Only ZOS would have the gall...

ThoughtRaven

BejaProphet wrote: »

2. The serious risk of trivializing the passive nodes such that nobody cares about them at all.

This right here is a major sticking point for me. I have just over 1800 cp. I had all the passives that I cared about several hundred cp ago, so I couldn't care less if they changed the system so other players could have what they want at a lower cp level. But not by trivializing the passives. Right now they are small bonuses, but they are just barely big enough as to feel worthwhile and provide a sense of satisfaction for unlocking them.

1040 magicka or stamina for example feels like progression when you fully unlock it.

520 is a joke.

BejaProphet

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

BejaProphet wrote: »

2. The serious risk of trivializing the passive nodes such that nobody cares about them at all.

This right here is a major sticking point for me. I have just over 1800 cp. I had all the passives that I cared about several hundred cp ago, so I couldn't care less if they changed the system so other players could have what they want at a lower cp level. But not by trivializing the passives. Right now they are small bonuses, but they are just barely big enough as to feel worthwhile and provide a sense of satisfaction for unlocking them.

1040 magicka or stamina for example feels like progression when you fully unlock it.

520 is a joke.

As stated, I think that is valid gripe.

Fennwitty

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

BejaProphet wrote: »

2. The serious risk of trivializing the passive nodes such that nobody cares about them at all.

This right here is a major sticking point for me. I have just over 1800 cp. I had all the passives that I cared about several hundred cp ago, so I couldn't care less if they changed the system so other players could have what they want at a lower cp level. But not by trivializing the passives. Right now they are small bonuses, but they are just barely big enough as to feel worthwhile and provide a sense of satisfaction for unlocking them.

1040 magicka or stamina for example feels like progression when you fully unlock it.

520 is a joke.

Agree. The number 520 is approximately the same as one and a half "small" +Stam or +Mag armor enchantment. And still more than 300 points lower than a "big" armor enchantment. Whoopee.

furiouslog

BejaProphet wrote: »

The constant stop/go give power and immediately take it away pattern is rediculous fo sure. But you agree the vertical progression has to have an end point, right?

I think everyone would agree on that. No one is objecting to the premise of a ceiling.

What is arguable is where that ceiling ends. It's difficult to understand what ZOS's intention is for veteran endgame content. I object to the power being lowered because I'm a median vet player. My trial parses pretty much range between 30%-60% of the distribution for my class in vet trials, depending on a load of factors. I depend on every advantage I can get in order to produce that. I'm not a top tier player. I have age, arthritis, nerve damage, and ADD all working against me. I put time in to understand mechanics, and I practice my rotation. I parsed 82K on my magplar this patch, which is pretty decent I guess, but parsing is just sitting there and doing the same thing over and over again without worrying about anything else.

When you get in an actual trial situation, you have the following things working against you:

1. Trial mechanics.
2. Randomness in combat.
3. Bugs.
4. Your mistakes.
5. Mistakes made by other players.


All of those things require awareness and an ability to react. The buffs granted to players by CP are OP for some players - these players have mastered their abilities and can clear veteran content so consistently that it's child's play. These folks also use every advantage they have to get to that point. They also restrict their classes and gear to the things that fully optimize their group play. Some of the top score groups also run during weird times, like 4AM EST, to ensure that the servers won't lag or bug out for their trial instance. If you take a look at ESOLogs, most of the score-pushing teams are made up of Warden Healer, Templar/Necro Healer, Random Tank(s) (but usually DK/Warden/Necro depending), and then half Magblades and half Magcros. Those classes perform most optimally in those roles to push the highest stats.

Is that the intent then, that we reroll alts so we can clear content? I don't think so? Who could even tell?

ZOS stated that their team could clear veteran content (a vague and ambiguous statement) with no CP used. The intent, I believe, is that the content is supposed to be able to be cleared at the gateways, which is 300 CP for vet DLC dungeons. So let's pin it there.

When U29 hit, our prog group, who had run vMOL and cleared it pretty cleanly just the week prior, struggled to clear again post patch. We did, but we wiped 10 times or so on the final boss. Why?

1. The red cats were killing our runners a lot easier, because they did not have enough CP to put into mitigation and still reach their intended nerfed DPS numbers.
2. Across the board, we did about 10% less DPS.
3. Across the board, we took about 15-20% more damage, and had more deaths.
4. We also had the usual amount of occasional bugs, like unanticipated one-shots, synergy activation failures, or sudden changes in barrage that killed replacement runners, but they were more difficult to bounce back from because our marginal performance was tighter.

When I posted some of the hard data on these forums, some people responded that our team was not good enough on skill and mechanics to be able to clear it in the first place, and that we had to get better and/or stop carrying poor performing players. Okay, how much better do we need to get? What's the benchmark?

Our team had been running vMOL for weeks up to that point. Everyone knew the mechanics, it's just that the margins of error that were built in to our abilities via the CP buffs had been reduced. Four people who were core members on that team quit the team after the patch, thinking that they had to go back and grind CP to get to where they were, and that it would take a while.

Now, it will take them less time to max out, but they will never get to where they were before the patch. People throw around numbers like 15K-20K dps as the required amount to clear a trial if they would just follow mechanics. We do that. Everyone in that group was at least at 20K dps, even sitting at sub-800 CP. But if there is one extra death, or one person makes a mistake, the ability to adapt to that situation successfully is severely reduced. In any given trial that we run, there is always some weird positional desync, or our skills/ultimates don't fire when pressed (any healer using purge in a trial knows what I am talking about), or trial synergies don't work. Our "power profile" allowed for some leeway in dealing with that stuff. If one player is just having a bad day and is not at the top of their game, that's something that this leeway can absorb. If there are a few AOEs that are geometrically off on screen from what the server says, the leeway helps with mitigating that. It's possible to recover.

If they keep lowering the ceiling without adjusting (OR FIXING) their trials, that margin that allows for an occasional error or bug gets really tight.

When ZOS runs their tests, they are using a set of highly experienced and competent players who have intimate knowledge of the mechanics at the design level, if not the code level. They are probably using a sever that is lag and bug free. They don't deal with the stuff we have to deal with when we play their game. Let's see what happens when they send a couple of their guys to play from Oceania on a VPN, mixed in with a smattering of broadly dispersed US residents, running a vet trial during prime time with Discord in the background. Then I'll be impressed by their findings.

But even aside from the cushion that the CP buffs provided, and the bugs that we often have to deal with, how perfect do we as players need to be in order to be considered worthy to clear content? I'm seriously asking here. Mechanics have been increasingly designed to be completely unforgiving because they were built in response to power creep. If a healer or tank dies due to a single mistake, the party can wipe. Now that it's easier to kill a tank even without the tank making mistakes, what's going to be done to balance the other side of the equation? Are they going to fix their buggy instances? Are they going to tweak stuff like the DPS check shield/dot mechanics of bosses like Zhaj’hassa and Dro’Zakar? If they did that, the sweaty groups will just laugh at how easy it got and post a bunch of videos running content solo/naked while the rest of us mere mortals would still just get through it okay.

If we experience something that gives us an unfair advantage in game, we are called out for "exploiting" the game, and it gets fixed. Now, the game is exploiting us. Fix it.

Veinblood1965

Bah with that many CP needed many will keep happily rowing for years.

VaranisArano

BejaProphet wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

BejaProphet wrote: »

Ellimist_Entreri wrote: »

Opinion Time.

furiouslog wrote: »

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

To cut the majority of CP passives in half, and claim that they are "listening to feedback".

The audacity. The absurdity.

The power loss is negligible, it is the claim that they are giving players what they want that is infuriating.

Yup.

Without arguing the specifics or the absurdity of the argument that anyone on the forums actually asked for this (no one asked for this), it's yet another major sweeping change that reframes the entire game. These happen every two to three months.

When we do get to just play the game without having to think about all of this stuff? After U29, a third of our prog teams dropped because they could not perform adequately in the vet trials we are progging. Everyone else farmed XP like crazy during the events, spending time and resources to gain the necessary advantages that enhanced their skills. Now we are all getting nerfed. Are vet trials getting nerfed too? Who is going to drop out next out of frustration? Stay tuned for June 1st to find out, because nothing we say and no amount of negative feedback is going to change anything. And three months later, we can expect nerfs of the new sets and content that will drop in Blackwood, and everyone will be back running around again in the old trusty sets that have been around for years, while regular players express outrage and parse experts still keep hitting 100K dps no matter what ZOS does to try to limit the capabilities of the "high end player".

I'm so tired of this. I understand the need to keep the game fresh, but concepts are barely implemented before they are slashed and burned wholesale. I waste more time doing stuff I don't want to do in this game than I spend enjoying it because the targets never stop moving. It's depressing, and I hate it, and this passive aggressive response to real community concerns about the extended grind and CP transfer inequities is one of the most insulting and ridiculous things ZOS could have done in response.

This feels like it gets more to the core of the issue for me than many of the arguments I have seen; Progression teams that were well on their way to potentially clearing end-game content for multiple cycles up through U28 got slapped back into farm mode to stay relevant for U29, and now it feels like the Devs are just upset people are clearing their content and are nerfing all mid tier players into irrelevance rather than taking the time to regularly develop new, challenging content that is scaled accordingly for the games growth and progression of the long term player experience.

To me this practice of repeatedly stripping away players invested time and effort in the form of constant power nerfs without retooling the end game content that was developed specifically around the original Champ system and player power constraints feels like nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt by the Devs to kneecap progression groups so they don't have to bother coming up with as much new content or doing so at scale and can keep players running the old content that may or may not actually be able to be completed eventually depending on how far ZOS decides to take these nerfs over the coming patch cycles.

This excuse of trying to take 15-20% off the top end is spent at this point as well - the top end parses are already down 15-20% from U28 to U29 according to ESO Logs. Players that were hitting 110k-115k+ are for the most part still able to break 90k-100k+. Meanwhile the players that were previously in the 35k-90k range have already been knocked down from that point with U29 and are going to feel every single nerf to player power incredibly hard in addition to having their progression halted or set back once again when U30 goes live; as stated by numerous raid leads over many threads recently.

The changes after U29 related to combat and the Champion System for the most part just seem the Devs are saying "Too many of you are progressing too fast, we must stahp it!" & throwing a tantrum. Any nerfs we get in U30 or after are just going to feel like more deliberate, intentional gatekeeping and kneecapping of the players by ZOS and their ever vigilant Combat Team as far as I am concerned. If the goal was to retool the combat experience while maintaining player progression capabilities as was stated well before the release of Champion Points 2.0, the end result has been a complete and total failure in that regard from my perspective.

The only thing I have seen that truly attempts to raise the floor so far is the inclusion the of Ability Bar Timers with U30; Though as for me I will still use ADR as the built in implementation is lacking the GCD tracking mechanism on the hotbar available with ADR & I prefer the visual style of ADR over the glaring yellow numbers provided by ZOS implementation.

BejaProphet wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

BejaProphet wrote: »

Everyone likes growing more powerful. Nobody sees vertical progression ending as a virtue in and of itself.

The problem is that ongoing vertical progression destroys games at worst, or ruins content at best. The struggle with games trying to survive long term, is that you have this massive world with only a tiny slice of it mattering.

ESO is trying to overcome that struggle by making sure a dungeon made today still matters five years from now. To do that it has to not be trivialized by five years of power creep.

That means at some point stopping vertical progression, and sadly at some points in time it could require nerfs. Nobody wants these things. But we do want what they produce: a massive game world where we can go anywhere and find meaningful content.

Therefore, though I wish I could keep vertically progressing, my desire for game health means I applaud the shift to horizontal progression.

Tbh old content is already trivialized. Fun fact: Vmol has an achievement for skipping the second lunar phase. Nowadays the question isnt wether you kill rakkhat after first or second lunar phase but rather after 3rd or 5th pad.

It’s not trivialized to the extent you see in classic MMO models. People still run MoL and people still fail it with a twelve man team.

In most MMO’s there would be people soloing content that old. I’m not saying your point is void of all merit. But any familiarity with past MMO’s will be sufficient to know that the trivializing happening in this game and that of others are dramatically different things.

Here we have a viable potential solution presented to us; and it certainly doesn't involve systematically dismantling the players progression. Have actual mechanics in your end game content to provide challenge; ones that require preparation, communication and coordination to complete. Seeing players completing low end base game and early expansion content multiple years after release and responding with "Oh noz, teh playerz r too strong must haz nerf train" rather than coming up with creative and fun ways to challenge your players to be completely honest just feels like a very bad approach to game development.

But what do I know about any of it? (;

So your suggestion in summary is “think of a better way, one that lets us vertically progress indefinitely without it trivializing content thanks to some mechanic nobody has thought of yet.”

Am I misunderstanding you?

I think I would summarize it more as "ZOS' nerfs to Vertical Progression keep hitting players who're trying to progress to harder content worse than the players who're already at the ceiling and often pushing the ceiling higher. And so it feels more like gate-keeping than it does the Devs actually trying to preserve the power limits they intend for content. It's Horizontal Progression for the top tier, but the progression tier is trapped in a constant cycle of vertical pprogression, being nerfed back down, and forced into more vertical progression, only to be nerfed back down."

So, no, I don't think the answer is infinite Vertical Progression. Rather, if it's healthy for the game to have a cap at which horizontal progression takes over, then it should be acceptable to have more players at that healthy cap, right? So if, say, 100k DPS is a cap the Devs are happy with, then the Devs should be fine with more progression groups reaching 100k DPS, right?

Except that's not what we see, because the Devs are really bad at lowering just the ceiling without also lowering everyone else with it. And so players who hadn't yet reached the Dev's cap find that it's further out of their reach. That's where the feeling of gatekeeping comes in: that there is not just a power cap for the top tier that ZOS is happy with, but also that they want the amount of top tier players at the power cap to be very small.

The reality is that the Devs don't want a lot of players at that happy cap of top tier horizontal progression. The more players are up there, the more it makes sense to push the envelope in harder content (stuff that requires group coordination rather than flat power, as was suggested) and risks creating a wider disparity between the ceiling and the floor again. It's harder to create challenges that don't just rely on high DPS. It's harder to balance content for highly organized vs less organized groups.

And so because the Devs really don't want to have a lot of players sitting at the cap, they deliberately nerf the progression tier. It IS about preserving power limits, but it's ALSO about preserving player tiers and keeping the endgame from becoming too heavily weighted with top tier players who get to enjoy horizontal progress instead of constantly getting nerfed out of their progression raids.

You might be willing to accept that sort of gatekeeping as being necessary for the health of the game. I dunno if you are. But I can't blame anyone in a progression raid looking at another set of nerfs for being salty that ZOS is nerfing them too when they aren't at the "top tier" or at the power cap. It's gatekeeping, and that's frustrating.

But you are talking about the cap in terms of an actual parse number. The developers only work with that indirectly. The developers give tools and stats.

There is a hard cap for those.. A player can reach the cap of vertical progression and only attain 30k dps due to differences in skill. But that player is still at the top of vertical progression so far as cp gain is concerned.

To speak of it in terms of parse numbers will only create confusion.

You talked about unlimited vertical progression being a problem because it eventually ruins content by making it too easy.

My point in summarizing the complaint made was that this applies at the very top tier of content. Below that, it doesn't apply. No one expects normal Fungal Grotto 1 to present a meaningful challenge to someone who's running Vet trials. It's healthy for the game to have a maximum cap on power so they don't completely blow the ceiling off the hardest content. However, it's not enjoyable to players when most of them have no chance to ever reach that cap because they keep getting nerfed whenever they get close.



The "cap" I refer to is the hard numbers required in order to beat the hardest content. ZOS doesn't want players exceeding that cap too much - as we see top tier players doing on a fairly regular basis.

A lot of times, progression groups will use DPS as a shorthand for that cap. In the same sense, I was using 100k DPS as a hypothetical parse to prove my point. If the "cap" at which ZOS is satisfied that top tier players should be able to perform sits at 100k DPS, then they shouldn't be nerfing players who're still below that. Vertical progression should still be possible up until the point of the cap, then horizontal progression should take over. It should be "safe" for players to reach 100k DPS without risking ruining content due to power creep.

You can replace 100k with whatever number you like. It's just a shorthand for "This is the max ZOS wants you to do to complete ZOS' hardest content." It could be mitigation, healing, buffing, crit, whatever, and usually is a combination of things. Whenever something starts overperforming beyond that cap, we can expect nerfs to follow (and rather than targeted nerfs, it's usually wide-ranging nerfs that impact all gameplay.)

You seem to be taking it the opposite way. That Vertical Progression should end at a set point, and if your skill leaves you stuck at 30k, well below the "cap" which ZOS has set as the point where they want players stopping, then it sucks to be you. You cannot progress any farther.

This is a correct description of what we see in game, but it's not the whole picture. Because for the whole picture, we have to remember that ZOS keeps seeing more players progressing until they get near the cap, then goes "oh, no, we can't have that" and nerfs a bunch of people who were near the cap back down. And so it's NOT merely due to player skill that players get stuck below the cap. That's why there's resentment directed at ZOS. They aren't just lowering the ceiling and the top tier as one might expect for the health of the game. They are making it harder for mid-tier players to progress to that harder content.


I would argue that if we must have a cap to protect older content from becoming obsolete, then vertical progression should be possible up to that cap. ZOS should stop nerfing players below that cap. That's not what's happening. Instead, ZOS appears to be "gatekeeping" the number of players near or at the cap by nerfing with a wide brush. It doesn't help that the top tier continues to adapt and hit high numbers, which inevitably inspires another round of ZOS nerfing then and everyone below them in one feel swoop.

Lord_Nikon

Maybe they should have had the cost to increase the various stars grow cumulatively...

1st level - 5
2nd level - 10
3rd level - 20
4th level - 40 (Heck add another instead of taking away.)
5th level - 80
Total cost for rank 5 would be 155

That's just an example, they could make any point cost they want. But essentially the bulk of the power for a start could be gotten relatively quickly while leaving something to strive for.

The cost could be made by increments of 2's 3's 10's.. whatever. This would let lower CP players get a lot of the power from the various stars, but keep higher CP worth something, while flattening the divide between players.

ClawOfTheTwoMoons

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

Shantu wrote: »

Here's a news flash: PLAYERS LIKE VERTICAL PROGRESSION!! They just don't like investing a few years of their life to get there.

qft

Edit: ignore me

BejaProphet

@VaranisArano

I get why you want to talk about top potential damage. But by doing so you are conflating two very distinct things.

1. Vertical progression through actual game systems. The developers control this. They can adjust how much stats a cp node gives, a passive skill etc. they control how much damage a skill does.

2. Vertical progression that comes from me getting better at playing the game. The developers can not control this.


My point: they can only lower the cap through adjusting the first and that will always affect all players, not merely the top tier.

VaranisArano

BejaProphet wrote: »

@VaranisArano

I get why you want to talk about top potential damage. But by doing so you are conflating two very distinct things.

1. Vertical progression through actual game systems. The developers control this. They can adjust how much stats a cp node gives, a passive skill etc. they control how much damage a skill does.

2. Vertical progression that comes from me getting better at playing the game. The developers can not control this.


My point: they can only lower the cap through adjusting the first and that will always affect all players, not merely the top tier.

Yes, you've neatly described the two types of progression available to players.

And since the Devs are unable to nerf player skill, this neatly explains why the Devs keep trying to nerf the top tier of very skilled players, but never manage to do so in any substantive way. Those are extremely skilled players, who use their experience and knowledge of the game systems to stay at the cap or exceed it no matter what nerfs ZOS has thrown at them in the past. Every time ZOS "raises the floor", the top tier benefits because of skill. Every time ZOS "lowers the ceiling", the top tier dodges the worst of the effects, because of skill.

It's not healthy for the Devs to allow unlimited progression or to allow player skill to blow the ceiling off their hardest content.

I would argue that neither is it particularly healthy in the long term for the Devs to continually nerf game systems in an attempt to keep power gained through player skill in check. But this is what ZOS does. They are ostensibly targeting the top tier, and yet always having much greater impacts below that point. Its certainly unpleasant for many players. But this is the course the Devs have chosen, so whether we like it or not doesn't really matter. The cycle of buffs and nerfs will continue.

Lab3360

Reducing CP? I will be reducing my my wallet when it comes to this game.

You dont get to tell me to work long and hard for something just to rip if rom me later. Better find another way to expand the life of your game instead cheating your veteran playerbase of earned values

Adaarye

VaranisArano wrote: »

ZOS isn't nerfing CP stars to make Doshia/Mannimarco more challenging. There is no 15-20% nerf that's going to make quest bosses with 350k health challenging for my dungeon-ready DDs who regularly fight bosses with millions of health. There's no 15-20% nerf that's going to make the sort of players who run 1 tank + 3 DDs in normal dungeons stop and bring a healer instead. The content itself just isn't that challenging.

Exactly. This patch is not going to fix ongoing problems. I repeat .. vet and even some random normal pugging as a healer has become not worth my time and certainly not enjoyable. I cannot get a decent pug group at least 90 percent of my attempts.

I suppose its time to retire to housing and trading until those things no longer interest me.

Hoolielulu

Adaarye wrote: »

Exactly. This patch is not going to fix ongoing problems. I repeat .. vet and even some random normal pugging as a healer has become not worth my time and certainly not enjoyable. I cannot get a decent pug group at least 90 percent of my attempts.

I suppose its time to retire to housing and trading until those things no longer interest me.

Even housing is a chore. If I'm not farming for crafting mats I'm scrounging up gold to buy them at insane prices. Then I'm too irritated to enjoy decorating. ZOS is determined to not only make me hate their game but hate myself for playing it.

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe

Hoolielulu wrote: »

Adaarye wrote: »

Exactly. This patch is not going to fix ongoing problems. I repeat .. vet and even some random normal pugging as a healer has become not worth my time and certainly not enjoyable. I cannot get a decent pug group at least 90 percent of my attempts.

I suppose its time to retire to housing and trading until those things no longer interest me.

Even housing is a chore. If I'm not farming for crafting mats I'm scrounging up gold to buy them at insane prices. Then I'm too irritated to enjoy decorating. ZOS is determined to not only make me hate their game but hate myself for playing it.

That and the crashing that's been going on in houses. Oh, and the furnishing limit. I could go on really.

StamPlar_1976

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

TLDR version of the last page or so of this thread:

ZOS keeps punishing players for getting good at their game.

Says it all right here.

merpins

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

I came into CP2.0 like you with more than enough CP to get whatever I wanted. I could clearly see stats were crazy high. 24k base health on DPS allowing for green foods to be used in combat. Amazing sustain from CP skills that constantly gave resources back. Besides the DPS nerf that happened last patch the increase to survival stats made the damage nerf moot basically.

I'm of the (unpopular) opinion that CP 2.0 is an improvement over CP 1.0. And like I said, if ZOS wanted to reduce player player power further and were upfront about it I could be more understanding. It was always a foregone conclusion that further balancing changes would be coming down the line. But don't use this half contemptuous half obfuscatory language implying people wanted these specific changes to the system. It is corporate speak that reeks of smarm and disingenuousness.

[snip] They supposedly worked on CP 2.0 for two years before it going live, but a month after release they realize all combat related passives were twice as strong as they should have been?

[edited to remove bashing]

Agreed. It wasn't something people were asking for, people were asking (for PVP) for faster CP gains, since the disparity between low CP players, that is those that can't grind since they have limited playtime every day, versus the high CP players that already had the opportunity to grind for those CP, that disparity, was too large. High CP players vs low CP players were winning in pvp, and people said that was a problem. They were now saying that we want lower stats, they were saying we want to gain CP faster so we can match those with high CP.

Ellimist_Entreri

Primidone wrote: »

[Quoted post was removed]

To be honest at this point I am just hoping ZOS has a plan for the next year+ worth of patches that will eventually balance things out and accomplish their stated goals of "Raising the floor" and "We're Taking Some of the Power Out of the High End Experience" while still maintaining a playable and enjoyable user experience.

If so then I am looking forward to the sandbox state at that time; however I can certainly see why many users are outraged during the process with little or no communication received regarding the long term end result when all they can see are repeated setbacks.

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe

Ellimist_Entreri wrote: »

Primidone wrote: »

[Quoted post was removed]

To be honest at this point I am just hoping ZOS has a plan for the next year+ worth of patches that will eventually balance things out and accomplish their stated goals of "Raising the floor" and "We're Taking Some of the Power Out of the High End Experience" while still maintaining a playable and enjoyable user experience.

If so then I am looking forward to the sandbox state at that time; however I can certainly see why many users are outraged during the process with little or no communication received regarding the long term end result when all they can see are repeated setbacks.

Judging by the stellar "year of performance", I wouldn't get your hopes up, sadly. I can't see an end to what you described any time soon.

Anonx31st

would have the gall to make these great changes! People complained that end game content is too easy, so ZOS is trying to fix this, and now people are complaining that they can't pwn the same content as easy lol.

Sanguinor2

Anonx31st wrote: »

would have the gall to make these great changes! People complained that end game content is too easy, so ZOS is trying to fix this, and now people are complaining that they can't pwn the same content as easy lol.

You seem to be confusing endgame with overland. Cant recall a thread saying that vet dlc trial trifectas are too easy.

ThoughtRaven

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

You seem to be confusing endgame with overland. Cant recall a thread saying that vet dlc trial trifectas are too easy.

This.

No one has been complaining that "endgame" content is too easy. Unless your version of endgame is overland and base game dungeons. In which case no amount of nerfs matter to you as you are playing a version of the game that can be completed by nothing but light attacking.

Jeremy

BejaProphet wrote: »

Everyone likes growing more powerful. Nobody sees vertical progression ending as a virtue in and of itself.

The problem is that ongoing vertical progression destroys games at worst, or ruins content at best. The struggle with games trying to survive long term, is that you have this massive world with only a tiny slice of it mattering.

ESO is trying to overcome that struggle by making sure a dungeon made today still matters five years from now. To do that it has to not be trivialized by five years of power creep.

That means at some point stopping vertical progression, and sadly at some points in time it could require nerfs. Nobody wants these things. But we do want what they produce: a massive game world where we can go anywhere and find meaningful content.

Therefore, though I wish I could keep vertically progressing, my desire for game health means I applaud the shift to horizontal progression.

If they are concerned about power creep in dungeons then all they would have to do is "vertically progress" their content to align with the players. So it can be done, it just requires them to scale existing Veteran Content higher as the game vertically progresses. That's all a Veteran Dungeon essentially is anyway, a normal dungeon that's been scaled upward to accommodate players who have higher CP. So it's not a process unknown to them. So the problem you present here is easily solvable.

I imagine this change has more to do with PvP, in that they don't want the experience gap between players to become so great that it discourages people from participating because they don't want to "grind". But this would be less of a problem if their No CP option in PvP wasn't such a miserable experience. Because if players could be content while doing that until they were able to reach higher levels Champion Points they wouldn't feel like they had to grind none stop. But many, probably most, players (and rightly so in my opinion) detest the current balance in No CP, so they absolutely won't do it.

Either way: ZoS either needs to embrace the CP system or remove it entirely. They have to decide if they want a game that is static at the end or one that "vertically progresses". Because I can tell you right now that people's patience for all these endless cycles of buffs and nerfs to create the illusion of progress only to have it stripped away and put right back where you started are wearing thin. That gimmick is not going to last.

ZaroktheImmortal

Jeremy wrote: »

BejaProphet wrote: »

Everyone likes growing more powerful. Nobody sees vertical progression ending as a virtue in and of itself.

The problem is that ongoing vertical progression destroys games at worst, or ruins content at best. The struggle with games trying to survive long term, is that you have this massive world with only a tiny slice of it mattering.

ESO is trying to overcome that struggle by making sure a dungeon made today still matters five years from now. To do that it has to not be trivialized by five years of power creep.

That means at some point stopping vertical progression, and sadly at some points in time it could require nerfs. Nobody wants these things. But we do want what they produce: a massive game world where we can go anywhere and find meaningful content.

Therefore, though I wish I could keep vertically progressing, my desire for game health means I applaud the shift to horizontal progression.

If they are concerned about power creep in dungeons then all they would have to do is "vertically progress" their content to align with the players. So it can be done, it just requires them to scale existing Veteran Content higher as the game vertically progresses. That's all a Veteran Dungeon essentially is anyway, a normal dungeon that's been scaled upward to accommodate players who have higher CP. So it's not a process unknown to them. So the problem you present here is easily solvable.

I imagine this change has more to do with PvP, in that they don't want the experience gap between players to become so great that it discourages people from participating because they don't want to "grind". But this would be less of a problem if their No CP option in PvP wasn't such a miserable experience. Because if players could be content while doing that until they were able to reach higher levels Champion Points they wouldn't feel like they had to grind none stop. But many, probably most, players (and rightly so in my opinion) detest the current balance in No CP, so they absolutely won't do it.

Either way: ZoS either needs to embrace the CP system or remove it entirely. They have to decide if they want a game that is static at the end or one that "vertically progresses". Because I can tell you right now that people's patience for all these endless cycles of buffs and nerfs to create the illusion of progress only to have it stripped away and put right back where you started are wearing thin. That gimmick is not going to last.

The real question is why do pvers have to suffer to balance things for PVP? It's bad enough they made it so heavy armour now takes more magic damage making it worse for thanks and I don't even understand why light takes more physical as this is bad for both pvp and pve as it encourages stam builds only since they're the only ones without drawbacks which makes no sense at all.

Jaimeh

I don't mind about the rest of the passives because (at least in PvE) they are not that impactful, and the whole premise of 2.0 was cutting down poer anyway EXCEPT piercing... stam can't reach pen cap, apparently, according to reps, ZOS is aware and they are still letting it go through, they don't care about stamina specs it seems.

ZaroktheImmortal

Jaimeh wrote: »

I don't mind about the rest of the passives because (at least in PvE) they are not that impactful, and the whole premise of 2.0 was cutting down poer anyway EXCEPT piercing... stam can't reach pen cap, apparently, according to reps, ZOS is aware and they are still letting it go through, they don't care about stamina specs it seems.

A lot of it really is going to effect pve for a lot not just stam, magika, healers, tanks. This is just a straight up nerf to everyone.

BejaProphet

Jeremy wrote: »

BejaProphet wrote: »

Everyone likes growing more powerful. Nobody sees vertical progression ending as a virtue in and of itself.

The problem is that ongoing vertical progression destroys games at worst, or ruins content at best. The struggle with games trying to survive long term, is that you have this massive world with only a tiny slice of it mattering.

ESO is trying to overcome that struggle by making sure a dungeon made today still matters five years from now. To do that it has to not be trivialized by five years of power creep.

That means at some point stopping vertical progression, and sadly at some points in time it could require nerfs. Nobody wants these things. But we do want what they produce: a massive game world where we can go anywhere and find meaningful content.

Therefore, though I wish I could keep vertically progressing, my desire for game health means I applaud the shift to horizontal progression.

If they are concerned about power creep in dungeons then all they would have to do is "vertically progress" their content to align with the players. So it can be done, it just requires them to scale existing Veteran Content higher as the game vertically progresses. That's all a Veteran Dungeon essentially is anyway, a normal dungeon that's been scaled upward to accommodate players who have higher CP. So it's not a process unknown to them. So the problem you present here is easily solvable.

I imagine this change has more to do with PvP, in that they don't want the experience gap between players to become so great that it discourages people from participating because they don't want to "grind". But this would be less of a problem if their No CP option in PvP wasn't such a miserable experience. Because if players could be content while doing that until they were able to reach higher levels Champion Points they wouldn't feel like they had to grind none stop. But many, probably most, players (and rightly so in my opinion) detest the current balance in No CP, so they absolutely won't do it.

Either way: ZoS either needs to embrace the CP system or remove it entirely. They have to decide if they want a game that is static at the end or one that "vertically progresses". Because I can tell you right now that people's patience for all these endless cycles of buffs and nerfs to create the illusion of progress only to have it stripped away and put right back where you started are wearing thin. That gimmick is not going to last.

The dungeon was an illustration. I was not meaning to suggest that dungeons are specifically the driving force behind their changes. Sorry, I thought that was clear.

etchedpixels

For me the fundamental problem is the games poor performance and laggy responses even with fast internet. I don't need massive resistances because of game mechanics most of the time I need them because of lag, slow response and bugs. I wonder if that's why the developers can clear everything on vet with no CP - is that on a local dev server or a thousand miles from the real ones over actual internet ?

I also don't buy that vertical progression is a problem in PVE. In PVP yes, but PVP is already a different gme entirely fudged with battle spirit, impen armour and the like so just cap stuff in PVP. In fact given PvP is meant to be player versus player not player versus CP grind time just make all of PVP noCP and be done with it. Saves all the mess in the CP trees for PvP weirdness, saves the fudges, saves messing up PvE - and improves PvP in the process. Just have noCP and noCPnoProc.

Who cares if someone in PvE could achieve 3000 CP and solo sunspire ? Whoopeee, give them a medal for their extraordinary skill instead of trying to keep trying to flatten the end game or add anti-solo and ait-small-group mechanics.

At the end of the day in a flat game a top end player does all the trials 100 times gets apex predator and bored of it, or with uncapped progression they get better and better, pull off some insane solo or small group achievement and go look for something harder or take up fishing.

ZaroktheImmortal

etchedpixels wrote: »

For me the fundamental problem is the games poor performance and laggy responses even with fast internet. I don't need massive resistances because of game mechanics most of the time I need them because of lag, slow response and bugs. I wonder if that's why the developers can clear everything on vet with no CP - is that on a local dev server or a thousand miles from the real ones over actual internet ?

I also don't buy that vertical progression is a problem in PVE. In PVP yes, but PVP is already a different gme entirely fudged with battle spirit, impen armour and the like so just cap stuff in PVP. In fact given PvP is meant to be player versus player not player versus CP grind time just make all of PVP noCP and be done with it. Saves all the mess in the CP trees for PvP weirdness, saves the fudges, saves messing up PvE - and improves PvP in the process. Just have noCP and noCPnoProc.

Who cares if someone in PvE could achieve 3000 CP and solo sunspire ? Whoopeee, give them a medal for their extraordinary skill instead of trying to keep trying to flatten the end game or add anti-solo and ait-small-group mechanics.

At the end of the day in a flat game a top end player does all the trials 100 times gets apex predator and bored of it, or with uncapped progression they get better and better, pull off some insane solo or small group achievement and go look for something harder or take up fishing.

...the lag is an issue they've been promising to fix for ages. They were supposed to have a whole year of upgrades done to fix it last year and it still isn't any better.

ZaroktheImmortal

BejaProphet wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

BejaProphet wrote: »

Everyone likes growing more powerful. Nobody sees vertical progression ending as a virtue in and of itself.

The problem is that ongoing vertical progression destroys games at worst, or ruins content at best. The struggle with games trying to survive long term, is that you have this massive world with only a tiny slice of it mattering.

ESO is trying to overcome that struggle by making sure a dungeon made today still matters five years from now. To do that it has to not be trivialized by five years of power creep.

That means at some point stopping vertical progression, and sadly at some points in time it could require nerfs. Nobody wants these things. But we do want what they produce: a massive game world where we can go anywhere and find meaningful content.

Therefore, though I wish I could keep vertically progressing, my desire for game health means I applaud the shift to horizontal progression.

If they are concerned about power creep in dungeons then all they would have to do is "vertically progress" their content to align with the players. So it can be done, it just requires them to scale existing Veteran Content higher as the game vertically progresses. That's all a Veteran Dungeon essentially is anyway, a normal dungeon that's been scaled upward to accommodate players who have higher CP. So it's not a process unknown to them. So the problem you present here is easily solvable.

I imagine this change has more to do with PvP, in that they don't want the experience gap between players to become so great that it discourages people from participating because they don't want to "grind". But this would be less of a problem if their No CP option in PvP wasn't such a miserable experience. Because if players could be content while doing that until they were able to reach higher levels Champion Points they wouldn't feel like they had to grind none stop. But many, probably most, players (and rightly so in my opinion) detest the current balance in No CP, so they absolutely won't do it.

Either way: ZoS either needs to embrace the CP system or remove it entirely. They have to decide if they want a game that is static at the end or one that "vertically progresses". Because I can tell you right now that people's patience for all these endless cycles of buffs and nerfs to create the illusion of progress only to have it stripped away and put right back where you started are wearing thin. That gimmick is not going to last.

The dungeon was an illustration. I was not meaning to suggest that dungeons are specifically the driving force behind their changes. Sorry, I thought that was clear.

Honestly I sometimes feel like PVP is the driving force behind a lot of changes. Like proc sets being changed heavy armour getting a weakness to magika sets being nerfed.

Aiphaton

I dont even take the effort anymore to type something in the forum.
There is no communication and will never be the just make the game more and more weird, want to help Casuals while punishing the medium - to excellent people.
At some point there will be three skills which make the whole rota.

Taunt - you cant lose agro you cant die
Damage - deal 99999999k dmg around you
Heal- People cant die for 10min

Btw. that was a joke.

I just wait that my commentar gets removed cause critiscm is always wrong