Nothing is wrong with a skill gap, and players who are willing and able to put in the time and effort to perform at the very highest levels should be encouraged and rewarded.
However, IMO the gap in ESO is too wide at this point, which leads to issues where new content is tuned to the very top players, leaving the much larger group of 'middle' to average players unable to complete and left to run older / easier content.
ESO needs a narrower power gap between players and much more middle-difficulty content (either directly through additional difficulty levels or some sort of adjustments over time to older content as newer content is released) to maintain a healthy population, especially as it is the average and middle-skilled players that foot the majority of the bill for development.
Every MMO that has tried to be hardcore has failed - the top 1% may help with guides and generating interest in a game, but that only goes so far.
If a game cannot attract and retain a large number of players - most of whom will be of average skill level - it is bound to fail.
Of course, the changes on the PTS on their own do not appear to be achieving either narrowing the gap nor making more content accessible for the average player.
The main problem I see is that they should have readjusted trials and dungeons for what would be the new normal dps for the high end raiders. Maybe that is something that is coming, they might be waiting until the nerfs are a bit more concrete. But a lot of this controversy could have been side stepped with a simple statement that pve content will also be nerfed to compensate.
starkerealm wrote: »The main problem I see is that they should have readjusted trials and dungeons for what would be the new normal dps for the high end raiders. Maybe that is something that is coming, they might be waiting until the nerfs are a bit more concrete. But a lot of this controversy could have been side stepped with a simple statement that pve content will also be nerfed to compensate.
There's no content rebalance on the way. They would never intentionally sign off on balance changes that would require them to adjust every dungeon and trial in the game.
starkerealm wrote: »The main problem I see is that they should have readjusted trials and dungeons for what would be the new normal dps for the high end raiders. Maybe that is something that is coming, they might be waiting until the nerfs are a bit more concrete. But a lot of this controversy could have been side stepped with a simple statement that pve content will also be nerfed to compensate.
There's no content rebalance on the way. They would never intentionally sign off on balance changes that would require them to adjust every dungeon and trial in the game.
Pepegrillos wrote: »Because the skill gap is so large that they end up having to create content tailored for a very small audience (vHM trials in particular). That's content that only a couple hundred or a thousand players can complete. (Last I heard vRGHM was only completed by 600 characters since it was released, so not even necessarily 600 different accounts).
All this wouldn't be a problem if end-game PVE was something the community deeply cared about (an example, race to world first in WoW). The issue is that almost no one gives a flying [snip] about it. So it's probably not just an isolated design decision, I bet someone around Zos started looking at developmental costs and returns.
Everyone who is blaming the high DPS of the best of the best groups is (I'm sorry to be blunt) just wrong. It's the fact that much of the newer content has such little margin of error that "the best of the best" is required to get close to even trying it. Those elite folks should get their credit through the leaderboards and faster completion times and maybe special achievements... not by simply being able to get through it.
I want to address these types of arguments since most posts are a variant of these. Early ESO discredits both of these types of arguments. In 2015 and 2016, ESO even overland had a bit of difficulty. Things like vet Maelstrom, City of Ash 2, and Vet Craglorn trials were extraordinarily difficult in the earlier years of the game. When Maw of Lorkhaj came out, there were very few people that could complete it at all. So ESO's endgame was even more exclusive and don't forget that the game was younger at this point, so people weren't as good or knowledgeable as they were today. Despite all of this, there were more high-end raiding groups and progression groups. The end game community was thriving despite how exclusive being a good player was at the time.
So why are things different now? The game is not nearly as difficult and end game is not nearly as exclusive as it was in 2015-2017, yet end game is actually shrinking not growing. Anyone care to explain?
Pepegrillos wrote: »Pepegrillos wrote: »Because the skill gap is so large that they end up having to create content tailored for a very small audience (vHM trials in particular). That's content that only a couple hundred or a thousand players can complete. (Last I heard vRGHM was only completed by 600 characters since it was released, so not even necessarily 600 different accounts).
All this wouldn't be a problem if end-game PVE was something the community deeply cared about (an example, race to world first in WoW). The issue is that almost no one gives a flying [snip] about it. So it's probably not just an isolated design decision, I bet someone around Zos started looking at developmental costs and returns.
Everyone who is blaming the high DPS of the best of the best groups is (I'm sorry to be blunt) just wrong. It's the fact that much of the newer content has such little margin of error that "the best of the best" is required to get close to even trying it. Those elite folks should get their credit through the leaderboards and faster completion times and maybe special achievements... not by simply being able to get through it.
I want to address these types of arguments since most posts are a variant of these. Early ESO discredits both of these types of arguments. In 2015 and 2016, ESO even overland had a bit of difficulty. Things like vet Maelstrom, City of Ash 2, and Vet Craglorn trials were extraordinarily difficult in the earlier years of the game. When Maw of Lorkhaj came out, there were very few people that could complete it at all. So ESO's endgame was even more exclusive and don't forget that the game was younger at this point, so people weren't as good or knowledgeable as they were today. Despite all of this, there were more high-end raiding groups and progression groups. The end game community was thriving despite how exclusive being a good player was at the time.
So why are things different now? The game is not nearly as difficult and end game is not nearly as exclusive as it was in 2015-2017, yet end game is actually shrinking not growing. Anyone care to explain?
Your claims.
1) In 2015-2016 ESO was harder.
2) In that period, the endgame was even more exclusive.
3) In that period, the endgame community was thriving and bigger than now.
All that can be true. But the fact that a proportionally small community was thriving doesn't mean that the game as a whole was. You can look at Simpson's Paradox for some sort of parallel.
The explanation is simple. Since the initial flop this game was, the devs have continuously been steering the game away from the traditional MMORPG target audience and towards the Elder Scrolls fans audience. The problem is that many, despite playing this game for years, have either simply not noticed this obvious change or have refused to accept it. So now they are in some sort of cognitive dissonance that prevents them from grasping the wider context in which all these changes make sense.
Moving in this direction has allowed the game to carve a niche for itself. And this has paid off. The game has become an easy, casual, fully voiced story-driven MMO. But going this way has obvious trade-offs. Some of them are dedicating fewer resources to pvp and end-game PvE. This has been obvious for years.
For all that and other reasons, nothing of what you mention addresses or discredits the posts you quote. You are talking beside the point.
So if we assume that what I said about early ESO is correct (which it is) and the end game community was bigger when the game was more exclusive, then proportionally, MORE people were engaging with vet content. This is exactly what ZOS wants, they want more people to engage with vet content. By showing that the more exclusive old ESO was successful at getting more players to engage with vet content, it suggests that too much exclusivity is not a problem. Your reason for stating that the skill gap is unhealthy is that it makes some content too exclusive. If I showed that exclusivity isn’t actually a bad thing for content engagement, then the skill gap by your reasoning, is not actually a bad thing for content engagement.
Pepegrillos wrote: »So if we assume that what I said about early ESO is correct (which it is) and the end game community was bigger when the game was more exclusive, then proportionally, MORE people were engaging with vet content. This is exactly what ZOS wants, they want more people to engage with vet content. By showing that the more exclusive old ESO was successful at getting more players to engage with vet content, it suggests that too much exclusivity is not a problem. Your reason for stating that the skill gap is unhealthy is that it makes some content too exclusive. If I showed that exclusivity isn’t actually a bad thing for content engagement, then the skill gap by your reasoning, is not actually a bad thing for content engagement.
The reason why the target-audience-change background I included is not part of a different discussion is that it offers a much simpler explanation to this second issue you raise. If anything, there was more engagement with endgame content because the audience of ESO at the time had more traditional MMORPG players than casual Elder Scrolls fans. But this is not the case anymore because Zenimax reorientation of the game has steadily decimated the traditional MMORPG population it once had.
Exclusitivty does not drive engagement unless you have an audience that's driven by exclusive, hard content. That hasn't been this game's audience for a while.
Pepegrillos wrote: »So if we assume that what I said about early ESO is correct (which it is) and the end game community was bigger when the game was more exclusive, then proportionally, MORE people were engaging with vet content. This is exactly what ZOS wants, they want more people to engage with vet content. By showing that the more exclusive old ESO was successful at getting more players to engage with vet content, it suggests that too much exclusivity is not a problem. Your reason for stating that the skill gap is unhealthy is that it makes some content too exclusive. If I showed that exclusivity isn’t actually a bad thing for content engagement, then the skill gap by your reasoning, is not actually a bad thing for content engagement.
The reason why the target-audience-change background I included is not part of a different discussion is that it offers a much simpler explanation to this second issue you raise. If anything, there was more engagement with endgame content because the audience of ESO at the time had more traditional MMORPG players than casual Elder Scrolls fans. But this is not the case anymore because Zenimax reorientation of the game has steadily decimated the traditional MMORPG population it once had.
Exclusitivty does not drive engagement unless you have an audience that's driven by exclusive, hard content. That hasn't been this game's audience for a while.
I think this is 100% right. The ESO demographic has shifted and the game overall is much more casual. However, the type of players you describe tend to be solo questing types. Many of these people would not even group up for vet content at all (I’ve seen posts of these people claiming that their immersion was ruined just by seeing another player on a flashy mount). I don’t think the skill gap is the reason for their lack of participation. They just play ESO like it’s solo.
Carcamongus wrote: »A skill gap, in principle, is just natural. Unnatural would be a situation in which everyone is equally skilled. What can be problematic isn't the existence of a gap, but its nature. Is it an ossified gap that can't be bridged or can people reasonably hope to go from the low end to the high one? Is the process clear and fair to all?
For the most part, I'd say the process is arduous but doable. It's not so simple that I'd call those who can't make it lazy, but if people spend the time, do their research and practice, the odds of success are good. Guilds help a lot, too.
Some players, though, have difficulty with certain aspects of the game and that has nothing to do with dedication. Another thread mentioned how colorblind folks struggled with some dungeons, like White-Gold Tower. For a long time I struggled with some bosses, eg the Earthbore Ammonia, because of slow reflexes and a hard time seeing the alert that the boss was about to heavy attack.
I'd say the best way to deal with the skill gap is to be clever with dungeon/trial/boss designs and smart about new content. If something big's about to happen, make it so everyone can clearly see that. Don't fill the screen with so many disorienting effects and other shinies that the player may at times have trouble seeing themselves (or risks having seizures, like in that Pokémon cartoon decades ago...). Change the heavy attack animation to be more visible. Instead of adding OP sets that everyone knows will be nerfed, be more reasonable. Instead of nerfing almost everything, buff non-meta sets that less experienced players might use until they can collect the crème de la crème.
In sum, elite players worked hard to get where they are and they should be able to reap the rewards of their efforts. Having in place a reasonable process with which people can join the elite ranks is much better than nerfing everything.
Note: I don't include myself among the elite ranks, but I do feel their pain.
FantasticFreddie wrote: »Account wide achievements drove away a lot of experienced raiders, this one is just too much.
LordDragonMara wrote: »BXR_Lonestar wrote: »Nothing is wrong with skillgap, but nobody should "have" to spend hours in front of a dummy in order to "qualify" to get access to content that is in the game. They keep coming up with these sets that boosts the DPS through the ceiling for the top 5-10% of players, meanwhile the players in the middle are getting left further and further behind. Something DOES need to be done to bring the floor DPS up and make doing good DPS easier to make the game more accessible. Otherwise players will just get frustrated and walk away.
Part of this is the function of powercreep. We want sets that make us feel more powerful, but when we do, it makes it harder and harder for them to design content that is fun, engaging, but also challenging for the upper end players and that is still completable for lower end players. Part of this is why I find it ironic as to why they are nerfing the oakensoul ring. This was a perfect example of something that brought up the floor DPS quite a bit without increasing DPS at the top end of things. In that sense, it was perfect.
So you pretty much want to be at that "end", but you don't want to practice to get there .... I also want to be top programmer/developer, but don't want to spend hours over hours in coding, and all the needed stuffs.
But it's up to me right, to do the work, right ?
And we should divide the gear from skills, cause this is 2 completely different things.
Some people just want from the start in the game to do all.
And again you don't need to be even close to optimal levels, neither to have perfect weaving to do the vets and end game stuffs. Game is already too easy on most fronts.
But it's a mmorpg and you certainly should know your character, your rotation and what abilities is needed for x or y thing.
Same as what build/gear to do. But this is more of a knowledge skill, then what we are talking about.
The way i see it currently, they are punishing top players for being top players, for actually spend time in the game, play the game, understand the game, practice the game, learn the game and find a way how to become top players.
And they reward players that just refuse to learn and refuse to get good at the game.
It's like my boss to come and say, listen i'm lowering your salary, cause you are the best in the company and write and do stuffs fastest. Your colleagues just can't keep your pace, so we are going to lower your wages .... How that sounds ? Because this is exactly what is their doing.
BXR_Lonestar wrote: »LordDragonMara wrote: »BXR_Lonestar wrote: »Nothing is wrong with skillgap, but nobody should "have" to spend hours in front of a dummy in order to "qualify" to get access to content that is in the game. They keep coming up with these sets that boosts the DPS through the ceiling for the top 5-10% of players, meanwhile the players in the middle are getting left further and further behind. Something DOES need to be done to bring the floor DPS up and make doing good DPS easier to make the game more accessible. Otherwise players will just get frustrated and walk away.
Part of this is the function of powercreep. We want sets that make us feel more powerful, but when we do, it makes it harder and harder for them to design content that is fun, engaging, but also challenging for the upper end players and that is still completable for lower end players. Part of this is why I find it ironic as to why they are nerfing the oakensoul ring. This was a perfect example of something that brought up the floor DPS quite a bit without increasing DPS at the top end of things. In that sense, it was perfect.
So you pretty much want to be at that "end", but you don't want to practice to get there .... I also want to be top programmer/developer, but don't want to spend hours over hours in coding, and all the needed stuffs.
But it's up to me right, to do the work, right ?
And we should divide the gear from skills, cause this is 2 completely different things.
Some people just want from the start in the game to do all.
And again you don't need to be even close to optimal levels, neither to have perfect weaving to do the vets and end game stuffs. Game is already too easy on most fronts.
But it's a mmorpg and you certainly should know your character, your rotation and what abilities is needed for x or y thing.
Same as what build/gear to do. But this is more of a knowledge skill, then what we are talking about.
The way i see it currently, they are punishing top players for being top players, for actually spend time in the game, play the game, understand the game, practice the game, learn the game and find a way how to become top players.
And they reward players that just refuse to learn and refuse to get good at the game.
It's like my boss to come and say, listen i'm lowering your salary, cause you are the best in the company and write and do stuffs fastest. Your colleagues just can't keep your pace, so we are going to lower your wages .... How that sounds ? Because this is exactly what is their doing.
No its not about wanting to get to the end without practice, I'd rather get to the end by practicing - playing the game, not by sitting on a dummy. Not everyone has hours to burn dummy-humping so to speak just to "qualify" to do end game content. That idea is just ridiculous IMO. Most people I know and play with only have a few hours a day to play - IF THAT. You can't just say "well those people don't deserve to play the content I play because they don't practice enough." That is just a very narrow-minded way of looking at things. We want to spend the time we do have playing the game, not practicing to play the game. Its hard enough just getting 12 people together to be able to run this content.
What I'm hearing from you is "endgame content is an exclusive club and only the elite should have access to it." I'd be fine with that too - if ONLY the elite paid for it... I paid for that same content to and it is ridiculous that I'd get excluded from it because I don't have 20 hours to practice/perfect my rotations. My DPS isn't bad (~60k on my best character), but its ridiculous when you get groups running around saying they can't take you unless you meet their ridiculous dps qualifications.
Let me just end with this philosophical question:
Is a player better because they have enough dps to bypass mechanics - or is a player better if they can negotiate the mechanics and play the encounter as intended? You tell me...
Pepegrillos wrote: »So if we assume that what I said about early ESO is correct (which it is) and the end game community was bigger when the game was more exclusive, then proportionally, MORE people were engaging with vet content. This is exactly what ZOS wants, they want more people to engage with vet content. By showing that the more exclusive old ESO was successful at getting more players to engage with vet content, it suggests that too much exclusivity is not a problem. Your reason for stating that the skill gap is unhealthy is that it makes some content too exclusive. If I showed that exclusivity isn’t actually a bad thing for content engagement, then the skill gap by your reasoning, is not actually a bad thing for content engagement.
The reason why the target-audience-change background I included is not part of a different discussion is that it offers a much simpler explanation to this second issue you raise. If anything, there was more engagement with endgame content because the audience of ESO at the time had more traditional MMORPG players than casual Elder Scrolls fans. But this is not the case anymore because Zenimax reorientation of the game has steadily decimated the traditional MMORPG population it once had.
Exclusitivty does not drive engagement unless you have an audience that's driven by exclusive, hard content. That hasn't been this game's audience for a while.
BXR_Lonestar wrote: »No its not about wanting to get to the end without practice, I'd rather get to the end by practicing - playing the game, not by sitting on a dummy. Not everyone has hours to burn dummy-humping so to speak just to "qualify" to do end game content. That idea is just ridiculous IMO. Most people I know and play with only have a few hours a day to play - IF THAT. You can't just say "well those people don't deserve to play the content I play because they don't practice enough." That is just a very narrow-minded way of looking at things. We want to spend the time we do have playing the game, not practicing to play the game. Its hard enough just getting 12 people together to be able to run this content.
What I'm hearing from you is "endgame content is an exclusive club and only the elite should have access to it." I'd be fine with that too - if ONLY the elite paid for it... I paid for that same content to and it is ridiculous that I'd get excluded from it because I don't have 20 hours to practice/perfect my rotations. My DPS isn't bad (~60k on my best character), but its ridiculous when you get groups running around saying they can't take you unless you meet their ridiculous dps qualifications.
Let me just end with this philosophical question:
Is a player better because they have enough dps to bypass mechanics - or is a player better if they can negotiate the mechanics and play the encounter as intended? You tell me...
ESO has 3 diffrent playstyles. ZOS is trying to reduce it to 1 right now and i dont get it. Instead on focusing each groups needs, they just try to push ppl into content.
They said reduce the delta, not remove the delta. So instead of DPS range from 30k floor to 140k ceiling, they want to make it like 50k floor to 100k ceiling.
BXR_Lonestar wrote: »LordDragonMara wrote: »BXR_Lonestar wrote: »Nothing is wrong with skillgap, but nobody should "have" to spend hours in front of a dummy in order to "qualify" to get access to content that is in the game. They keep coming up with these sets that boosts the DPS through the ceiling for the top 5-10% of players, meanwhile the players in the middle are getting left further and further behind. Something DOES need to be done to bring the floor DPS up and make doing good DPS easier to make the game more accessible. Otherwise players will just get frustrated and walk away.
Part of this is the function of powercreep. We want sets that make us feel more powerful, but when we do, it makes it harder and harder for them to design content that is fun, engaging, but also challenging for the upper end players and that is still completable for lower end players. Part of this is why I find it ironic as to why they are nerfing the oakensoul ring. This was a perfect example of something that brought up the floor DPS quite a bit without increasing DPS at the top end of things. In that sense, it was perfect.
So you pretty much want to be at that "end", but you don't want to practice to get there .... I also want to be top programmer/developer, but don't want to spend hours over hours in coding, and all the needed stuffs.
But it's up to me right, to do the work, right ?
And we should divide the gear from skills, cause this is 2 completely different things.
Some people just want from the start in the game to do all.
And again you don't need to be even close to optimal levels, neither to have perfect weaving to do the vets and end game stuffs. Game is already too easy on most fronts.
But it's a mmorpg and you certainly should know your character, your rotation and what abilities is needed for x or y thing.
Same as what build/gear to do. But this is more of a knowledge skill, then what we are talking about.
The way i see it currently, they are punishing top players for being top players, for actually spend time in the game, play the game, understand the game, practice the game, learn the game and find a way how to become top players.
And they reward players that just refuse to learn and refuse to get good at the game.
It's like my boss to come and say, listen i'm lowering your salary, cause you are the best in the company and write and do stuffs fastest. Your colleagues just can't keep your pace, so we are going to lower your wages .... How that sounds ? Because this is exactly what is their doing.
No its not about wanting to get to the end without practice, I'd rather get to the end by practicing - playing the game, not by sitting on a dummy. Not everyone has hours to burn dummy-humping so to speak just to "qualify" to do end game content. That idea is just ridiculous IMO. Most people I know and play with only have a few hours a day to play - IF THAT. You can't just say "well those people don't deserve to play the content I play because they don't practice enough." That is just a very narrow-minded way of looking at things. We want to spend the time we do have playing the game, not practicing to play the game. Its hard enough just getting 12 people together to be able to run this content.
What I'm hearing from you is "endgame content is an exclusive club and only the elite should have access to it." I'd be fine with that too - if ONLY the elite paid for it... I paid for that same content to and it is ridiculous that I'd get excluded from it because I don't have 20 hours to practice/perfect my rotations. My DPS isn't bad (~60k on my best character), but its ridiculous when you get groups running around saying they can't take you unless you meet their ridiculous dps qualifications.
Let me just end with this philosophical question:
Is a player better because they have enough dps to bypass mechanics - or is a player better if they can negotiate the mechanics and play the encounter as intended? You tell me...
Fingolfinn01 wrote: »BXR_Lonestar wrote: »LordDragonMara wrote: »BXR_Lonestar wrote: »Nothing is wrong with skillgap, but nobody should "have" to spend hours in front of a dummy in order to "qualify" to get access to content that is in the game. They keep coming up with these sets that boosts the DPS through the ceiling for the top 5-10% of players, meanwhile the players in the middle are getting left further and further behind. Something DOES need to be done to bring the floor DPS up and make doing good DPS easier to make the game more accessible. Otherwise players will just get frustrated and walk away.
Part of this is the function of powercreep. We want sets that make us feel more powerful, but when we do, it makes it harder and harder for them to design content that is fun, engaging, but also challenging for the upper end players and that is still completable for lower end players. Part of this is why I find it ironic as to why they are nerfing the oakensoul ring. This was a perfect example of something that brought up the floor DPS quite a bit without increasing DPS at the top end of things. In that sense, it was perfect.
So you pretty much want to be at that "end", but you don't want to practice to get there .... I also want to be top programmer/developer, but don't want to spend hours over hours in coding, and all the needed stuffs.
But it's up to me right, to do the work, right ?
And we should divide the gear from skills, cause this is 2 completely different things.
Some people just want from the start in the game to do all.
And again you don't need to be even close to optimal levels, neither to have perfect weaving to do the vets and end game stuffs. Game is already too easy on most fronts.
But it's a mmorpg and you certainly should know your character, your rotation and what abilities is needed for x or y thing.
Same as what build/gear to do. But this is more of a knowledge skill, then what we are talking about.
The way i see it currently, they are punishing top players for being top players, for actually spend time in the game, play the game, understand the game, practice the game, learn the game and find a way how to become top players.
And they reward players that just refuse to learn and refuse to get good at the game.
It's like my boss to come and say, listen i'm lowering your salary, cause you are the best in the company and write and do stuffs fastest. Your colleagues just can't keep your pace, so we are going to lower your wages .... How that sounds ? Because this is exactly what is their doing.
No its not about wanting to get to the end without practice, I'd rather get to the end by practicing - playing the game, not by sitting on a dummy. Not everyone has hours to burn dummy-humping so to speak just to "qualify" to do end game content. That idea is just ridiculous IMO. Most people I know and play with only have a few hours a day to play - IF THAT. You can't just say "well those people don't deserve to play the content I play because they don't practice enough." That is just a very narrow-minded way of looking at things. We want to spend the time we do have playing the game, not practicing to play the game. Its hard enough just getting 12 people together to be able to run this content.
What I'm hearing from you is "endgame content is an exclusive club and only the elite should have access to it." I'd be fine with that too - if ONLY the elite paid for it... I paid for that same content to and it is ridiculous that I'd get excluded from it because I don't have 20 hours to practice/perfect my rotations. My DPS isn't bad (~60k on my best character), but its ridiculous when you get groups running around saying they can't take you unless you meet their ridiculous dps qualifications.
Let me just end with this philosophical question:
Is a player better because they have enough dps to bypass mechanics - or is a player better if they can negotiate the mechanics and play the encounter as intended? You tell me...
Both cases are true. I believe the answer is for zos to make challenging content for those incredible high passes, a reward for that play style. Will I ever see it, most likely not, as i parse on the lower end. However i do not begrudge those players who play at the top end.
LordDragonMara wrote: »
The game has plenty of new players. It's not like new players aren't coming. The problem with the Skill Gap is not because Skill Ceiling is too high. It's because the game not properly explain combat mechanics, and many more. But lowering the skill ceiling and trying to artificially close the gap it's not the solution.
guarstompemoji wrote: »LordDragonMara wrote: »
The game has plenty of new players. It's not like new players aren't coming. The problem with the Skill Gap is not because Skill Ceiling is too high. It's because the game not properly explain combat mechanics, and many more. But lowering the skill ceiling and trying to artificially close the gap it's not the solution.
This. Making it worse, the combat UI design does not point towards its function.
Imagine if...
... One of the spaces on the bars had a different border, and had "spammable" in soft gray text when it was empty. You could ofc shift this around. But, what if there was a visual indicator?
... You could turn on an "Advanced Combat" checkbox, and it did things like enabled a tutorial, enabled visual skill timers, and explained what a spammable and a DOT was? You could also uncheck this checkbox.
... During the tutorial, skills would flash more obviously, briefly, when they were ready to use again?
...etc. Turn the tutorial and the "Advanced Combat" checkbox over to the community to input ideas for. Have the devs coalesce these. Test. Retest. Move forward.
I am middle class and so are some of my friends. I don't generally participate in vet trials, because I have no interest in getting organised for a 12-man group, joining a regular progression group, playing to a schedule. I parse around 60K on the trial dummy. 70K when I really put my mind to it. With one class. The easiest (magplar). I don't keep a good rotation. Point is, I'm not even interested in playing that game - the vet trial game - and I'm mystified why that should be an issue for anyone. If this is where we're drawing the line, then normal trials are available for everyone to experience the story content. It works for me. I enjoy PvP, solo and small group play (dungeons, arenas).Alchemical wrote: »The problem is that ESO has no middle class, there's a very hard divide between 'casual' and 'hardcore'
I think the more correct question is "Why would you even start?" I was once like that. I came from single-player games. It was a matter of foolish pride to do White Gold Tower when it came out and none of us were ready for it. I was extremely negative twoards a veteran player who didn't want to join, because he knew he was in for 5 hour sessions of getting nowhere. I expected to be able to do everything, because I came from non-competitive single player games. That's a mental barrier you just have to get past, if that's what it is. I'm tempted to say the entitlement, but that's not even it. It's more like an unspoken assumption, because single player Bethesda games, basically anything that isn't called Dark Souls, are easy. Although being spoilt in your upbringing exactly results in entitlement, so perhaps that is exactly the right word after all.Add that in to the sheer DENSITY of ESO's build knowledge and theorycrafting that comes with end game, and it's almost impossible to get 'in' to veteran raiding as a casual. Like, where do you even start?
I doubt very much that that's what they're being told. There may be a few people who do that, but what I've encountered is the following. I put my builds up on UESP. They're not builds for trials, but some use advanced gear, such as arena weapons and trial sets. In the UESP editor I list the perfected versions of those items, when that's what I actually use. So I give out my builds freely to whoever wants to look at them, and what I've found more than once is that people become completely fixated on farming the perfected gear, even when I tell them repeatedly that that is not important. What do you do? Where does that come from? I don't know. Obviously requiring Perfected Relequen for vet dungeons is complete BS.You look up a build and the first thing you'll see is someone telling you that you need Perfected Relens to do veteran dungeons.
The developers appear to be taken in by a data-driven approach, e.g. they have statistics on what skills players use, what sets, and what content they run. It appears that only takes them so far, and then they try stuff. This is how we ended up with this wild string of unsuccessful experiments. DOTs buffed. DOTs nerfed. Heavy attacks buffed this spring. Heavy and light attacks nerfed this autumn.If you take one thing away from this; be nice to the developers. They're not out to get you...
guarstompemoji wrote: »LordDragonMara wrote: »
The game has plenty of new players. It's not like new players aren't coming. The problem with the Skill Gap is not because Skill Ceiling is too high. It's because the game not properly explain combat mechanics, and many more. But lowering the skill ceiling and trying to artificially close the gap it's not the solution.
This. Making it worse, the combat UI design does not point towards its function.
Imagine if...
... One of the spaces on the bars had a different border, and had "spammable" in soft gray text when it was empty. You could ofc shift this around. But, what if there was a visual indicator?
... You could turn on an "Advanced Combat" checkbox, and it did things like enabled a tutorial, enabled visual skill timers, and explained what a spammable and a DOT was? You could also uncheck this checkbox.
... During the tutorial, skills would flash more obviously, briefly, when they were ready to use again?
...etc. Turn the tutorial and the "Advanced Combat" checkbox over to the community to input ideas for. Have the devs coalesce these. Test. Retest. Move forward.
These are all good but there are more somewhat opaque things happening in the combat system (FYI I personally know the answers to these things, but if the player base is coming from single player ES games they probably don't)
1. What is an enchant and what does it do? What does XXXX Flame damage mean? Does it do that much damage every time you hit something with it? Does it do flame damage if you cast a skill?
2. What exactly are item sets and how do they work? Why are different pieces of gear different colors? How can you change that yourself?
3. Food and potions are important. Important enough for it not just to be in a leading screen tip that know one will read, but put it on a pop-up where you need to click or press E to confirm you read that you should always be using food and potions will help in tougher fights.
4. Probably 23 other behind the scenes things that could be quickly explained (people can always dig further out of the game if they want more than a cursory introduction to things) and make the systems less hidden and reduce the knowledge gap that causes a huge amount of the DPS delta.
spartaxoxo wrote: »They said they want to reduce it, not eliminate it. They said having one is natural and healthy for a game. But they want a more natural and logical progression to harder and harder content. So, this is a bit of a strawman.
Currently the endgame population is unsustainably low. Some guilds have trouble even filling prog rosters. And there's a wide mass of people that want to do that content, but can't, due to the power gap. You can't let everyone run in the Olympics, but the Olympics also can't be just be Usain Bolt running against random objects because there's not enough people for an actual race.