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The floor can be raised without changing anything about balance with this simple trick
BohnT2
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The "Floor" is used by Zos to refer to bad players without saying they're bad, just like low APM players is used to describe players who only use skills every few seconds which in general are bad players.
ZOS has been attempting to cater to those players more by nerfing many mechanics and introducing things like casttimes on ultimates, however none of this has to happen because the "Floor" is an self bred issue that gets fueled by how the game is designed.
Think back to when you started the game, maybe with the Beta, maybe in 2014 or maybe only 1 week ago. When you started the game you had not much of an idea about how combat will be and how this "interrupting" or "weaving" will later be integrated into the combat.
so you've spend your first few minutes with pressing random skills that you don't know much about and how good they are and pressed the buttons the game told you to, to get the introduction done.
that means you maybe interrupted and enemy once or twice, weaved 2 light attacks, and used your skills 3 times and blocked an attack from an enemy that deals no damage.
With this knowledge you're released into the starting zone, you mindlessly walk around trying to understand what is happening in the world and you start to do the first few quests which are pretty easy and every fight can be won without healing or performing any mechanics.
And here's the big issue this never changes in the overland zones, no enemy requires you to follow a mechanic, no boss will oneshot you if you don't block/dodge his attack and you don't see the effects of weaving skills and as you progress you start to forget about those things you've been taught during your first minutes in the game.
When you're reaching CP10 you're still not required to improve you can still level by doing quests, facing enemies who can't hurt you even if you just use light attacks without using any healing skills.
Suddenly you get into your first veteran dungeon with no gear, no idea which skills to use and what to do when an enemy has those red strings around him and you fail and you have no idea why the game became so hard.
This process is the equivalent of teaching your children basic maths for 9 years and then one day tell him to solve his first integral, doesn't sound like a good idea right?
However if you keep increasing the difficulty over the course of those 9 years the huge majority of people will be able to solve an easy integral without any issues and can improve on that further and will be able to solve differential equations at one point.
No one ever thought about making maths easier, you improve the teaching and implement a constant learning process which gives the majority of people the option to progress.
This is the attempt that should be used for this game too, you can have easy starter quests but it's important to constantly teach players and try to get them to improve, this removes any need to have drastic changes to match the floor and the ceiling because most people won't be stuck at the floor but will rather be in the middle ground where they can see that others are better but they understand why they're better and that it's possible for them to get there too by their own efforts because they have already improved themselves.
ZOS has been attempting to cater to those players more by nerfing many mechanics and introducing things like casttimes on ultimates, however none of this has to happen because the "Floor" is an self bred issue that gets fueled by how the game is designed.
Think back to when you started the game, maybe with the Beta, maybe in 2014 or maybe only 1 week ago. When you started the game you had not much of an idea about how combat will be and how this "interrupting" or "weaving" will later be integrated into the combat.
so you've spend your first few minutes with pressing random skills that you don't know much about and how good they are and pressed the buttons the game told you to, to get the introduction done.
that means you maybe interrupted and enemy once or twice, weaved 2 light attacks, and used your skills 3 times and blocked an attack from an enemy that deals no damage.
With this knowledge you're released into the starting zone, you mindlessly walk around trying to understand what is happening in the world and you start to do the first few quests which are pretty easy and every fight can be won without healing or performing any mechanics.
And here's the big issue this never changes in the overland zones, no enemy requires you to follow a mechanic, no boss will oneshot you if you don't block/dodge his attack and you don't see the effects of weaving skills and as you progress you start to forget about those things you've been taught during your first minutes in the game.
When you're reaching CP10 you're still not required to improve you can still level by doing quests, facing enemies who can't hurt you even if you just use light attacks without using any healing skills.
Suddenly you get into your first veteran dungeon with no gear, no idea which skills to use and what to do when an enemy has those red strings around him and you fail and you have no idea why the game became so hard.
This process is the equivalent of teaching your children basic maths for 9 years and then one day tell him to solve his first integral, doesn't sound like a good idea right?
However if you keep increasing the difficulty over the course of those 9 years the huge majority of people will be able to solve an easy integral without any issues and can improve on that further and will be able to solve differential equations at one point.
No one ever thought about making maths easier, you improve the teaching and implement a constant learning process which gives the majority of people the option to progress.
This is the attempt that should be used for this game too, you can have easy starter quests but it's important to constantly teach players and try to get them to improve, this removes any need to have drastic changes to match the floor and the ceiling because most people won't be stuck at the floor but will rather be in the middle ground where they can see that others are better but they understand why they're better and that it's possible for them to get there too by their own efforts because they have already improved themselves.
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MellowMagic✭✭✭✭Agreed, not sure how they would go about doing that but this is definitely true. Most new players are not going to want to seek outside sources to improve themselves. Quest bosses should have more mechanics tied to them that forces you to listen and execute this mechanic inorder to complete these fights. This could make questing more satisfying too because quest bosses burn and die before you can finish a one rotation. Forcing new players to bash, interrupt, weave and dodge roll to kill bosses could help raise the floor.3 -
MerguezMan✭✭✭✭I globally agree with OP's logic, but...
1) "without changing anything" is a wrong assumption. You're asking to implement learning process.
- Why would you feel the need to "play better" if you don't have to, to go through the pve game ?
You need to get better when facing higher challenge. That would come from more complex enemy AI or mechanics. That is probably a lot of effort to implement.
- From level 10, anyone can go pvp. There you get smashed if you have no idea what you're doing.
Players that skipped pve and went directly into pvp, and are still there, had to learn very quickly what works best.
2) "low APM players are generally bad players" is also probably a wrong assumption.
- lag and bugs can disable all you abilities and light/heavy attacks for few seconds, making hard or impossible to LA weave. The more lag you have, the lowest is your APM. It's not player-dependent at all.
- being online, game performance can also be factored. No matter your reaction delay, if you don't see an enemy or attack coming, you won't react in time. Some incoming attacks are displayed with delay, or not displayed at all.
3) Keep in mind console players have none of the add-ons available on PC. That includes skills display and on-screen UI helpers. Such add-ons implemented in the base game could help, and that wouldn't be much effort.
IMO, ZOS teams should focus on game performance before anything else.0 -
BohnT2✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭MerguezMan wrote: »I globally agree with OP's logic, but...
1) "without changing anything" is a wrong assumption. You're asking to implement learning process.
- Why would you feel the need to "play better" if you don't have to, to go through the pve game ?
You need to get better when facing higher challenge. That would come from more complex enemy AI or mechanics. That is probably a lot of effort to implement.
- From level 10, anyone can go pvp. There you get smashed if you have no idea what you're doing.
Players that skipped pve and went directly into pvp, and are still there, had to learn very quickly what works best.
2) "low APM players are generally bad players" is also probably a wrong assumption.
- lag and bugs can disable all you abilities and light/heavy attacks for few seconds, making hard or impossible to LA weave. The more lag you have, the lowest is your APM. It's not player-dependent at all.
- being online, game performance can also be factored. No matter your reaction delay, if you don't see an enemy or attack coming, you won't react in time. Some incoming attacks are displayed with delay, or not displayed at all.
3) Keep in mind console players have none of the add-ons available on PC. That includes skills display and on-screen UI helpers. Such add-ons implemented in the base game could help, and that wouldn't be much effort.
IMO, ZOS teams should focus on game performance before anything else.
Yes Zos should focus on game performance but that's something that shouldn't have to be mentionied all the time in every thread.
now to your points, first of all i said "without changing anything about balance which is a huge difference to saying nothing should change at all.
a player with low APM is in general worse than someone with high APM, ofc you can use some extreme cases where someone keeps dodging, spamming block and stuff without doing any rotation he will ofc do less damage than someone who has lower APM but follows a rotation.
but in general someone using 30 skills per minuts (casting something every 2 seconds) will deal less damage than someone using a skill every cooldown, this can be further shown by someone LA weaving every second along with using skills vs someone who only uses skills. The guy with perfect weaving has a higher APM and more damage.0 -
Zulera301✭✭✭✭✭You want to learn basic mechanics? Base game dungeons.
You want to learn slightly more complex mechanics? Base game vet dungeons
You want to learn more difficult mechanics? Hit up a Craglorn trial or two.
You want to learn complex mechanics? DLC dungeons.
You want to learn complex and difficult mechanics? Vet DLC dungeons.
You want to learn REALLY hard and complex mechanics? Vet trials.
You want to get your self esteem destroyed within seconds and throw all your PvE knowledge to the wind?
Cyrodiil/PvP.
There's plenty of options to learn. Quests are EZPZ because they also offer the fewest rewards. That difficulty scale generally corresponds with how good the rewards are.Shortly after the formation of the Ebonheart Pact, a Nord woman was given a tour of the Tribunal Temple. When later asked about the experience, she seemed upset. Suffice to say, the Dunmer were not pleased to hear this, and thus they inquired further.
"Well," the Nord frowned, "the priests were very angry and unwelcoming. They kept shouting things at me like "you can't drink that mead in here!" and "somebody stop her, she's running naked!" and "we can't catch her; she's covered in grease!""0 -
mav1234✭✭✭✭✭so there are two problems, imo:
1) weaving is not intuitive - as a new player it seemed like it should be reversed, e.g. that light attacks were for 'resting' and 'heavy' for damage.
2) weaving often makes the game visually jerky, even when it is playing smoothly.
3) instructing new players in non-intuitive concepts is fine, but it is also difficult. this is the kind of thing that does need a video and in depth explanation for some people it seems.
all that said, this change was TERRIBLY timed, and there are other concepts the game could really benefit from having a tutorial for.0 -
Deter1UK✭✭✭✭✭
Oh so you're telling me that in general players who are older than 50 years are better than players who are younger?
This has nothing to do with arrogance or anything, it's an easy equation, less skills used, less damage when we assume same skills being used.
Also it's not me inventing this term it's taken from the post zos published.
I'm not saying any such thing.
I'm objecting to the widely held assumption that someone with a low DPS because for whatever reason they are unable to mash buttons at high speed is a 'bad player'.
That is all.1 -
Berek_Bloodfang✭✭✭I completely agree with the concept and delivery of the OP's post, why don't developers think this way? Why do they listen and cater to floor instead of teaching them? My kids complain about their homework being hard but I don't NERF their homework??2
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drkfrontiers✭✭✭✭✭
✭Good post. Refreshing. Nice to see there are still some people able to provide meaningful feedback without ridiculing the developers.
I agree 1000%
If the overland content because more challenging, people would learn to adapt.
Whats makes a great game is the danger around every corner.
I remember back to Oblivion when I first started playing. Trolls and bears terrified me, and I would sneak around the place all the time.Edited by drkfrontiers on March 24, 2020 4:13PM"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche1 -
Animal_Mother✭✭✭✭Bring back pre-nerf Doshia and V4 mudcrabs. That should raise the bar a bit.
Overland has gotten so easy, it can be completed without reinforcing the basic concepts supposedly introduced with the tutorials. These concepts should be part of the easiest gameplay. Instead, the easiest gameplay, overland, has become a faceroll for any mob less than a DLC world boss.
DLC world bosses are the overland creatures scoring kills against players.0