I want to be excited about killing dragons...

zarocco26

I'd like to start this post by saying ESO is my favorite video game, I've been playing for over 5 years, and have had some of the best times gaming within the amazing world that ZOS has created. I have been playing MMOs for over 20 years, and ESO is probably the best one I have played. For the first time, I am actually sad about a content update in a game I play so much of, and that is the biggest problem with the proposed combat changes in update 24. The year of the dragon has been awesome in terms of content. The story has been top notch, the gameplay has been exciting, and coming from a jaded MMORPG vet, this game has made me feel excited like few have. Great work on game content, and I have no doubt that the finale of this year's story will be fantastic. However, why am I not excited about it? Because the developers have made the decision to couple an exciting content patch with an extremely unpopular "balance" adjustment, that frankly feels awful on the PTS. My PTS feedback is this: Postpone these balance changes, tweak the numbers, have more internal testing and let us enjoy the end of the Year of the Dragon before gutting combat and making the game less fun.

Honestly, I get it, the combat team sees a problem and wants to fix it, that's their job and I am not going to pretend to know more about combat balance than the professionals, but I really feel like they have lost sight of what makes an MMORPG fun with the latest changes. I would argue, that people aren't looking for a balanced combat experience when playing an MMORPG, they are looking to feel like a god that can kill powerful foes! You start and your character is weak, a nobody...but you progress, get stronger, you see the other powerful characters and think "Hey, I can be that if I get better and put more time into it!" As of right now, I go on the PTS and my character is weaker than she was a year ago...and that feels like crap. No amount of balance, or parse spreadsheets, or anything can make that feel good. I have been sitting at 810 CP for too long, with no progression in sight, and now my skills literally just do less damage than they did last year...because someone with a spreadsheet thought that it is more important to standardize skills than to think about what makes a game fun. Without progress, a MMORPG is going to die. If I cared about balance over progress, I could play shooters or MOBAs. I do play those games on occasion, but not like I play ESO, because I care more about my character getting stronger by dedicating myself to the game. I don't care that other classes are objectively better at DPS than mine, I care that my character is getting stronger and I can kill a DRAGON. I don't care when someone better than me kills me in PVP because they are stronger, it makes me want to become more powerful and progress....you know, get better gear, make my abilities hit harder and hopefully next time I run against that annoying ganker I have a counterpunch waiting! People are going to say "adapt" or "MMOs need meta adjustments", which is fine and I agree with...but this is too much too fast. You can't let people have negative progression or they will stop playing. Progression groups have just recently adapted to the last round of changes, which were annoying at the time, but didn't make people objectively weaker, so at least I felt like I could potentially get stronger. You can't just nerf all the combat skills within 2 patches to artificially make the game harder! If power creep is such an issue (which I disagree with, I think power creep is a fundamental part of RPG gaming, but that's just an opinion), then design new content with that in mind and leave old content as training grounds for the harder stuff. Get more creative with PVP, if people are dying to dots too much maybe think about reducing the costs of purges, or making hots stronger to promote counter play...or you know just expect people to play in groups with dedicated roles, not balance based on dueling.

So back to dragons...keep up the great work with all the content, but slow down the combat balance and think about what makes an RPG fun, because right now, the PTS is not fun and that is the biggest problem with Update 24.

Araneae6537

While I don’t agree with every point, I agree with much that you’ve said, especially that “balance” and especially standardization of skills should not be the primary goals. Adjustments so that too much doesn’t become ridiculously easy are good IMHO and occasional adjustments to individual skills are to be expected, but I agree that the type of changes currently happening do seem extreme and certainly it is not fun for your character to suddenly feel weaker than they did before the patch, much less a whole year ago. I hope that you and others are able to find builds that work for you and keep your characters fun to play! As for me, I only started playing ESO in July and while I have concerns about some of the changes to Nightblade, a lot of my improvement is still from learning to play the game better so I’m hoping I won’t feel the nerfs as much and maybe there will even be some good points if hybrid builds are made more viable.

TL;DR I agree with most of your points. Keeping content challenging and engaging is good but ought not be accomplished by making your character feel hamstrung.

mbeetley_ESO

My reasoning is also somewhat different but I do share some of the same concerns. I'm not so much averse to dragons becoming more difficult, as I am to them becoming so hard that casual players in off-peak times are utterly unable to compete. I recently came upon a dragon on PTS, and eventually 4 other players happened along. We were managing okay until it set off its AOE, and then, all dead within maybe 5 seconds. I just did a few tests solo, not because I would succeed (I can't solo a dragon in the production environment now), but to see if I could sort out what the problem is. AFAICT the AOE affects the entire battlefield and deals over 30k damage in just a few short seconds. So unless you have dedicated healers spamming AOE healing spells (or waves of players waiting in the wings to join in as people die) it's hard to see how any kind of non-purpose-built group could survive these encounters.

I get that you don't like that there are people camping at one spot (read: Prowl's Edge, NW hunting ground) and farming dragons. But I worry that you'll price casual players right out of the dragon hunts if it's only possible to defeat dragons with specially-constructed groups like trials, or giant random groups, as opposed to the current system where maybe 6-8 moderately skilled players can wear them down given enough time. There have been enough times where I've logged in on a Saturday morning my time and there have just been a few others around, but we've managed to take one down in a VERY lengthy battle.

I think it's the AOE part that really concerns me. If it's a single-target or cone attack that can single-shot kill (or that has DOT that does so rather quickly), that's fine. If there are several players in that case we can hope that a couple of folks get out of the way so that the wyrm doesn't reset while the rest of us are resurrecting. And if we don't, well, we can adjust our strategy and try again. But if the only way to survive is to have a purpose-built group with several dedicated healers, these will turn into trials rather than just hard world bosses like I would hope they remain. I'll keep checking over the weekend to see if there are ever any other players around to help out with one of these, and see how it goes, but thus far I'm concerned.

mbeetley_ESO

Quick follow-up: I'm surprised there isn't a dedicated thread for the dragon fights (at least not that I've seen). These are significant changes to the game and merit some feedback.