Stance towards endgame players

Plectro

A lot of players have been quite unhappy with recent changes. I am not here to rant or insult. I would like to give constructive criticism, my view of the changes that have been made in the past several months, not just the most recent PTS patch. My overall experience with the game.

I have around 2000-3000 hours in ESO. I first started playing a few years back and I absolutely loved the game. It did so many things right. It did a few things wrong. Many patches and changes were wonderful and I'm very happy about some of the features that were added. For example the ability to transmute traits, reconstruct items, sticker books, guaranteed drop of an item not in the sticker book yet are all wonderful changes which made the game that much better.

If you asked me a while ago what my favorite part about the game is, I would have definitely said it is the combat system, and the fact that the game rewards good play over everything. The fact that you can still pull very high DPS when you just put in the effort to learn the game, to understand the mechanics, even with mediocre gear, and with low level / CP. Mastery of combat mechanics is among the most satisfying things for me as a player. I spent a lot of time teaching newer players who were also interested in improving their DPS, or their buff/debuff uptimes as supports. It is always incredibly satisfying to see people be proud of themselves for reaching that next level of 50k, 70k, 90k, 100k DPS. However, the developers have been trying to bridge this gap between the players who learn to get good at the game, and players who either are disadvantaged, have disabilities, or simply are unwilling to put in the effort to learn and improve. And I understand, mastering complex mechanics of the gameplay is not for everyone. And that is okay. Everyone has their own way of enjoying the game and as long as players are having fun, that's the whole point.

However, the reason why so many players are upset, is that by bridging this gap between high-end and low-end players, you are devaluing the amount of time and effort many players have already put into the game. We've seen this a while ago where the optimal backbar weapon: Maelstrom Arena staff was only obtainable from veteran Maelstrom. Many players struggled through the difficulty of that arena, spent countless hours playing and learning it, mastering it, in order to obtain the weapon they wanted. Only for it to be changed and made so that normal maelstrom now dropped the very same weapon. The Perfected version of the weapon was added for veteran, which provided virtually 0 benefit over the non-perfected from normal. A lot of players were frustrated with this. Their efforts and accomplishments have been diminished. With the most recent proposed light attack and dot duration changes, this achieves the very same effect.

Similarly, there are frequent changes to the meta, which is extremely frustrating to endgame players. I am among the players who absolutely love min-maxing, optimizing, trying to squeeze as much out of a build and my performance as possible. I've been in a few score-pushing groups and I love competing for leaderboards. However, it is near impossible with frequent meta changes. One patch High Elf is the best race for magicka groups, next patch it's changed to Khajiit. My whole group race-changed to Khajiit. 2 patches later this was reverted back to high elf. A few patches later more drastically significant changes, and it keeps happening over and over. People spent money on race changes because they care about being optimal, and it just comes to bite them back. And even non end-game players enjoy optimizing. You constantly see new players ask "what is the best class? What is the best race? What should I build?" By the time they finish leveling their character or obtaining the gear they want, it is no longer good. So many players put in effort into this game, only to be frustrated in the end, seeing it was pointless.

Just two days ago I finished optimizing my character on the live server. I have been maining magicka sorcerer for a long time, until crystal weapon was buffed and I tried it and I loved it. Changed everything to stamina. I understood it's a little bit overtuned and will get nerfed a little bit. But the rotation was interesting, the gameplay as stamina sorcerer I found very enjoyable and I thought I'll stick to it. I finally got all the gear I needed. I got my maelstrom arena greatsword, golded it out, farmed transmute crystals to get it to infused. Gathered other stamina sets. Spent hours practicing the rotation on the dummy, then in trials, struggling with it the first few runs, trying to learn something new. When I finally feel like I understood and got the grasp of it, I was able to reach 130k DPS with it on the dummy... I try the very same build and rotation on the PTS and it's about 85k. Really? With a few skill adjustments, I was able to get to around 97k again but the rotation was very different. I had to remove what was nerfed and replace gear and skills with other things. I understand the damage rebalancing is sometimes necessary. But why spend so much time working towards something to improve your DPS, your character, farming the gear, only to have it immediately be rendered useless? This has been happening over and over.

To sum it up. I understand not everyone will be capable of mastering complex combat rotations and it is nice to provide more accessibility for disadvantaged people. But stop trying to make everyone equal. People aren't equal. People vary drastically in skills and talents. Stop diminishing the hard work and effort some players have put into the game. I suggest maybe you start valuing and encouraging learning the game more, instead of trying to remove the learning aspect of it. Because to many of us, this learning is what makes the game most fun.

UtopianWarrior88

I agree with firstly, the sentiment you describe Plectro, but also I'd like to add what I consider a possible solution.

If for now we take the premise that light attacks deal too much damage, there needs to be some scope - buff the spammables and dots to compensate for that loss. Reading the "logic" behind the changes, it would mean that other players benefit more too as they should be able to keep up the dots and spammables.

Content is made and tuned with the current DPS in mind, and with this intended nerf, it will be really hard for those groups in what you could call the stageway between average and endgame.
The lack of acknowledgement of this from ZOS made me cancel my subscription after enduring most of these changes over the last patch. It just feels very much like that endgame community is ignored.

FantasticFreddie

Yep. 100%.

DagenHawk

The gap isn't that bridged

Players who are skilled still are skilled

Players who aren't still have the same issues. No 35 level character is going to walk into a trail solo or even kill a world boss.

[snip]

[edited for baiting]

p00tx

UtopianWarrior88 wrote: »

I agree with firstly, the sentiment you describe Plectro, but also I'd like to add what I consider a possible solution.

If for now we take the premise that light attacks deal too much damage, there needs to be some scope - buff the spammables and dots to compensate for that loss. Reading the "logic" behind the changes, it would mean that other players benefit more too as they should be able to keep up the dots and spammables.

Content is made and tuned with the current DPS in mind, and with this intended nerf, it will be really hard for those groups in what you could call the stageway between average and endgame.
The lack of acknowledgement of this from ZOS made me cancel my subscription after enduring most of these changes over the last patch. It just feels very much like that endgame community is ignored.

It's [endgame] not just ignored. The verbiage of the patch notes was outright hostile toward endgame players. "The aim is to not harm the low-end experience, and target only the higher end". What did we ever do to warrant wanting to harm our experience? We play the game too, and we buy crowns and pay for subs and buy the DLCs and updates. Up until recently, I maintained all of that across two platforms, like many cross platform transfers. Why this sudden out-in-the-open hostility towards the endgame community? I mean, I'm actually a little glad they're finally being more honest about it instead of passive aggressively taking shots at us, but good grief...

Treeshka

If they really designed the recent content based on the previous damage numbers they need to tune them down. Because these changes on the current iteration of the test server are not making them easier to do for new players.

I can understand the light attack nerf because it is a very hard to do for new and many players are not doing it. I have seen some people saying that they reject to do it even. So yes they nerfed the light attacks, and increased dot durations but in a way they end up getting nerfed their damage. So this is like damage nerf from two aspects.

But on the other hand you can cast your spam skill more there is one good side at least. Maybe for some players this makes the combat boring but for me it is fine.

I would suggest either reverting the light attack nerf or literally make the dots do the same damage as before but longer the duration.

I can also agree with the fact that each patch something major happens and it shifts the damage race and class. I do not like the idea of keeping the game fresh with constant changes is not a good idea. I tried to protect myself from this thing by simply playing with one character only and so far it is working since i am still having fun from the game.

Paralyse

Plectro wrote: »

Similarly, there are frequent changes to the meta, which is extremely frustrating to endgame players. I am among the players who absolutely love min-maxing, optimizing, trying to squeeze as much out of a build and my performance as possible. I've been in a few score-pushing groups and I love competing for leaderboards. However, it is near impossible with frequent meta changes. One patch High Elf is the best race for magicka groups, next patch it's changed to Khajiit. My whole group race-changed to Khajiit. 2 patches later this was reverted back to high elf. A few patches later more drastically significant changes, and it keeps happening over and over. People spent money on race changes because they care about being optimal, and it just comes to bite them back. And even non end-game players enjoy optimizing. You constantly see new players ask "what is the best class? What is the best race? What should I build?" By the time they finish leveling their character or obtaining the gear they want, it is no longer good. So many players put in effort into this game, only to be frustrated in the end, seeing it was pointless.

Just two days ago I finished optimizing my character on the live server. I have been maining magicka sorcerer for a long time, until crystal weapon was buffed and I tried it and I loved it. Changed everything to stamina. I understood it's a little bit overtuned and will get nerfed a little bit. But the rotation was interesting, the gameplay as stamina sorcerer I found very enjoyable and I thought I'll stick to it. I finally got all the gear I needed. I got my maelstrom arena greatsword, golded it out, farmed transmute crystals to get it to infused. Gathered other stamina sets. Spent hours practicing the rotation on the dummy, then in trials, struggling with it the first few runs, trying to learn something new. When I finally feel like I understood and got the grasp of it, I was able to reach 130k DPS with it on the dummy... I try the very same build and rotation on the PTS and it's about 85k. Really? With a few skill adjustments, I was able to get to around 97k again but the rotation was very different. I had to remove what was nerfed and replace gear and skills with other things. I understand the damage rebalancing is sometimes necessary. But why spend so much time working towards something to improve your DPS, your character, farming the gear, only to have it immediately be rendered useless? This has been happening over and over.

Fellow magsorc here who also enjoys theorycrafting and minmaxing but who has adamantly refused to jump on the stam meta.

20+ years of playing MMO's has taught me a lot of things
One of the main things is this

If you are chasing the meta -- beware of putting a lot of time and effort into builds that are very obviously OP -- the devs don't value your time as much as you value your time.

So many people were so quick to jump on the stamsorc and magdk wagons without stopping to consider the odds that a spec which is parsing 15-20k or more ahead of every other DPS spec in the game is inviting a visit from the Nerf Gods. Stamsorc was and is extremely imbalanced and way out of line with the averages.

You might as well tie a giant posterboard around your character's neck with "NERF ME" written on it in huge block letters.

I did hardcore endgame in WoW for years, bleeding edge/aotc/heroic and then mythic raid day 1 pushes, 3-4 days a week of 3-4 hours each day, often on a single encounter, until it finally died and then the process started over on the next boss.

Same thing there that happens in ESO.

I'd put a lot of time and effort into levelling and gearing a toon that was meta dps for a given raid. Lots of log reviews and simcraft analysis.

Next patch would come out and suddenly a spec would go from top dps to midpack or bottom dps on a given boss or an entire raid.
Go from guaranteed invite to bench warming overnight. Not very fun.

I learned to keep one of each of my favorite DPS classes levelled up and at least normal or Heroic geared out so that I would just switch my main to sync with the meta. Ret Paladin bad? Get the Assassination Rogue. Rogue got nerfed? Here's the Unholy Death Knight. DK got nerfed? Affliction Warlock. Rinse and repeat, every time a patch hit, and then restart the whole thing from scratch with each new raid because old gear = bad gear.

ESO minmaxers know these things to be true. They know that the meta is always going to change, that today's god tier DPS might be tomorrow's bottom parsers. They know that sets they've spent hours or months farming, traiting and enchanting can be deprecated or rendered wholly irrelevant in the blink of a dev's eye. They make it a goal to 100% stickerbook literally every dungeon and trial set in the game in case something that was not meta suddenly becomes awesome, or vice versa. They can and will spend many, many hours trying to get 0.5 to 1% more dps.

That's the life of a MMO minmaxer: constant change, constant farming, constant parsing and analyzing and simming and theorycrafting. Constant heartache and, opposite, overflowing exuberance when the meta swings your way.

If you are not comfortable with that level of time investment, and that devotion to following the meta, and to rebuilding from scratch every time the ZOS wind blows from a different direction, it can be a very frustrating and unenjoyable experience, if you let it.

tl;dr if you go all in on an OP meta, don't be shocked when the nerf bat smacks you in the face.

de_void

DagenHawk wrote: »

The gap isn't that bridged

Players who are skilled still are skilled

Players who aren't still have the same issues. No 35 level character is going to walk into a trail solo or even kill a world boss.

[snip]

Because the gap that ZOS is trying to bridge deals with effort put into the game, not the game per se. Hence any hard/soft caps or nerfs won't fix that.

Cryptor

skilled players are still skilled, if you are under lvl you are still not going to achieve much until you lvl up, very little changed

moleculardrugs

I like blurring the barrier between high and low-end players, because it adds more competition. I don't want care much for classism or elitism in gaming. Longer-term players should have some type of reward for playing this long and being this loyal to the game, but the combat system being blurred is just adding more players to pve and pvp, which is nice since you have old players leaving all the time because this game isn't meant to last forever. I have put in a few thousand hours too, I'm grateful for them and living in the world of Tamriel, but at the same time, I can only escape from the real-world so much before it draws me (or grabs me) back into it.

VaranisArano

@Paralyse Well said!

DagenHawk

de_void wrote: »

DagenHawk wrote: »

The gap isn't that bridged

Players who are skilled still are skilled

Players who aren't still have the same issues. No 35 level character is going to walk into a trail solo or even kill a world boss.

People who are complaining are pitching tantrums over nothing more than their sense of superiority. I would say more but it would be crass and highly rude.

Because the gap that ZOS is trying to bridge deals with effort put into the game, not the game per se. Hence any hard/soft caps or nerfs won't fix that.

Which is pretty much the exact opposite of what they talked about yesterday.....

[snip] No lets be generous there are 2k of you dedicated bleeding edge players that spend 20 to 30 hours a week making sure everything is perfect....Vs a couple million normal folks.

[snip] but all the average player will see is a more convenient system that they won't have to spend 20 hours on before they play the game.

[snip] but people like convenience it is human nature.

[snip] What ZoS is doing is smart and they need to and will do more.

I'll be the Big Nord on the hugely rare radiant Apex Mount come buy and say hello.

[edited for baiting]

wolfie1.0.

DagenHawk wrote: »

The gap isn't that bridged

Players who are skilled still are skilled

Players who aren't still have the same issues. No 35 level character is going to walk into a trail solo or even kill a world boss.

[snip]

[snip] I admit I threw a tantrum over AWA.

With this change I am not doing so. I am expressing my confusion, frustration, and sadness at the changes knowing full well that my dps is going to be back in the gutter with the changes and that it will probably take me 3 to 6 months to crawl back out... just in time for the next round.

In the announcement of this ZOS called out Change fatigue, I am beyond fatigue, I am at change exhaustion and probably nearing change extinction.

If zos is going to go through with this then we shouldn't have to experience a major combat change for several years.

[edited to remove reference to removed quote]

p00tx

DagenHawk wrote: »

de_void wrote: »

DagenHawk wrote: »

The gap isn't that bridged

Players who are skilled still are skilled

Players who aren't still have the same issues. No 35 level character is going to walk into a trail solo or even kill a world boss.

People who are complaining are pitching tantrums over nothing more than their sense of superiority. I would say more but it would be crass and highly rude.

Because the gap that ZOS is trying to bridge deals with effort put into the game, not the game per se. Hence any hard/soft caps or nerfs won't fix that.

Which is pretty much the exact opposite of what they talked about yesterday.....

[snip] No lets be generous there are 2k of you dedicated bleeding edge players that spend 20 to 30 hours a week making sure everything is perfect....Vs a couple million normal folks.

[snip] but all the average player will see is a more convenient system that they won't have to spend 20 hours on before they play the game.

[snip] but people like convenience it is human nature.

[snip] What ZoS is doing is smart and they need to and will do more.

I'll be the Big Nord on the hugely rare radiant Apex Mount come buy and say hello.

I've never even heard of you, so pot shots aren't on the agenda, nor do I think that kind of behavior is going to be very constructive right now. I'm not trying to compete with other players right now over who hates who more and who is most toxic or whose gameplay is more "worthless" or unworthy of consideration, because I feel like that sort of attitude is also unnecessary and non-productive, and furthermore, I think there is room for everyone in this huge game, so there's no need to try to discount anyone's experience.

I, and the actually very large endgame community, are all rather upset that the entire structure of the game has been changed in a very unhealthy and negative and shortsighted way. Change is fine, and it's absolutely expected, especially in a complex game of this size. No one is moaning about the simple act of making changes. We're concerned and frustrated because the changes are bad. They're going to negatively impact gameplay for players across the entire spectrum, from the bottom to the top. The top will always figure out ways to make more dmg happen, and we just have to wait a patch or two before the dmg ceiling will be right back up there. It's super frustrating right now and will likely kill progression for the few of us currently pushing for the Swashbuckler Supreme achievement, but we'll live. The lower end players don't have that option though, and they're vital to the health of this community. Endgame is nothing without curious new players who eventually climb their way up and venture into the harder content. We need people to continue to feel comfortable with the game and engaged by the combat, so that we can keep endgame growing and thriving.

So, are my motivations selfish? Maybe. I like my little corner of the game and don't want to see it destroyed because of misplaced avarice. Without a robust and varied community, this game fails, and we all need to work to sustain that variation and population, even if we don't always understand each other. It's what being part of a community means.

katanagirl1

I’m not an elite player, but I am fine with others doing dps numbers that I cannot even comprehend. I would never call for any nerfs to their gameplay. They earned it. This change probably won’t hurt them as much as it will me.

My end game is housing and PvP, though I am trying some normal trials now. Overland combat in PvE is easy for me but I have lots of CP and a skill rotation. It is not easy for new players trying to learn the game and level up. You want harder content there are places for that.

I hope these changes do not make overland more difficult. Overland is the area I traverse to get from one area to another basically, and where I dig up treasure chests, farm mat nodes and enjoy the scenery, and do my surveys. It’s not somewhere I want to spend a lot of time trying to get to where I want to be.

So maybe they will nerf endgame players if their endgame is like mine, but that would not be their target audience.

DairyCat

katanagirl1 wrote: »

I’m not an elite player, but I am fine with others doing dps numbers that I cannot even comprehend. I would never call for any nerfs to their gameplay. They earned it. This change probably won’t hurt them as much as it will me.

My end game is housing and PvP, though I am trying some normal trials now. Overland combat in PvE is easy for me but I have lots of CP and a skill rotation. It is not easy for new players trying to learn the game and level up. You want harder content there are places for that.

I hope these changes do not make overland more difficult. Overland is the area I traverse to get from one area to another basically, and where I dig up treasure chests, farm mat nodes and enjoy the scenery, and do my surveys. It’s not somewhere I want to spend a lot of time trying to get to where I want to be.

So maybe they will nerf endgame players if their endgame is like mine, but that would not be their target audience.

Overland will technically be more difficult because everyone is doing less damage. But I don't think it's going to make it noticeably more difficult before. If you were one shotting wolves by 150%, and after this patch you one shot them by 110%, you really won't notice because the end result is the same. If you're taking a long time to kill wolves right now then yeah, it make take longer.