Are they ever gonna finish the class identity and skill audit?

Strider__Roshin

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Classes are fine btw, overall they work. Do they have some issues? Of course. However the megaserver has some real issues that need to be addressed sooner rather than later and imo take priority.

I think the greater issue is rather than simply reverting some of the hamfisted, awful changes that haven't worked, they're sticking to their guns and pretending these changes were good for the long-term health of the classes involved.

Yup, a little humility would go a long way for ZOS.

OtarTheMad

OWLTHEMAD wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

OWLTHEMAD wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

To my knowledge the classes left on the class identity is Nb and Templar. I know they did changes in the two updates prior to that too but classes were focused back when Dragonhold dropped I do believe.

I thought that they did say somewhere that skill audit and class identity changes (at least massive changes) were put on the back burner for performance but I can't seem to remember where.

So, we got put on back burner for performance? Sounds about right. Smh. They should have finished what they started. Now all theyve done is alienate a large chunk of the player base.

I feel bad for ZOS I really do, at least this time. They are told by a large chunk of people to hold changes and do fixes to performance... they do this and NOW people are complaining about no massive changes? MAKE UP YOUR MIND LOL.

ZOS is doing a lot here and from home. I think that the megaservers have more pressing issues then class issues, and this is coming from someone who plays Magcro which is pretty much on the bottom rung when it comes to classes.

Classes are fine btw, overall they work. Do they have some issues? Of course. However the megaserver has some real issues that need to be addressed sooner rather than later and imo take priority.

The thing is, at least in my case specifically, its not even major changes at this point. Its minor tweaks they made that were devastating to certain classes.

In my case, i am a magblade. If they literally just removed the cast time on soul harvest/incap and/or lowered the minimum traveltime on bowproc (so that someone at point blank range didnt have a whole second and a half to react to something that should have already hit them) it would go a long way towards placating the mains of an entire class.

But for my class specifically, its just not worth playing the mechanics right now.

I havent killed anyone with bow proc in ages. In fact its not worth firing. Just keep spamming swallow soul until they run out of resources. Soul harvest? Never lands. To easy too get away from and too telegraphed.

These are your core combo and killing tools and they dont function adequately.

The class isnt satisfying to play. Combos arent worth using because the combo mechanics don't pay off.

This just one class and alk it needs are minor tweaks.

As far as the other classes, fine no major changes to balance or design. I get it. But like nightblade surely there are minor tweaks that can be made without sucking up huge amounts of manpower to make people more satisfied with game play?

I know nightblade can be made massively more viable by just two minor tweaks(or reversions really) with out making any major changes.

Theres no excuse.

Trust me I get it. I am Magcro.

I have a skull spammable that is slow and obvious, a skeletal arcanist that is a passive at best, tethers that took a step back this patch and one of my ultimate is "OP". In PvE yeah, can be. But in PvP... good players are more likely than not just going to step a little to the right or left to avoid it. It is also a tad slow coming out of the ground so you can see it coming. My class is a one trick pony at best when it comes to magicka damage. According to some people I talk to playing a magblade would be an upgrade for me lol.

It's just my unpopular decision to be okay with these many minor issues cause they have major ones on the plate. That's just me tho.

OWLTHEMAD

OtarTheMad wrote: »

OWLTHEMAD wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

OWLTHEMAD wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

To my knowledge the classes left on the class identity is Nb and Templar. I know they did changes in the two updates prior to that too but classes were focused back when Dragonhold dropped I do believe.

I thought that they did say somewhere that skill audit and class identity changes (at least massive changes) were put on the back burner for performance but I can't seem to remember where.

So, we got put on back burner for performance? Sounds about right. Smh. They should have finished what they started. Now all theyve done is alienate a large chunk of the player base.

I feel bad for ZOS I really do, at least this time. They are told by a large chunk of people to hold changes and do fixes to performance... they do this and NOW people are complaining about no massive changes? MAKE UP YOUR MIND LOL.

ZOS is doing a lot here and from home. I think that the megaservers have more pressing issues then class issues, and this is coming from someone who plays Magcro which is pretty much on the bottom rung when it comes to classes.

Classes are fine btw, overall they work. Do they have some issues? Of course. However the megaserver has some real issues that need to be addressed sooner rather than later and imo take priority.

The thing is, at least in my case specifically, its not even major changes at this point. Its minor tweaks they made that were devastating to certain classes.

In my case, i am a magblade. If they literally just removed the cast time on soul harvest/incap and/or lowered the minimum traveltime on bowproc (so that someone at point blank range didnt have a whole second and a half to react to something that should have already hit them) it would go a long way towards placating the mains of an entire class.

But for my class specifically, its just not worth playing the mechanics right now.

I havent killed anyone with bow proc in ages. In fact its not worth firing. Just keep spamming swallow soul until they run out of resources. Soul harvest? Never lands. To easy too get away from and too telegraphed.

These are your core combo and killing tools and they dont function adequately.

The class isnt satisfying to play. Combos arent worth using because the combo mechanics don't pay off.

This just one class and alk it needs are minor tweaks.

As far as the other classes, fine no major changes to balance or design. I get it. But like nightblade surely there are minor tweaks that can be made without sucking up huge amounts of manpower to make people more satisfied with game play?

I know nightblade can be made massively more viable by just two minor tweaks(or reversions really) with out making any major changes.

Theres no excuse.

Trust me I get it. I am Magcro.

I have a skull spammable that is slow and obvious, a skeletal arcanist that is a passive at best, tethers that took a step back this patch and one of my ultimate is "OP". In PvE yeah, can be. But in PvP... good players are more likely than not just going to step a little to the right or left to avoid it. It is also a tad slow coming out of the ground so you can see it coming. My class is a one trick pony at best when it comes to magicka damage. According to some people I talk to playing a magblade would be an upgrade for me lol.

It's just my unpopular decision to be okay with these many minor issues cause they have major ones on the plate. That's just me tho.

Yeah, that ult isnt great in cyrodil (though ive seen it employed to devastating effectiveness in ic, close quarters and bottlenecks are where it shines)

I would have to agree that magcro (especially being behind a pay wall, and especially being a necro, magicka should perform better than stam to begin with) needs a bit of work.

Where i disagree is in you saying that these are 'minor' issues.

While in the case of magcro i think there are more fundamental mechanical issues that might need performance to be fixed before they can address, there are still tweaks and modifications that can be made, at least as a stop gap. A show of faith you could say.

But in the case of magblade, the situation there is just plain unfair and imbalanced.

Nightblade soulharvest/incap serves the same niche as the templar sweep ult.

Templar sweep ult is aoe, and has no cast time.

Soul/incap is single target, has a cast time and is highly telegraphed. You literally spend a whole second holding 2 swords above your head like your bugged. You see it coming from a mile away, and the timing of it allows your opponent to break free of any stun and roll dodge without ever taking the hit. I get it on soul tether. I get it on veil of blades. Big aoe spell type ultimates.

This is a single target melee ulti that has comparable (yet situationally superior in function) abilities in other classes with no cast time by comparison. Blatantly un fair treatment, with an easy fix. I cant imagine it takes much man power to adjust a couple of values.

Merciless resolve/relentless focus is supposed to be THE cheif burst skill for nightblade. In its current function it simply cant be used that way. Too large a chunk of nb defensive capacity is tied to the skill, which certainly disuades you from using it with multiple opponents, however, even with impeccable use of fear or other stuns, the ability is too telegraphed and takes too long to hit making it unviable as a damage ability.

Our most iconic offensive tool has become a passive defense tool in pvp. Again, lower the minimum travel time and this ceases to be an issue.

For nightblades these ARE major problems. But they have very easy, very obvious fixes. And at least until they are ready to address the class in more detail it is inexcusable that these two problems are not dealt with.

Performance from servers in pvp and pve sucks. I get it. These should be priorities i dont disagree. But when solutions to other problems require only minor efforts, not doing so in the process because you are prioritizing performance fixes is just a bad excuse.

Its like not cleaning up a broken glass because your too busy sweeping the floor. The two go hand in hand and the excuse just doesnt work.

That they choose to blatantly ignore it is at least as major a problem as game performance in my opinion.

Runefang

They finished the audit and found no class identity and determined the game takes too much skill.

They are now working to solve the skill issue by dumbing the game down.

YandereGirlfriend

The thing that seems strange to me is why they cannot do several of these things at the same time?

Performance is obviously going to be the most labor-intensive and technically nuanced endeavor but that's work for the engineers not for any of the people responsible for item and class balance.

In the meantime, what is stopping the itemization people from going back and buffing forgotten sets and the combat team from tweaking passives and designing (if not yet implementing due to engineers being occupied elsewhere) new abilities?

We hear a lot about the various "teams" that up to various things about the game but seriously, what are they doing during their work week to come up with a such modest work product? Did it really take the itemization team an entire week to conclude that they needed to nerf the three trial sets and Stuhn's?

Two reasonably productive people could easily audit and tweak every set in the game over the summer. But they won't (which might actually be a blessing given the high probability of nerfs). Why not? Give the project to some interns if you want to save budget.

Heck, you could probably create a template for crowd-sourced balance suggestions and then train an AI to select the best ones. Or cut out the AI and simply take the crowd-sourced average for numerical values. This would still likely produce better balance than the spreadsheet, similarly to how visitors at the Iowa State Fair can get surprisingly close to estimating the weight of a prize sow.

Faulgor

I still remember that they planned to give every class a specific skill tree for dps/tank/healing, like Warden and Necros have.
Whatever happened to that?

Right. It's all just half-hearted stuff run through PTS cycles that never gets revisited...

Vaoh

Imo it started with Morrowind where they stopped designing for player enjoyment, and started designing based on what a handful of Devs thought things should play out like.

Time and time again they were horribly incorrect. From huge sustain nerfs, to massive DoT buffs/nerfs, to Shield cast times, to Ult cast times, to the Light Attack 80% nerf..... not gonna bother listing all the crazy things that have popped up and have mostly been implemented.

Point is, when “fixing a bug where Skill X dealt 30% more damage than intended” is portrayed as a fix rather than a simple nerf, it shows they have a very hard time with admitting fault for bad decisions. ESO’s issues can’t be fixed with a Dev team which prefers to stick to bad decisions just to avoid admitting fault. Literally lost multiple endgame guilds on my server in Morrowind.

grannas211

Probably around the same time they get around to actual performance fixes

MincVinyl

What do you mean the class skill audit is done?

stamsorc lost a useful ability for a light attack proc gimick copy of nightblade's bow
dk can chuck rocks or something

and necro has everything you could ever need now that you are swapping to it

newtinmpls

SmukkeHeks wrote: »

I still haven’t seen a single one of those characters with the Z in game.

Never. Been playing since a month after launch.

I don't think they actually exist <smirk>