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

idk

BTW, I just saw that the new sticker book collection for crafting drop gear will allow us to craft most sets at any level. Only specific gear is locked at CP160

starkerealm wrote: »

idk wrote: »

witchdoctor wrote: »

Yeah, I don't see how a gear level increase accomplishes anything in ESO.

Everything is CP 160. What possible purpose, besides pissing people off, does CP 180 gear serve?

We know ZOS is not going to start making CP 180 zones.

So, they are going to what, make the world CP 180? In which case, nothing has changed.

@witchdoctor

To answer your question, what possible purpose has there been for raising the gear cap the three previous times?

I will tell you. The first two times were because Zos added trials and an arena that was set two levels higher than the previous level. The third time was because Zos just wanted to add some more crafting matts.

In reality, no game has any real justification for raising the gear cap. They just make an excuse to do it.

So, there's a phrase that I've had multiple dev team members tell me, when talking the early years, "It's a different game now."

Back in 2014 and 2015, itemization was built around a more traditional gear treadmill. Rich (I think) actually called it, "gear chase," when they were announcing Imperial City.

So, the original goal (which we saw with Craglorn) was that ESO would raise the level cap with each new content drop, so players would always have something to level up to. It also meant there was always new, better, gear to be grinding towards.

With IC they showed their long term plan for that system, where odd Vet Rank gear would be easy to obtain, but even tier gear would be much more difficult. (IE: Getting V15 gear was trivial, but you had to grind a lot to get V16.)

There was even a new Boreal tier planned for Wrothgar, (which, probably, would have been v17 and v18) though that was scrapped fairly early on in the DLC's development.

The idea was that every three months, a new content drop would hit, the gear and vet rank cap would go up, and players could quickly leapfrog past the previous tier entirely, but would need to grind constantly to get to the current top gear, and it would be outdated in a few months anyway.

(I assume) this is part of why crafting 160 gear costs so many more materials than crafting 150. You were supposed to work very hard for that extra level of gear.

It wasn't until Thieves Guild that ZOS started walking that design back, and made 160 reliably drop. It wasn't until Dark Brotherhood that vet ranks went away entirely, shifting to Champion Points across the board. And, it wasn't until One Tamriel that you could get whatever you wanted in 160, (and could go wherever you wanted at endgame, instead of being restricted to DLC zones if you wanted endgame materials.)

In that sense, the rolling gear cap increases were part of a different era in the game. One where our gear was supposed to be something we'd constantly grind for.

In some ways, you could already see that plan fracturing as early as Wrothgar, because, while the IC sets weren't competitive for PvE content, the decision not to increase the level cap to V18 was the first sign that the gear treadmiill was being retired.

The thing is, IC was a bridge too far. The gear grind was punitive (in comparison to how easy it had been to obtain V14 gear), v16 gear only caught up to where v14 gear had been before the patch (when the cap went into effect, it just pushed everything down, instead of increasing player power. Something which had not been true with the V12 and V14 cap increases.) The new material tiers were effectively gated by PvP, and as the first new content in almost a year, many PvE players (on PC) felt abandoned by ZOS, and gated off from recovering their lost stats.

So, IC was a major stumble, and feedback from it set a lot of rules for the game going forward.

First off their "traditional gear treadmill" was far from traditional. I have never played a game that required everyone to farm new gear every few months. Remember, the first level increase was less than two months after the game released. A large majority of players had not even reached the first gear cap making raising it absurd.

Second, as I stated in the beginning, Zos has said they will raise the gear cap again when they feel the time is right. This was in the past year and all well after what you are mentioning. As such it seems what the dev's shared about their early "vision" is not relevant to Gina's comment made about the time Zos was starting their revamp of the combat system.

I do agree IC was a major stumble. We loudly criticized the pointless gear increases that occurred during the first year of the game and it seemed they heard us. The IC gear cap increase seemed to be made with an even more trivial justification making me question if the dev team has had some sort of actual vision when considering major changes to the game.

ssewallb14_ESO

Very unlikely.

You can't really do vertical gear progression in a game like this, sticker book or no. With vertical gear the new gear completely replaces the old, you can't do that in a game with 7000 set pieces. Even if you could reconstruct old gear at the new cap, the cap would need to be raised periodically to have progression, meaning people would need to continuously remake everything they own, not just one time. It would add pointless grind to the game with the feeling of players losing something they own, which is the opposite of what ZOS has been going for for several years now

Runefang

Honestly a one-time gear level increase in a game that is now 6 years old isn't a bad thing, especially with the sticker book. I wouldn't care too much as long as the near gear level up is just better than what I have now.

Waffennacht

I definitely could see it happening

AyaDark

If gear lvl increase - people who collect gold gear and jevelery lose a lot of money.

The day such day comes, i just delete the game and will newer enter it, the same for all projects of the same developers.

I have blacklist of company i will newer have anything with. If they do really bad to players i add it to my personally blacklist and do not ever say anything good about them with proofs.


Such changes will be full disrespect to old players, do the same content again?

May be 3th time farm vMA again ? For the same items ?

I had 20 gold weapons, now i refarm it again, make again ?

I have more than 100+ gold hevelery items i collect for 3 years - refarm ?

No ty, i will just go away.

zaria

I rater expect perfected gear in older trials who makes much more sense.

XxCaLxX

I personally like the idea and do believe a change of some kind is coming but over the last few years all their changes have mainly focused on new players or bringing in new players and this goes against that so I just don’t see a gear gap raising.

Scardan

It scares me. I am fresh 160 CP and i am already broke after buying mothers sorrow staff and julianos. I will cry and beg for gold coins on the streets of Vivec, sitting in my useless CP160 set and weapon if they increase gear cap any time soon xD

LalMirchi

This would be a terrible change.

Eiregirl

No matter what they do it will not be perfect and people will complain because it is not perfect.

Raise the gear cap and within a short time everyone will be use to it and the power level will be right back where it is now even if they rebalance the entire game.

I played WOW from launch and up until about a year ago and I DO NOT MISS the gear chase at all.
I do not miss having to level up my characters every expansion.
I do not miss having to grind new gear for each of my characters every patch.
I do not miss the crappy crafting system in WOW.

I have played ESO since launch and except for the screw up that was craglorn and some performance issues mainly in cyrodiil (a place i avoid) I have truly enjoyed it. I enjoy not having to chase gear all the time. I enjoy not having to level up every character I want to use every time there is a new chapter of the game and I enjoy not having to grind new gear for each of them. I enjoy being able to craft good gear for my characters to use.

The only real way I could see them increasing the gear cap without p***ing off a lot of players would be to automatically increase the level of all CP 160 gear to the new max level at the same quality.

There are people that have 18 characters on an account and there are people with multiple accounts with a full slate of characters.

Just for 1 gear setup for 5 characters that's 60 to 70 pieces of gear (depending on weapons) to totally gear out those 5 characters double that for 10 characters and triple it for 15!!! and gods forbid if you have multiple gear loadouts for all those characters. You do the math on how many mats it would take to get all that gear up to where you want it to be and the quality you want it at.

I would much rather have a system that has no gear level than to grind gear all over again for all my characters.

Aliyavana

cyberjanet wrote: »

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.

Great to know

Jaimeh

Eiregirl wrote: »

There are people that have 18 characters on an account and there are people with multiple accounts with a full slate of characters.

Just for 1 gear setup for 5 characters that's 60 to 70 pieces of gear (depending on weapons) to totally gear out those 5 characters double that for 10 characters and triple it for 15!!! and gods forbid if you have multiple gear loadouts for all those characters. You do the math on how many mats it would take to get all that gear up to where you want it to be and the quality you want it at.

This. Even with the stickerbook system in place, the crystals/mats required to re-gear multiple alts with all their sets would be a nightmare, and its only reaosn would be to create a huge time sink. No, thank you.

Nordic__Knights

ssewallb14_ESO wrote: »

Very unlikely.

You can't really do vertical gear progression in a game like this, sticker book or no. With vertical gear the new gear completely replaces the old, you can't do that in a game with 7000 set pieces. Even if you could reconstruct old gear at the new cap, the cap would need to be raised periodically to have progression, meaning people would need to continuously remake everything they own, not just one time. It would add pointless grind to the game with the feeling of players losing something they own, which is the opposite of what ZOS has been going for for several years now

once you re craft an item you get mat/stones back for decon so in time re crafting becomes free

starkerealm

Just saw this response tonight, so... sorry, I'm not exactly being timely here.

idk wrote: »

First off their "traditional gear treadmill" was far from traditional. I have never played a game that required everyone to farm new gear every few months.

Destiny 2. DCUO.

Actually, in fairness, most MMOs do run off a gear treadmill like this to some extent, the difference is the tempo ZOS was setting.

The difference between ESO's Gear Treadmill and WoWs would have been the speed at which the community was going to be thrown back in. With WoW you have two years between releases before your top tier raid gear is outclassed by random green drops. With ESO, that would have probably happened every six months.

idk wrote: »

Remember, the first level increase was less than two months after the game released. A large majority of players had not even reached the first gear cap making raising it absurd.

Level cap, but, yes.

idk wrote: »

Second, as I stated in the beginning, Zos has said they will raise the gear cap again when they feel the time is right. This was in the past year and all well after what you are mentioning. As such it seems what the dev's shared about their early "vision" is not relevant to Gina's comment made about the time Zos was starting their revamp of the combat system.

They've said that repeatedly over the years. Though the phrasing has changed a few times. Now, the one thing I'll grant you, at one point Gina (I think) made a comment about not wanting to move the level cap until there was a system in place to avoid having to regrind all your gear. (I'm paraphrasing here.) To an extent, the Set Collections do fulfill that requirement.

That said... there's not much point in raising the level cap at this point.

idk wrote: »

I do agree IC was a major stumble. We loudly criticized the pointless gear increases that occurred during the first year of the game and it seemed they heard us. The IC gear cap increase seemed to be made with an even more trivial justification making me question if the dev team has had some sort of actual vision when considering major changes to the game.

To an extent, yes, but I think a lot of the early gear increases were more about pre-launch inertia. A kind of, "we'll raise the level cap with each new zone, because that's how MMOs work," situation. Now, it would be pretty pointless, because of the way the game is designed.

From what I understand, internal testing ahead of launch basically said ESO wasn't going to live up to the team's goals, and a pivot was planned before the game released. Meaning, it hit shelves already in a transitional state between the original vision and what the game was being changed into. From the outside, I couldn't even begin to pick apart what came from where, and the original treadmill plan could be on either side. I don't know much about this, but, ESO underwent some massive changes during development, and it would be nice to get Rich or Matt to pull apart what happened over the years, and get context for some these design choices.

Salvas_Aren

Imagine they increase the gear cap in the middle of a gold mat inflation and yeet all your already golden stuff.

They would definitely do that.

Odovacar

one of IDK's last threads and predictions on here...Lets see if this comes true on the 26th

Edit* IDK will be missed here on the ESO forums

Giraffon

No. It's not needed. If there's any kind of power creep, it's not because of the 160 gear cap. Leave me and my gear alone.

zaria

Odovacar wrote: »

one of IDK's last threads and predictions on here...Lets see if this comes true on the 26th

This one predict perfected gear from more trials.
You heard it here first.

Sgrug

It is absolutely needed. This game is suffering greatly with the lack of Vertical Progression. We need growth, it is well past time to give those who have been capped forever a path to grow.

Odovacar

zaria wrote: »

Odovacar wrote: »

one of IDK's last threads and predictions on here...Lets see if this comes true on the 26th

This one predict perfected gear from more trials.
You heard it here first.

OG @zaria

Qbiken

Sgrug wrote: »

It is absolutely needed. This game is suffering greatly with the lack of Vertical Progression. We need growth, it is well past time to give those who have been capped forever a path to grow.

Unless ZOS makes it possible to make all old gear whatever new cap there is for free we don´t need any kinda of gear cap increase. It´s one thing to re-grind a maelstrom weapon or two (even tho that change was the most smoothbrain change I´ve seen in a while) but to regrind your entire account is essentially a huge reason to just un-install. And the main thing this game suffers from is performance issues, not the lack of vertical progression lmao

B0SSzombie

I can't imagine higher level gear.

This game is barely balanced as is, increasing the numbers more would be a complete mess.

Progression is new and refreshing mechanics (Stuff like Mythic Gear for instance), not bigger numbers.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I do agree that the sticker book is a necessary first step in what is probably an inevitable (at some point) gear cap increase.

Gold mat prices are going to go through the roof if this happens (and they are already on the ceiling). So many people have been pumping out gold sets from sticker book for their alts. Thankfully, I have resisted the urge to blow through my moderate stockpile of gold mats. I would assume that if the gear cap went to say, 300, that we would be able to reconstruct what we already have found at a higher level, but holy cow, will there be so many people raging if this happens. I wont exactly be thrilled as I have hundreds and hundreds of pieces of gold gear that would be junk.

Ultimately, I think doing this serves no real purpose other than to force people back on the grind wheel. I would advocate that they remove level restrictions on gear rather than increase them. This will annoy far more people than it pleases, and I honestly think that it would be enough for some to just walk away.

If they do it, they need to figure out a way to allow people to reasonably increase their current gear (perhaps with transmute), or allow (perhaps temporarily) for deconstructed 160CP gold gear to yield significantly more gold mats.

jaws343

They halted Champion Point progression because of power creep. There is a zero percent chance this happens because it would:

A) require a full game rebalance, which is very unlikely.

or

b) it would just make players even stronger than they already are, further trivializing all current content.

or

C) it would literally do nothing because enemies would still scale and be equal in power to the new level, effectively being a completely useless change to gear cap.

Ackwalan

All a level increase would do is remove gold and mats from the game, and probably more then a few players.

THEDKEXPERIENCE

Necromancy!!

Anyway I’m fine with it if they do it like this.

CP 150 10 mats
CP 160 150 mats
CP 810 1500 mats of absurdium.

Absurdium should be the hardest drop to find in the game and only available to people with max crafters. It should take nearly 6 months for an every day standard player to acquire enough for one piece of gear. Even the most hardcore grinders shouldn’t be able to craft one piece for nearly a month. Then make the slight increase something dumb small like 2% better than CP160.

It should be a massive pain in the ass to build a set so it would take nearly a year for the meta to move from CP160 to CP810 gear.

If they do that cool. If they make it’s easy to obtain it will only be a pain in the ass to people who don’t have the gold, skills or connections to craft a set.

Girl_Number8

Necrosis is more like it lol

Sgrug

jaws343 wrote: »

They halted Champion Point progression because of power creep. There is a zero percent chance this happens because it would:

A) require a full game rebalance, which is very unlikely.

or

b) it would just make players even stronger than they already are, further trivializing all current content.

or

C) it would literally do nothing because enemies would still scale and be equal in power to the new level, effectively being a completely useless change to gear cap.

Except now it is finally obvious that gear and specifically proc sets are the real issue with power creep. CP had diminishing returns, it was never a real power creep issue.

Beside we need some power increase to go with vertical growth otherwise why bother playing? That is basic game game play design.

starkerealm

zaria wrote: »

Odovacar wrote: »

one of IDK's last threads and predictions on here...Lets see if this comes true on the 26th

This one predict perfected gear from more trials.
You heard it here first.

This, I could believe. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if ZOS is going to rearrange the trials a bit to standardize the older ones. There's already hints of that in the set collections menu with some of the Craglorn trials. I mean, I farmed VO out of vAA, but apparently it's a Sanctum set? Okay.

Silaf

I may be the only one here... still as a crafter selling materials i'm all in favor of this much needed change.
I wonder how much i will be able to sell dreugh wax for