs lost sight of the most basic concept of what DD and DoTs are and how they should be applied to a game.

Huyen

Drako_Ei wrote: »

I tried a lot of rotations and setups, and the best that i could do on a magplar was 73k dps with a 100% dynamic rotation.

I hope liko or alcast come up with a better setup i can use because 73k sucks

This is what makes ZoS nerf the crap out of right now. People lime this wanting more dps, and complaining at the same time the game is to easy. This is why we cant have shiny new toys.