Pre-made classes for Cyrodiil?

Ceejengine

Hey,

So it sounds like Cyrodiil is just getting worse and worse and more problems keep popping up.

What if we made an admittedly huge change and introduced pre-made one-bar skill load-outs into Cyrodiil. Players would no longer be able to take their characters into Cyrodiil as is. You must select a load-out that replaces your skills & outfit (and I think it should go for gear too).

The idea here would be to drastically reduce lag and make it easier to strategize. We could also eliminate a lot of problematic group comps.

Each load out would have 5 abilities and an ultimate that are already pre-determined. Each load out will have its own unique design, strengths and weaknesses. It will have its own costume as well that makes it easy to identify and also reduces server strain.

The most direct example I can come up with is a certain Battlefront game with magic space wizards. Each player that wanted join in Cyrodiil PvP would select one of however (I can come up with a dozen pretty quickly) many pre-made loudouts to join in.

Players can swap load-outs at predetermined locations like shrines or inside of forts they own, or upon death before they revive.

The only skills allowed would be the pre-determined skills that come with the load-out, as well as any skill from Assault + Support. (I'd also make a case for WW and vampire.).

I really think the right call is to keep each loadout to 1 bar. I think it'll streamline the whole deal significantly.

Then, disable all 5 pc gear set bonuses. I don't know about mythics or monster sets.

I'd do everything in my power to drastically minimize the number of AoEs.

I have no input on whether CP should be permitted or not.

Players would be free to morph the pre-selected skills as they see fit and would gain any applicable skill line exp. It'd also allow players to experience late-stage skills early on. Players could either morph the skills as they choose or the whole kit could come pre-made.

Each faction could also have their own flavorful load-outs like Swordsingers, or Greenseer, etc.

Daedric artifacts like Volundrung would just be one of these Prestige classes.

I'd say allow WWs, and allow vampire characters to use their vampirism skills instead of pre-loaded skills.

Here's just a couple generic examples

Bounty Hunter: Uses 2h, has a chain pull, a stealth suppressor, a group movement speed buff and an execute.

Harrier: Uses a bow, has caltrops, volley, poison arrow, a single target snare.

Acolyte: Resto staff. Has a heal, magicka steal, AoE silence.

Bulwark: 1h + shield. Has a group shield, charge, self-heal.

Thanks for reading.

sedi

I see where tou are going but would be a bit of a shame to limit build versatility. Aside from those that just run the cheese builds a lot of people work very hard to create interesting and fun builds. Even with the limiting changes this will still be the case.

Mindcr0w

Nah, I get the whole "try drastic measures approach" given how things have been going, but this is too much. Preset loadouts? If I can't play my character, my way, with my choices I don't wanna play. Whether those choices end up being good or bad.

Ace_SiN

Theorycrafting is a huge draw for this game. Removing it entirely is unarguably a net negative. Personally, I think these forums are littered with low-skilled players that can't admit ESO has a high-skill floor and they would rather make excuses for why they died. There is no secret build in ESO with today's gaming scene. Information travels too fast and too many people are trying to be "the guy" for their gaming channels. Yet, if you read these forums you'd come to the conclusion that some super secret unstoppable/unkillable juggernaut build exists. When the reality is it's a skilled player running common meta sets, blocking/dodging timely, and using los to force multiple 1v1s against targets that bloodlust and forget to buff manage. True tanks can only kill fresh newbs and laughably bad builds. If you spend only a day theorycrafting/testing, you will realize how much stat sacrificing you must do to not be killed quickly. The TTK is actually very high which is why bad builds/players fall over almost instantly (the biggest reason being they don't block incoming burst).

ESO has had a lot of bumpy roads since launch, however, it actually is reasonably balanced these days. No that doesn't mean it's perfect, all classes are without issues, or some classes are not better than others. That's a balancing dream that will never exist. Besides Magicka NB, I've seen successful builds on all other classes. Although Magicka, in general, has lost a lot of its footing over Stamina builds throughout the years. These issues need a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

Katheriah

It's already dead, please stop kicking it.

eKsDee

In what way would this improve performance? If there's anything the tests have shown us, it's that the performance issues are not as simple as "this is causing lag, remove it", because they've tried that on multiple things and had marginal-at-best improvements that could be chalked up to margin of error.

They tried penalising players for casting AoE's, in an effort to reduce the AoE spam, and it did nothing. They tried changing AoE buffs and healing in groups only, and it barely had an impact on performance. They just recently tried disabling conditional effects on sets, and it had no impact on performance. The only things left are foundational aspects of the game (actions in general, bookkeeping for stats, the way the players themselves are stored within the servers, etc), which none of your suggestions address.

You have a fixed set of skills to use, but they're still actions that may or may not be putting the strain on the servers due to how the game handles actions. You have a fixed stat pool but unless Zenimax makes some radical changes to how stats are tracked, which they'd have to be handled completely differently in PvP vs PvE to remove the bookkeeping aspect, the server still has to do bookkeeping for them to keep track of what a player's stats should look like, which could still be the bottleneck. And, of course, the server software architecture is still the exact same, and that could be the bottleneck.

This is also why the tests are pointless to begin with, because they're shooting completely blind at a problem that might not even be related to the actual gameplay, rather it might just be how the game functions at the lowest levels of the server software.

This is why profiling tools exist, that actually record when the system enters and exits each section of code to get a rough idea of how long that section of code took (as well as other information, such as how the code interacted with system resources within that section of code). This is a bit different since we're likely talking about a virtual network of multiple virtual systems interacting with each other, but I'm sure there's profiling tools for cloud computing.

That is what Zenimax should be doing, that is what would actually shed light on what's slowing everything down. Your suggestions would honestly be better for balancing purposes, not performance purposes.

Chilly-McFreeze

I chose to play an RPG, not a shooter. I'd rather have it they stick to that.

Larcomar

It's certainly the logical end point of where we're going. As other's have said, it would kill an awful lot of what made PVP in ESO interesting. But I think we're already half way there now and it would be foolish not to admit that.

Would I play it? TBh I used the "tests" as a chance to try out some proper pvp games, and I'm going to shift to one of those anyway. If ESO could do it better, well, sure. But I can't see zeni being able to deliver that on top of all the other stuff an MMo has to do.

On the plus side, it would at least stop the constantly whining about "OP" sets / classes / abilities whenever people die and maybe make the forums a less toxic place.

Sarannah

I would love this!!! I am always wondering how PvP works, and feel like it is too much of a hassle to even get started with it.
Having a pre-made/pre-geared character to select, would make me try PvP.

Now about making it all one-bar, this I am 100% for! I am already playing the entire game one-bar. So making PvP one-bar or auto-swap bar, would be a dream come true for me. Besides that, I feel players who can two-bar have too much of an advantage over players who cannot master using two-bar.

Chilly-McFreeze

Sarannah wrote: »

I would love this!!! I am always wondering how PvP works, and feel like it is too much of a hassle to even get started with it.
Having a pre-made/pre-geared character to select, would make me try PvP.

Now about making it all one-bar, this I am 100% for! I am already playing the entire game one-bar. So making PvP one-bar or auto-swap bar, would be a dream come true for me. Besides that, I feel players who can two-bar have too much of an advantage over players who cannot master using two-bar.

You forgot the /s at the end. Can't be to cautious with ZOS reading this.

Renegader

Ace_SiN wrote: »

Theorycrafting is a huge draw for this game. Removing it entirely is unarguably a net negative. Personally, I think these forums are littered with low-skilled players that can't admit ESO has a high-skill floor and they would rather make excuses for why they died. There is no secret build in ESO with today's gaming scene. Information travels too fast and too many people are trying to be "the guy" for their gaming channels. Yet, if you read these forums you'd come to the conclusion that some super secret unstoppable/unkillable juggernaut build exists. When the reality is it's a skilled player running common meta sets, blocking/dodging timely, and using los to force multiple 1v1s against targets that bloodlust and forget to buff manage. True tanks can only kill fresh newbs and laughably bad builds. If you spend only a day theorycrafting/testing, you will realize how much stat sacrificing you must do to not be killed quickly. The TTK is actually very high which is why bad builds/players fall over almost instantly (the biggest reason being they don't block incoming burst).

ESO has had a lot of bumpy roads since launch, however, it actually is reasonably balanced these days. No that doesn't mean it's perfect, all classes are without issues, or some classes are not better than others. That's a balancing dream that will never exist. Besides Magicka NB, I've seen successful builds on all other classes. Although Magicka, in general, has lost a lot of its footing over Stamina builds throughout the years. These issues need a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

THIS

Dunning_Kruger

Or ; limit siege; limit cross /smart healing .

BlueRaven

If this stops them from nerfing pve, then yes.

TequilaFire

Not what I paid for.

VaranisArano

Larcomar wrote: »

It's certainly the logical end point of where we're going. As other's have said, it would kill an awful lot of what made PVP in ESO interesting. But I think we're already half way there now and it would be foolish not to admit that.

Would I play it? TBh I used the "tests" as a chance to try out some proper pvp games, and I'm going to shift to one of those anyway. If ESO could do it better, well, sure. But I can't see zeni being able to deliver that on top of all the other stuff an MMo has to do.

On the plus side, it would at least stop the constantly whining about "OP" sets / classes / abilities whenever people die and maybe make the forums a less toxic place.

I agree, both with the "logical end point" and with it killing a lot of what makes ESO PVP interesting.

I find that ESO's ability to support niche roles in PVP to be a large part of what makes it fun. I play a MagDK Healer in PVP, about as far from the meta as one can get, and yet my PVP guild still made it an effective support role.

If ZOS gave me a pre-made tanky/support class, I might still have fun in PVP...but I wouldn't be playing Captain Varanis Arano anymore.

Araneae6537

Character achievements might save us from something this awful ever being implemented, for who gets whatever achievements the player earns with Captain Carbon-Copy?

Ceejengine

eKsDee wrote: »

In what way would this improve performance? If there's anything the tests have shown us, it's that the performance issues are not as simple as "this is causing lag, remove it", because they've tried that on multiple things and had marginal-at-best improvements that could be chalked up to margin of error.

They tried penalising players for casting AoE's, in an effort to reduce the AoE spam, and it did nothing. They tried changing AoE buffs and healing in groups only, and it barely had an impact on performance. They just recently tried disabling conditional effects on sets, and it had no impact on performance. The only things left are foundational aspects of the game (actions in general, bookkeeping for stats, the way the players themselves are stored within the servers, etc), which none of your suggestions address.

You have a fixed set of skills to use, but they're still actions that may or may not be putting the strain on the servers due to how the game handles actions. You have a fixed stat pool but unless Zenimax makes some radical changes to how stats are tracked, which they'd have to be handled completely differently in PvP vs PvE to remove the bookkeeping aspect, the server still has to do bookkeeping for them to keep track of what a player's stats should look like, which could still be the bottleneck. And, of course, the server software architecture is still the exact same, and that could be the bottleneck.

This is also why the tests are pointless to begin with, because they're shooting completely blind at a problem that might not even be related to the actual gameplay, rather it might just be how the game functions at the lowest levels of the server software.

This is why profiling tools exist, that actually record when the system enters and exits each section of code to get a rough idea of how long that section of code took (as well as other information, such as how the code interacted with system resources within that section of code). This is a bit different since we're likely talking about a virtual network of multiple virtual systems interacting with each other, but I'm sure there's profiling tools for cloud computing.

That is what Zenimax should be doing, that is what would actually shed light on what's slowing everything down. Your suggestions would honestly be better for balancing purposes, not performance purposes.

This is really insightful. I will be the first to admit I'm very dumb and I don't understand any of the technical stuff you're examining, but you wrote it in a digestible way and I appreciate that.

My line of thinking is that it allows ZOS to create a standardized set of information for the server to work through instead of the insanely high amount of variables that it has to account for now.

Ace_SiN wrote: »

Theorycrafting is a huge draw for this game. Removing it entirely is unarguably a net negative. Personally, I think these forums are littered with low-skilled players that can't admit ESO has a high-skill floor and they would rather make excuses for why they died. There is no secret build in ESO with today's gaming scene. Information travels too fast and too many people are trying to be "the guy" for their gaming channels. Yet, if you read these forums you'd come to the conclusion that some super secret unstoppable/unkillable juggernaut build exists. When the reality is it's a skilled player running common meta sets, blocking/dodging timely, and using los to force multiple 1v1s against targets that bloodlust and forget to buff manage. True tanks can only kill fresh newbs and laughably bad builds. If you spend only a day theorycrafting/testing, you will realize how much stat sacrificing you must do to not be killed quickly. The TTK is actually very high which is why bad builds/players fall over almost instantly (the biggest reason being they don't block incoming burst).

ESO has had a lot of bumpy roads since launch, however, it actually is reasonably balanced these days. No that doesn't mean it's perfect, all classes are without issues, or some classes are not better than others. That's a balancing dream that will never exist. Besides Magicka NB, I've seen successful builds on all other classes. Although Magicka, in general, has lost a lot of its footing over Stamina builds throughout the years. These issues need a scalpel, not a sledgehammer.

You're not wrong about people needing more critical thinking, and with critical thinking you have far fewer issues in the game.

Although I don't think nearly enough people actually theorycraft in this game, I think it stands to reason that once you get into large scale PvP, personal builds lose value.

The way I see it is that it goes 1 of 2 ways.

1.) Theorycrafted builds are extremely viable against large groups of people, which then means that certain builds are by definition extremely overpowered and my suggestion removes that or

2.) Theorycrafted builds are not viable past a certain number of enemies and therefore pre-built Cyro classes don't really impact individual PvP functionality but would simplify large-scale warfare gameplay.

The way I see it, and this is just my personal opinion so it doesn't hold much weight in the conversation, but Cyrodiil is less about your build and more about team strategy.

Battlegrounds and hopefully one day arenas are where player builds get showcased. In Cyro its much less about you and much more about your faction.

BlueRaven wrote: »

If this stops them from nerfing pve, then yes.

One day there'll be a company that leaves the two separate. One day.

Sarannah

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

I would love this!!! I am always wondering how PvP works, and feel like it is too much of a hassle to even get started with it.
Having a pre-made/pre-geared character to select, would make me try PvP.

Now about making it all one-bar, this I am 100% for! I am already playing the entire game one-bar. So making PvP one-bar or auto-swap bar, would be a dream come true for me. Besides that, I feel players who can two-bar have too much of an advantage over players who cannot master using two-bar.

You forgot the /s at the end. Can't be to cautious with ZOS reading this.

That wasn't sarcasm!

finehair

It seems, different but not bad. Like a real war scenario your army provides gear for you etc. Another campaign with this thing would be good to try out and see if people likes it. But changing a campaign to this would be too harsh, since it's much bigger than no proc sets limitation

Ceejengine

Sarannah wrote: »

I would love this!!! I am always wondering how PvP works, and feel like it is too much of a hassle to even get started with it.
Having a pre-made/pre-geared character to select, would make me try PvP.

Now about making it all one-bar, this I am 100% for! I am already playing the entire game one-bar. So making PvP one-bar or auto-swap bar, would be a dream come true for me. Besides that, I feel players who can two-bar have too much of an advantage over players who cannot master using two-bar.

I think another part of this idea that'd help alleviate the PvP anxiety is that you're a member of the horde in your standard issue you stuff. When it comes to learning you can just focus on your own mechanics.

You don't have to worry that your gear isn't optimized, or that you have the wrong CP allocated. You don't have to be scared you didn't grind skill lines enough.

And then once you get your feet wet, you can start researching builds and sets and stuff and transition over to doing battlegrounds as well. Hopefully one day there will be an arena for people to really test themselves too.

finehair wrote: »

It seems, different but not bad. Like a real war scenario your army provides gear for you etc. Another campaign with this thing would be good to try out and see if people likes it. But changing a campaign to this would be too harsh, since it's much bigger than no proc sets limitation

I think it would contrast great with battlegrounds too. You can have the best of both worlds. Streamlined tactical overland pvp in Cyrodiil, and heroic build types in battlegrounds.

That offers two distinct brands of PvP experience in a single MMO.

Now all we need is competitive ranked & unranked arena. With a spectator mode.