LA/HA Changes, APM, and Onboarding New Players

ketsparrowhawk

- Spamming LA's to fill up my resource bar isn't any more intuitive than doing a heavy or two. But it feels much worse.

- APM hasn't been affected at all. LA weaving is still essential because it is a major source of sustain, thus enabling the player to pack more damage into their build. Currently on live, an inexperienced play might say, "LA weaving is such a cheat! It allows players to do so much more damage than me!" With this change, they'll say, "LA weaving is such a cheat! It allows players to have so much sustain and thus do so much more damage than me!"
- Simply lowering LA damage would achieve the desired effect, without reinventing how the game works.

- This game is not in beta. The core mechanics have long been established. There are other ways to onboard new players that don't involve alienating your loyal playerbase.
- Has there been any talk of making the tutorial system more robust? Some suggestions:

1. Add interactable "combat training dummies" that take players through various training scenarios and teach the basics of the combat system.
2. "successfully block/dodge/break free x times".
3. "LA/HA weave training (seriously.. just embrace it and teach it to new players)".
4. "DPS challenge 10k/15k/20k/25k/etc".
5. "Burst combo challenge! Do 10k/20k/30k/etc damage within X seconds."
6. "Dueling challenge! The dummy could throw anything at you. Watch out! Successfully land three 10k/20k/30k combos, while taking no more than x damage."
7. "Free spar!" basically the same as the dueling challenge, except there are no objectives and it can last indefinitely.
8. Of course add achievements for completing each one. Even if this were all on a stationary dummy, I think it would be hugely beneficial.

- Something like this would 10000% be a homerun with the community, and it would accomplish your goal of bringing inexperienced players up to speed.

Heimdarm

Weaving is not hard, nor easy, but it is not fun. The changes are good, but could be better. Heavy attacks should restore resources as before and light attacks should be completely removed.

Kinga

I hope, ZOS will never change the fighting system back to HA spamm.. Because, this will kill the action fight system.. and this is the only reason to play eso..

The fight system whit LA weaving is really the best and works smoth... so I cant understand why this system shold be change to an slower fight system whit HAs..

code65536

They definitely can do a better job of teaching players the basics of the game.

Compare, for example, the Cyrodiil tutorial quest and the Undaunted introduction quest.

For the Cyrodiil tutorial, a number of NPCs have dialog that explain various things to you, and you're asking to use and repair siege.

For the Undaunted introduction, you're told to step foot into a dungeon and afterwards, you listen to a song.

No, the Cyrodiil tutorial is not perfect, and there's a lot of important things that it doesn't explain. But but it's still far better than the Undaunted introduction.

For example, when I was a new player (having never played any other MMOs), I'd see people asking for a "tank" in zone chat. I had no idea what they meant by that. My guess at the time was that it's something like a Cyrodiil siege weapon (I didn't realize that it was a player) that was big, tough, and does lots of damage. You know, like a real-world tank. As it turns out, a tank is just a player that's very tough... and that does almost no damage. Oh, and they're supposed to use a special skill that makes enemies think that you are the only person there.

For anyone who's new to a MMO, the only bit that's intuitive is that the tank is tough. Yet none of these things are explained by the Undaunted introduction question.

Making game mechanics easier to grasp is good. But sometimes you need to pair that with some guidance, too.

satanio

ketsparrowhawk wrote: »

With this change, they'll say, "LA weaving is such a cheat! It allows players to have so much sustain and thus do so much more damage than me!"

This is not true. With HA weaving you will be doing half of the stuff you normally do, and as a result consuming less resources.

TheFM

satanio wrote: »

ketsparrowhawk wrote: »

With this change, they'll say, "LA weaving is such a cheat! It allows players to have so much sustain and thus do so much more damage than me!"

This is not true. With HA you will be doing half of the stuff you normally do, and as a result consuming less resources.

That sounds so fun! Slowing down gameplay to a grinding halt.

/S