ESO has a Set Problem

BigBragg

Every zone, every dungeon adds new sets. Dropped, crafted either way the cadence for content and adding six new sets to the game every quarter is getting ridiculous, unimaginative, and possibly unsustainable for the games long term health. Don't get me wrong, I love having options and variety to play with. But between storage issues, and things starting to feel like minorly tweaked reitterations pumped out just to help sell new content only to become obsolete in the next balance patch or two, it just seems less and less appealing to me. Feels less creative with each new group of sets. Perhaps it's time to start talking about other design paths to reward players, or other visions on yearly engagements.

pink_panther

Same here just farmed perf false god and now the Nerf. Awesome then I can refarm another set and loads of transmutation crystalls again.

It will take weeks. At this point I am thinking about playing sth else.

BRCOURTN

I really like seeing new sets. The new ones with the dungekn dlc seem great and they're not too close to anything that already exists. 44 ultimate for your team with a potion? Building crit damage with different damage types? All cool ideas. I think it keeps the game fresh in a good way.

ganzaeso

I have been meaning to go through my inventory and toss any easy to farm sets out. The trick to managing inventory is to convert as much to gold as possible and only keep what you currently use.

Nairinhe

Be like me, wear Hunding + Spriggan for ages
On the more serious note - while I'm a tad concerned with growing number of sets (and motifs while we are at it) they all are still different enough and there are still new sets I get all "oh, that would fit one of my characters nicely!" about.
But I'm a potato, I don't min-max, I don't play competitively so I'm not worried about staying on the absolute top with my gear

Firstmep

BigBragg wrote: »

Every zone, every dungeon adds new sets. Dropped, crafted either way the cadence for content and adding six new sets to the game every quarter is getting ridiculous, unimaginative, and possibly unsustainable for the games long term health. Don't get me wrong, I love having options and variety to play with. But between storage issues, and things starting to feel like minorly tweaked reitterations pumped out just to help sell new content only to become obsolete in the next balance patch or two, it just seems less and less appealing to me. Feels less creative with each new group of sets. Perhaps it's time to start talking about other design paths to reward players, or other visions on yearly engagements.

Well at least this isnt World of Warcraft, where every raid tier/new expansion your old gear become obosolete very quickly.

Imagine using gear from Legion, to do BFA raiding in wow, now compare that to using lets say Julianos over Mothers Sorrow in ESO, there is a big difference in how much old gear becomes relatively worse between the 2 games.

Maybe you havent played back then, but i still remember when the only jewellery options in this game were agility/willpower/endurance, and when they planned to increase gear levels gradually.

The team has done a lot to alleviate the grind over the years, you can go through an entire raid in WOW, without even receiving a single piece of gear or upgrade, in contrast in ESO, you literally get loot from every boss of every dungeon/trial etc.

Also they're buffing some older sets, which is absolutely unheard of in literally every other MMO.

At the end of the day, they do need to keep some sense of progression, so its not a big suprise if they release stronger sets with new updates, imagine if lets say Julianos remained best in slot magicka dps set for 5 years straight.

And also they are not just putting more powerful gear out there, but actually trying to come up with new and interesting ideas for set, WOW has removed sets with unique bonuses a while ago, most gear pieces are literally just stat sticks.

As for False God nerf, yeah you will lose a tiny amount of damage from this set, but to say it will become obsolete, wow.

Sometimes i read these forums and i get the feeling that most PVE posters are all perfect dps machines that can only function with the absolute BIS gear and nothing else.

Mayrael

The only set problem I can see in ESO is that the old good sets are nerfed in the sake of making new ones more appealing.

Aznarb

As for False God nerf, yeah you will lose a tiny amount of damage from this set, but to say it will become obsolete, wow.

Sometimes i read these forums and i get the feeling that most PVE posters are all perfect dps machines that can only function with the absolute BIS gear and nothing else.

Their is a name for these : drama's queen.

Set are easy to farm, zos did a good job at adjusting them time to time.
Inventory space is not a problem, that just you who keep everything for whatever reason, no mmropg ask you to do this.

The funny thing are those people who complain about farming like it's grindy..
Go play Lineage 2 where 1 part of an item that you need 10 of them to craft a piece of armor with a 1/65000 chance to drop and where the craft had only 60% to success.
Then we will speak about grind, time or hard.

Nestor

Firstmep wrote: »

Sometimes i read these forums and i get the feeling that most PVE posters are all perfect dps machines that can only function with the absolute BIS gear and nothing else.

Or even test what the changes mean before they cry about it.

I think the most vocal are the ones who think better gear makes up for a middling rotation.

mairwen85

Mayrael wrote: »

The only set problem I can see in ESO is that the old good sets are nerfed in the sake of making new ones more appealing.

But then we have examples next patch like Medusa and War Maiden, or Elf Bane current patch. I like the direction of next patch and hope it paves the way to build diversity where we will see class specific setups which are equal in performance (or slightly less than) the homogeneous meta we currently have. I don't want to see trial sets become worthless, but we have enough sets in the game for niche to become much more viable and provide alternatives.

Nestor

Back to the OP....

ZOS has, in the past, been very good about balancing sets and skills. Everytime i see a well thought out test parse of various set combos, the real differences in the better combos is 1% to 3%. 3% or so is not why you are dead or failing to make someone else dead.

Which is why, in this game, you can be competitive and successful with 4 and 5 year old sets. Now, it remains to be seen how good this current team is at balance, but i bet they are better than we are. They see all the numbers, they know what is going in in the game overall. We only see our characters.

SolidusPrime

Personally I like the number of sets BUT I hate the way we're encouraged to collect multiple sets but don't have anywhere to put them. Even just 1-2 extra sets per character eats up a huge chunk of inventory. I want to play with different builds and swap things in and out and collect them all but don't have anywhere to put them after everything else I have to store.

Wish we could get some armor stands for our home or something.

amm7sb14_ESO

BigBragg wrote: »

Sometimes i read these forums and i get the feeling that most PVE posters are all perfect dps machines that can only function with the absolute BIS gear and nothing else.

Couldn't agree with this fast enough

the1andonlyskwex

One of the best things about ESO is the large number and wide variety of sets available. Hopefully they never change that.

BXR_Lonestar

The sets aren't the issue IMO the real problem is the insane cost we have to upgrade gear to gold, transmute them to the right trait, only to have them nerfed. If that happens, we ought to be able to decon sets that we golded or transmuted and get most of our resource investment back. Currently, if I decon a gold armor piece, I MAY get ONE gold upgrade material. Stupid. Increase that up to a guaranteed chance to get back 3/4ths of the crafting materials back if we decon, and that solves two problems at once. We get our hard-earned materials back and storage is less of an issue because now instead of holding onto legacy gold sets in case they're rebuffed, its just as economical to decon.

Everest_Lionheart

I

Nairinhe wrote: »

Be like me, wear Hunding + Spriggan for ages
On the more serious note - while I'm a tad concerned with growing number of sets (and motifs while we are at it) they all are still different enough and there are still new sets I get all "oh, that would fit one of my characters nicely!" about.
But I'm a potato, I don't min-max, I don't play competitively so I'm not worried about staying on the absolute top with my gear

I switched to Hundings/Briarheart and never looked back...or forward! 😆😆😆

Everest_Lionheart

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

The sets aren't the issue IMO the real problem is the insane cost we have to upgrade gear to gold, transmute them to the right trait, only to have them nerfed. If that happens, we ought to be able to decon sets that we golded or transmuted and get most of our resource investment back. Currently, if I decon a gold armor piece, I MAY get ONE gold upgrade material. Stupid. Increase that up to a guaranteed chance to get back 3/4ths of the crafting materials back if we decon, and that solves two problems at once. We get our hard-earned materials back and storage is less of an issue because now instead of holding onto legacy gold sets in case they're rebuffed, its just as economical to decon.

Yeah RNG is a cruel mistress. I’ve had 3 of the exact piece in the same trait drop multiple times in trials/dungeons. 3 well fitted hats aren’t doing me any good here. And the next run 3 sturdy gloves aren’t any better.

The return on mats for breaking down is pretty bad too, but giving me back say 4/8 gold tempers instead of 1 is likely to hurt the in game economy. Players like us would love to be able to get a better ROI for breaking down items but the people moving large amount of gold per day would hate it.

BigBragg

Some of y'all jump to some strange conclusions. Just going to point out some quantities for you.

Light Armor: 105 five piece sets
Medium Armor: 97 five piece sets
Heavy Armor: 97 five piece sets
Crafted Armor: 59 five piece sets

idk

I agree that adding so many sets will lead to some new sets seemingly lacking imagination. However, it is perfectly sustainable to add so many sets to the game every quarter.

Just ignore the ones that are not what we want to use and focus on those that interest us. It really is that simple.

WrathOfInnos

BigBragg wrote: »

Some of y'all jump to some strange conclusions. Just going to point out some quantities for you.

Light Armor: 105 five piece sets
Medium Armor: 97 five piece sets
Heavy Armor: 97 five piece sets
Crafted Armor: 59 five piece sets

That’s interesting, I’ve never seen the totals like that. The 8 additional Light Armor sets must be from the trials that drop both a Magicka DPS set and a healer set (Maw, Cloudrest, Halls, Sunspire, Kyne’s).

I will also point out that the 105 Light Armor sets are split pretty evenly between Magicka DPS and healers, while nearly all of the 97 medium armor sets are for DPS.

tsaescishoeshiner

Mayrael wrote: »

The only set problem I can see in ESO is that the old good sets are nerfed in the sake of making new ones more appealing.

This is 100% untrue. Because this is such a recurring conspiracy, I'll break it down point-by-point:
1. If this was their goal, why would they nerf New Moon Acolyte and False God's now? There are no trial sets or crafted sets in Update 27
2. Players want build diversity. This means nerfing sets that are overly popular. Do we want PFG meta for 5 more years? Wasn't Thrassian a bit OP?
3. Would we prefer to have new sets that are usable or unusable in endgame PvE? Do we want new content to have worthwhile sets?
4. They just BUFFED dozens of older sets. Which secret plan is that a part of?
5. Many sets get buffs, nerfs, and adjustments, and it's just confirmation bias to wait until this happens to a popular newish set and claim it's part of this pattern
6. vCR sets are still in the meta, as well as a number of older DLC Trial & Arena sets—even overland sets! (Mother's Sorrow). It's too bad the Craglorn sets aren't as good as the newer sets, but craggies came out a long long time ago and are like beginner's trials.

As a mag player, I feel let down by the NMA and False God's nerfs and I'm hopeful that they'll buff them back up at least a little bit. But they do crowd out other sets — older sets included. As long as updates are increasing the amount of viable sets, I'm happy.

Nemesis7884

I get where op is coming from, at the same time I am always looking forward to new sets, new build options, build themes etc...they just need to find their way with terms of direction, power balance etc... they still cant get the balance right or know where they want to go after 6 years...