Every patch, ESO becomes more standardized and boring

Arimeris

This is 90% rant, I know, but am I the only one who is really bothered that more and more aspects of combat blend together and classes, as well as playstyles, feel less unique? (At least PvE, I don't play PvP).

One example: Physical and Spell Resistance Buffs are combined this patch. Before that, Phys. and Spell Res. Bonus on Gear was combined into 'Armor'. Before that, the respective Debuffs were combined. I mean, why even have two Resistances anymore when there are so very few sources of only one resistance?

Similar example: "Damage is based on your highest offensive stats." - I f*cking hate reading this! I always get the impression that the developers are too lazy or incompetent to improve the dozens of less used skills to make them feel unique and fun, and rather just make some skills that seem most used 'work' for both stamina and magicka.

Another example: Abilities from different skill lines that fulfill the same function (like spammables) seem to be designed to also feel the same. Dive from the warden, Flame Skull from Necro, Surprise Attack from Nightblade, Force shock, and more... IMO adding some small debuff to a skill doesn't make the skill feel more unique.

I would really like to see a few more unique skills, maybe with unique debuffs/buffs, some unique stats idk, I'm not the most creative type, but then again, I'm not getting paid for ideas.

There are a few more things, but first I wanted to see if I'm alone in this opinion or if you guys have similar views, what do you think? Is it even important to you that not everything becomes one big... mush..? Do you think that this is what balance looks like?

JinMori

That's not the problem, the problem is when they start to standardize class gameplay, that's when you should worry.

But the fact that they merged penetration and crit into 1 stat, that is actually a good thing.

For example, they should standardize med and light armor passives, both should get weapon/spell damage and penetration, and the crit buff on med armor should work like light armor.

But when they make skills feel too similar that could become a problem. They can avoid that by giving similar skills like dots for example their own little quirk.

For example, molten whip has it's scaling mechanic with ardent flame abilities, making it feel different from force pulse or dive etc.

The point is that at the end of the day skills have similarities, some are made for damage, some for protection and some for healing, the difference is in the details of how they achieve that.

You can't say that things get homogenized just because they fulfill the same role. You can say that they are homogenized when they act and feel exactly the same, and homogenization is not even always a bad thing, it's mostly bad when it's on skills that are meant to define the class. That's the bad type of standardization.

I think i've been as impartial as possible here, this is what i think about standardization.

hakan

well pve is/was always like that. place dots and spam. not really dynamic. i thought you were talking about pvp before reading this.

those skills you listed feel same cuz they are meant to be spammable but when you consider the builds they may feel different too.

Vizirith

The issue is balancing the classes in both pve and pvp while also making them unique. It is much easier for games like wow because it allows for a lot less build customization with no universal skills/sets/mundus.

Kurat

They probably doing it so its easier for servers to handle.

Atherakhia

I disagree. The changes they are rolling out is a good thing and healthy for the game. The problem is the pace at which they're rolling these changes out. One of the main detractors in this game for me is how a player has to repeatedly 'waste' GCDs to maintain buffs and debuffs on targets because they are all fairly weak despite how (in)consequential some of them may be. By combining various debuffs and stats they reduce the amount of maintenance a player may need and increase the variability in sets available to them.

For example, hopefully they'll get around to merging both Spell Damage and Weapon damage. Judging from various glyphs and sets in the game, these 2 stats appear to be weighted the same and combining them would allow some crossover for mag. Crit and spell pen are the same thing.

With luck heal over time effects are the next thing they normalize. If all heal over times had the same overal strength and fit into either a 'major vigor' or 'minor vigor' things would be far more balanced overall without really impacting overall class diversity.

For example, even though 2 classes would have access to the same overall 'major vigor' heal over time, one class would have the skill also cast something like major mending allowing their heal to effectively heal for more while another could apply minor defile effectively healing for less.

These types of changes are healthy for the game overall and would help with balance and server stability.

thadjarvis

Atherakhia wrote: »

I disagree. The changes they are rolling out is a good thing and healthy for the game. The problem is the pace at which they're rolling these changes out. One of the main detractors in this game for me is how a player has to repeatedly 'waste' GCDs to maintain buffs and debuffs on targets because they are all fairly weak despite how (in)consequential some of them may be. By combining various debuffs and stats they reduce the amount of maintenance a player may need and increase the variability in sets available to them.

They did not combine various debuffs into less. Take PvE offensive. The proposal is to nerf Vulns, Slayer, and Beserks while adding Brittle. So, there are more debuffs now. And each one feels less satisfying to apply but you still want/have to. Ie you have to use MORE GCDs to be less powerful...

There are some buffs like Major Force but we can't really test this stuff bc (at least I've heard) we can't test Brittle as it's inconsistent and difficult to measure on PTS at this time.

Zeromaz

Agreed. Next year we’ll all be playing the same class with different spell effects

Joy_Division

You're not alone.

ZoS balances by spreadsheet now and try to tell us that having every class's skills cost and the same tooltip damage somehow increases class identity.

Beardimus

Arimeris wrote: »

This is 90% rant, I know, but am I the only one who is really bothered that more and more aspects of combat blend together and classes, as well as playstyles, feel less unique? (At least PvE, I don't play PvP).

One example: Physical and Spell Resistance Buffs are combined this patch. Before that, Phys. and Spell Res. Bonus on Gear was combined into 'Armor'. Before that, the respective Debuffs were combined. I mean, why even have two Resistances anymore when there are so very few sources of only one resistance?

Similar example: "Damage is based on your highest offensive stats." - I f*cking hate reading this! I always get the impression that the developers are too lazy or incompetent to improve the dozens of less used skills to make them feel unique and fun, and rather just make some skills that seem most used 'work' for both stamina and magicka.

Another example: Abilities from different skill lines that fulfill the same function (like spammables) seem to be designed to also feel the same. Dive from the warden, Flame Skull from Necro, Surprise Attack from Nightblade, Force shock, and more... IMO adding some small debuff to a skill doesn't make the skill feel more unique.

I would really like to see a few more unique skills, maybe with unique debuffs/buffs, some unique stats idk, I'm not the most creative type, but then again, I'm not getting paid for ideas.

There are a few more things, but first I wanted to see if I'm alone in this opinion or if you guys have similar views, what do you think? Is it even important to you that not everything becomes one big... mush..? Do you think that this is what balance looks like?

Agreed, and it's across the whole game.

Crafting dumbed down massivley, so many mini games have been lost, recipe collecting for rare ones & writs. Enchanting.

Also in PvP the currently meta is OP proc sets or AOE / Bleed combos which frankly are dull. It's basically get near someone and let the gear do the work.

Weopons should kill things not boots, belts and shoulder pads.

Shantu

Standards are the antithesis of diversity. When things become the same, the first casualty is interest. The problem is you can't balance fun and entertainment on a spreadsheet.

Hurbster

They looked at the class homogenization in WoW and said 'hold my beer'.

JohnOfMarkarth

Zeromaz wrote: »

Agreed. Next year we’ll all be playing the same class with different spell effects

more like... Same class with different color palette.

Same effects with diff animations is already probably gonna happen in less then a year

Same heal with different cost? Again probably less then a year

Proc-running? Already here. Not going away. Its not. No dreaming ...

Classes will be relevance-less... what will matter entirely is... yer next-in-line-to-hit-Live-servers proc set. And eventually those procs sets will also lack any visual... Thus making ESO truly a min-max-calculator-spreadsheed "warrior" game.


I hope not...
But i have a feelin'