[Feedback] Racial Passive update - Bosmer Stealth

Ratzkifal

BlueRaven wrote: »

At this point I am even wondering if they read the “pts” section at all, much less this thread. The only place where you see actual responses is on pvp threads.
These forums feel mostly meaningless.

Well there was one Dev response this PTS about the lack of Frost or Lightning sets when Fire just got another good set. The Dev that spoke up about it has my respect by the way.

But yeah, I feel you on this one. I haven't checked yet, but I am fairly sure that this little thread here has a higher approval rate than most other suggestion threads on the PTS part of the forum. The original Bosmer thread in the General section had 124 agrees + 28 Awesomes, which is also quite impressive and I think I've only seen a handful of posts on this entire forum with more likes than that.

You'd think after a certain amount of people have gathered behind a suggestion you would at least get a official response, even if that response is "No, we like detection and don't care that it's useless in PvE".

:puts on clown makeup:
But oh well, we still have two PTS patches and one live patch left so we'll surely get a response by then.

Ratzkifal

No new changes for racial passives again today. Just as I thought. And worse yet, they changed the descriptions of the races, which tells me that they are very happy with themselves.

"The racial skills of the High Elves reflect their magical affinity by increasing their weapon damage [...]."

Something doesn't sound right here.

"These innate bonuses help define the race as proud and powerful spellcasters."

They forgot to mention that they are also powerful warriors now that can swing weapons better than Redguards.

Bosmer description was unchanged of course.

BlueRaven

Ratzkifal wrote: »

No new changes for racial passives again today. Just as I thought. And worse yet, they changed the descriptions of the races, which tells me that they are very happy with themselves.

"The racial skills of the High Elves reflect their magical affinity by increasing their weapon damage [...]."

Something doesn't sound right here.

"These innate bonuses help define the race as proud and powerful spellcasters."

They forgot to mention that they are also powerful warriors now that can swing weapons better than Redguards.

Bosmer description was unchanged of course.

Seriously, how can we players communicate to them better? Do they not understand? Or do they just not care?

anadandy

BlueRaven wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

No new changes for racial passives again today. Just as I thought. And worse yet, they changed the descriptions of the races, which tells me that they are very happy with themselves.

"The racial skills of the High Elves reflect their magical affinity by increasing their weapon damage [...]."

Something doesn't sound right here.

"These innate bonuses help define the race as proud and powerful spellcasters."

They forgot to mention that they are also powerful warriors now that can swing weapons better than Redguards.

Bosmer description was unchanged of course.

Seriously, how can we players communicate to them better? Do they not understand? Or do they just not care?

The latter, IMO. The original Bosmer thread was one of the most rational, reasonable, well argued and detailed feedback threads ever. And they utterly ignored it except for one moderation post about derailing after we had a troll deliberately trying to derail.

I suspect we're stuck with garbage Detection in PVE forever.

Ratzkifal

BlueRaven wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

No new changes for racial passives again today. Just as I thought. And worse yet, they changed the descriptions of the races, which tells me that they are very happy with themselves.

"The racial skills of the High Elves reflect their magical affinity by increasing their weapon damage [...]."

Something doesn't sound right here.

"These innate bonuses help define the race as proud and powerful spellcasters."

They forgot to mention that they are also powerful warriors now that can swing weapons better than Redguards.

Bosmer description was unchanged of course.

Seriously, how can we players communicate to them better? Do they not understand? Or do they just not care?

I am currently in the process of writing a small essay outlining all of our issues and presenting our arguments and our rebuttal of counter arguments in the class rep thread, because at this point they are our best shot. They might not be the right address, but there doesn't seem to be any right address for this issue and Gina said in her post that the goal of the program is "to make [our] voices be heard", so even if this is not class related or even balance related, it's worth a shot and also the only thing we haven't done so far.

I asked Nefas in a recent stream what his opinion on it was, but to me it looked like he didn't understand the question and I didn't want to distract him from PvP any further since he was clearly too busy at the time.

If any of you want to help me with that, feel free to share your thoughts now and maybe join in the discussion over there should anyone actually respond. Glory does seem to be responding to a lot of things there though, so who knows.

BlueRaven

Ratzkifal wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

No new changes for racial passives again today. Just as I thought. And worse yet, they changed the descriptions of the races, which tells me that they are very happy with themselves.

"The racial skills of the High Elves reflect their magical affinity by increasing their weapon damage [...]."

Something doesn't sound right here.

"These innate bonuses help define the race as proud and powerful spellcasters."

They forgot to mention that they are also powerful warriors now that can swing weapons better than Redguards.

Bosmer description was unchanged of course.

Seriously, how can we players communicate to them better? Do they not understand? Or do they just not care?

I am currently in the process of writing a small essay outlining all of our issues and presenting our arguments and our rebuttal of counter arguments in the class rep thread, because at this point they are our best shot. They might not be the right address, but there doesn't seem to be any right address for this issue and Gina said in her post that the goal of the program is "to make [our] voices be heard", so even if this is not class related or even balance related, it's worth a shot and also the only thing we haven't done so far.

I asked Nefas in a recent stream what his opinion on it was, but to me it looked like he didn't understand the question and I didn't want to distract him from PvP any further since he was clearly too busy at the time.

If any of you want to help me with that, feel free to share your thoughts now and maybe join in the discussion over there should anyone actually respond. Glory does seem to be responding to a lot of things there though, so who knows.

I am at a job site right now, but if I could I would totally help with that.

Araneae6537

So Bosmer still have that horrid detection bonus on the PTS? I’m not convinced that it’s useful in PvP and obviously it’s completely useless in PvE and more than that, has no connection to lore. Many of you have already said it better so I’m just posting my agreement — Bosmer need their stealth bonus back!

colossalvoids

Ratzkifal wrote: »

I asked Nefas in a recent stream what his opinion on it was, but to me it looked like he didn't understand the question and I didn't want to distract him from PvP any further since he was clearly too busy at the time.

If you actually want to contact a class rep your best bet would be a discord pm or at least a post in his own discord, there were PTS discussion and class rep feedback threads. Would surely be better if it's a constructive well put together doc file and not a question or simple line or two.

Ratzkifal

colossalvoids wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

I asked Nefas in a recent stream what his opinion on it was, but to me it looked like he didn't understand the question and I didn't want to distract him from PvP any further since he was clearly too busy at the time.

If you actually want to contact a class rep your best bet would be a discord pm or at least a post in his own discord, there were PTS discussion and class rep feedback threads. Would surely be better if it's a constructive well put together doc file and not a question or simple line or two.

I was about to do that once but the people on that discord also said that if it's not class related, I shouldn't be putting it in that chat room. And since the PTS cycle was still young at that point I didn't. Also with the character limited on Discord, I don't want to be doing that over there since I can present my case better on here.
I will do it over there too however, but it would be easier if I can link to an existing post on the forums in discord than trying to write an entire essay and make it still readable. Spoilers in discord can't be collapsed like they can on here.

Cundu_Ertur

Mo money mo money mo money for everyone who is NOT them.

Ratzkifal wrote: »

No new changes for racial passives again today. Just as I thought. And worse yet, they changed the descriptions of the races, which tells me that they are very happy with themselves.

"The racial skills of the High Elves reflect their magical affinity by increasing their weapon damage [...]."

Something doesn't sound right here.

"These innate bonuses help define the race as proud and powerful spellcasters."

They forgot to mention that they are also powerful warriors now that can swing weapons better than Redguards.

Bosmer description was unchanged of course.

And my dwindling interest in this game dwindles further.

Jaraal

Ratzkifal wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

No new changes for racial passives again today. Just as I thought. And worse yet, they changed the descriptions of the races, which tells me that they are very happy with themselves.

"The racial skills of the High Elves reflect their magical affinity by increasing their weapon damage [...]."

Something doesn't sound right here.

"These innate bonuses help define the race as proud and powerful spellcasters."

They forgot to mention that they are also powerful warriors now that can swing weapons better than Redguards.

Bosmer description was unchanged of course.

Seriously, how can we players communicate to them better? Do they not understand? Or do they just not care?

I am currently in the process of writing a small essay outlining all of our issues and presenting our arguments and our rebuttal of counter arguments in the class rep thread, because at this point they are our best shot. They might not be the right address, but there doesn't seem to be any right address for this issue and Gina said in her post that the goal of the program is "to make [our] voices be heard", so even if this is not class related or even balance related, it's worth a shot and also the only thing we haven't done so far.

While I applaud your dedication to the (absolutely just) cause, I'm certain that the development team is fully and completely aware of every facet of the Bosmer issue. They are simply digging in their heels and choosing to fight and die on Decision Hill. It no longer matters what is right or wrong..... only that they win at all costs.

Ratzkifal

Jaraal wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

Ratzkifal wrote: »

No new changes for racial passives again today. Just as I thought. And worse yet, they changed the descriptions of the races, which tells me that they are very happy with themselves.

"The racial skills of the High Elves reflect their magical affinity by increasing their weapon damage [...]."

Something doesn't sound right here.

"These innate bonuses help define the race as proud and powerful spellcasters."

They forgot to mention that they are also powerful warriors now that can swing weapons better than Redguards.

Bosmer description was unchanged of course.

Seriously, how can we players communicate to them better? Do they not understand? Or do they just not care?

I am currently in the process of writing a small essay outlining all of our issues and presenting our arguments and our rebuttal of counter arguments in the class rep thread, because at this point they are our best shot. They might not be the right address, but there doesn't seem to be any right address for this issue and Gina said in her post that the goal of the program is "to make [our] voices be heard", so even if this is not class related or even balance related, it's worth a shot and also the only thing we haven't done so far.

While I applaud your dedication to the (absolutely just) cause, I'm certain that the development team is fully and completely aware of every facet of the Bosmer issue. They are simply digging in their heels and choosing to fight and die on Decision Hill. It no longer matters what is right or wrong..... only that they win at all costs.

Makes me wonder why they went back on the "no two races can share a passive" rule and gave Argonians back both their poison and their disease resistance. My guess is they really just don't see things the way we do and think Darloc Brae and the new CP are a good replacement.

In other news I am about to finish the essay and will post it here first to give you an opportunity to give me feedback first before I post it on the class rep forum.

Ratzkifal

Here it is. What do you think?

---

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

[...]
As a general reminder, the goal of this program is to ensure your voice is being heard, and concerns are being relayed and discussed directly with the Dev Team. While the last couple updates have largely focused on the ongoing ability audits, we’ll be moving back to having regular calls with the Class Reps and posting public meeting notes very soon.
[...]

Since the goal of this program is to ensure voices are being heard, I have come here with quite a bit of frustration about not being heard and not even having received an official answer from anyone. So now I am coming here, to the class reps, to present my case to people that I know are at least more likely to be heard than I am and more likely to respond than ZOS is, in hopes that I can at least get an answer or better.

I don't want to beat around to bush a lot. I am here on behalf of the Bosmer stealth community. We've made multiple threads on the topic in the last two years now, most notably this one which gathered at least 152 people in support of giving Bosmer back their stealth, which isn't an unimpressive number for something that doesn't even affect balance in any way or is performance related, and more recently this PTS thread among others which goes to show that people care even to this day and didn't move on after these two years since Wrathstone. Even if some of these posts contain a lot of salt, they are largely constructive. The original thread managed to stay constructive, active and on topic for 89 pages and yet there was no official response to this.

Back in the Wrathstone update PTS we were told that you, the class reps, were raising concerns that we, the Bosmer, would be "trading in stealth for different buffs", which we appreciated to hear, but also had concerns about the reply you received from ZOS.

Source:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Good evening everyone!

A few days ago, we held one of our regular calls with the Class Reps to discuss PTS feedback with the focus being the racial passives, itemization, and the two new Wrathstone dungeons. @Joy_Division was kind enough to take notes during the call, which you'll find below.

[...]

Without further ado, here are the notes from our meeting as written by Joy:

----
[...]

Racials

As expected, we spent a good chunk of time here. I’ll go into more detail below, but the gist of the feedback from the Devs made us think they have taken our and the community’s feedback to heart and are legitimately trying to make this as smooth as possible. Speaking for myself, I was impressed and - pleasantly surprised – the path ZOS is going here to try and improve the races is to do just that: improve what’s on the PTS. It’s a nice change of pace not to see things get hit with nerfs as an attempt to address issues.

[...]

[...]
• Bosmer: ZOS has heard concerns about the stackable powerful movement speed. Bosmers will still get a speed boost off dodge, it just wont be as high. Bosmers will get some short damage bonus as compensation. Note: Reps specifically asked about the community’s concern that bosmers are trading stealth for different buffs. We were told that ZOS saw these concerns and would work on creating more options/systems for stealth gameplay outside of race. With these additions, stealth gameplay will open up to more players, and also allow bosmers to have the nice combat buff will still having avenues to be as stealthy as before.
  [...]

In general, the Reps felt the Devs were responding to a lot of feedback that has been given, are trying to make this as smooth as possible, and were pleased to see that positive adjustments were the main tool rather than nerfs.

The Reps did float ideas that would make it possible for players to receive more than one race change token. We encouraged the Devs to put more thought into this.

ZOS has delivered on opening up stealth to other races and created more options with the CP system including a stealth bonus in Craft, but this has not addressed our concerns. "A system for stealth outside of race" does not address the issue that Bosmer in the lore have been the stealthy race for 25 years. Instead we got a buff to detection, which is rather useless outside of PvP and has very limited use in PvP too, which I will get into as well later.
In the Wrathstone patch notes the developer comment stated that no two races should share a passive, but this rule, arbitrary and injust as it was, has now been broken in Flames of Ambition with multiple races receiving 258 Weapon and Spell Damage.

Now there is no argument against giving Bosmer back their 3meters of stealth anymore. We never cared for the extra damage from stealth that was removed in Wrathstone, since we understand that it wasn't healthy for PvP, but ZOS left us with no stealth.
Stealth is an important part of Bosmer culture and is deeply ingrained in their lore too. The combat team might not be aware because they aren't the lore team, so they might not think of it as a big deal but to a lot of us it is.

Removing stealth from Bosmer in favor of detection is bad because:

1. It breaks the lore
   There is no precedent for Bosmer detection or good eyesight in the lore while there is plenty of very explicit mentioning of their stealth. Note that in addition to the following, there is also plenty of dialogue in games on the topic.

   • The Rite of Theft is a war custom of the tribal Woodelfs in which a tribe raids another to steal the valuable possessions or people for ransom. The larger the stolen object, the more prestige it has. While deaths do occur, these raids are generally not deadly due to the stealthy nature of this war custom. "Thanks to centuries of this practice, the tribal Bosmer have become legendary for their stealth" - Mistral Aurelian Teriscor
   • The Bosmer's most famous poem is called "The One Thousand Benefits of Hiding". Although we have never seen this poem, it has been mentioned several times, even within the books of ESO. Sources for this are the "Pocket Guide to the Empire, First Edition: Aldmeri Dominion", "War Customs of the Tribal Bosmer" (ESO) as well as "A Dance in Fire, Book 1". All these sources are quoting it to be the most famous poem and two of them also mention the forest-coupling ability.
   • Bosmer are known to possess an ability called "forest-coupling" that allows them to camouflage themselves in proximity to plantlife. This ability, in conjunction with being prone to desertion, is described as the reason why the Colovian armies stopped using the superior Bosmer archers in their legions after a failed experiment in the War of Rihad. It is said that "they would sometimes walk into the shade of a single tree and vanish. Their forest-coupling skills are remarkable." While this can be interpreted as exaggeration, their superior stealth still factored into them not being commonly recruited into archer regiments for the Empire. It should be considered that the Imperial Legion is one of the most tactically advanced and honed military forces in Tamriel, making them a very reliable source for information of military importance such as stealth capabilities of potential enemies or allies.
   • Sources:
     • "Right of Theft" - an ESO quest in Greenshade revolving around the Rite of Theft
     • A Merchant's Guide to Valenwood - book in ESO describing Bosmer as "being known for their thieving" and advising to keep watch on your goods even at night
     • Heroes of the Sanctuary - book in ESO, a story about how three Altmer used the Rite of Theft to get the Bosmer to allow them to found cities on Valenwood's coast
     • Valenwood: A Study - book in ESO, mentioning that the Bosmer came to be by learning stealth and cunning from their prey
     • War Customs of the Tribal Bosmer - book in ESO, that mentions the most famous Bosmer poem "Meh Ayleidion", meaning "One Thousand Benefits of Hiding"
     • Pocket Guide to the Empire, 1st Edition/Aldmeri Dominion - a paper booklet released with The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard, it mentions the "Meh Ayleidion", but also describes the "forest-coupling" ability
2. It breaks with tradition
   Every game starting with Arena described Bosmer as great sneak thieves.

   • Elder Scrolls 1 Arena
     
     
   • Elder Scrolls 2 Daggerfall
     
     
   • Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind
     
     
   • Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion
     
     
   • Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim
     
     
   • Elder Scrolls Online (before Wrathstone)
     
     
3. Detection is bugged
   After some thorough testing I've noticed that Bosmer detection goes through invisibility, which seems to be an unintended interaction as the target does not actually become targettable despite being revealed. The invisible enemy automatically dodges all targetted attacks as if they had just successfully activated Cloak, which leads me to believe that invisibility is coded by setting enemy detection to zero and the Bosmer passive bypassing that. Detection from skills or potions intended to reveal invisible enemies, which give what I like to call "truesight", always come with a special indicator above the character's head and actually state "invisible enemies" rather than "stealthed" enemies, where "stealth" is the result of sneaking and countered by detection while "invisibility" is the result of skills or potions and is countered by "truesight". With no such truesight indicator being present in Bosmer, I feel like this is a bug and not a feature.
   
   Furthermore due to the way the eye indicator works in a situation where both a Bosmer and an enemy are in stealth, the eye indicator goes from "hidden" or closed to "danger" or half-open for the enemy first! This means that an increased detection radius gives away your presence to an enemy before you, the Bosmer, are made aware of theirs. The same is true in the case of the Khajiit but a notable difference is that a Khajiiti presence is alerting an attentive enemy at the same time as with any other race while Bosmer are alerting enemies before any other. In stark contrast to other races though the stealth passive allows Khajiit to remain hidden while Bosmer are detected at the same rate as any other race, making additional detection detrimental to someone who is trying to be stealthy.
   Evidence of the hidden/danger interaction can be found here:

   Ratzkifal wrote: »

   Basically recreating/reposting my old post, because I can't quote it thanks to the thread being locked.
   
   Test1: No medium Armor on both, the one with the red orbs has 3/3 Hunter's Eye.
   
   
   Without wearing any armor, the "danger" indicator is nonexistant for the person being revealed. You go from completely hidden straight to full reveal. However there is some very wonky behavior as I am constantly going "hidden" again since no combat is happening, only to be immediately detected as soon as the indicator goes to "hidden" without any of us moving. This is when sneaking face toward face. The fennec fox pet was friendly enough to not go into stealth, so you can still tell where my sneaking Bosmer friend is. Note that he is not standing on top of the flag but slightly behind it (there is room for about another crouching Bosmer between him and the flag).
   
   Test2: One has full medium armor with passives, the other with the red orbs has 3/3 Hunter's Eye
   
   
   This time the Bosmer without the Hunter's Eye passive put on 7 pieces of medium armor, none of which interact with detection nor stealth beyond the medium armor passive. As you can clearly see, the Bosmer without Hunter's Eye is made aware of a nearby enemy through the "danger" indicator - the half opened eye. The Bosmer with Hunter's eye is still hidden and has no idea an enemy even exists in the area. This time the helpful fox behaved and went properly into hiding. The duel flag is touching the Hunter's Eye Bosmer's heel this time.

4. Detection is only useful in PvP
   This one is a rather simple point. There is no PvE content where detection is useful. There is not a single sneaking NPC and even the NB NPCs that use cloak do not actually get revealed by the same bug that reveals invisible players. It might be a cool feature for the future to introduce, but as there are currently none this passive is very limiting and is in direct conflict with the goals of the racial rebalance which ZOS stated back in Wrathstone (goal #2 universal applicability). Stealth can be used for Heists, Sacraments but also in PvP to avoid IC sewer base campers or get a Skyshard when you don't feel like fighting. Detection only has a single purpose use while Stealth is actually flexible and can be used to be offensively by setting up an ambush or defensively by avoiding players.
5. It does not work as a counter to Khajiit
   An idea that we thought the combat team might have had was that there should be a counter stat to stealth and while that is true, Detection on the Bosmer does not serve as a counter to Khajiiti stealth because they are on the same alliance. Stealth isn't really utilized in Battlegrounds aside from Capture the Relic perhaps, so if that was their train of thought at any point, it is a little bit too niche to make Bosmer be the counter to a race that is usually on their side unless it is a very specific game mode of Battlegrounds and one player actually decided to sneak.
   We do think that Detection has its place in the game and should be available, but it is not flexible enough to be fit as a Racial passive. We like that it has made its way into CP because nobody was willing to drop a 5-piece item set bonus to wear a set that granted Detection. My personal suggestion was that Detection in CP should be made twice as powerful per point spent so that the handful of players we encountered who did like Detection can invest into it if they so chooseif they feel it's worth it instead of forcing it upon every Bosmer. This would also bring it in line with other sources of Detection as the 3m Bosmer currently have pale in comparison to the 20m that a Detection potion offers.
6. It limits choice
   One of the original goals of the Wrathstone racial passive update was to open up more viable options and allow players to make choices instead of having only one viable race for any one purpose. The Wrathstone update failed to deliver that when it comes to stealth races. Originally Khajiit and Bosmer were both the stealthy races of the game, and rightfully so, but after Wrathstone the number of choices was lowered to one - Khajiit, since they got to keep their stealth bonus. General consensus among the Bosmer stealth community is that as long as a passive explicitly mentions being stealthy, it would be considered enough. Although we all agreed on the original 3m of stealth being what we wanted at the time when no two races were allowed to share a passive we were also willing to accept bonus movement during sneak. The general movement speed bonus Bosmer have received on the Flames of Ambition PTS is not explicit to stealth and falls into the same category as the 6% sneak cost reduction Imperials get, which we called an "accidental bonus". We do not want an accidental bonus, we want acknowledgement of their innate abilities in their racial passives as described in the lore.
7. Habits
   The Argument of habitude is not a very compelling one on its own, but combined with the others listed above it does hold weight too. We all have emotional investment in our characters to some degree and the people with little emotional investment have already used their race change tokens to jump ship or simply don't care about the issue. But a lot of us remain and we have refused to spend the three skill points into Hunter's Eye out of protest. Before Wrathstone Bosmer weren't viable for anything except gankers, roleplay or being cute. People who made a Bosmer did so partially because of stealth as that was what made them unique. People who wanted to be stealthy but didn't want to be Khajiit made Bosmer, so when ZOS took away their stealth, these Bosmer were left without their identity. Normally when a balance change affects you negatively you just "adapt" and move on, but in this case, because of the reasons above, we felt like this wasn't right and we shouldn't have to move on and "adapt". The lore is on our side and set our expectations right for what a Bosmer should be like and ZOS betrayed that expectation when they removed stealth for these last two years. Since we are all invested in our characters we have to live with these changes and can't just switch our build, since that would erase the character we'd grown to love. For five years Bosmer in ESO were stealthy and we want to continue to be because we've never wanted to be Khajiit. This change has hurt feelings and curbed enthusiasm for the game as we'd get a daily reminder each time any one of us would see their Bosmer in their character select screen. Every time ZOS would talk about lore and how much they cared about it our salt levels would rise, because we know better because we've been ignored and got no answer.

We've had little resistance on the forums to our suggestion. The only people who were against it either misunderstood that we disliked the penetration, movementspeed or stamina regeneration when that is absolutely not the case and we very much loved those changes, or they liked detection in principle but didn't understand the how little 3meters of detection actually is. To these people I want to extend an olive branch that the new detection CP should be made a bit more powerful to compensate them for the detection they've lost.

Something that some players didn't understand was why we Bosmer didn't just start wearing gear with stealth bonuses and it is possible that people on the combat team don't understand why we don't just use the new stealth CP either. The issue lies with the expectation that as a Bosmer we should have an inherent advantage towards stealth, allowing us to reach the same level of effectiveness with stealth as others while leaving us open to wearing different sets or getting different CP instead. We chose Bosmer to be stealthier, because that is and has been their thing next to Archery for 25 years.
It's the same deal with Altmer expecting to be good at magic or Nords expecting to be tough. You'd be getting a similar response from them if you messed with them like that.

Please, class reps, help us let our voices be heard! You are our only hope.

Edit Uploaded the post here now!

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Joy_Division

Tagged from something I wrote two years ago

For what it's worth, I never thought it was a good idea to deprive/remove/nerf those characteristics that made classes or races distinctive, especially if their were lore reasons behind the original design.

I don't mind other races / classes having stealth options, though I would have preferred if this did not mean Bosmer has to lose their inherent stealthiness and thus have to adopt what every other race had to do. Because at that point, there isn;t anything about Bosmer that is stealthy, it's just a piece of gear or a generic passive, the same things available to every other race.

Cundu_Ertur

Nice.

There's also a lore book (from Greenshade I think) that has the only mention of Bosmers being good hunters, and it makes not the slightest mention of tracking, but does mention Bosmer stealth. Maybe that would fit in the support for the lore section?
I wonder, too, if you should mention that the only race ever noted to be exceptionally skilled at finding people in stealth are not the Bosmer (for whom this is never mentioned) but rather the Orcs -- the Wood Orcs of Valenwood, to be specific.

But, to be honest, I'm just here to add more salt. Seems to me that the current crop of devs just hate Bosmeri and want to erase their existence altogether. See? SALT. And cynicism.

Cundu_Ertur

Oh, also you may want to pre-emptively counter the whole "Rite of Theft is a dead tradition" thing I had to rebut a year and a half ago (or so). There are several active quests in Valenwood (Greenshade and Grahtwood) that show that the Rite is alive and kicking in the current era.

Ratzkifal

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Nice.

There's also a lore book (from Greenshade I think) that has the only mention of Bosmers being good hunters, and it makes not the slightest mention of tracking, but does mention Bosmer stealth. Maybe that would fit in the support for the lore section?
I wonder, too, if you should mention that the only race ever noted to be exceptionally skilled at finding people in stealth are not the Bosmer (for whom this is never mentioned) but rather the Orcs -- the Wood Orcs of Valenwood, to be specific.

But, to be honest, I'm just here to add more salt. Seems to me that the current crop of devs just hate Bosmeri and want to erase their existence altogether. See? SALT. And cynicism.

I am not sure about mentioning that factoid about the Woodorcs because it makes it seem like I want to push that passive onto them. I will bring it up if the message results in a conversation, especially if the class reps come back to say that the Devs insist on a race having anti-stealth. As far as I am aware they are treating Detection still as a full set bonus, so Orcs probably wouldn't be happy to get nerfed again to make room for useless detection, especially since there are much more defining things about Orcs which isn't the case for Bosmer aside from Archery.

Ratzkifal

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Oh, also you may want to pre-emptively counter the whole "Rite of Theft is a dead tradition" thing I had to rebut a year and a half ago (or so). There are several active quests in Valenwood (Greenshade and Grahtwood) that show that the Rite is alive and kicking in the current era.

Wait, anyone actually said that? Lol. It's very much not dead. I don't think I even need to do that since there are so many examples of the Rite of Theft being a thing still.

Ratzkifal

Joy_Division wrote: »

Tagged from something I wrote two years ago

For what it's worth, I never thought it was a good idea to deprive/remove/nerf those characteristics that made classes or races distinctive, especially if their were lore reasons behind the original design.

I don't mind other races / classes having stealth options, though I would have preferred if this did not mean Bosmer has to lose their inherent stealthiness and thus have to adopt what every other race had to do. Because at that point, there isn;t anything about Bosmer that is stealthy, it's just a piece of gear or a generic passive, the same things available to every other race.

That wasn't my intention, but welcome to this thread and thank you for the insight!
Edit: I found your name tagged in Gina's post. I removed the @ so you don't get pinged every time someone responds to me.

Cundu_Ertur

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Oh, also you may want to pre-emptively counter the whole "Rite of Theft is a dead tradition" thing I had to rebut a year and a half ago (or so). There are several active quests in Valenwood (Greenshade and Grahtwood) that show that the Rite is alive and kicking in the current era.

Wait, anyone actually said that? Lol. It's very much not dead. I don't think I even need to do that since there are so many examples of the Rite of Theft being a thing still.

Link is here. It was actually almost exactly 1 year ago.

Starlight_Whisper

weathersong wrote: »

Just want to chime in with a different angle here, and I agree for the most part with the top post, but:

Bosmer's change to movement speed right now seems *really* good. Not just convenient, but strong in PvP. Couple it with Steed, a few Divines, and maybe werewolf, and you can actually hit the run speed cap without even sprinting.

Giving the Bosmer another passive that can in some situations (especially PvP) be quite strong... is maybe too much.

Detection isn't great, or at best is situational. Run speed is situational but is pretty good. I think the two balance out.

Detection makes you found easier

anadandy

Please see this post asking for "Out of Sight" CP star to be made an active ability.

On the off chance that ZOS does take that suggestion, then they absolutely need to counter balance that by giving Bosmer back their Stealth. Otherwise we're right back at the having to slot an ability or wear certain gear just to get what Bosmer have always had (until Wrathstone) - and leaving them on par (or worse) at Stealth as every other race in Tamriel.

Ratzkifal

anadandy wrote: »

Please see this post asking for "Out of Sight" CP star to be made an active ability.

On the off chance that ZOS does take that suggestion, then they absolutely need to counter balance that by giving Bosmer back their Stealth. Otherwise we're right back at the having to slot an ability or wear certain gear just to get what Bosmer have always had (until Wrathstone) - and leaving them on par (or worse) at Stealth as every other race in Tamriel.

Yeah, that would suck if we'd have to slot that. There are already so many stealth/justice related slottables in there that you already have to make tough choices. If something so fundamental like sneak radius is put in the slottables it will actually reduce choice because it becomes mandatory.

Edit: Fixed a typo and rephrased a sentence a little to make it more clear what I was trying to say

Cundu_Ertur

Bosmer Community: many well written essays on why bosmer should be stealthy.

ZOS reply:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2KVj2vVxUs

Ratzkifal

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Bosmer Community: many well written essays on why bosmer should be stealthy.

ZOS reply:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2KVj2vVxUs

I've gotten into contact with Nefas on discord. He said that this was the first time he heard about our issue, which is giving me hope that things might be looking up from here. He has a track record of things he notices getting nerfed/fixed by ZOS quickly (even when that wasn't always his intention). That he doesn't know about the issue is partly due to him becoming a Class rep later than Wrathstone but also means that it really is entirely possible our arguments aren't being ignored but just not being heard, which I feel is sad but at least not as disheartening.
He also said that he can't really say anything on the matter or what ZOS' thoughts on it are unless he gets a specific approval from ZOS due to the NDA, so we probably won't get any info on what happened back then.
I asked him if he needs any more info on the matter which we would then provide but he hasn't replied to that yet (not sure he will either), but he's got pretty much all the necessary info to make a solid case already anyway from my original post.

So now I am hoping he can get into contact with ZOS and explain our issue to them and why the new CP system doesn't fix it etc. before the end of the PTS cycle.

Cundu_Ertur

My hope: this gets addressed.
My expectation: we'll get a box full of nothing. Again.

Ratzkifal

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

My hope: this gets addressed.
My expectation: we'll get a box full of nothing. Again.

Honestly, same here.
Masel also responded in the class rep thread and he said they repeatedly brought it up in the past but ZOS never did anything about it. Now we don't know into how much detail they went or how insistent they were or if ZOS will listen to reason now that the thing they had planned to expand stealth with is revealed, so I wouldn't say all hope is lost yet, but as you say, I am managing my expectations accordingly so I don't get as disappointed if ZOS chooses to ignore reason again.

Starlight_Whisper

Can we have more speed while sneaking then? Like some sort of compromise?

Starlight_Whisper

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Bosmer Community: many well written essays on why bosmer should be stealthy.

ZOS reply:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2KVj2vVxUs

I've gotten into contact with Nefas on discord. He said that this was the first time he heard about our issue, which is giving me hope that things might be looking up from here. He has a track record of things he notices getting nerfed/fixed by ZOS quickly (even when that wasn't always his intention). That he doesn't know about the issue is partly due to him becoming a Class rep later than Wrathstone but also means that it really is entirely possible our arguments aren't being ignored but just not being heard, which I feel is sad but at least not as disheartening.
He also said that he can't really say anything on the matter or what ZOS' thoughts on it are unless he gets a specific approval from ZOS due to the NDA, so we probably won't get any info on what happened back then.
I asked him if he needs any more info on the matter which we would then provide but he hasn't replied to that yet (not sure he will either), but he's got pretty much all the necessary info to make a solid case already anyway from my original post.

So now I am hoping he can get into contact with ZOS and explain our issue to them and why the new CP system doesn't fix it etc. before the end of the PTS cycle.

Should be problem if he has never heard of this issue.

Ratzkifal

Starlight_Whisper wrote: »

Can we have more speed while sneaking then? Like some sort of compromise?

We made that suggestion years ago already. It was ignored back then and it has been ignored again so far, but there is still one more week of PTS and then the live patch, so there are two opportunities left for ZOS to do something right.
I would still prefer the sneak radius, but sneak-specific speed is still more useful and lore appropriate than detection.