VMA and VDSA weapons will have perfected versions but your weapon won't be upgraded automatically.

Elsonso

Thicclady wrote: »

Solution:

Just enable Maelstrom for 2 players (duo play), and adjust mobs damage/health very high

How is this a solution?

Donny_Vito

I was a bit mad at first that I'd have to re-run older content, but I don't think I'll mind it too much honestly. VMA wasn't too bad, but that's just my opinion and it's obvious some people despise going back in there. But unless you are min/maxing, you don't have to get the new one. For me, it'll be nice to knock the rust off old characters and bring them back into VMA for a potential score run (though, I imagine it'll be tough the first few weeks to make the leaderboards).

Neophyte

Thicclady wrote: »

Solution:

Just enable Maelstrom for 2 players (duo play), and adjust mobs damage/health very high

That is not a solution lmao

Erelah

mairwen85 wrote: »

And your point is? Beating vMA is the reward in itself so no trophy or other recognition is required and we should just be happy that we did it regardless of any awarded item that embodies the success?

In that case they should totally give away Flawless Conqueror for no death nMA and have me re-earn a new Perfectly Flawless Conqueror. /sarcasm

The point is your false rage is manipulation. You will run it again, you will grind the content, and for a few weeks you will be angry on the forums complaining how you were robbed of you great accomplishment whose real-world value is nothing. Designers have done the math and in the end this decision is leveraged on it will make them more money than they will lose.

It is a video game whose only intrinsic value is the joy you have while actually logged onto it.

mairwen85

Erelah wrote: »

mairwen85 wrote: »

And your point is? Beating vMA is the reward in itself so no trophy or other recognition is required and we should just be happy that we did it regardless of any awarded item that embodies the success?

In that case they should totally give away Flawless Conqueror for no death nMA and have me re-earn a new Perfectly Flawless Conqueror. /sarcasm

The point is your false rage is manipulation. You will run it again, you will grind the content, and for a few weeks you will be angry on the forums complaining how you were robbed of you great accomplishment whose real-world value is nothing. Designers have done the math and in the end this decision is leveraged on it will make them more money than they will lose.

It is a video game whose only intrinsic value is the joy you have while actually logged onto it.

False rage is a good one I wouldn't quite describe my posts as raging. But I thank you for your input and analysis regardless. Especially with respect to manipulation, I really appreciate that addition to your reply, as it shows a discerned level of understanding for what's being discussed in this thread. Your insights are most conducive to the conversation at hand.

Erelah wrote: »

It is a video game whose only intrinsic value is the joy you have while actually logged onto it.

You're not wrong, and when decisions are made that reduce that joy, I guess that decreases the intrinsic value.

LegendaryArcher

Erelah wrote: »

The point is your false rage is manipulation. You will run it again, you will grind the content, and for a few weeks you will be angry on the forums

Maybe he will. I will definitely not run it again. I'm going back to WOW if this stays.

SidraWillowsky

Faulgor wrote: »

I guess people just hate vMA and don't want to run it again because they see it as a distraction from the game they usually play, rather than part of the game itself.

What I don't understand is why not just say so and instead claim this is some kind of moral failing on ZOS' part, when they have added new rewards to old content frequently before without any complaints.

I actually quite enjoy vMA. As I mentioned above, I was running it for fun at one point- the RNG gods smiled on me and I'd gotten every single vMA weapon type within about 15 runs. The worry about getting the weapon I needed was over and I could focus purely on score.

But that's the key - I didn't have to worry about the weapon drop. What I'm worried about is the worry and trepidation over the weapon that's gonna drop at the end if I don't have the weapon. Being so anxious about what I'm going to get just turns what I do like into a total grind.

MLGProPlayer

Faulgor wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

I guess people just hate vMA and don't want to run it again because they see it as a distraction from the game they usually play, rather than part of the game itself.

What I don't understand is why not just say so and instead claim this is some kind of moral failing on ZOS' part, when they have added new rewards to old content frequently before without any complaints.

Name one other time they've done this.

I named several in the other thread you created on this topic.
E.g. the Refabricated motif, every time they add motifs to DLC dungeons, jewelry master writs, battleground styles, when they first introduced monster sets, the whole set reshuffling with One Tamriel, etc.

Maybe those aren't the rewards you care about, but the concept isn't novel for ZOS.

Motifs are a new reward. Nobody previously farmed vHoF for them.

Motifs can also be traded. You don't even need to farm them.

You couldn't have found a more different example to what is happening right now.

xaraan

Faulgor wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

In every one of those examples, they took away nothing from people who'd previously earned it.

They aren't taking anything away from you now, either, so what's the distinction here?

daemonios wrote: »

Try to read this slowly if you're still having trouble: nobody is complaining about weapons dropping in normal.

Why are you trying to be condescending here? I didn't say anywhere that people are upset about weapons dropping in normal.

daemonios wrote: »

We are complaining that our weapons earned in vet will be made equal to those dropped in normal, with better versions dropping from old content that we've already completed a number of times.

Well, now it does sound like you're upset about weapons dropping in normal, because that might harm the reward differential between normal and vet you've come to expect.
So what if there were no perfected weapons, and the usual ones would just drop in normal and vet, would that upset you, too? If not, well then you're just upset about having to run "content you've already completed a number of times", which, as was my point, is not that different from what ZOS has done before.

daemonios wrote: »

New motifs in old dungeons have no gameplay implications, as opposed to new, better weapons dropping in old content.

As I said, might not be the rewards you care about, but the principle is the same.

virtus753 wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

I guess people just hate vMA and don't want to run it again because they see it as a distraction from the game they usually play, rather than part of the game itself.

What I don't understand is why not just say so and instead claim this is some kind of moral failing on ZOS' part, when they have added new rewards to old content frequently before without any complaints.

Name one other time they've done this.

I named several in the other thread you created on this topic.
E.g. the Refabricated motif, every time they add motifs to DLC dungeons, jewelry master writs, battleground styles, when they first introduced monster sets, the whole set reshuffling with One Tamriel, etc.

Maybe those aren't the rewards you care about, but the concept isn't novel for ZOS.

Those are additional rewards, not replacement ones. And they are not trophy weapons. In fact, most of them are designed to be sellable. You rerun the content for the new rewards if you want them for yourself or if you want to sell them, but not because the rewards you’ve already gotten have just been replaced and made less than in the grand scheme of things.

If you want to find distinctions, I'm sure you can. Move the goalpost wherever you like. But that wasn't the question, just where they added new rewards to old content.

They are taking away.

People need to get off this aspect. It's only applicable in a vacuum and this is not a single player game. My vMA weapon will be turned into a nMA weapon, whether stats change or not. Someone doing exact same content as me a day later technically if we both ran it before and after patch would get a better drop for doing the exact same thing. And someone doing a version so easy you can close your eyes through it version will get the same weapon I have. Plus the entire power creep aspect of the damage moving forward means that yes, much like inflation, just b/c it has the same stats does not mean it's not worth less. And if they are going to give a more "valuable" version out for the exact same content it becomes an issue.

Anyone in a raid team choosing to stick with the old weapon will be behind the curve just a little more vs everyone else that farms it after the patch as well. Despite it being the same content.

This is not a cosmetic item either like a motif, so of course people will be a bit more concerned about it. Your examples were not great, but the other guy already explained why whether you agree with him or not.

My view is, if I ran vMA, then I should have a vMA weapon - whether I ran it last month or two months from now. And if I ran it last month, I will not, I will have a nMA weapon.

I like the idea of nMA weapons, but no one that runs nMA deserves to have the same drops as someone that did vMA. And no one that ran vMA deserves to have that taken away from them and some new player running it for the first time getting a better version just b/c they ran it a month later.

worrallj

I really really hate this change. Feels very disrespectful. And I don't even understand how it is supposed to benefit them: everyone getting the short stick here already owns orsinium.

I get wanting to make an event of going back to vma though. I'd vote that redoing vma gives you the option to upgrade a maelstrom weapon that you earned before the update to a perfected version. I think that would be fun and way less obnoxious.

Knowledge

I've updated my original post to contain the proposed changes to vDSA and vMA weapons found in the PTS 6.0.0 patch notes.

woe

If you already have them congrats you have a good weapon that will do a little more damage than it used to. If you want to grind again, you can get one that is better. These changes are fine and good.

xaraan

Well, now we see the bonuses are definitely ones that anyone will want to have. So yes, definitely screwing over players that have already earned them. (While at the same time making some of the other perfected weapons like Asylum destro less worthwhile).

kind_hero

I wonder if the people who decided this change thought of the outrage they will cause.

It is really a slap in the face to the people who worked hard to get those veteran exclusive weapons.

How many of the people who farmed vMA would have settled for a so called imperfect version that has 1k pen less? How many hours, tons of gold, repair kits and potions could have been saved?

I am sure far less people will do the veteran MA now, than before, because only if you really want to min/max everything and you need that penetration, you will spend days to get the weapon you already have.

On the other side, the weapons could be quest rewards with Greymoor... nMA is that easy. The reward is just to great compared to the content difficulty (normal MA).

Eruceninde

I agree.. I did not work my butt off learning maelstrom arena, trying and trying to get better at it, finally clearing, then farming the arena over 50+ times just for an inferno, a BiS weapon, for everyone to be able to waltz in a stupid easy norm mode and get the exact same weapon. Upgrade the existing maelstrom weapons to perfected, so everyone who worked hard on clearing difficult vet content isn't just chopped liver.

mairwen85

And still no justification given for the decision in 50 pages of patch notes?
Cant say I'm surprised... why did I even think it was reasonable for us to expect one?

khajiitNPC

Oh well — I’m fine with running vet content again, it might take a while but, I mean this is an MMO. Stuff gets nerfed, buffed, nerfed again. I just want a working Cyrodiil.

Caelc

i dont understand why people will bother running it again. the perfected versions are really not worth it. look at the bow, omg about 2 percent crit on back bar. who cares.

mairwen85

Caelc wrote: »

i dont understand why people will bother running it again. the perfected versions are really not worth it. look at the bow, omg about 2 percent crit on back bar. who cares.

Surely that's just a bigger slap to the face adding more insult to injury here? I did say it would be underwhelming and negligible, pretty pointless perfect bonus -- and it is... doesn't undo the aggravation at the principle on display in this matter though, or the precedent it sets.

karekiz

I wonder how many people here.

Are about to reroll their rolled Mag DK because of Perfected AS nerf since it was FOTM

Knowledge

Caelc wrote: »

i dont understand why people will bother running it again. the perfected versions are really not worth it. look at the bow, omg about 2 percent crit on back bar. who cares.

I wish they'd let us upgrade some of our weapons maybe even one? If we cleared it.

YandereGirlfriend

Now that we see the meager Perfected bonuses (e.g. stats that are useless on a back-bar weapon), I suddenly have no desire to go back to farming vMA.

It is certainly still annoying (and disrespectful) that players doing nMA will have the same weapon while putting in 1/12 of the effort, but at least my DPS FOMO is assuaged by the trivial differences between normal and Perfected.

And somehow the Sword and Shield managed to catch a nerf in the process. Balancing by spreadsheet, pure SMH.

PizzaCat82

Im glad I never bought a VSDA carry if my weapons are now going to be crap.

xaraan

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Now that we see the meager Perfected bonuses (e.g. stats that are useless on a back-bar weapon), I suddenly have no desire to go back to farming vMA.

It is certainly still annoying (and disrespectful) that players doing nMA will have the same weapon while putting in 1/12 of the effort, but at least my DPS FOMO is assuaged by the trivial differences between normal and Perfected.

And somehow the Sword and Shield managed to catch a nerf in the process. Balancing by spreadsheet, pure SMH.

I'm fairly certain 99% of us that have issues with the way they are doing it aren't upset b/c we thought the bonuses were going to make the weapons god-tier or anything. It was exactly what you said, the disrespect. You hit the nail on the head for me.

We can all skate through the content with the nMA weapons, heck we could do all the content in purple gear. We don't gold out every little thing b/c that little extra bonus is all we need. We work and try and build the best character b/c that's what we enjoy doing and to see it shuffled away from us feels insulting. This isn't 'new gear' in new content that is replacing what we need. This is just a vMA weapon, if I do the same run right now and the same run in two months I'll get two different versions of the same drop and I don't think that should happen. Just like the way my Tremorscale monster set that I have in my bag will be changed with the patch, so should my vMA weapons to match the next patch's vMA weapons.

Matchimus

...

carlos424

Lotus781 wrote: »

Are the weapons really that good that it reqires all this drama? If you vets are as good as you think you are then you should be able to use the lesser items and still kill it on the battle field or is it the fact you need your fancy swords and staffs to get by, at the end of the day an SAS vet can kill you with a spoon just as easy as with an mp5.

No, the weapons aren’t op. It’s the principle of the matter. People have taken a lot of time and effort to accomplish a goal and receive a reward. Now people are being given that same reward for doing basically nothing. Does that seem fair?

silvereyes

There's a lot of talking past each other going on in this thread, so I'll just repost @code65536's excellent summary from the combat changes preview thread.

code65536 wrote: »

I want to try to cut through the noise a little and look at things from the developers' perspective. Look at where the they are coming from and why they see non-upgrade as the right thing to do. And try to explain why that perspective is so sharply at odds with how players see things.

Floating around various Discords are screenshots of a conversation that @ZOS_RichLambert had with a player who messaged him, in which Rich lays out ZOS's point of view.

How the developers see things...

The developers see Perfected arena weapons as something new. They've changed the sourcing of existing weapons to make them more accessible. And they've added new weapons to the game. And, since these are new things that they're introducing to the game, it makes sense that people have to acquire them from scratch. When a motif is added to a dungeon, you have to re-run that dungeon to get it and aren't retroactively granted copies from previous clears of that dungeon, so why should arena weapons be different?

How the players see things...

Most players don't see the weapons as new. Instead, they see it as a buff to the veteran reward weapons. And that the new thing isn't the Perfected weapon. Instead, the new things are the imperfect weapons that's being added to normal. From the players' perspective, rewards are being added to something that previously had no rewards (normal). It's the normal reward that are new, and existing rewards that are being buffed.

So what exactly is "new" here?

Both perspectives make sense. It all hinges on the question of, What new is being added here? Do we go with the developers' claim that Perfected is new, because Perfected Dragonstar/Maelstrom weapons had never existed before? Or do we go with the players' claim that Perfected is just a buff of existing veteran rewards and that non-Perfected is new, since normal had never granted weapons before?*

If people agree that Perfected weapons are "new", then the developers' perspective makes complete sense. If people agree that Perfected weapons are just a buff of existing weapons and that non-Perfected weapons are the truly "new" thing, then the developers' perspective falls apart.

Historical perspective: Master's weapons in 2016

I think the best analogue would be DSA's Master's weapons. In 2016, the Master's weapons that you'd get from DSA were VR14, back when the max player level was VR16. In the latter half of 2016, they introduced max-level Master's weapons. Everyone's existing VR14 weapons remained unchanged. If you wanted the new max-level Master's weapons, you had to run vDSA all over again and reacquire them all from scratch. And nobody batted an eye at this. Nobody complained about having to reacquire their weapons.

And I imagine the folks at ZOS are thinking right now, "This is no different than adding max-level Master's weapons in 2016, why the hell are players going crazy over this?!"

But there is one very important difference here: The addition of max-level Master's weapons coincided with the rescaling of Dragonstar Arena. DSA was no longer VR14 content, it was now max-level content, with a significant difficulty buff. You could no longer blow through vDSA with no support characters--you had to actually bring a tank and a healer. The incoming damage was increased significantly. The enemy health levels were buffed substantially. Portals granted damage immunity and you could no longer kill enemies before they even appeared out of the portal. The new max-level vDSA was a proper, difficult challenge.

It may have been the same content, but it was a new experience.

And I think the argument here for why the developers missed the mark is that their supposedly "new" arena gear does not require new experiences.

When you get new gear, it's associated with new content. There are, for example, new dungeon sets... that require running a new dungeon. Or, in the example that I just gave above, a new experience could be old content that had gotten a facelift.

Why the players are right

The main problem with the developers' perspective is that the means of acquisition is identical. It's hard to convince a player that something is "new" when the conditions of that reward are identical. Unlike the developers, players don't see this as Perfected vs. Imperfect. They see it as Veteran-difficulty-reward vs. Normal-difficulty-reward. ZOS thinks they added a new reward. Players think that ZOS is buffing an existing reward, but not buffing it retroactively.

As I've said in an earlier post, if ZOS changes the means of acquisition--either by buffing vMA or adding additional requirements (e.g., requiring a single-session clear; after all, Perfected Asylum weapons are rewarded not for simple vAS clears, but for vAS +2 clears, though that's looking increasingly like an aberrant outlier)--then what they suggest probably wouldn't have raised players' hackles nearly as much. But not when the requirements for acquisition are identical.

Point of comparison: Gear cap increases

As I had already mentioned with the 2016 Master's weapon buff, the closest analogue to ZOS's line of thinking are gear cap increases. As expected in ESO (and any other MMO), if the gear cap increases, existing gear doesn't get upgraded. You have to reacquire it.

And this fits with what @ZOS_RichLambert had been arguing: When gear cap increases, existing gear doesn't get nerfed. It just doesn't get the extra power that's being added. (Though to argue that existing gear doesn't lose power in absolute terms is a disingenuous argument despite being technically correct, because it's losing power in relative terms, and that's what matters in the long run.)

As I had already argued earlier, the main problem with comparing Perfected weapons to gear cap increases is that gear cap increases are associated with difficulty rescaling. When ESO introduced VR15/16 gear, it required that we defeat VR15/16 enemies that were tougher than older VR14 enemies. When DSA weapons were upgraded from VR14 to CP160, it required beating a DSA that had received a substantial buff to difficulty.

The second problem with comparing Perfected weapons to gear cap increases is that gear cap increases are extremely unpopular. Time and again, when players have discussed the potential of gear cap increases, the response has been overwhelmingly negative. People really don't like the idea of having to arbitrarily re-earn things.

So even if you could compare Perfected weapons to a gear cap increase (despite the lack of any "new experiences"), it's still not a very flattering comparison because gear cap increases are so widely reviled.

Point of comparison: Adding new drops to a dungeon

As I alluded to earlier, if extra rewards get added to a dungeon after its release--e.g., motifs--people don't clamor for making this rewards retroactive for previous clears. So... how's this different?

It's different because in the case of motifs, you go from nothing-is-dropping to something-is-dropping. With arena weapons, you already have a reward dropping in vet. It's not a new reward--it's a different reward. Or, as the players see it, it's the same reward with buffs. If we continue with this comparison, it's actually the normal modes that are seeing something new that hadn't existed before. Which fits in with the general player perspective that the vet rewards are buffed and that the actual new rewards are the normal weapons.

So... what's the point of this post?

I guess my target audience for this post is @ZOS_RichLambert and other devs, and my hope is that I'm able to convey the players' perspective, why it differs from the developers' perspective and why, if you are to pick between the two, the players' perspective makes more sense and why the developers' perspective, while reasonable, does not pass the muster.

I want this to be about convincing the devs to see things as we see them, without the anger and outrage that we see in 90% of the other posts here.

One last thing: Why this has touched a nerve with players

While this post is mostly to lay out why I think the developer perspective misses the mark, I also want to touch on why there's been so much anger in this thread (though this is irrelevant to the point that I want to make).

The first is the RNG of acquiring weapons. While it's possible to get extremely lucky (one of my alt accounts got an infused Inferno on its first and only run of vMA), there are just as many stories about people who aren't lucky. I know someone who has just two inferno staves, and at least 60 ice staves (they stopped keeping track after 60). I know people who have farmed vMA literally hundreds of times to get their gear. Too many people have been burned by the RNG for there to be anything other than anger at the suggestion that they would have to endure that all over again.

I've run vMA somewhere between 200 and 300 times, and I kinda enjoy it, but I'm able to enjoy it only because I already have my weapons and don't have this question of gear drops hanging over me when I run it. The very idea of having to battle the potentially brutal drop roulette all over again really saps the fun out of it, because the arena should be about battling the enemies in the arena, not the RNG drops, but that RNG is what often dominates the experience. I think that the RNG loot has made these weapons more precious to players than the devs had intended, hence the strong reactions.

The second is the extremely strong player perception of disrespect coming from ZOS. Update 25 has been terrible. Performance has never been this bad, trials groups are cancelling runs or rescheduling them for weird hours, and I haven't seen morale this low in years. Yet there's been virtually no communication from ZOS about this important matter. All we have are vague reassurances about ongoing investigations. For many people, this arena weapon issue is yet another sign of disrespect coming from a company that had already expended the last of their goodwill with these game-breaking issues in Update 25.

Please do the right thing, Rich.




* Nitpicker's corner: Yes, I know that's not quite true, since back when DSA was still VR14 content, normal DSA dropped VR13 Master's weapons.

Edit: for reference, here is the comment attributed to @ZOS_RichLambert (though there is no id in the image) that I think code was referring to:

Raudgrani

silvereyes wrote: »

There's a lot of talking past each other going on in this thread, so I'll just repost @code65536's excellent summary from the combat changes preview thread.

code65536 wrote: »

I want to try to cut through the noise a little and look at things from the developers' perspective. Look at where the they are coming from and why they see non-upgrade as the right thing to do. And try to explain why that perspective is so sharply at odds with how players see things.

Floating around various Discords are screenshots of a conversation that @ZOS_RichLambert had with a player who messaged him, in which Rich lays out ZOS's point of view.

How the developers see things...

The developers see Perfected arena weapons as something new. They've changed the sourcing of existing weapons to make them more accessible. And they've added new weapons to the game. And, since these are new things that they're introducing to the game, it makes sense that people have to acquire them from scratch. When a motif is added to a dungeon, you have to re-run that dungeon to get it and aren't retroactively granted copies from previous clears of that dungeon, so why should arena weapons be different?

How the players see things...

Most players don't see the weapons as new. Instead, they see it as a buff to the veteran reward weapons. And that the new thing isn't the Perfected weapon. Instead, the new things are the imperfect weapons that's being added to normal. From the players' perspective, rewards are being added to something that previously had no rewards (normal). It's the normal reward that are new, and existing rewards that are being buffed.

So what exactly is "new" here?

Both perspectives make sense. It all hinges on the question of, What new is being added here? Do we go with the developers' claim that Perfected is new, because Perfected Dragonstar/Maelstrom weapons had never existed before? Or do we go with the players' claim that Perfected is just a buff of existing veteran rewards and that non-Perfected is new, since normal had never granted weapons before?*

If people agree that Perfected weapons are "new", then the developers' perspective makes complete sense. If people agree that Perfected weapons are just a buff of existing weapons and that non-Perfected weapons are the truly "new" thing, then the developers' perspective falls apart.

Historical perspective: Master's weapons in 2016

I think the best analogue would be DSA's Master's weapons. In 2016, the Master's weapons that you'd get from DSA were VR14, back when the max player level was VR16. In the latter half of 2016, they introduced max-level Master's weapons. Everyone's existing VR14 weapons remained unchanged. If you wanted the new max-level Master's weapons, you had to run vDSA all over again and reacquire them all from scratch. And nobody batted an eye at this. Nobody complained about having to reacquire their weapons.

And I imagine the folks at ZOS are thinking right now, "This is no different than adding max-level Master's weapons in 2016, why the hell are players going crazy over this?!"

But there is one very important difference here: The addition of max-level Master's weapons coincided with the rescaling of Dragonstar Arena. DSA was no longer VR14 content, it was now max-level content, with a significant difficulty buff. You could no longer blow through vDSA with no support characters--you had to actually bring a tank and a healer. The incoming damage was increased significantly. The enemy health levels were buffed substantially. Portals granted damage immunity and you could no longer kill enemies before they even appeared out of the portal. The new max-level vDSA was a proper, difficult challenge.

It may have been the same content, but it was a new experience.

And I think the argument here for why the developers missed the mark is that their supposedly "new" arena gear does not require new experiences.

When you get new gear, it's associated with new content. There are, for example, new dungeon sets... that require running a new dungeon. Or, in the example that I just gave above, a new experience could be old content that had gotten a facelift.

Why the players are right

The main problem with the developers' perspective is that the means of acquisition is identical. It's hard to convince a player that something is "new" when the conditions of that reward are identical. Unlike the developers, players don't see this as Perfected vs. Imperfect. They see it as Veteran-difficulty-reward vs. Normal-difficulty-reward. ZOS thinks they added a new reward. Players think that ZOS is buffing an existing reward, but not buffing it retroactively.

As I've said in an earlier post, if ZOS changes the means of acquisition--either by buffing vMA or adding additional requirements (e.g., requiring a single-session clear; after all, Perfected Asylum weapons are rewarded not for simple vAS clears, but for vAS +2 clears, though that's looking increasingly like an aberrant outlier)--then what they suggest probably wouldn't have raised players' hackles nearly as much. But not when the requirements for acquisition are identical.

Point of comparison: Gear cap increases

As I had already mentioned with the 2016 Master's weapon buff, the closest analogue to ZOS's line of thinking are gear cap increases. As expected in ESO (and any other MMO), if the gear cap increases, existing gear doesn't get upgraded. You have to reacquire it.

And this fits with what @ZOS_RichLambert had been arguing: When gear cap increases, existing gear doesn't get nerfed. It just doesn't get the extra power that's being added. (Though to argue that existing gear doesn't lose power in absolute terms is a disingenuous argument despite being technically correct, because it's losing power in relative terms, and that's what matters in the long run.)

As I had already argued earlier, the main problem with comparing Perfected weapons to gear cap increases is that gear cap increases are associated with difficulty rescaling. When ESO introduced VR15/16 gear, it required that we defeat VR15/16 enemies that were tougher than older VR14 enemies. When DSA weapons were upgraded from VR14 to CP160, it required beating a DSA that had received a substantial buff to difficulty.

The second problem with comparing Perfected weapons to gear cap increases is that gear cap increases are extremely unpopular. Time and again, when players have discussed the potential of gear cap increases, the response has been overwhelmingly negative. People really don't like the idea of having to arbitrarily re-earn things.

So even if you could compare Perfected weapons to a gear cap increase (despite the lack of any "new experiences"), it's still not a very flattering comparison because gear cap increases are so widely reviled.

Point of comparison: Adding new drops to a dungeon

As I alluded to earlier, if extra rewards get added to a dungeon after its release--e.g., motifs--people don't clamor for making this rewards retroactive for previous clears. So... how's this different?

It's different because in the case of motifs, you go from nothing-is-dropping to something-is-dropping. With arena weapons, you already have a reward dropping in vet. It's not a new reward--it's a different reward. Or, as the players see it, it's the same reward with buffs. If we continue with this comparison, it's actually the normal modes that are seeing something new that hadn't existed before. Which fits in with the general player perspective that the vet rewards are buffed and that the actual new rewards are the normal weapons.

So... what's the point of this post?

I guess my target audience for this post is @ZOS_RichLambert and other devs, and my hope is that I'm able to convey the players' perspective, why it differs from the developers' perspective and why, if you are to pick between the two, the players' perspective makes more sense and why the developers' perspective, while reasonable, does not pass the muster.

I want this to be about convincing the devs to see things as we see them, without the anger and outrage that we see in 90% of the other posts here.

One last thing: Why this has touched a nerve with players

While this post is mostly to lay out why I think the developer perspective misses the mark, I also want to touch on why there's been so much anger in this thread (though this is irrelevant to the point that I want to make).

The first is the RNG of acquiring weapons. While it's possible to get extremely lucky (one of my alt accounts got an infused Inferno on its first and only run of vMA), there are just as many stories about people who aren't lucky. I know someone who has just two inferno staves, and at least 60 ice staves (they stopped keeping track after 60). I know people who have farmed vMA literally hundreds of times to get their gear. Too many people have been burned by the RNG for there to be anything other than anger at the suggestion that they would have to endure that all over again.

I've run vMA somewhere between 200 and 300 times, and I kinda enjoy it, but I'm able to enjoy it only because I already have my weapons and don't have this question of gear drops hanging over me when I run it. The very idea of having to battle the potentially brutal drop roulette all over again really saps the fun out of it, because the arena should be about battling the enemies in the arena, not the RNG drops, but that RNG is what often dominates the experience. I think that the RNG loot has made these weapons more precious to players than the devs had intended, hence the strong reactions.

The second is the extremely strong player perception of disrespect coming from ZOS. Update 25 has been terrible. Performance has never been this bad, trials groups are cancelling runs or rescheduling them for weird hours, and I haven't seen morale this low in years. Yet there's been virtually no communication from ZOS about this important matter. All we have are vague reassurances about ongoing investigations. For many people, this arena weapon issue is yet another sign of disrespect coming from a company that had already expended the last of their goodwill with these game-breaking issues in Update 25.

Please do the right thing, Rich.




* Nitpicker's corner: Yes, I know that's not quite true, since back when DSA was still VR14 content, normal DSA dropped VR13 Master's weapons.

Edit: for reference, here is the comment attributed to @ZOS_RichLambert (though there is no id in the image) that I think code was referring to:

It's like, "You know what [snip], I think you can actually keep your car (it's obviously not mine) - I think I might stick to another car brand in the future.".

[edited for bashing comment]

TradoTheOne

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

N

TradoTheOne wrote: »

Its basically a participant trophy for all IMO. Talking about devaluing players time and effort IF they choose to not auto upgrade.

I don't want to sound too silly, but I kinda see it as giving out current trial skins or personalities for normal runs, it devalues it. (Yea, im a sucker for that stuff)

Im all up for people getting good weapons, since im currently a tanky boi and I love my dps to burn and nuke as much as possible BUT getting that weapon will not necessarily bring you to "holy ***" level.

But grinding vMA a ton of times again without any changes in the arena is just a plain, old and simple gg Zenimax.

I don't give a *** about them "devaluing" the weapon. They could give it away for free for all I care. What I care about is having to re-run content I've already run a million times.

Kind of the point I wanted to make aswell, maybe better worded is devaluating the already spent time and effort.

Raudgrani

xaraan wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Now that we see the meager Perfected bonuses (e.g. stats that are useless on a back-bar weapon), I suddenly have no desire to go back to farming vMA.

It is certainly still annoying (and disrespectful) that players doing nMA will have the same weapon while putting in 1/12 of the effort, but at least my DPS FOMO is assuaged by the trivial differences between normal and Perfected.

And somehow the Sword and Shield managed to catch a nerf in the process. Balancing by spreadsheet, pure SMH.

I'm fairly certain 99% of us that have issues with the way they are doing it aren't upset b/c we thought the bonuses were going to make the weapons god-tier or anything. It was exactly what you said, the disrespect. You hit the nail on the head for me.

We can all skate through the content with the nMA weapons, heck we could do all the content in purple gear. We don't gold out every little thing b/c that little extra bonus is all we need. We work and try and build the best character b/c that's what we enjoy doing and to see it shuffled away from us feels insulting. This isn't 'new gear' in new content that is replacing what we need. This is just a vMA weapon, if I do the same run right now and the same run in two months I'll get two different versions of the same drop and I don't think that should happen. Just like the way my Tremorscale monster set that I have in my bag will be changed with the patch, so should my vMA weapons to match the next patch's vMA weapons.

I see it like this: The game is supposed to be fun, and entertaining. Sometimes I make the conscious decision of doing things that are not as amusing. Like farming VMA weapons. I did it because I wanted to have the best in slot gear. And eventually I had them, because I did VMA many times. *V*MA, not *N*MA, because there was no such weapons to be had from Normal difficulty back then. Chance is, I would really have settled with "Normal" weapons back then - if there was such a thing, but there was not. I did NOT plan to do it again. EVER. If so, out of free will - not because they'd take away what I already had.

Now ZOS are rendering this invested time useless. They shrug their shoulders, and say I can just do it again if I want it. If they have kids, are they kicking over their kids' sandcastles and say "Well, you still have the sand, why don't you just build it again? It's still all there you know. Everything changes..." (or is this really what their parents did to them?). It's frankly pretty much a psychopathic trait, not being able to identify with the feelings we have about this. And I'm not exaggerating.

The time and efforts we spent getting these. Later maybe transmuting them (one or even several times), improving them, changing enchants. TO refresh your memory: You already NERFED these weapons, and that was no problem whatsoever to you ZOS guys, but now (always for the sake of "new players", of course...) you have decided to give them some sort of new bonuses - but we ain't having them, and I can't fathom why? They are from VETERAN Maelstrom Arena....?

Sad I won't be around to see if "OG" people will actually be stupid enough to re-farm these. That would be the ultimate submissive behavior. Pathetic to be honest. We might be addicted to this game, but there's an end to every love story too.