Will a Developer Please Contribute to Dialogue About the Update 21 Wood Elf Racial Change?

GrumpyDuckling

@ZOS_Gilliam

It has been almost a year and a half since you cited your “core mantra of the game -- freedom,” as a notable factor behind the Update 21 racial changes. Will you please, finally, take the time to listen to and respond to the Wood Elf racial change that directly contradicted your mantra?

You said that you wanted to “expand the horizon for choice” and “present players with a self-reflecting question of ‘What is my playstyle or ideal build?’” You claimed that you wanted to “provid[e] options” that would help players answer that question.

“To summarize, we decided to focus more on racial balance this update because racial choice was one of the larger outliers to our core mantra of the game - freedom. We wanted to expand the horizon for choice and present players with a self-reflecting question of “What is my playstyle or ideal build?”, providing options to help reach that individual answer. Now, instead of having a single race that focuses almost exclusively on a specific playstyle, you can pick based on a personal level.”
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/453551/upcoming-racial-balance-changes-for-update-21/p1

Before Update 21, Gilliam, many Wood Elf players had already self-reflected and asked themselves what their playstyle and build would be. Many of those playstyles consisted of lore-friendly sneakiness and/or thievery. But, your decision to remove the reduced detection radius passive from Wood Elf racial skills had the opposite effect of your well-intended goal of providing options and freedom. Instead, you reduced options for existing players who already had a gameplay style, and took some freedom away from those players. You made sneaking harder for Wood Elves, which not only contradicted lore, but also pushed players who sought to maintain their existing playstyle into equipping specific item sets to try to get back some of what you took away. You reduced build freedom, and went against your mantra.

After almost a year and a half, will you please contribute to dialogue about the contradictory nature of your words and actions regarding Bosmer racial changes from Update 21? I know that you once placed a high value on communication in this forum. You once wrote, about a combat update:

“...Improved communication and transparency is vital to success in today's day and age of information and open discussions. I know it brings a lot of flak, and it's definitely easy to focus on the negative, but please continue doing this. Back and forth discussions like this will breathe new life into community engagement, and general perception of game health. Nothing will ever be perfect, but damn if it isn't worth fighting to be anyways…” (Comment #31).
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/4615873#Comment_4615873

I hope you still feel this way, because some of us have been advocating for a return of original Bosmer sneaking for quite some time, and would welcome discussion about how it would fit nicely into your "core mantra of the game -- freedom."

zvavi

Power to the little mer.

MartiniDaniels

It will be fun to have something like 5% passive dodge as unique feature - because wood elves are notably smaller, it should be harder to hit them

Taloros

Would be a welcome change.

Lost interest in the game due to the random changes, beginning with the Bosmer nerf, ending with the roller coaster approach to DoTs.

Reversing some of that sh... would help to show that the development teams cares.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I dont really care about sneak passives, but hard to deny that Bosmer is pretty bad. My Crafter is a Bosmer and if she did anything else, I would certainly change her race. If you Compare "Swift Warrior" (orc) to Hunter's Eye (bosmer), you realize the second one is laughable in comparison.

OWLTHEMAD

Wait, bosmer are playable? I thought they were removed from the game.

BlueRaven

OWLTHEMAD wrote: »

Wait, bosmer are playable? I thought they were removed from the game.

Certainly feels like that.

OWLTHEMAD

You know, ive never played a bosmer, nor does there racial status effect me any, but it is a fact that i have not seen anyone play a bosmer in any content since at least elsweyr.

BlueRaven

OWLTHEMAD wrote: »

You know, ive never played a bosmer, nor does there racial status effect me any, but it is a fact that i have not seen anyone play a bosmer in any content since at least elsweyr.

I know of three across my guilds mostly because they are fans of the race, not the racials. One person ONLY roles bosmers in fact.

Aznox

A month ago I racechanged my Orc stamsorc to Bosmer for PvP min-maxing reasons, so treads like this make me smile

Luckylancer

Gain 10% Movement Speed for 6s and a bonus to Physical and Spell Penetration of 1500 for the duration after using Roll Dodge or if you did not take damage in last X (10 maybe) seconds.

People dont roll dodge much in PvE so last racial passive is wasted in PvE. Make it procable with bow/bow PvE builds. They are the bow race after all. This bonus wont affect PvP much. AD snipe spammers will have extra 1,5k pen but proper players will take damage every 10 secs.

Cundu_Ertur

Bosmer in every TES game since Morrowind: sneaky archers. Bosmer since the update: non-sneaky non-archers.
Strictly speaking, there are no Bosmer now. Just Bosmer shaped things.

Ergo: We already have Ohmes. What we need now is proper Bosmer.

Cundu_Ertur

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Bosmer in every TES game since Morrowind: sneaky archers. Bosmer since the update: non-sneaky non-archers.
Strictly speaking, there are no Bosmer now. Just Bosmer shaped things.

Ergo: We already have Ohmes. What we need now is proper Bosmer.

edit to add:
To add to what the OP said, currently there is one and only one race that is adept at thievery. That is not freedom. It is also inconsistent with previous games, where Bosmer had the best racial traits for thievery.

crap meant to edit, quoted instead.

Taloros

A wood before the Bosmer nerf:


The same wood after the Bosmer nerf:


The difference?

In the first picture, ten Bosmer are hiding in that wood.
In the second picture, all ten Bosmer have quit the game.

MashmalloMan

If you're unhappy about waiting a year and a half, try 3-4 years since they showed concern for class identity mainly having to do with stamina classes in pve.

What did we get in return when we finally hit a patch that they agreed would be focusing on Warden, DK and Sorc?

Warden's getting a bleed they can only proc on off balance targets over 7m away (why does it need such a convoluted proc and how does this help class identity?) and a class dot (actually nice). Both of which didn't make them more interesting to play and adding a class dot in a total dot nerf meta doesn't accomplish anything in terms of making them stronger dps options.

Sorc's not earning a new damage ability, but instead finally getting a reason to use something they had double barred for the past 5 years in Bound Armaments. Except instead of making it actually useful for PVE and PVP by copying in class mini game mechanics like Curse or Frag's, we got a copy/paste of NB's Bow proc in a worse state. What about updated passives, new ways to play via damage ability options or quality of life like adding at least 1 debuff/buff like major savagery or major fracture, more damage abilities or a new ultimate? Nothing.

DK's and poop fist. Need I say more? It has no idea what it wants to be. Is it instant or is it a cast time skill? Is it for stunning or is it a spammable? Aoe or single target? Ranged or melee? It's such a confusing mess of an ability when it could easily be one of the most interesting spammables in the game and many people have suggested HOW.

• Instant cast time, no projectile travel time.
• Keep the first hit as aoe, subsequent hits as melee. This is interesting from a gameplay perspective and more abilities in the game should have 2 parts to them (they just did this with werewolf pounce and heal), but streamline the entire ability to behave the same way (melee).
• Keep the debuff, this is actually a great idea, if people aren't aware it increases damage done for every instance of damage (common misconception is it's weapon damage) which actually goes hand in hand with DK's being the attrition based "dot class".

Fixed. No poop. Melee on the melee class... No cast time. No projectile. Unique.

All that being said.. it's been 2 major updates now since the "Class Identity Update" in U24 and none of what they did fixed anything for the classes at hand. In fact classes like NB are the worst they've EVER been. Which is so ironic because they were actually the stamina class identity standard to beat since launch. If you look at any posts pre 2019, most people were aware of this when making requests.

Many comments went like this:

Person 1: "Stamina class identity is boring, the only interesting and well made class is Stamina NB!"
Person 2: "I agree, but instead of nerfing NB's to obscurity, can we please make sure ZOS understands to buff the rest of the classes to make them more interesting to play like Stamina NB's?"

ZOS: "Nerf NB? Your wish is my command. We believe NB has too many redundant skills so we've put all the buffs and debuffs you want on things you don't want to use!"

*Sorc's Magicka Toolkit enters the chat with 5+ stun abilities, 4+ immobilize abilities, 5/6 Magicka damage type based ultimates and 4+ resource related class passives.* "Yeah! So redundant.. NERF NB. Nerf Cloak while your at it. Add a stacking cost like streak!"

Fur_like_snow

Wood elf on fire stop drop and roll small son you’re burning up!

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Aznox wrote: »

A month ago I racechanged my Orc stamsorc to Bosmer for PvP min-maxing reasons, so treads like this make me smile

You changed from Orc to Bosmer? Were the reasons that you specifically dont like to min/max?

Aznox

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

A month ago I racechanged my Orc stamsorc to Bosmer for PvP min-maxing reasons, so treads like this make me smile

You changed from Orc to Bosmer? Were the reasons that you specifically dont like to min/max?

As a stamsorc in no-CP PvP, Bosmer is mathematically superior to Orc for my current builds.

MartiniDaniels

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

A month ago I racechanged my Orc stamsorc to Bosmer for PvP min-maxing reasons, so treads like this make me smile

You changed from Orc to Bosmer? Were the reasons that you specifically dont like to min/max?

If you plan to use bow backbar in PVP, bosmer is nice pick. Not better then orc, but not worse either. Problem is that bow backbar is not reliable or good (technically only good bow is master's and majority of meta specs have cheap and powerful purge which just make it useless).

BlueRaven

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Aznox wrote: »

A month ago I racechanged my Orc stamsorc to Bosmer for PvP min-maxing reasons, so treads like this make me smile

You changed from Orc to Bosmer? Were the reasons that you specifically dont like to min/max?

If you plan to use bow backbar in PVP, bosmer is nice pick. Not better then orc, but not worse either. Problem is that bow backbar is not reliable or good (technically only good bow is master's and majority of meta specs have cheap and powerful purge which just make it useless).

It would be nice if bosmers were built for the whole game, not just a niche build for a fairly empty pvp campaign.

Aznox

Even without bow, even in CP PVP, any medium armor setup should be close to 100% uptime of the 1500 penetration bonus and 10% movespeed buff.

Of course this isn't very useful in end-game PvE, but i was responding to the "There's Absolutely No Reason To Pick Bosmer" claims.

BlueRaven

Aznox wrote: »

Even without bow, even in CP PVP, any medium armor setup should be close to 100% uptime of the 1500 penetration bonus and 10% movespeed buff.

Of course this isn't very useful in end-game PvE, but i was responding to the "There's Absolutely No Reason To Pick Bosmer" claims.

So you would have been fine with "There's Almost Absolutely No Reason To Pick Bosmer" then?

Saying they do well in pvp (which has a small population to start) then further narrow it down to no-cp (has a no-cp campaign ever even had 3 bars to a faction? Even during an event?). This is not an argument that the passives were well done, in fact it’s the opposite.

And even after all that, it’s still arguable that orcs are better. Fantastic.

Aznox

I'll let anyone reading this thread make his own opinion of both your and my contributions

Maybe someone should open a tread about how useless Nords racials are to a PvE Stam DPS ?

Or why anyone would ever pick Imperial for a Mag PvE DPS ?

I'll stop toying with you now but please understand that exaggerations like this will not help convince anyone, especially not members of the balance team :

Wait, bosmer are playable? I thought they were removed from the game.

x48rph

Well, you can take their silence to mean they aren't really interested. It's rare you can ever get a dev to discuss any significant issue you have with the game. Even when their trying to have "open discussions" they screen out most questions people really want answered, especially if it requires them to discuss and/or debate actual reasons and logic behind changes. The recent vampire thing proved that. They purposely ignore the question on bosmers when they had that reddit thing way back where we got to ask questions but made sure to answer all kinds of dumb ones few people cared about.

BlueRaven

Aznox wrote: »

I'll let anyone reading this thread make his own opinion of both your and my contributions

Maybe someone should open a tread about how useless Nords racials are to a PvE Stam DPS ?

Or why anyone would ever pick Imperial for a Mag PvE DPS ?

I'll stop toying with you now but please understand that exaggerations like this will not help convince anyone, especially not members of the balance team :

Wait, bosmer are playable? I thought they were removed from the game.

That quote has a lot of truth in it. ESO does not exist in a vacuum, it has as history and lore. And the current combat team seems not to care about it.

Bosmers (and orcs for that matter) along with basically all of the races don’t relate to that history. The bosmer passives don’t even relate to how they are portrayed in eso.

But I get a sense that you don’t care.

x48rph

Aznox wrote: »

Even without bow, even in CP PVP, any medium armor setup should be close to 100% uptime of the 1500 penetration bonus and 10% movespeed buff.

Of course this isn't very useful in end-game PvE, but i was responding to the "There's Absolutely No Reason To Pick Bosmer" claims.

If your going to count the pen from roll dodge in the graph you need to include the cost of roll dodge as well

GrumpyDuckling

x48rph wrote: »

Well, you can take their silence to mean they aren't really interested. It's rare you can ever get a dev to discuss any significant issue you have with the game. Even when their trying to have "open discussions" they screen out most questions people really want answered, especially if it requires them to discuss and/or debate actual reasons and logic behind changes. The recent vampire thing proved that. They purposely ignore the question on bosmers when they had that reddit thing way back where we got to ask questions but made sure to answer all kinds of dumb ones few people cared about.

They absolutely don't care to partake in specific dialogue, and it is frustrating (especially when they make decisions that don't align with their supposed objectives). The silence is so bad, that I felt compelled to quote what the developer has said in the past when he was a player -- to try to remind him about what he once valued (see the end of the first post).

Then today, I read a discussion back and forth from another developer in a different platform outside of the forums about the Maelstrom and Dragonstar weapons not getting upgraded. The decision by the developer to engage in a back and forth seemed like it could have been a nice opportunity to better explain why decisions were made and attempt to reach an understanding, but it was just an illogical, emotionally-laced back and forth that did not accomplish anything.

Aznox

x48rph wrote: »

If your going to count the pen from roll dodge in the graph you need to include the cost of roll dodge as well

Not in PvP because a medium armor spec would be roll dodging every 6 sec anyway.

And this value calculation doesn't even takes the movespeed bonus into the equation, if you weight it against swift trait stat budget, you can make a case for Bosmer having even more value than Nord in PvP.

But this is obviously an end-game PvE thread, and i have absolutely no credentials to talk about end-game PvE, so i'll let you guy make your case in peace

GrumpyDuckling

Aznox wrote: »

x48rph wrote: »

If your going to count the pen from roll dodge in the graph you need to include the cost of roll dodge as well

But this is obviously an end-game PvE thread, and i have absolutely no credentials to talk about end-game PvE, so i'll let you guy make your case in peace

Nope, this is not an end-game PvE thread. It is a thread about how a developer's words and actions contradicted one another when the 3 meter sneak radius reduction was removed from the Wood Elf race.

This is the longest 3 meters ever.

MartiniDaniels

Aznox wrote: »

x48rph wrote: »

If your going to count the pen from roll dodge in the graph you need to include the cost of roll dodge as well

Not in PvP because a medium armor spec would be roll dodging every 6 sec anyway.

And this value calculation doesn't even takes the movespeed bonus into the equation, if you weight it against swift trait stat budget, you can make a case for Bosmer having even more value than Nord in PvP.

But this is obviously an end-game PvE thread, and i have absolutely no credentials to talk about end-game PvE, so i'll let you guy make your case in peace

Yes, I agree with your arguments. But you know that practice is criteria of truth. You won't see much bosmers in PVP with exception of AD and much dunmers with exception of EP and much redguards with exception of DC, while nords, altmers, bretons and orcs are everywhere.
Also S&B blocking is cheaper and more universally effective then roll-dodge (if you are not roll-dodging with bow). So while bosmers are great for solo play with kite high burst builds (I loved my little stamplar), but when you meet warden nord or necro orc with 2H/S&B of comparable skill and they start spamming their buffs and able to hold block against your 6k WD onslaught jabs like forever just waiting for your single mistake to wreck you in 2 seconds... so you pick up potatoes S&B or BRP DW and from that point you are the same as orc but with less HP and a little bit higher average penetration. And those HP are a huge deal. Because higher HP means lesser damage from executioner..
I think ZOS in their evaluations of class and race effectiveness seriously undervalued role of HP. In PVE you can get use of high HP with lava foot soup and in PVP it is just plain + ~5% to your "burst resistance". Maybe it's small but I can't count how often opponents survive at those 5% HP just to burst heal/LOS in next moment.

Taloros

Love it how discussions work. State something pretty simple like "things fall down" to build a point on, e. g. that it's smart to wear helmets at construction sites, and there's always that one guy who has to contradict that for pure contradiction's sake: "But 'down' is completely subjective - your statement didn't include a precise definition of what you mean by 'down'. An iron bar also wouldn't fall 'down' if you placed a really strong magnet above it; as you failed to define 'fall', that could also mean things 'fall' 'up' sometimes. Also, if Jupiter came closer to Earth, things wouldn't fall 'down', but 'up', and I'm right and you're dumb. Oh, and what was the point of this discussion again?"

Simple truth is: The Bosmer nerf sucked. Big time. The reasoning for the nerf (no usefulness of stealth detection in PvE) didn't fit the actual nerf (added stealth detection for PvE). The nerf didn't fit the lore. And there was just no reason to change it. Change for change's sake is just... well... unnecessary.