Possible gear cap increase coming our way. Yes, prediction.

idk

This is just a guess, but several points lead to an opportunity for Zos to raise the gear cap.

A couple of years ago, Zos (I think it as Gina) stated that Zos would raise the level cap when it seemed appropriate.

• Zos is reworking CP. If this is a complete revamp then our gear level will likely be based on a different rating/level system.
• Zos added the transmutation system to make it easier for us to farm gear. Now they are going to allow us to "learn" drop sets we equip so we can craft them for ourselves. afaik, this will permit us to craft the gear at any level.
• We have experienced significant power creep over the years making older content seem rather trivial.

With all of this happening, it would be a great time for Zos to rebalance the game and reset the power creep without the major inconvenience of the previous three times Zos raise the cap. We would only need to farm new mats if new materials were added to the game and then craft whatever we were already wearing if that is what we desired. It would also be the best justification for raising the gear cap we have ever seen in this game.

What do you think?

Edit: To the second bullet, Zos could easily raid the cap for crafting from the new sticker book to make that point work.

Also, I am not advocating such a change but pointing out Zos has said they will do it when they feel it is right (for them).

tomofhyrule

I definitely think the stickerbook is a feature that would lead right to a gear cap increase. If it becomes really easy to remake the gear we're wearing, it'd be trivial to get it back... and that would also forestall any arguments like we had with the Perfected Maelstrom gear, since now all you need to do to get it back would be to put up the mats and crystals, and not re-grind vMA and hope for RNGesus' blessing.

Annoying, yes, and we'd need to grind crystals like no tomorrow. But totally possible.

As to what they'd do with CP instead? No clue. That sounds like it could end up being some massive overhaul and I have no idea what to expect.

The one piece of gear I'd be sad about is the Grievous Leeching Ward, since you can't reform the one that talks to you... Would be nice if in cases like that we could get the quest rewards upgraded.

Sylvermynx

I - wouldn't precisely like (as I really hated the constant need to grind higher level gear in WoW and RIFT) - but I could see it happening, and if it was just gathering the new mats (and crystals....) it might not be too bad.

Though.... I can see a bajillion people parked all over the new mat nodes.... Ugh.

MaLTRaiN

I hope they don't do such STUPID thing.

Remake a set is not "easy", because for improving your set you already expend A LOT of gold. In fact, a full golden set cost more than 2 million gold now. And we're talking about just one full set in just one character.

And, of course, I'd need thousands of crystal transmutations for remaking all my sets.

If they do this, many people wouldn't play anymore, maybe me included.

redspecter23

The stickerbook is the key that makes this possible without ******* off nearly the entire playerbase. The part they have to still figure out is how to make it beneficial to players. With scaling, all it does is make our current gear useless and force us to remake it in a higher level. What would be the point with things set up the way they will be? Level cap goes to 180 and I just decon all my gear and immediately remake it at cp180. Yes, it's annoying, but not as annoying as refarming it all. Still pointless after that's done though.

Zeromaz

I think the gear set collections is in preparation for new servers. Everyone knows how easy it is so wipe stuff when moving servers. Microsofts acquisition of the company makes me think this

Calm_Fury

The question is, but WHY would they do this?

I agree that with the Sticker Book, it won't be as bad as before, but it will still be bad. Unless they make the transmutation system allow you to upgrade the gear level, it will still be a major grind for people that have been playing the game for a long time and has lots of alts.

You have a point that, if they were ever going to do this, it would be now. But I don't see any reason at all for that to happen unless they Champion Point changes will be a COMPLETE change, and I wouldn't bet money on that.

Just like we got all excited about Class Balance, Identity and Skill Pass, I think the Champion Point changes will be just a few tweaks here and there.

If the CP is just tweaked instead of completely re-done from the ground up like the phasing out of Vet ranks was, I really don't see a point in raising gear gap. It would just alienate even more the already dwindling high end players.

wolfie1.0.

MaLTRaiN wrote: »

I hope they don't do such STUPID thing.

Remake a set is not "easy", because for improving your set you already expend A LOT of gold. In fact, a full golden set cost more than 2 million gold now. And we're talking about just one full set in just one character.

And, of course, I'd need thousands of crystal transmutations for remaking all my sets.

If they do this, many people wouldn't play anymore, maybe me included.

To be fair the worth of improvement items only has any value if you intend to sell or buy said items. You can always farm them for free. And let's be real hear. ESO is an MMO they have to have us farm for something. And they cant just go on releasing a ton of new sets with out overwhelming something or making it near impossible to balance. Something is going to have to give. And that will either be a new leveling system (ie a CP replacement) new gear, or change to how gear works.

Personally I am in favor of making it so that gear requires an upkeep of an improvement item and refined mats in order to keep the item in good repair after X amount of uses or hits. Meaning that you actually need to repair it and if you dont it gets destroyed. Personal opinion, I don't think it will go over well in the community.

But really the gear ZOS is releasing is getting stale and the options are getting too many to track without something like a sticker book. They are going to have to do something proactive here in a year or two.

FrancisCrawford

Remaking a set will in most cases cost a lot more than the minimum 25 crystals each (because the cost is only that low when you have a sticker for EVERY possible weapon, among other items). So most people in most cases will mostly re-grind them.

Exceptions are mainly mythic items, ability-altering weapons, and overland or PvP sets that you can buy in guild stores.

Extreme test case: All 18 of my characters have 5-piece sets of Jailbreaker to wear around town, and I still will be missing a number of stickers.

Sarannah

Gear cap increase is the worst mistake MMO's can make, same with level cap increases. Those things make an MMO a treadwheel, and that is not something I would want to play. There is a reason why we all play ESO, and not WoW! Not to mention, alts would be completely worthless, until they are leveled/geared again and again and again with every new DLC/expansion.

Last year I was playing a game which I totally loved, and had played for 6 years non-stop. When they changed the endgame into a treadwheel, I left without a hesitation. Even after spending 1000's of dollars. In fact, I did quit ESO for many years when they messed up going buy-to-play.

You can't change core systems in a game without making most players go to another game, which does those systems better. This is why they should be really careful about changing CP. And instead of changing CP, they should just expand it with a non-gameplay bonus system(so keep 810 as it is now).

Never mess with a game's core, unless you want your players gone.

Linaleah

gear increase will not fix power creep - its just going to add a little bit of a grind. complete rework of combat might, but i have a feeling that any rework that they might do that would create any significant narrowing of the gap - is going to completely push away people who like current combat.

Nord_Raseri

I just hope all those CP levels grinded out(sitting between 1200-1300 right now) aren't completely thrown to the wind. As for gear level cap, having to make/grind new gear for all my characters characters is not my idea of a good time. Cange can be good, or can be very, very bad. It is what it is I guess.

CleymenZero

idk wrote: »

This is just a guess, but several points lead to an opportunity for Zos to raise the gear cap.

A couple of years ago, Zos (I think it as Gina) stated that Zos would raise the level cap when it seemed appropriate.

• Zos is reworking CP. If this is a complete revamp then our gear level will likely be based on a different rating/level system.
• Zos added the transmutation system to make it easier for us to farm gear. Now they are going to allow us to "learn" drop sets we equip so we can craft them for ourselves. afaik, this will permit us to craft the gear at any level.
• We have experienced significant power creep over the years making older content seem rather trivial.

With all of this happening, it would be a great time for Zos to rebalance the game and reset the power creep without the major inconvenience of the previous three times Zos raise the cap. We would only need to farm new mats if new materials were added to the game and then craft whatever we were already wearing if that is what we desired. It would also be the best justification for raising the gear cap we have ever seen in this game.

What do you think?

I think increasing gear cap is the single stupidest thing this game needs. It's artificial content creation and it ads no value to the player other than another task to do.

When you scale a game around a certain level, you eliminate the need for gear cap. If anything, gear level should just be eliminated.

The power creep isn't because of gear cap. Anyways... I wish these topics would just go away. If they commit to the indefensible just like they did with the perfected maelstrom, they seriously will lose me for good.

ankeor

Nonsense. They should remove item levels all together instead. It is not serving any purpose.

And yeah, remove below cp160 mats also.

bmnoble

Wouldn't that throw out all their attempts to reign in high player damage?



At most I see the sticker book as giving them the option to replace the CP system.

I don't think they would just arbitrarily decide to raise the gear cap:

It would risk pissing off a lot of players the casual player base in particular, yes a lot of us long term players with gold and crystals to spare can get the mats and crystals and remake the gear we want most again probably in the first week or month after a gear cap update.

But a lot of players are broke when it comes to gold(a large part due to having no interest in crafting, so they are not bothering with daily writs), have no interest in PVP so are short of crystals as well, unless the new planned PVE sources of crystals provide a comparable amount to PVP, I see a lot of those players leaving the game because they would have little choice but to farm most of their gear again due to a lack of gold and crystals.


That and if you think gold mats are expensive now, if they pulled this kinda stunt and made all are gear useless in a single update, everyone will be either not selling their gold/purple mats for awhile to remake their own gear and when they do sell the price will be massively inflated due to the huge demand for mats for a very long time, further screwing over the casual and new players.


Personally I hope they leave the gear cap alone and just rework the CP system.

zaria

Calm_Fury wrote: »

The question is, but WHY would they do this?

I agree that with the Sticker Book, it won't be as bad as before, but it will still be bad. Unless they make the transmutation system allow you to upgrade the gear level, it will still be a major grind for people that have been playing the game for a long time and has lots of alts.

You have a point that, if they were ever going to do this, it would be now. But I don't see any reason at all for that to happen unless they Champion Point changes will be a COMPLETE change, and I wouldn't bet money on that.

Just like we got all excited about Class Balance, Identity and Skill Pass, I think the Champion Point changes will be just a few tweaks here and there.

If the CP is just tweaked instead of completely re-done from the ground up like the phasing out of Vet ranks was, I really don't see a point in raising gear gap. It would just alienate even more the already dwindling high end players.

I agree why, mobs will now be scaled higher and we would be back there we was just with say cp120 gear and has to make new.
On the other hand if did radical changes, perhaps.

But think CP changes is tweaks and nerfs, more QoL features and then raise the cap a bit.

Chaos2088

Do agree that with the cp system rework that gear will be also changed. Since it it locked to cp lvl.

The sticker book does give a bypass to recreate gear to a higher lvl, so things are pointing to a gear change. As to what we don’t know yet.

Think we will do next year.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO

I don't understand the notion that "power creep" is somehow unintentional.

It's not as if the current state of the gear in ESO is a result of a complex system with many unknowns, like inflation in a national economy where millions of individual actors can make unexpected, illogical decisions that greatly influence the outcome. A small team of designers decided on all the stats for all gear and set all damage from all sources deliberately. If they did not mean for the sets and damage to be balanced (or, depending on your point of view, unbalanced) like this, then why would they go ahead and make it that way? High player damage happens by design, not by exploit.

If an adjustment is coming, it's not because the gear somehow became overpowered unintentionally over time and is "due for a change", as if that were a natural development. It's because they are now having second thoughts about their past decisions and wish to change course. That's perfectly fine, it's their game, but it's not as if they didn't see the power creep coming. They very deliberately made it happen.

Naftal

I hope they'll REDUCE the gear cap to lvl50. It makes absolutely no sense that cp is involved in gear level in any way.

Deathlord92

Increasing the gear cap would be a terrible idea some of us have lots of golded out sets.

Grizzbeorn

I think it would be an arbitrary, frivolous, pointless change. WHY would they need to increase the gear cap?
What condition in-game at the current moment is begging for a gear cap increase?

Tranquilizer

Why should changing the CP system result in upping the gear cap ?

ZOS can change the CP 160 gear to meet the changes without introducing a new gear cap. They did it when they introduced CP, why shouldn't they when they remove CP ?

BTW, the day ZOS forces me to re-farm all of my gear is the day I quit ESO for good.

Niaver

If they want to re-balance combat, they can simly do that and nerf all our gear. With the reworked CP system, let's assume CP cap becomes 100. Scale our gear to new cp-100, nerf it to desired power level, done. No need to refarm/recreate the gear.

Luke_Flamesword

If they will change anything, I just love to see just remove levels from gear. It doesn't make sense with so fast leveling to cp 160. For new players it's just annoying because even with slow playing in overland it's hard to complete whole set - when you get 5th piece, first one is already too low level So they often grind levels in dolmens, because veteran players only tells them "you can't do it until cp 160 beacuse you don't have gear". From 1 to 160 cp level is even more parody, because with enlightment levels goes so fast, that you don't even bother with changing gear too often - you just grint this as fast as possible. Most players don't remember this, beacuse only once you go this path with cp levels but this is very important to encourage new players to play longer and this system is not good. Real fun starts when you actually can get real gear and there is no point for this before you reach 160 cp - it's pointless limitation.

Also it solves problem with accidentaly making or buying lower level gear. I remember story of guy, who made and golden 150 cp jewelry by accident - ouch...

starkerealm

idk wrote: »

This is just a guess, but several points lead to an opportunity for Zos to raise the gear cap.

A couple of years ago, Zos (I think it as Gina) stated that Zos would raise the level cap when it seemed appropriate.

• Zos is reworking CP. If this is a complete revamp then our gear level will likely be based on a different rating/level system.
• Zos added the transmutation system to make it easier for us to farm gear. Now they are going to allow us to "learn" drop sets we equip so we can craft them for ourselves. afaik, this will permit us to craft the gear at any level.
• We have experienced significant power creep over the years making older content seem rather trivial.

With all of this happening, it would be a great time for Zos to rebalance the game and reset the power creep without the major inconvenience of the previous three times Zos raise the cap. We would only need to farm new mats if new materials were added to the game and then craft whatever we were already wearing if that is what we desired. It would also be the best justification for raising the gear cap we have ever seen in this game.

What do you think?

Counterpoint: This would allow them to strip CP off of gear entirely, and make the new gear cap 50, if they chose to. Right now the Tier 6 through 9 materials are mostly vestigial and only see use on your account once, after that it will be all Ruby. It would not surprise me if they intend to compact those tiers down into Ebony and wipe away all the tiers above that.

I agree that the reconstitution system would allow them to increase the gear cap, but given how everything scales, I don't think that would have any meaningful effect on players, particularly not ones in the 810+ crowd.

Sarannah

Luke_Flamesword wrote: »

Also it solves problem with accidentaly making or buying lower level gear. I remember story of guy, who made and golden 150 cp jewelry by accident - ouch...

When I first started I thought master writs should always be CP level 160. Cost me alot of resources till I figured that one out hehe.

On topic: Anyways, ZOS can't just change gear to level 50 or make it levelfree. There are many things tied to CP 0-CP160, like all crafting systems for example(levels), poisons, glyphs, questrewards, levelscaling, etc. Probably many more things I forgot about.

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO

Naftal wrote: »

I hope they'll REDUCE the gear cap to lvl50. It makes absolutely no sense that cp is involved in gear level in any way.

Getting to level 50 is now a very quick journey, requiring only a few days of gameplay if you want to rush it.

The CP160 cap is a remnant of VR16, "veteran rank 16". Leveling to VR10 used to require you to go through three times the zone content you did to reach level 50, equivalent to another 50 levels or so. You gained about one VR level for doing all the quests, delves and public dungeons in each faction zone, and by the end of" "Cadwell's Gold" you had some pretty challenging overland trash fights to try to overcome, which was meant to encourage ad-hoc grouping and practice to develop your skills. The intended path to VR12 and subsequently VR14 and VR16 was through Craglorn, including all its trials and forced group content which was actually rather difficult at release, and Wrothgar. Before One Tamriel, I hear Wrothgar used to be quite difficult as well. (I was taking a break from the game at that time.)

So, the leveling does not actually end at lvl50 -- you are only about 1/3 done at that point. For anything beyond your first character, you jump from lvl 49 to whatever CP level you have on your other lvl 50 characters, but making "plain" level 50 the cap would mean even more problems with people entering "endgame" content (vet dungeons, vet trials) wearing random dropped gear and having no real clue on how to play.

So, no. I think new players need to play more than just enough to reach level 50 before they can be expected to know their class and perform well in their role for group content. People choose to keep grinding dolmens for the stretch from CP10 to CP160 to "power level", but that is counter-productive, as it will leave you with too few skill points. I cannot stress enough how many bad and clueless players I have tried, and sometimes failed, to carry through veteran dungeons on my tank. We do not need more of those "power leveled" characters with unreasonable expectations on easy and quick rewards.

Naftal

stefan.gustavsonb16_ESO wrote: »

Naftal wrote: »

I hope they'll REDUCE the gear cap to lvl50. It makes absolutely no sense that cp is involved in gear level in any way.

Getting to level 50 is now a very quick journey, requiring only a few days of gameplay if you want to rush it.

The CP160 cap is a remnant of VR16, "veteran rank 16". Leveling to VR10 used to require you to go through three times the zone content you did to reach level 50, equivalent to another 50 levels or so. You gained about one VR level for doing all the quests, delves and public dungeons in each faction zone, and by the end of" "Cadwell's Gold" you had some pretty challenging overland trash fights to try to overcome, which was meant to encourage ad-hoc grouping and practice to develop your skills. The intended path to VR12 and subsequently VR14 and VR16 was through Craglorn, including all its trials and forced group content which was actually rather difficult at release, and Wrothgar. Before One Tamriel, I hear Wrothgar used to be quite difficult as well. (I was taking a break from the game at that time.)

So, the leveling does not actually end at lvl50 -- you are only about 1/3 done at that point. For anything beyond your first character, you jump from lvl 49 to whatever CP level you have on your other lvl 50 characters, but making "plain" level 50 the cap would mean even more problems with people entering "endgame" content (vet dungeons, vet trials) wearing random dropped gear and having no real clue on how to play.

So, no. I think new players need to play more than just enough to reach level 50 before they can be expected to know their class and perform well in their role for group content. People choose to keep grinding dolmens for the stretch from CP10 to CP160 to "power level", but that is counter-productive, as it will leave you with too few skill points. I cannot stress enough how many bad and clueless players I have tried, and sometimes failed, to carry through veteran dungeons on my tank. We do not need more of those "power leveled" characters with unreasonable expectations on easy and quick rewards.

I have no idea what you're talking about. I think you're misinterpreting my message.

There's nocp content in the game where it makes no sense that a new level 50 player needs to then gain 160 cp points just because.

There's currently so many cp810 who cannot play the game. Everyone need to actually prove they can play instead of others looking at their level.

starkerealm

Sarannah wrote: »

Luke_Flamesword wrote: »

Also it solves problem with accidentaly making or buying lower level gear. I remember story of guy, who made and golden 150 cp jewelry by accident - ouch...

When I first started I thought master writs should always be CP level 160. Cost me alot of resources till I figured that one out hehe.

On topic: Anyways, ZOS can't just change gear to level 50 or make it levelfree. There are many things tied to CP 0-CP160, like all crafting systems for example(levels), poisons, glyphs, questrewards, levelscaling, etc. Probably many more things I forgot about.

If they wanted to, it's entirely possible.

Okay, so, if they went to unleveled gear, what would change?

We already have level scaling potions and food. So, you'd just need to compact your solvents and greases down into a single item. Worst case, this might require re-purposing the refinement system to convert old materials down into new ones. (This has already been done with Soul Gems. When the multi-tiered system was abandoned, Grand Soul Gems became "Soul Gems," and the others simply stopped working. Again, the same approach could be applied here, where suddenly Alcahest is the only thing used in poisons, and the other materials are just a historical novelty.

The same thing is true for the equipment and rune crafting materials. As an interesting aside, there enchantments in the game that lack potency runes entirely, so potentially abandoning that part of the system (or cutting it down to just positive and negative potency) wouldn't be as strange as it first appears.

With equipment materials, you could easily terminate the Tier 5 - 9 materials, rename the Ruby tier mats to match their Ebony Tier counterparts, and you'd be done on that front. (Actual items can be tweaked on the fly, so that's not an issue.) In fact, gear level scaling was already rebalanced across the board back when the level cap went from Vet 14 to Vet 16. (And the CP160 gear we have today was roughly equivalent to the pre-IC V14 gear.)

Jewelry is the odd one out here, as there are only 5 tiers of materials for them.

So, materials can be dealt with. items can be dealt with.

That just leaves the skill lines. Those can be changed. ZOS doesn't like to do it often, but they could simply force respecs into the skill lines, adjust the tier access passives, and let us log in to find our characters now have slightly more skill points than they did when we logged out.

So, that's just capping at 50.

Removing level caps entirely? It could be done.

Weapons and armor are effectively level scaled already, so if you adjusted them to shift with you as you leveled up, they'd continue to operate normally, becoming more powerful as you leveled up.

Similarly, item rarity is adjusted dynamically, so you could (theoretically) even control, or limit, that. The biggest risk would be low level characters with endgame equipment in BGs. But that was already possible, and we're going to see that in a minute anyway.

Something ESO doesn't currently support, but could be possible would be limiting the number of active set bonuses a character can benefit from, and capping the effective rarity of their gear, in low level BGs.

You could even rework the existing materials to give them unique bonuses. For example, Iron could have reduced upgrade material requirements, but also have reduced overall stats. With Steel acting as a kind of "baseline" material with no bonuses or penalties.

Critically, this suggestion would require you to be able to change the crafting material of a set drop (possibly via reconstitution), OR have give each set a fixed material.

This would also allow for different materials to be significantly rarer or more common depending on where you were farming, based on what's supposed to be there. (For example, Morrowind should be very Ebony rich.)

While it would play havoc with the current economy, you could even make some materials very rare and or niche. Such as giving Ruby tier materials a bonus to earned XP and AP but returning them to their original stomping grounds in the Imperial City as Tel'Var focused materials.

So, yeah, it's possible, but it would take a fair amount of work.

I doubt they'd be willing to remove gear levels entirely. It would be a very radical change for the game. Though slicing off everything above Ebon Tier is quite possible.

stefj68

i really hope not, i dont feel like farming 30 sets and golden them at this time!

cyberjanet

idk wrote: »

afaik, this will permit us to craft the gear at any level.


What do you think?

On the PTS, the gear binds at CP160 no matter what level you get it at (I tried a dungeon with my husband who had a level 32 character.) When you reconstruct it, it reconstructs at CP160 only, so you are not able to craft at any level.