PTS Combat Test - Discussion Thread

wild_kmacdb16_ESO

I like the idea conceptually. I would tweak the actual numbers though... 78% damage reduction for LA is too much. Make it 50% and reduce the resource regen appropriately.

thadjarvis

I'm open minded and will adapt. If it increases or decreases my time remains to be seen. However, the proposed changes seem to be a generally high cost way to achieve a particular goal of narrowing the skill gap. Secondly, in some aspects it seems to widen the skill gap.

1) The proposed changes are fundamental to the combat system. There may be multiple rotation options and many potential impacted sets and skill dynamics. Given the simplicity of last year's balancing DoT/spam/AOE coefficients taking 3 patches., it's prudent to assume the balancing will take more time and iterations: 4-6+ patches. Is ZoS and the ESO community prepared for that? Does the skill gap and game-play change justify that upheaval cost (the biggest complaint last year)?

According to steam data ESO lost about of third of players during the upheaval string of patches last year. ESO recovered as things stabilized, but can ESO community withstand it again especially if the changes are more fundamental and longer in duration....

2) Is there a shorter path to accomplish most goals such as simple suggestions of tweaking damage coifficients of LA and HA's in the current system so that respective rotations are within some acceptable ban like 0-10%. That could be done in one patch with maybe one follow up patch to fix unintended consequences.

What are the actual goals here, and what is the most efficient way to get there. Use those engineering degrees you guys have rather than modeling politicians.

3) The dynamics of modifying skill usage when OB is up sounds cool. However, the theme seems to be to reduce the skill gap. Tracking a (hard to track) debuff and adjusting skill use during combat is quite possibly the highest skill bar in PvE DPS currently. Just ask end-game Stamdens. Even the experts can barely pull off that mechanic on a dummy; most just ignore it completely in content. Expecting casual/intermediates to utilize the mechanic does not seem realistic.

Seems to be against narrowing skill gap.

4) What is the purpose of changing restoration and sword and board dynamics in addition to the DPS weapons. I am unaware of any complaints about how SnB/Resto use light and heavy attacks. Note the some healers don't even LA let alone LA weave; they will have to learn which seems to be against the purpose of the update. The sustain ceiling for tanks drops in these changes which affects beginner and intermediate tanks the most because advanced tanks know how to manage resources better and likely play with more sustain from group as well as short fights (high DPS supporting them).

Overall, the tank/healer weapon changes seem to be in direct opposition of the stated intent of the changes: narrow the skill gap.

5) The frost heavy that taunts likely makes less sense. Zero purpose for tanks to heavy attack generally, and DPS will want to. Result is tanks have to go out of their way to use it without any benefit (no resource restore) and DPS don't want it.

6) Medium attacks not stunning impacts classes differently in PvP. May need to counterbalance its loss in some cases.

Dagoth_Rac

Nerf light attacks, buff abilities, call it a day. Light attack weaving will still give best DPS, but it will not be like 20k+ extra DPS. You will still need to light attack weave to get that last bit of DPS for hard modes and achievements. But it will open up simply clearing vet content to more players, which I think would be good for game. The barrier to vet content completion should be the mechanics, not DPS checks that require nearly flawless light attack weaving.

This complete rewrite of combat from seemingly the ground up is not likely to do what you want. If good-but-not-great players have to light attack weave to sustain instead of doing the occasional heavy attack, that will make sustain harder for the good-but-not-great players. And lack of sustain is one of the leading causes of the massive gap between the top players and the second tier.

The need for constant, frantic, precise button mashing often makes ESO feel a bit like Guitar Hero or something. I agree that needs to be toned down. But I don't think this will do that. Constant, frantic, precise button mashing will still be required, just for slightly different reasons.

Milli_Rabbit

I love the idea! Let's see how we can adjust it after some testing.

Lysette

I haven't tested it, but just read the patch notes - I like the idea of it and it is far more intuitive to regain resources from light attacks rather than heavy attacks. The question for me is just, if this isn't shifting the focus from regeneration to raw max resources and basically support brute force approaches rather than more elegant resource/attack management. Well, I will see when it will be on the live server - but in general I think a change is necessary.

Skorro

Zos on 5th day of quarantine: *hits blunt* you know, I got a great idea to reduce the lag we've been having from overpopulation..

Lughlongarm

Overall, this concept have some potential.
Some points to think about and keep an eye on.

1)Sustain, especially magicka sustain is way too easy with the current changes. With off-balance, you can maintain a spamable+ LA weave, without dedicated sustain gear. In PvP, magicka builds can probably drop most of the sustain gear(kinda like many stamina builds ATM, using heavy for sustain).

2)Fire and Frost heavy attack takes longer and does less damage than a Spammable+LA(which you maintain) raising the question, why should you even Heavy attack, unless you are specifically build for that?

3)Because damage scales with casting time, Shock staff does way too much damage compared to fire(for the relative casting time). This gap is getting way bigger with the maelstrom staff.

4)Some classes like magicka NB are based around the theme of weaving LA. Should all the NB skills that add sustain on LA should be changed to add damage on LA?

5)The changes to heavy attack interaction with off-balance, is the last nail on the concept of making off-balance, a pseudo CC for classes without a reliable stun(Like warden).

blkjag

Plasma_Elf wrote: »

How about fix the huge list of bugs before making needless core mechanic changes like this?

Performance first

fred4

All I want to say is: What are they wasting their time with? If they worked on performance and they're measuring APS at the server, they may just see that metric increase, because people will see visual skill feedback on their screens and stop mashing the same button.

MellowMagic

This change just doesnt make sense to me, first off who is doing 3 light attacks in a row without any skills? Who wants to use a heavy attack over a class spammable or a weapon line spammable? Light attacks restoring resources makes as little sense as heavy attacks restoring resources, it should just be reverted or if this sticks light attack damage should be reduced by ~30 % and the resource return remains but alot less. If they want us to weave a heavy attacks every once in awhile, a fully charged heavy should place a strong Dot regardless of weapon choice(shock,flame,ice, magic or bleed) strong enough that itll encourage players to weave heavy attacks every rotation every 10-15 seconds but not replace spammables with heavies.

Skorro

blkjag wrote: »

Plasma_Elf wrote: »

How about fix the huge list of bugs before making needless core mechanic changes like this?

Performance first

Agree, and then CP and bug fixes

SekiMou

The current LA + skill + LA "weaving system" is one of your game's special feature I really have no idea why you want to kill something so fundamental to the game. If you would like to "slow" the rotation to make it more friendly to the "bad players", then why not simply make the basic attacks auto? Just like wow? Then I would simply go play wow or ffxiv which also has auto-LAs and WITH NO LAG ON CASTING SKILLS and drop this game whose developers clearly do not appreciate its own hard-core players, the most important population to an MMORPG game.

Why do you value players who only have been here for less than 3 months and too lazy to even get the practice of weaving over the players who stick here for years and enjoy the current system?

Please do not make this go live.

DeSyreni

mpicklesster wrote: »

On a serious note, one alternative solution to the light attack nerfs would be to simply buff heavy attack builds to be as strong as light attack builds. That way, people with different preferences and/or motor skill restrictions can achieve the same DPS. It would also help ZOS more completely live up to their "play any way you want" mantra.

I see this solution as a win-win...win. 1) People who invested a lot of time perfecting light attack rotations don't have their efforts wasted 2) People who play heavy attack rotations because of physical limitations or limited practice time can still be competitive DPSs and 3) ZOS gets to add one more item to their list of reasons as to why their game lets you play how you want.

I personally like playing a light attack rotation because I enjoy the pace. To me, heavy attack rotations just feel slow and tedious. (I for one do NOT miss the heavy attack meta we had a while back. Remember when Sunderflame was the stamina meta?).

Imagine...if...I...wrote...this...whole...post...with...ellipses...between...every...word. That's...what...heavy...attack...rotations...feel...like...IMO.

However, I also recognize that some people might not have the time to learn a light attack rotation--or they might have a physical disability that prevents them from learning one. I don't think it's right that a physical disability could directly or indirectly bar someone from video game achievements. I know I'd feel awful if I couldn't enter a vet trial because my DPS was too low only because of a physical disability that prevented me from light attack weaving. I think buffing heavy attack builds--to match light attack builds--would help solve problems like this without completely upending the current meta.

Agreed 100%, I worked hard to improve my dps, now it was potentially a complete waste of my time. And now sustaining is so ridiculously easy, I thought that sustain was reduced in Vvardenfell because it was to easy...

satanio

StamDK DW/bow Maw&Rele&Lokke
full LA rotation -75k dps: https://www.esologs.com/reports/1NKp2cT4bHW7mPzY#fight=last&type=damage-done&source=1
--Warning: next rotations contain Molten Armaments, other classes will perform worse with HA.--
hybrid LA&HA rotation - 72k dps: https://www.esologs.com/reports/jHCvMn8WyQ63FpaR#fight=last&type=damage-done&source=1
full HA rotation - 68k dps: https://www.esologs.com/reports/CgZ9mKrhcxaXvn2t#fight=last&type=damage-done&source=1
full HA rotation with CP adjusted -> 71k dps: https://www.esologs.com/reports/VjqrQAGtm9vBMWkL/#fight=last&type=damage-done&source=1

I don't know how to do Medium Attacks so, feel free to do some MA rotation.

fred4

Excellent analysis:

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

Mudguard

I think the combat in ESO is really a weak point. I personally find it very "spammy" with the light attack weaving and cancelling. I always remember reading a description of ESO combat that likened it to your character having some kind of fit.

I think I wouldn't mind if they just added in some kind of auto-attack like in WOW.

Madhatten512

So let me get this straight you just tried adjusting a core mechanic in the game block which failed miserable it barely works, and the desired goal better performance wasn't reached in the slightest bit. Now because some people have learned to light attack weave well with practice that's created a skill gap, and since some people just refuse to take the time to learn how to do it you are going to take that away, and just water down combat a bit more. THIS IS A 6 YEAR OLD GAME!!!!! It isn't in beta. Stop changing combat for the sake of bad players if they can't learn a simple light attack weave then they won't be able to learn this non-sensical garbage either.

Just fix the game that should be your number one priority not saving potatoes from dying, Or making it as simple as possible a person that's level 3 on there first toon. How in gods name with the worst performance in the history of ESO(and that's saying a lot) would this even be considered. The people that have supported you for the last 6 years like the combat the way it is or shall I say the way it was before this combat team thought they knew better than everyone else. Ult cast times was the start of this balancing for potatoes, and you lower the ceiling every single patch. Enough is enough. I mean really its to hard to light attack weave. Some peoples Actions per second is to high. There is a global cooldown if I can squeeze more damage into that global cooldown than someone with the reaction time of a snail to bad they should improve at the game not be bailed out by the combat team. This is insane. Focus on the fixing the freaking game.

oXI_Viper_IXo

I realize we live in the age of instant gratification for zero effort, but you are completely taking away any incentive for people to learn and master combat in this game. That was part of the fun.

The more you attempt to close the skill gap, the more fun you are sucking out of the game for veteran players.

Skullstachio

I can say this much, this PTS is even worse than nerfmire, if they follow through on this, I guarantee they will see a recession in players and lose out on fundamental revenue. Then they will have no choice but to revert and scrap this entirely.

SupremeRissole

First of all your ONLY priority should be performance right now, the game is broken, it's been declining for years despite promised "improvements" but enough on that.

For the first time in years we had a patch where not much changed combat wise, builds in dragonhold remained viable for harrowstorm without much readjustment and it was a welcome change to the sweeping rebuilding and rebalancing every patch. So why such a radical core game mechanic change? We were just starting to believe the game would normalise, I guess we were wrong.

I struggle to understand why you always want to lower the cieling and either remove or nerf high skill gameplay (e.g adding cast times to ultimates). The skill-play is the main thing keeping veterans in this game. Someone who has pracitced and refined their skills on this game and invested thousands of hours (and crowns) should be rewarded for that and be able to out-play someone who only has a few hours a week to play. You wouldnt give a new player heaps of armour in a FPS game just because they arent as skilled as their competition, no the new player loses, until they learn to win. That's what makes video games fun.

Heavy attack builds are already pulling enough damage to clear most content, in PvP you have zergs and snipe spammers. Theres plenty to do as a less skilled player. You raised the cieling last year in the WORST patch ever being the DoT meta, and that was the first time myself and many others I know unsubscribed, I just couldnt support the game in that state.

Im all for some of those changes, like removing the destro HA snare, increasing the damage of harder to land HA's like 2H and inferno. I think a high damage lightning HA is a bit extreme in PvP especially when put in the hands of a zerg. But if you left lightning HA as is on live but buffed the damage to proposed values with the vma staff buff that would be reasonable, that way players have to build around it and sacrifice something for that kind of easy damage.

Camkitty2

I think some of the ideas behind these changes sound interesting, but I think this may be too many changes to core combat mechanics. It just feels too heavy-handed. I'd like to address these changes point by point and suggest some other options that might be a bit more subtle.

While I think it makes sense for Heavy attacks to do more damage than Light attacks, flipping the resource restoring mechanic seems entirely unnecessary. Instead, maybe they could both restore and also do damage? Since Light is faster it could restore and damage less than Heavy. This way the time invested in a Heavy attack would make sense for the result, and Light attacks could still function as damage and restore in between abilities, but would have less output than heavy.

Having all attacks interact with Off-Balance could be a nice change, but it could scale differently to match the type of attack. If, as I wrote above, Light and Heavy restored and damaged, this could simply be increased when hitting Off-Balance enemies. Maybe Medium attacks could just knock the enemy down very briefly, and Heavy attacks could stun the enemy for the normal amount of time.

I think that Light, Medium, and Heavy attacks scaling with your highest offensive stats is a nice change that makes sense.

Light attacks having a different effect when used in quick succession is an interesting idea, but it affecting resource restore seems a bit strange. Maybe it could instead add some extra effect to your next skill? Something like reduced cost, or more damage or healing?

I appreciate the changing of Light attack cooldowns to be closer across weapon types; the disparity between weapon types was very annoying and noticeable.

Medium attacks scaling between Light and Heavy damage makes sense; maybe they could also scale in resource restoration.

The Heavy attack damage being affected by the cast time makes sense; maybe this could also affect resources restored.

The staff heavy attacks not reducing movement speed is a nice change that will help with caster mobility.

For the empower buff, maybe it could buff both Heavy and Light attacks? Or it could even be left as buffing light attacks as a way to speed up combat.

I don't really have specific comments for the set changes, since I haven't used them extensively, but of course if heavy and light attacks were changed in some of the ways I described those set changes wouldn't make much sense.

If Light, Medium, and Heavy attacks were changed in the way I described, it would likely make most of the weapon, armor, werewolf and champion point changes unnecessary.

I personally tend to think of Light, Medium, and Heavy attacks as being on a sort of sliding scale, since they are all tied to the same button. The changes I described are what make sense to me with this interpretation. This would potentially help make the attacks more versatile; depending on the situation players could use high-damage, high-return, long cast time Heavy attacks, or lower-damage, lower-return, short cast time Light attacks. It would feel like less of a flip change to the combat system.

Thank you for your time and I hope you will consider these alternate ideas.

[Deleted User]

Hello everyone,

Recently we've had to remove a few posts for bashing, flaming and baiting, content that is against the Forum Rules. For further posts be sure to stay constructive and respectful when providing feedback to avoid thread derailment or action on one's own account.

Thank you for understanding.

Lilly_Elessa

So first off;

We’d like to emphasize the possibility of these changes never actually going into the game – we are simply testing and gathering feedback right now.

I do not trust this statement, in the slightest. As a community, we have repeatedly given overwhelmingly negative feedback on content on the PTS, and we are never listened to. Or when any changes are made between PTS and live due to feedback, they are irrelevantly small.
That we are seeing this test at all, and based on past tests, I feel we have every reason to believe that you are committed to at least this direction, if not these exact changes.

So now I will proceed with the standard fare of negative feedback.
As a long time player of this game, who has loved it for every little quirk, who has loved it in spite of and sometimes because of its flaws, who is not the best player, who hates the animation cancelling that we have all mastered: These are not the changes you want to make.
We've discussed destroyed class and role identity here before. Well now we're talking about something much bigger than any of those: Combat identity. You want to literally flip it on its head. I completely understand wanting to close the skill gap a bit, but for making such a wild change I really do not feel that this is going to do that. These specific changes feel like a cheap attempt at removing animation cancelling - which I would not be sad to see go, but ... That simply is not what this is doing. And removing animation cancelling would be a mountainous task, but a cheap work around to that is really not going to work.

Also, why is the ingame /feedback being weighed more heavily than forum/otherwise feedback? That box is uncomfortable, with a relatively low character limit. Do as many people even use it?

Drdeath20

Seems logical for pvp, wont be a big deal in pve either. People will still ani cancel bcz it still fits with the cool down. We will just see more full DoT builds with a heavy attack as the spammable. The better you are at ani cancellation the better your sustain will be.

Big nothing burger for combat but then theres the things like frost staff heavy attacks, and molag kena (which I imagine is a typo) just nonsensical changes.

LeHarrt91

So with the Changes to Heavy Attacks and Tri Focus, can we get a change to the HA Taunt on Frost Staff?

Starpulsechic

Regardless of whether this turns out to be a good or bad your timing is terrible

You’ve lost an abundance of players due to block changes, dysnc issues, server performance issues.

I think the biggest beef a lot of players have is you have literally admitted you don’t want skill of gameplay to have such a huge factor on combat outcome. This is so disappointing for many players who have spent the time to become good at their play style. It’s off putting and I can confirm from seeing a lot of posts from various discord servers you will loose a lot of subs to this.

These changes actually don’t lessen the skill gap whatsoever. For instance in a BG the less skilled players are just going to run in HA and skill attack spam and die when they run out of resources cause pugs are pugs right. If you couldn’t weave beforehand these changes actually will make it harder for new players as you’ll need to have more situational awareness to know when to adapt your HA/LA weaving to account for offensive/ defensive gameplay.

New World is about to go Alpha in a week with similar combat play style to ESO and your here testing the idea of wanting to change Core combat mechanics in the wake of Patch 25 the Performance Destruction edition. In terms of business timelines even bringing this up for feedback discussion is total madness.

angrydrew

Would much rather Eso spent some time fixing the skilz so they actually fire when you want rather than impliment more complicated structures WHY NOT STICK TO WHAT YOU SHOULD FIX PLZ.I bought this game to play not experiment with .Or even make they castles stay the same size so it does disappear occasionally or dare i say cap your servers so the people can walk run ride and basically do what you keep promising it does.I want to see the skills its more interesting and thats why i have a monitor so no ani- canceling and why change the skilz all the time ? you over complicate it ..ITS A GAME!! all be it a very stressful one at the moment .

Zippy81

Using a heavy attack requires focusing, using your stamina/magicka. Instead of adding recovery to light attacks, lower recovery after using heavy attacks. It would force people to build more for sustain instead. A heavy attack would be the base for burst.

When you're tired, you don't rest with using light attacks only, you shouldn't use abilities and attacks at all, maybe buffs only. How about abilities that could restore magicka/sustain for others by sacrificing your own?

Restoration staves should focus on restoring so why not remove damage from it completely? Buff its magicka restoring power and add extra aoe effects for allies on it, similar to different types of damaging staves. What if we had fire/lightning/ice restoration staves for buffing in different ways? A special glyph could do the charm.

I just hope you remove the taunt from ice staff heavy attacks.

There's often an issue of using wards, here's a way to make them more useful - if you can avoid getting hit, you also have the time to rest so you could get more recovery.

I never liked the idea of getting stacks on every 2nd mechanic.

Good luck! Are you ready for such a big overhaul?

TheFM

If these six pages are not enough indication that people DO NOT want this, and the feedback to how it actually effects the game isnt enough within the first day, I dont know what to say. Its obvious the only people that want this is people who refuse to learn basic mechanics. I didnt like ani cancelling, but you could get around it, but weaving, come on, it is so easy it is ridiculous, THERE IS EVEN A LOADING SCREEN EXPLAINING HOW TO WEAVE!

People have already left because the abysmal performance
People have already left because of the block mishap

And then you spring this on us? Do you have any idea how much of a pain in the rear it is to LAND a heavy attack as a magicka player in pvp? Do you have any idea how unreliable light attacks are in this game? You are slowing down combat and making us rely on light attacks for regen...when light attacks hardly ever register. I dont even know at this point.

the1andonlyskwex

ZeroXFF wrote: »

I've been calling for the removal of LA weaving with AC for a long time, but this change won't functionally change anything in that regard. The fact that LAs restore resources and HAs do more damage is indeed more intuitive and probably a good thing for new players, but it's not the biggest issue with the current system.

The most unintuitive part is that LAs are kind of independent of skills, because you don't have to wait out their animation/cooldown to use a skill, but then again not really, because you can't do LAs after a skill. They should either be made actually independent (and implement WoW-style auto-attacks), or be made exclusive and be treated as just another skill. The way it is now, it's an absolutely unintuitive design where you're effectively not doing LAs and skills, but essentially pressing 2 buttons to use 1 skill. This is not contributing to anything being "fast-paced", it only unnecessarily complicates the controls.

This isn't an actions per minute issue, this is a conceptual issue. If you made the GCD half as long but treated LAs and skills the same, it would result in the same APM, but it would be much more intuitive and it would make it so that every button press is tied to a gameplay decision and is actually meaningful. As it is on live, it's just mechanical clicking of the left mouse button.

This fundamental issue is not being addressed with this change.

This. Just put LA on the GCD. If you want to maintain the "pace" of combat, cut the GCD in half too.

The current system is way too timing sensitive for an MMORPG (especially with lag). It also feels more like a bug exploit that everyone just accepted than an intentional mechanic.