Champion Points: Trust and Control

asuitandtyb14_ESO

Laying in bed, I was able to finally organize my thoughts and frustrations on the champion point system. So here I am instead, typing this up instead of sleeping, probably for a bunch of readers to argue over, because I doubt any dev of clout cares about my opinion on the matter. Regardless, I present "Champion Points: Trust and Control".

Remove the cap on champion points. Let the level that a player can earn go on, infinitely. Furthermore, remove the 0 to 100 number cap on each passive. The strength of ESO has always been in build choices. Embrace it- OWN IT. Go nuts with it. Give your players agency. Let them start as peons, but with the knowledge that if they invest "X" amount of hours (let's say 3000), they can be gods. If someone wants to spend all their points in one passive, let them. Balance it, of course. As a stat increases past certain thresholds, increase the diminishing returns. Encourage spreading points out, but don't force it either. If needed, reduce how much of a gain each point invested adds in general.

A sense of vertical progression is needed, and it is currently lacking. For example, recently in the Division 2, a watch was added. This watch has four categories, each with four subcategories of passive stats. Each time you level, the watch category rotates, and the player can choose to increase one of four sub-category passives. The increase per point is marginal, and it is not infinite, but it may as well be. The time investment needed to increase the watch is substantial, but ultimately the player is rewarded with a tiny, and maybe insubstantial reward, but rewarded nonetheless with some progress. It hugely increased my interest and feeling of power within that game.

But asuitandty, I hear you say "Champion points we're capped because players were becoming to strong for content, and the devs were struggling to balance the various types of dungeons, trials and overland around it." I hear you, and I get that. I don't disagree with that, and I know what I'm suggesting flies in the face of that as well. Here's the thing though: champion points are optional. If a player, solo, in a group, dungeon or trial, wants to set a certain level of challenge for themselves, they can use as many, or as little, of those points as they want. They can already do that, right now.

Let's take overland out of the picture, because that content is designed to be conquered solo, by any build. Let's just look at dungeon, and trials, but more specifically, trials, because that is where the truly difficult content is. Trials are going to be pre-made more often than not. Under this proposal, if the group wants a challenge they can decide to do it with a set amount of used CP. They can choose to do with no cap, and walk through the trial with ease. Give the players that agency. If they don't want the challenge, then don't challenge them. If they invested so much time (again let's just use 3000 hours), and earned so much CP that they can walk through a trial like gods, then I would say they earned that. And if they want to run a trial with no CP at 3000 hours, then even better; they would certainly have my respect.

There are of course more than a couple ways, you as a developer, could balance this. You could offer various incentives for running different types of content at different CP ranges. The best or rarest rewards could actually be at 0 CP.

Build the difficulty of trials around unique mechanics and how a group must precisely communicate and coordinate around those mechanics, in such a way that CP is not a factor. Let's use raids from Destiny 2 as an example. In Destiny 2, raids are not hard because the creatures and bosses are extremely tough (though they can be), but because every raid has a variety of certain mechanics that must be learned, and usually require all members of the raid to be performing tasks at the same time, performing those tasks precisely, and in a small amount of time, or the attempt fails. The game assumes that at this level, players will be good enough that it won't matter how statistically tough npcs will be, so it challenges those players in ways they cannot experience in any other outlet in the game.

Or, you could create some sort of algorithm that scales the stats of npcs in trials to scale with a range of CP bracket selections. For example, in the Division 2, a group can choose from a range of difficulties to run that game's version of dungeons. I personally think this is the easiest, most boring and most creatively bankrupt choice.

Create a baseline, or control, from which you as developers build each overland, dungeon, and trial content around. Trust us, the players, to control the degree of difficulty we want and get out it.

CMDR_Un1k0rn

I play in No-CP PvP for a reason.

xXMeowMeowXx

Nah, it was a decision to appeal to the casual players and the new players.

They stopped it and added in more XP boosts, till becoming 810cp was a joke.

Look at some of the strongest play styles in PvP....It is boring and the same skills are used with a few exceptions.

Vertical progression is what makes a game fun and rewards time spent. Horizontal is just walking towards the sunset.

I preferred things not so homogenized....

FakeFox

Having a reasonable cap to players power makes competition skill based and this is very important for a healthy endgame. Without a cap to champion points or any other stat increase, the most important factor for a players power becomes time, because whoever spends the most time mindlessly grinding wins simply by having higher stats. Your'e balancing suggestions don't make a lot of sense either. What you are suggesting is for players to accumulate theoretically unlimited power, but then to make that power meaningless with dynamic scaling and content difficulty being independent from player power. And yes, that would be necessary to make such a system even remotely balanced, but it would make the system pointless in order to do so. Why introduce it in the first place? Further content difficulty in ESOs endgame PvE is already heavily based on stat independent mechanics on top of stat based difficulty, as it is in basically every decent MMO. I also have to disagree with your example of Destiny 2, damage is basically everything in D2 engame PvE with burst strategies trivializing most boss fights and endgame activities largely revolving around time limits and time based scoring systems. I also never found much difficulty in D2 raid and dungeon mechanics, but I guess that is very much subjective.

mikemacon

Nope.

mavfin

Every other MMO caps player leveling at some point. Why shouldn't this one?

TheShadowScout

asuitandtyb14_ESO wrote: »

Remove the cap on champion points...

Let me stop right there...

History lesson.

In the beginning, there was NO cap on CP. Then some grindwankers used the system to grind themselves huge piles of CP... way over 1000 while everyone else still was working below 300. It is suspected botting/rubberbanding was involved. For a while, they had a good time steamrolling everyone in PvP (that was way before No-CP campaigns, obviously)... but then ZOS took notice, and added the cap, with an "increase by 30 with every DLC" policy.

Since it was an action they had to take to counter some ars... uhm... irresponsible people, the whole "trust" thing went out of the window right back then.

And even so, the complaints about CP imbalances remained, thus they froze the cap while they looked into doing some rebalancing there... which eventually I guess will happen at which point I reckon they will move forward with CP cap increases again I suppose...

But... that's it.

...


Now... my thoughts on the CP system are that they should take a good hard look at it, and do two things...
...for one, split off more specialized sub-stars from many stars there, dividing the bonus each brings into those. Meaning... each main star would give exactly -half- the bonus it does not, but to everything it covers... and the other half of the effect would lay in the sub-stars, but seperated by specializations... like, the main star might give bonus to ALL staves, and the sub stars specialize in fire, shock, ice and resto staves for example.
...for another, add a completely new region (serpent?) that has only non-combat bonus stars... and require a fourth of the CP people get to be spent there, much like the "warrior-mage-thief" split. Meaning... anyone who spent all their CP in the current split, needs to earn/allocate another third of that number to this new sign... meaning they could up the cap to 1080 in one step without anyone gaining any new points for warrior, mage and thief. And then... go from there, with the combat-effect progression slowed by both those mechanics while still getting people something for their playing...

Mindcr0w

I don't need to necessarily be able to spend my excess points on things to make my character more powerful, but let me spend them on something. Add some new tier of cp for post 810 points that only add qol bonuses or some other such thing. Just let them be useful somehow.

Having 500+ points going to waste doesn't feel good.

Bradyfjord

I wish there was an alternate advancement system that could be used for non combat purposes. Crafting, in particular. But cp for pet classes to reskin their pets would be nice, as well as reskins of skills to live my DBZ fantasy. 😁

Cireous

I want CP that adds survival mechanics for your character in the Overland.

bmnoble

Got no issue with being able to use CP points for all the CP levels a player has in PVE, then again you might get some elitist's asking for people with 1000+ CP to do trials, vet dungeons etc...

But I think it should be capped in PVP, maybe allow us to have two or more CP set ups some for PVP and some for PVE, to prevent having to re spec every time you would want to go and do CP enabled PVP or do another role in PVE etc...


That is just my thoughts assuming they don't come up with a decent re work of the CP system, just let players use their points if they want to.

Part of me wonders if they are all just hoping we will forget about the CP rework, be nice to have some sort of update about it at the very least.

RavenSworn

I've posted this before but I'll bring it up again.

Limit the constellation that a player can put in once they have past a certain threshold in all other constellation. Say for eg:

You put 300 points each in Mage, Thief and Warrior cp. However, you can only put in the rest of your points in either one of them and it then locks you off from the others.

That way, you have a specific build that you can work towards and basically use the cp as either complementing or enhancing your build.

Rearrange each bonuses across the 3 star sign, and basically make them a rock paper scissor kind of arrangement. Like the Warrior constellation will have direct damage increase, reduced DoT damage taken, etc while Thief would have DoT damage increase and reduced AoE damage taken. This then makes the player to make a conscious choice of how they want to build their character.

There was also an idea that I had where players can store their points that they gain beyond the current cap and consume it to unlock a higher tier of difficulty in dungeons, trials and arenas.

The stored points can also be used to unlock base game cosmetics like a panda skin for the Warden or costumes for the specific class, roles and more.

Linaleah

CP already makes an enormous difference to how easy or not easy content feels. people with max cp are already complaining how easy the game is. you remove caps - it becomes even WORSE.

Neverwinter does a lot of things wrong, IMO, but there is one thing they do right and last I played, GW2 has a similar system. you continue to level even after you reach a level cap. but instead of increase in power every time you hit a new level milestone (so in case of ESO that would be CP points) - you get a small care package. a little bit of currency, or some useful items like potions or whatnot. so that could be a solution to ever growing CP numbers that doesn't make the power creep even worse than it already is, while still keeping level ups at least somewhat rewarding.

PunkAben

xXMeowMeowXx wrote: »

Nah, it was a decision to appeal to the casual players and the new players.

They stopped it and added in more XP boosts, till becoming 810cp was a joke.

Look at some of the strongest play styles in PvP....It is boring and the same skills are used with a few exceptions.

Vertical progression is what makes a game fun and rewards time spent. Horizontal is just walking towards the sunset.

I preferred things not so homogenized....

If any have doubt how then work and how succesful Zenimax have make this to work so all are equating.. just visit Cyrodiil or a BG

Varana

Trust?
First rule of gaming: If players can abuse a system, they will.

ayu_fever

they should just raise the cap to CP999.
we get 333 of each color CP.

even if they do change/rework/nerf the whole system eventually, at least let us run around with SOME of our “over-leveled” CP points until that fateful day arrives.

Anhedonie

Holy ***, as somebody who played since beta and seen what issues CP system creates...this post is pure nightmare fuel.

LuxLunae

The CP system is bad. It had it's use for a while but then had no direction. It was a bandaid to the VR system. Then ZoS coupled everything on the CP system. Instead of removing it, they ruined classes, sets, and gameplay to keep it.

When you are changing everything for one thing, the system is broken as it has a high dependency on one thing.

Some of you say you want verticle progression, feeling stronger and stronger...

The only thing this lead to was the 5 finger First Person Shooter.

Burst damage is the bullet....The sad thing is that now this should be called

DPSO...Damage Per Second Online as that is all this game depends on....whether it be dungeons, pvp, or anything stacking stats is the way to go.

There is no strategy in this game.

WhyMustItBe

[snip]

This could never work without totally rebuilding the way PVP works. Because no human that does PVP would ever choose to limit themselves. As it is, people bend over backwards to chase meta builds that cheese advantage because winning at any cost, including the abandonment of any semblance of sportsmanlike conduct, is ALL that matters.

[Edited to remove Inappropriate Content]

LuxLunae

WhyMustItBe wrote: »

[snip]

This could never work without totally rebuilding the way PVP works. Because no human that does PVP would ever choose to limit themselves. As it is, people bend over backwards to chase meta builds that cheese advantage because winning at any cost, including the abandonment of any semblance of sportsmanlike conduct, is ALL that matters.

This is why in march when I was looking for jobs with someone he was like

"Hopefully they open back up and then we get hired."

Then I said

"Whats probably going to happen is they will start to open up early june, people won't listen to the rules, the virus will spike up again and then they will start closing places back up. You can't trust humans to do the right thing. "

Randomly someone replied to my YT comment 3 yrs ago I forgot I made that the economy would start to decline (I was thinking about 2025 ish) because "You can't trust humans to do the right thing when the time comes to decide whether they want to fix the economy or let it burn."

Humans are predictable creatures. This is why Google, Facebook, and all these other social media/internet/(whatever amazon and walmart is)/etc. Are building the human profiles from the data that we willingly give them.

First the data will be used for advertising. We will THINK we made the choice but they lured us into it. FB has already hacked the minds of billions...

Then it will be used to predict crimes with great accuracy. Minority report but supernatural replaced with A.I.

Then All of what you will be from the moment you are born to the moment you die can be quickly processed by an A.I. and fit on a thumbdrive .

Then we will wonder what it means to be alive.

Now that last one that can predict everything you will be can be helpful...It can put you towards a path of marginal success.

You add your "decision" path into the A.I. and it tells you your chances of success down that path, how much you may make going that path, what you can access going down that path.

The A.I would be hooked up to the internet so it can reference a ton crap of data for possible outcomes.

You could ask it if you need a lambo. It should be able to decide whether you'll cherish the purchase or toss it to the side like the rest of the junk you buy just because you have money laying around.

Most purchases are made when people have money lying around that they don't really know what to do with at the time...Google A.I. FB A.I and the rest will capitalize on that fact....Open A.I. will try to protect you from it.

Wth am i talking about?

idk

asuitandtyb14_ESO wrote: »

Remove the cap on champion points. .

First off, Zos is about to start reviewing different ideas to change CP. My guess is it will be a radical departure from what we have now which would make pretty much all of this thread completely irrelevant.

Second, and maybe even more important, when CP was originally released there was no artificial cap. Many of us were surprised because we had told Zos how powerful the full 3600 points were. Zos eventually saw our wisdom put in place the artificial cap as well as significantly increased the cost of getting CP points near and at the cap to slow down progress.

OP suggests ESO's strength is about choice but the current design forces us to choose. If there were no cap then we would no longer be making choices when we reached 3600 points. Yes, some have posted in the thread they have that many CP.

lucky_Sage

The cp system is the most broken aspect of the game it terms of balance.
The second most broken aspect is process sets that deal more dmg over times than player DoTs. Which is This way now because zos has to balance around the broken cp system.
The problem with cp is it allows you to get everything sustain tanky and dmg when it should make you choose needs to be changed to be where each tree specializes in something like tanking healer summoner melee brawler burst dmg assassin stuff like that

codierussell

There are a few issues with what was proposed, firstly, people already do no cp runs of vet hard mode trials and it doesn't make a ton of difference other that the time it takes to complete. Once you know the mechanics a lot of PVE gets extremely easy and time is no longer a factor.

Secondly, people complain in PVE for a couple reasons, either content is too easy or content is too hard. For us on the easy end of thinking it is because they reuse mechanics and in general better players have an easier time learning and following mechanics. This means that the only way to make content harder is through more complex mechanics such as VCR hard mode and VAS hard mode to the point that there is a ton of stuff going on at once. On the other end of the spectrum people that find content hard or nearly impossible is because they struggle with mechanics. Things like VMOL twins hits people hard due to the devastating mechanics should someone do something wrong.

With this said there is really no easy way to fixing this problem and it is not really a CP issue. Simply, the hard modes of trials need to become more complex and harder to manage on a thinking level. Obviously on PC with add ons complexity gets reduced slightly, but it can still be done. In the new trials there isn't a ton of difference between the hard modes other than things hit harder and have a bit more health so DPS requirements go up a touch. ZOS developers need to make more complex fights and that is the end of the story. The problem is that most ZOS employees cannot complete the hard modes of trials so they really have no way of knowing what is hard and what isn't.

As for the CP portion of the conversation, I think they should just get rid of it altogether. Balance everything to no CP and people will build around it. It would be a relatively easy way to get out of the power creep by just adjusting the damage numbers. Don't touch the sustain and damage but reduce the health of enemy's by some amount based on how much DPS would be lost and reduce the incoming damage by the numbers that 810 CP would have. That way the incoming damage is not changed but DPS and healers will have to respec for longer fights and build sustain into their characters.

Nyteshade

I mean there are plenty of vertical progression, grind is the point of the game...style games out there.

I suspect people play this game (And GW2 for the same reason) because while there is a substantial element of grind, it's not the sole focus.

And I think the grind is spread amongst activities. Farming items for a build. Leveling, gaining CP, Farming skyshards, mages guild leveling, Fighters guild leveling, other skill trees, plus crafting.

And that's just getting started.

See, the progression and grind is real. If you choose not to participate in it, so be it.

But your suggesting a game that rewards folks strictly on how many hours they can sit in front of the monitor. That's a hollow, hopeless system. But MOST MMO's are built that way and are available to any who want to play that way.

No sense in coming in here and suggesting the entire backbone of a game be changed for your preference, while I suspect most are here because they like it as it is, or would have found a game more suited to their preferences.

You don't call up Ford and ask them to make your Mustang more like a Corvette.

rpa

Cp &cet is a fashion in mmo genre; cheap to implement illusion of progress at max level. I only have experience of it in few games but to me appears it's a one way street with a dead end ultimately creating more problems than it solves.

In Wildstar Primal Matrix generated a gap between veteran and new players which made finding replacement players for progression teams difficult enough to kill most of the few endgame guilds left in that glorious abortion of a game. In WOW how boring, Artifact progression (Legion) was a trivial joke because catchups at time I gave it a re-retry. And EzSO, who cares after 160?

redspecter23

CP are semi broken in their current state. The proposal by the OP would crank that up to 11. I don't think any thought was put into balance at all by the initial post and this is coming from someone with nearly 2k cp that would benefit from a removed cap on total and tree points. Absolutely... broken.

Gabrielzavadski

No.

JinMori

What they should do with cp involves more than just cp alone.

FIrst, create a new difficulty to account for long term power progression.

Second, improve cp, increase the cap each patch like before, since they were locked for basically 2 years at this point, increase them by quite a bit the first few times to account for this, make the passives you get from spending points in each tree more interesting, most of them are quite boriung, they could provuide some really cool stuff, like i don't know, allowing you to put 2 traits on your armor and weapons as a 120 cp spent on a tree reward for example, things like these, because honestly, most of them are boring af, wtf do i do with windrunner? 10 % more regen while i sprint? WOW so interesting and complex, and impactful.

And third, balance red and blue perfectly, so each counter each other to perfection, or close, also, you should probably change them to flat values to reduce server stress, like instead of increasing your damage with dots or direct abilities by 25%, give it a weapon damage and spell damage bonus that is on par with 25% more damage, this way you not only reduce your so dear skill gap because less % values, but you should also reduce server stress, as add is less intensive that mult as i understand.

Keep the system and improve it. Since you created it you are basically forced to commit to it now, because if you remove it now, a lot of people will be pissed, me included since i like progression systems. If you didn't wanna deal with this ***, well should have thought about it when you released craglorn, but if you think that leaving it as it is is fine, no it's not.