So... What's Wrong With a Skill Gap?

MidniteOwl1913

xgoku1 wrote: »

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.

I'm guessing what Gilliam is saying is that the current DPS delta is way too big which is causing issues in designing content like DPS checks for Vet HM stuff. This update is more about addressing the powercreep increasing the ceiling over the past few years.

Okay I parse 30k (on a good day on my DK, which BTW is going to be unplayable after the class nerfs in the patch) and I have yet to see anything *anything at all* to suggest I'm magically going to be able to do 20k+ more damage with a 33% across the board damage nerf. So someone please explain to me.

SeaGtGruff

I think "skill gap" in this usage is the wrong term. As I see it, there are at least three kinds of "gaps" which tend to get lumped together (incorrectly, in my opinion) into the term "skill gap" as used here-- a skill gap, knowledge gap, and power (or damage) gap. We could also probably speak about a health gap, gear gap, and other types of gaps, but the first three tend to be lumped together as though they were interchangeable, which they are not.

Frankly, I think gaps of various kinds are inevitable, due to the fact that different players have different goals, preferences, and playstyles. Catering to that diversity has been a strength of the Elder Scrolls games since Arena. Arena wasn't sophisticated enough to cater to it to the extent that Daggerfall and later games could, but it was still designed around the idea that players could take on the role of Thief, Mage, Warrior, or some subclass of those three, and could either play their way through a main questline to "win the game" or just explore the game's world at leisure doing whatever they were inclined to. The Elder Scrolls Online is an MMORPG, but it's still an Elder Scrolls RPG, so different players are going to have different ideas about what they want to do in the game and how they want to go about doing it.

As far as the so-called "skill gap," I think what most people mean by that is really a power gap. A player can be skilled without having a very powerful character, or have a powerful character without being very skilled-- or both, or neither, etc. The trouble with confusing skill and power is that many players seem to assume that anyone whose character isn't powerful must not be very skilled at playing the game, or that anyone who's skilled at the game should have a powerful character. That can lead to a mindset that everyone in the game should be a Damage Dealer, and that the game should be catering to DDs. This is contrary to the overall Elder Scrolls (or, if you will, D&D) philosophy of letting players create characters of various types and providing them with a variety of activities which cater to those types of characters. Yes, the game should cater to DDs-- but not at the expense of everyone else.

There will always be a certain amount of imbalance between players, because the only way to have a perfectly balanced game would be if there were only one class, one set of skills, one type of armor, one type of weapon, etc.-- in other words, a totally level playing field. I don't think anyone truly wants that, especially not the devs. But having players who can achieve levels of DPS which used to be unthinkable, and which only seem to be getting higher and higher each year, makes it extremely difficult for the devs to cater to those players without ruining the game for everyone else. And when extremely powerful players start talking about how boring and unchallenging the game is because they can just burn through enemies with little effort, it's kind of hard to understand why they can't see that they're actually ruining the game for themselves.

Trying to rein in players who are chasing the outrageous power creep is not going to "break" the game.

I have some thoughts about weaving and rotations, but they're better left for another post. Basically, they're more along the lines of questions to ponder, and the gist of the questions has to do with a sequence of procedures which must be executed with precise timing in order to be "maximally effective," and whether that approach is inherently prone to breaking down if any step in the sequence gets even slightly out of whack, versus a more flexible approach in which the steps can vary in response to specific situations and can more readily adapt to accommodate any changes.

fred4

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

As far as the so-called "skill gap," I think what most people mean by that is really a power gap. A player can be skilled without having a very powerful character, or have a powerful character without being very skilled-- or both, or neither, etc. The trouble with confusing skill and power is that many players seem to assume that anyone whose character isn't powerful must not be very skilled at playing the game, or that anyone who's skilled at the game should have a powerful character.

I really like this clarification!

That can lead to a mindset that everyone in the game should be a Damage Dealer, and that the game should be catering to DDs.

In who's mind, though? I think the trial meta, including dummy parsing, is one of the most carefully explored and documented areas of the game that has the most "science" behind it. I think this stems, in part, from having to organise 12-man groups, which invariably involves more forethought than 4-man or solo gameplay. However when you look at the YouTube subscriber count of trial players, Nefas, Skinny Cheeks, they're smaller than those of middle of the road content creators, such as Deltia, Hack the Minotaur and Xynode. In other words, I smell a red herring that both the devs and some of the forum readership have bought in to.

I hate to bring up the e word. Do people look up to trial players? Do those players regard themselves as better than the rest? If everyone is truly playing the way they want, what is the incentive for taking your cue from the vet trials meta? I think some new players do, because they want a one size fits all build and they mistakenly pick up something designed for group play, when they're still only soloing. Doing damage is the objective of the game, the one role you really must fulfil solo, so that's what they pick. Judging by the above demographics, though, it seems to me that many subsequently discover channels such as Hack the Minotaur and should discover more suitable builds for their playstyle.

Does everyone fish? Does everyone build a house? No, right? I suppose the argument goes that nothing really stops you from doing those things, but then again normal trials and normal dungeons do exist. Nothing really stops you from experiencing that content either.

What is the incentive, why would anyone insist that vet trials are something you need to experience? On the other hand, isn't the difficulty of most vet trials (not all) also a myth propagated by some e players? Requirements, such as having to parse 70K are not real. Nefas loves trials and the community around them. He has an initiative to teach people and came up with realistic requirements you really should meet. They are much, much lower. So, again, I smell a red herring.

This is contrary to the overall Elder Scrolls (or, if you will, D&D) philosophy of letting players create characters of various types and providing them with a variety of activities which cater to those types of characters. Yes, the game should cater to DDs-- but not at the expense of everyone else.

There are builds in the game - solo / tank / no compromise builds - that are very OP. I've been talking about mine at length in multiple forum threads. Has a single person adopted my proven build wholesale? Nope. I suppose this goes to people wanting to do their own thing. Fair enough. In the last thread I explained all the theory behind it, why it works. It's a ridiculous build that can do vMA / vVateshran / solo vet HM dungeons / solo arena 1 of vBRP. The power is within the game to make entirely different compromises, yet many people only chase damage. This has to be a social phenomenon as much as anything else. It's not backed by any objective reality.

Then again, I don't have a strong competitive streak, like some people do. Nor am I an achievement hunter. Nor must I have every skin or motif in the game.

I certainly know some people who have moved on to ticking off every achievement that ZOS have created. My question of the day is: If that's why people want to do vet trials, is that a good enough reason? Should content be made easy enough, so everyone can get their participation trophy? You can obviously tell from the way I phrased that, that I don't agree.

But having players who can achieve levels of DPS which used to be unthinkable, and which only seem to be getting higher and higher each year, makes it extremely difficult for the devs to cater to those players without ruining the game for everyone else.

Or so the devs would have you believe. Content like vMA proves otherwise. There is a big delta between completing it and posting a competitive score. I can complete it in about 48 minutes, top scores are done in under 30. I'm not saying vMA is the be all and end all of content design, but there have to be more ways to make flexible content. Black Drake Villa has hard modes for every boss and a secret boss with good rewards at the end.

Trying to rein in players who are chasing the outrageous power creep is not going to "break" the game.

I would instinctively agree, except the devil's in the details. According to what I've read, the increase from 1 second to 2 second HOTs is set to do exactly that for some groups, apparently, e.g. because tanks can be hit for 40K per second in some trial phases and they need healing every second, not every two seconds.

I have some thoughts about weaving and rotations, but they're better left for another post. Basically, they're more along the lines of questions to ponder, and the gist of the questions has to do with a sequence of procedures which must be executed with precise timing in order to be "maximally effective," and whether that approach is inherently prone to breaking down if any step in the sequence gets even slightly out of whack, versus a more flexible approach in which the steps can vary in response to specific situations and can more readily adapt to accommodate any changes.

I wonder whether you're giving high end players enough credit here. I've heard of new players achieving a certain number on a dummy, who do only half the damage in an actual trial, whereas an experienced one more or less matches the dummy. That's because the experienced player runs a dynamic rotation to account for boss movements and other things. It's not just about split second accuracy, it's split second accuracy in tune with your skill durations and boss movements. The latter you only know from experience.

On the face of it longer DOT durations fix the issue. In reality, as someone else pointed out, it's the varying length of DOT duration that really screws up your rotation. If you have a DOT of 20 seconds and one of 24 seconds, the beginning player will refresh both at 20 (or eatlier or later), whereas the endgame player will find a dynamic rotation that maximises DOT damage by refreshing at exactly 20 and 24 seconds. Standardised durations simplify rotations. Whether DOTs are 10s or 20s does not matter. That also means sets like Elf Bane or passives that extend DOTs should not become meta.

fred4

@SeaGtGruff, you haven't yet stated your ideas on how to make fights more flexible. I'd like to hear them!

Maybe it sounded like I was arguing with you in that last point, but I'm really not. I like PvP and I like chaotic fights, such as the final Red Petal Bastion fight, because they feel unpredictable and require the flexible responses you are, perhaps, talking about. Note however I'm using the word "feel" very deliberately. The only way I think ZOS could truly create more enjoyble (from my POV) and flexible fights would be by putting some serious AI behind the NPCs. Without that, what feels chaotic and exciting today, can be learnt and predicted in the future. This is what high end players do. It's experience as much as execution.

This reminds me of a TV documentary showcasing Michael Schumacher in his heydey. They tested his hand eye coordination times, which are apparently very consistent among humans. His were nothing special. Then they looked at how he approached corners on the circuit. Whereas his teammates throttle curves were erratic, you might say almost in surprise at having found the entry to the curve, Michael's were much smoother. It was his ability to anticipate and predict stuff that made him a great driver.

It's inevitable people will get bored and they need ever faster and harder hitting challenges. They've learnt the common ingredients that go into even new dungeons and trials already. I weave pretty well, but there is a sizeable gap between me and top players. It's about more than weaving, that's for sure.

blktauna

peacenote wrote: »

ZOS seemed to be on kind of a good path with the newer encounters where there's a hard mode for every boss and THAT'S where you bang your head against the wall. I'm not ashamed to say that, at the moment, my dungeon group is stuck trying to complete Shipwright's Regret Hard Modes. That's ok; we want that kind of a challenge and it's making us better players. But folks can see and enjoy the content without the hard modes in two easier modes - regular veteran and normal. That's great! But U35 REDUCING the DPS of my dungeon team is not going to make those SR Hard Modes more accessible to my team. The ceiling is still the ceiling... what it takes to beat those encounters.

The people who can do the crazy monster parses aren't hurting anyone. It's the content that you can't beat without having ten of those people in your group that's the issue.

This right here

spartaxoxo

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

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.

If there aren't enough people interested in the "olympics" nothing ZOS does will help with that and they can permanently damage the more middle/casual player group in the attempt. I don't think that's what they want.

The issue is that they ARE interested but can't do it because the game doesn't have a normal progression curve. 50k DPS is enough to trivialize nearly all of the content in the game. But it's not good enough to get you invited for vet DLC trials even on regular vet, even in cases where's it enough to do that trial mechanically like some of the older ones.

Some of that is because a high end DPS is double that. The other is because the trials themselves are designed to get progressively more difficult the longer it takes. High end DPS never see these mechanics or only see weak versions, whereas they make stuff next to impossible for lower end DPS. Resulting in guilds simply requiring the higher end DPS. A good example of that is the lightning strikes on VKA's first boss, which escalate in strength the longer the boss survives.

MidniteOwl1913

I found this comment from the devs in the patch notes interesting. It seems they really do think they have found a way to reduce damage "bloat" (their word not mine) and not hurt the average player. Honestly, I think they just don't have any idea of what the average player is like.

"The main reason for streamlining these values was to reduce the bloat of damage production they can provide at the high level, reinforcing an intense necessity to perfectly “light weave” to produce viable damage, while simultaneously retaining their damage levels at the low end for those who rely on them to not be negatively affected. In doing so, we’ve also been able to adjust item sets that augment these effects to be much more impactful without the concern of creating higher burst potential in PvP environments, helping accessibility in all environments."

fred4

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Honestly, I think they just don't have any idea of what the average player is like.

The spread seems to be really wide. The below poll is based on opinion, but that's what it seems to indicate:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/610250/what-do-you-consider-average-dps-this-patch/p1

barney2525

A wide Skill gap promotes Elitism and pushes large numbers of players away from End-game content, and thus pushes many players away from the game.

No Company wants to tell Any player - ' You won't be able to participate in some content '

fred4

barney2525 wrote: »

A wide Skill gap promotes Elitism and pushes large numbers of players away from End-game content, and thus pushes many players away from the game.

No Company wants to tell Any player - ' You won't be able to participate in some content '

You can participate in all normal content with only beginner to moderate skill. Veteran modes add little to nothing in terms of actual content.

Ragnarok0130

barney2525 wrote: »

A wide Skill gap promotes Elitism and pushes large numbers of players away from End-game content, and thus pushes many players away from the game.

No Company wants to tell Any player - ' You won't be able to participate in some content '

I disagree. Games that have nothing to strive for and hand players everything on a silver platter of no effort struggle to retain players in the long term. Games that have a good experience for normal players and have a solid challenging end game to aspire to retain players over time because there's always more to attain or a new challenge to meet.

The game should do something many other games have done for decades and tell new players about in game systems and mechanics and offer them tips to get better. Instead ESO has outsourced that to the community and community add on creators to make up for their own shortfall. It guess its to be expected from BGS's parent company when BGS relies on the community to make their games stable with community generated mods.

Amottica

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

LordDragonMara wrote: »

It has everything to do. Because Weaving and managing your Dots is not so hard thing to do, comparing to aiming for example, in order to get a good mouse control, it takes a lot of time, years and a lot of hours.

In ESO everything comes naturally, if you actually want to improve and get to that level, instead of just complaining that is too hard.

Here's the thing - I'm just here to play a game for enjoyment. All this "you gotta study hard, perfect your <blah blah blah>, put in the hours, etc"... it's crazy to me. Even back when I was a highschool kid, with a million hours a week to play, I didn't care that hard. As a non-competitive 50-something, it's not remotely in my mind..

Then you don’t want to play an MMO, you want to play Skyrim….ESO is an MMO and not Skyrim.

No. They just indicated they are not as concerned about how good their DPS is and such.

The game moto of "play as you want" with the sheer number of choices we have opens the door to builds that do not perform well by the measurement many of us have for doing group content but for many, they have fun with those, well, unique builds. In the end, ESO is not a play how I want you to play and is still an MMORPG.

TaSheen

Amottica wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

LordDragonMara wrote: »

It has everything to do. Because Weaving and managing your Dots is not so hard thing to do, comparing to aiming for example, in order to get a good mouse control, it takes a lot of time, years and a lot of hours.

In ESO everything comes naturally, if you actually want to improve and get to that level, instead of just complaining that is too hard.

Here's the thing - I'm just here to play a game for enjoyment. All this "you gotta study hard, perfect your <blah blah blah>, put in the hours, etc"... it's crazy to me. Even back when I was a highschool kid, with a million hours a week to play, I didn't care that hard. As a non-competitive 50-something, it's not remotely in my mind..

Then you don’t want to play an MMO, you want to play Skyrim….ESO is an MMO and not Skyrim.

No. They just indicated they are not as concerned about how good their DPS is and such.

The game moto of "play as you want" with the sheer number of choices we have opens the door to builds that do not perform well by the measurement many of us have for doing group content but for many, they have fun with those, well, unique builds. In the end, ESO is not a play how I want you to play and is still an MMORPG.

Thank you. I'm with Kiralyn on this one - I'm so burned out on raiding I'll never go back to it in any game. I just want to quest and complete "numb nuts" content in overland. I'm older, and my ping is crap, so I really can't push combat much - it gets painful if I go there.

I raided in WoW over a decade ago - eventually it wasn't fun anymore (well, it wasn't ever exactly fun to begin with, but I got myself into to it so it is what it is) and - I just can't go there again. Too much water under too many bridges, and a decade or more makes a HUGE difference in what I can accomplish here in this game.

BlueRaven

fred4 wrote: »

Does everyone fish? Does everyone build a house? No, right? I suppose the argument goes that nothing really stops you from doing those things, but then again normal trials and normal dungeons do exist. Nothing really stops you from experiencing that content either.

There is a lot of factors that stop people from doing trials. It's not like someone dings 50, and just decides to walk into a trial. Getting a group to accept you, and being ok with it being your first (or even second) time are not insignificant hurdles.

Also the fact that housing appears to be a lot more popular than trials should tell you something. Three of my guilds (and they are NOT housing guilds) have house building contests. Also, about 1-2 years ago my guilds basically stopped doing trials. But one guild still has a group fishing event.

fred4 wrote: »

What is the incentive, why would anyone insist that vet trials are something you need to experience? On the other hand, isn't the difficulty of most vet trials (not all) also a myth propagated by some e players? Requirements, such as having to parse 70K are not real. Nefas loves trials and the community around them. He has an initiative to teach people and came up with realistic requirements you really should meet. They are much, much lower. So, again, I smell a red herring.

For trials in general, curiosity.

Going into cyrodiil is technically even easier then entering a trial, yet you constantly see threads asking for pve versions of it. People want to see it, but don't want the pressure of getting killed. A similar philosophy for trials. They want to see it, but on their own terms.

For vet trials it may not be demand (more on that later) it might just be that Zos is worried that the raw numbers of people doing them are too low. In other words, there might not be enough demand. It's not like even if you make a trial, the different difficulty versions of it can be created for free. There is a financial cost for that content, and maybe they feel that difficult content is not appealing to enough customers to justify that cost.

fred4 wrote: »

There are builds in the game - solo / tank / no compromise builds - that are very OP. I've been talking about mine at length in multiple forum threads. Has a single person adopted my proven build wholesale? Nope. I suppose this goes to people wanting to do their own thing. Fair enough. In the last thread I explained all the theory behind it, why it works. It's a ridiculous build that can do vMA / vVateshran / solo vet HM dungeons / solo arena 1 of vBRP. The power is within the game to make entirely different compromises, yet many people only chase damage. This has to be a social phenomenon as much as anything else. It's not backed by any objective reality.

Do you think casual or even average players care about builds? How many of them are using their upgrade material to boost the overland sets they get in the latest chapter? How many of them visit the forums? How many players do not even own one monster helm?

This is not the first time ZOS has tried to raise dps. They implemented suggested builds into the basic skill menu, they introduced companions to give players a boost in questing. They have tried other means to get the top and bottom closer together.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that yes, there are OP builds. But is the build (if they even know about it) something the player WANTS to do. When many players pick up a fantasy game, most (I would say) are not open minded enough to just choose whatever op build there is and adopt it. Most have a preconceived "construct" in mind, they might want to play a stealthy archer, an OP assassin, or a powerful warrior with a two handed weapon. I have a good friend of mine who across two accounts ONLY builds mag wood elves, over and over again. (She likes how they look.) Will she ever set foot in a normal dungeon, even with people that can easily solo it? No. She is far too intimidated by them.
This is an extreme example, but the point is just because a build is "OP" it does not mean people want to play that build. A wider variety of builds need to be supported. If someone wants to play an orc mag necro dps, it's in zos best interest to make that possible in whatever content they choose to do it in. And how can the player do that if every little bit counts to make their dps high enough for vet content?

fred4 wrote: »

Or so the devs would have you believe. Content like vMA proves otherwise. There is a big delta between completing it and posting a competitive score. I can complete it in about 48 minutes, top scores are done in under 30. I'm not saying vMA is the be all and end all of content design, but there have to be more ways to make flexible content. Black Drake Villa has hard modes for every boss and a secret boss with good rewards at the end.

What percentage of the player population have the dps to even do that on normal? Does vMA record the number of failed attempts? The number of times players tried to do it, failed and never returned? If a player tries some sort of "v" content, and fails miserably, how many will also never try anything "v" related again? Zos HAS those numbers, and maybe they want higher completion rates or at least participation rates. Right now they have to build that content for the players with high dps numbers. Maybe they want to bring those numbers down so they can make content more people feel they have a realistic shot at completing them. Also I am not sure how many people care about scores, to many (and probably most) they care about completing it. It's probably a binary, pass/fail issue. If a high percentage of people can't even complete it, that is a problem.

There is another thread complaining that the "Craglorn trial" scene is cooling off. I think people are getting bored feeling they are regulated to the same few trials, year after year. The newer trials have dps and complexity requirements that pugs can't complete. So what does zos do? Make a new "pug" version of trials?
I think the philosophy they want to try is to lower the dps requirements in trials while at the same time not making the "high end" trial players bored. They are going about it badly, but I feel the idea behind it is sound.

And as an aside, I'll let you think about another concept. What percentage of the player population can solo a public dungeon? I don't think even that is too high. Should they make public dungeons easier?

Another problem not addressed here: PvP has a huge power difference too that makes the experience unfriendly to new players. They tried to lessen it with "NO CP" variations, but since you hardly ever see those areas population capped, it's probably not a very popular option. I wonder how much of this "dps" nerf is really aimed at making pvp more enjoyable to the masses. As in, players NOT getting one or two shot from another more experienced player.

TaSheen

Well, I can't solo world bosses OR public dungeons. Doubt I ever will be able to.

BlueRaven

I just want to add another thing about builds in general. Many builds I see require weapons or gear sets from already difficult vet content. It's not enough to say that op builds exist, but if the common player cannot get the gear FOR those builds, those builds might as well not exist for the majority of those players.

It becomes a variation of the old saying they have about job experience:

You can't do the content without the build, and you can't do the build without doing the content.

Tannus15

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

Announcement from an extremely popular discord. They are shuttering their doors and hosting no more raids. Account wide achievements drove away a lot of experienced raiders, this one is just too much.

vRG HM is insanely difficult. I lead a trials group that has steadily progged our way through all the HM trials and we're currently stuck on Bahsei. We're quite casual, we prog once a week for 2 hours, but that said we've done every HM except vRG and vDSR.

For some reason the content team are balancing trials around the very top tier of ESO end game and then wondering why people can't do it. I don't understand. We're not talking the trifecta here, we're just talking HM. Why don't they want people to be able to clear it?

Let's face it, they could make the HM significantly easier and it would still be a tiny proportion of the player base getting a clear. The vast majority of people can't clear it on vet, never mind HM.

yes, we want a challenge.
yes, we don't want to just clear it on our first attempt.
but honestly their metrics don't feel reasonable.

this patch makes everything worse.

What's more they are making the buffs and debuffs the most important part of dps. you MUST have high major vulnerability and major slayer uptimes. you MUST have everything organised and optimised for good dps now.

the powercreep has not been on an individual level. the powercreep has entirely been from the buffs and debuffs, which they have added to the dummy. Take a look at 3m or 6m parses and it's not like you're seeing 70k+
we were doing 45k parses 4 years ago.
right now on live we're doing 55k mostly because of kinra and rele. again, major berserk on a set, not a great plan.
this patch nerfs us back to 45k on the dummy even with kinra and rele.
it's 40k with julianos and orders wrath.

the last time individual characters got stronger was summerset when they added jewellery traits. since then it's all been group buffs.

Tannus15

@fred4 I'm not the best at vMA but i'm pretty good. my time is usually around 34 minutes. most of the time my score is in the high 580k or low 590k.

I've got multiple characters on the NA vMA leader board for sorc and warden this patch.

I did a vMA run on the PTS. 553k. it took 44 minutes.

They are nerfing us because they have added group buffs and it really sucks

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/discussion/611961/vma-sorc-live-vs-pts

Jaraal

BlueRaven wrote: »

For vet trials it may not be demand (more on that later) it might just be that Zos is worried that the raw numbers of people doing them are too low. In other words, there might not be enough demand. It's not like even if you make a trial, the different difficulty versions of it can be created for free. There is a financial cost for that content, and maybe they feel that difficult content is not appealing to enough customers to justify that cost.

If this were indeed ZOS's reasoning, then they would be increasing damage so that more people would be able to complete vet trials. Instead, they are nerfing damage 20-40%, depending on class.

Why would they want even fewer people utilizing their most labor intensive content? They have never lowered the difficulty of any encounters. So what's the reasoning then?

BlueRaven

Jaraal wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

For vet trials it may not be demand (more on that later) it might just be that Zos is worried that the raw numbers of people doing them are too low. In other words, there might not be enough demand. It's not like even if you make a trial, the different difficulty versions of it can be created for free. There is a financial cost for that content, and maybe they feel that difficult content is not appealing to enough customers to justify that cost.

If this were indeed ZOS's reasoning, then they would be increasing damage so that more people would be able to complete vet trials. Instead, they are nerfing damage 20-40%, depending on class.

Why would they want even fewer people utilizing their most labor intensive content? They have never lowered the difficulty of any encounters. So what's the reasoning then?

Zos’s stated goal was to nerf the top end but leave the lower end alone. Even the title of this thread is about defending the size of that power gap that zos claimed they want to lessen.

Yes, they are going about it badly, but the philosophy behind the changes was made clear. It was to that philosophy that I was referring to, the “why” behind these changes.

barney2525

fred4 wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

A wide Skill gap promotes Elitism and pushes large numbers of players away from End-game content, and thus pushes many players away from the game.

No Company wants to tell Any player - ' You won't be able to participate in some content '

You can participate in all normal content with only beginner to moderate skill. Veteran modes add little to nothing in terms of actual content.

I thought the whole point of this was in obtaining the Gear which is Only obtainable IF you can complete the Veteran Dungeons - which are different content than Normal Dungeons, even tho they technically have the same name.

If they weren't different content, you could get All the Top Gear in normal mode.

fred4

BlueRaven wrote: »

This is an extreme example, but the point is just because a build is "OP" it does not mean people want to play that build. A wider variety of builds need to be supported. If someone wants to play an orc mag necro dps, it's in zos best interest to make that possible in whatever content they choose to do it in. And how can the player do that if every little bit counts to make their dps high enough for vet content?

I must read your post in more detail. For now I'll just respond to some bits.

I just gave advice to someone on their solo build. He ended up making a double SnB single-target only build (not my advice).

Years ago, I gave advice to a player who got stuck on a public dungeon boss. In his words, he tried everything, every trick on his stealthy single-target nightblade to deal with this boss, which consisted of 3 mini bosses. He thought it ought to be nerfed. It took a video showing me spamming Sap Essence, with CP downgraded to his level, to convince him how easy those bosses were.

IMO you cannot and should not change the game to accomodate people like that. This is far from the so-called meta, this is about the basics. What is a spammable. What is an AOE skill. What is a DOT. How do you heal. And so on. If people don't take on advice about how builds work at that level, then OK, maybe they cannot set foot in a normal dungeon. That's to be expected.

Where is the line here? You can't dismantle combat at a fundamental level, because the logical conclusion is a mobile game with an autoplay button and a cash shop only. Doesn't make sense from a role-playing perspective either. If you're a single target assassin, you shouldn't expect to defeat the hordes in Skyreach that way, although I grant you the boss trinity in Old Orsinium that the above player had problems with may have been a borderline case.

But then, your last sentence: "if every little it counts to make their dps high enough for vet content". No. The person who is contemplating vet is at a different level. They have IMO no right to complain, because they can experience the content on normal. This is no longer about missing out on content.

I can understand the trepidation of setting foot in new content with a random group. I feel that too. The possibility of getting stuck and not being able to work through it, without going back to the drawing board, is real. However I think this is partially due to going into the wrong content. The game being so open, allowing you to go anywhere at any time, works against it here. You can homogenise it or level the content, so it's all tailored towards a players abilities. A version of this now happens while you are below level 50. This, I think, creates it's own problems.

When the game was new, there were difficulty jumps. This is an age old complaint. Nowadays so many things have already been done to fix that. Basegame dungeons are easier than DLC. Normal easier than vet. Some world bosses are hard, some easy. How boring would the game be if everything was the same difficulty or if everything scaled to yours?

You can run into a brick wall, when you're lacking fundamental build knowledge or when you're lacking content knowledge. The game allows you to go anywhere. If you run into something too hard, there are probably other places to go that are challenging, but not too hard. The obvious example for dungeons is: Start with normal Fungal Grotto 1. A simple tutorial with dungeon rankings and describing the type of challenge you're likely to encounter, not in flowery RPG terms but in technical terms, might IMO do as much to help new players as these proposed combat changes.

The early Tomb Raider games had a fun training / obstacle course level. Something like that is missing in ESO. Even a challenge such as "here are 100 skeletons that do very little damage, but you have to kill them all" would prompt players to slot and learn about AOE skills, for example.

What percentage of the player population have the dps to even do that on normal?

MA is about experience. Normal MA did not exist when I was a new player, thus I can only take your word for it, when you say it's hard for some.

I do not accept that it's about DPS. Not on normal and not even on vet anymore. When it came out and it was only vet and you didn't have DPS, you were screwed. I tried playing tanky at the time. It didn't work, at least not with the knowledge I had then. These days you can go in with some very tanky builds and still have enough DPS. It requires knowledge and buildcraft, true. Not just any build. However even vMA can be mode very comfortable. I have a build that flat out ignores some mechanics that I thought you could never ignore. Not by being fast, but by being so tanky.

Does vMA record the number of failed attempts?

Here's you conflating normal with vMA again in the next sentence. No. That's not valid. vMA was the hardest content in the game at one point. It was expressly designed for solo endgame players who had nothing else left to do. It should be so hard that you have to put serious work in. You don't get a participation medal for vMA, you get that from normal mode. You also get a sense of progress, because the difficulty rises gradually, and these days you can save that progress by doing the quest.

There is another thread complaining that the "Craglorn trial" scene is cooling off.

I thought so, but no, it's not. What very likely happened is that, when ZOS decided to host the event in Craglorn, they had to spin up a bunch of additional instances of that zone to cater for the player volume. These instances persisted. I'm assuming they are being reduced right now as part of Monday maintenance. In other words the playerbase has been split up across something like 10 versions of Craglorn up until today, whereas normally there are just one or two.

fred4

barney2525 wrote: »

fred4 wrote: »

barney2525 wrote: »

A wide Skill gap promotes Elitism and pushes large numbers of players away from End-game content, and thus pushes many players away from the game.

No Company wants to tell Any player - ' You won't be able to participate in some content '

You can participate in all normal content with only beginner to moderate skill. Veteran modes add little to nothing in terms of actual content.

I thought the whole point of this was in obtaining the Gear which is Only obtainable IF you can complete the Veteran Dungeons - which are different content than Normal Dungeons, even tho they technically have the same name.

If they weren't different content, you could get All the Top Gear in normal mode.

They are not different content. You can get all the top gear in normal mode. Who gave you a different impression?

I once met a player who claimed to do 5K more DPS from golding out their gear and that this was the reason they beat me in duels. Complete nonsense. I golded out my gear and he still beat me. He had just become a better player and that coincided with him golding out his gear.

Unlike other games, golding out gear (except weapons) yields very little benefit in ESO. Neither does obtaining perfected versions of sets (with very few historical exceptions - I can only think of the Asylum destro staff).

A veteran dungeon will give you purple jewelry. A veteran trial gives you some gold jewelry. It's nice to obtain such jewelry in that fashion, because upgrading it is very expensive. However without such jewelry you'll still be within a few percent of top players, if you know what you're doing. Skill counts for so much more. Only weapons should be routinely golded out.

I find that new players often just want a single build to fit and forget for a while. For some reason they usually also want the best version of that build and end up working hard for golded out perfected gear. Given how little difference that makes and how often ZOS shakes up the meta, meaning you might want a different set, this is foolish on both counts. I've been making gold from Dreugh Wax, since forever. If you can afford to use it, great, but it's not necssary.

fred4

Come to think of it, since we all got 1K extra weapon / spell damage at base, even the effect of golding out weapons has been diluted. I'm rich enough to personally still do it, because I sell all the Dreugh Wax I make from crafting writs. If I was broke and looking at the difference between, say, 4.5K and 4.8K weapon damage, I might even conclude it's perfectly fine to run around with a purple weapon.

PrimusTiberius

Like so many have said, its not so much of a skills gap as there is a knowledge gap.

BlueRaven

fred4 wrote: »

They are not different content. You can get all the top gear in normal mode. Who gave you a different impression?

Monster helms, perfected weapons, etc

Korsario

Stamicka wrote: »

For a few years now, the devs have been putting a lot of effort into shrinking the skill gap, but why? What is wrong with a skill gap? Let's talk a bit about Gilliam's reasoning behind recent changes.

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Weaving

Currently, to be truly effective in ESO’s combat, you need to learn to manipulate something that is known as “weaving,” which refers to the act of squeezing multiple actions into the global cooldown window. Doing so drastically increases your agency and output, and it is a staple of the game that we’ve come to embrace, as it helps our combat feel different and exciting to participate in once you learn the ins and outs. However, the impact of weaving leads to a massive gap in performance where players who cannot interact with it as effectively are left miles behind those who can. While this is partially unavoidable and an important part of what makes the mastery of ESO or any activity utilizing a similar system particularly satisfying, we want to do what we can to shorten that delta. The closer the gap between the low and high end, the easier it is to create content that can accommodate a wider audience, while making more natural progression points for those looking to improve. To this end, we’ve started to look at the impact that one of the most common and important forms of weaving has in ESO: Light and Heavy Attack weaving.

So here it seems like the reason for trying to shrink the skill gap is to make it easier to design content for a wider audience. Is this not the purpose of Normal, Veteran, and Veteran Hard Mode difficulties? The same piece of content can be played by players of different skill levels with these optional difficulty modes. It seems like these changes were made to make Veteran Mode more accessible to people, but what's wrong with them doing Normal Mode instead of Vet? If you want Vet content to be less of a challenge, then why have a Vet Mode at all? At the end of the day, it is up to the player to choose to improve and work towards more challenging content. If someone does not want to progress to more challenging content, it doesn't need to be handed to them. This is the reality of any game. So the "make vet content more accessible" reason doesn't really make sense.

I see many people calling the skill gap "unhealthy", but why? Skill gaps exist because some people choose to put time into improving their skills, some people don't. This creates a skill gap. What is wrong with this? Why does it need to be fixed? How is it unhealthy? Share your thoughts.

When theres to much gap you cant produce content that will fit everyone, if the damage difference is to big you cant make overland cotnent both challenging and fun from both sides also dungeons become a skip fest or a snooze fest. Its pretty easy to know this.

ChunkyCat

They probably have data showing tens of thousands of players never even set foot in vet trials.

Anhedonie

Bring back the soft caps?

JustAGoodPlayer

I learned a lot of players do 45-50k from 20-23k. (In few days)
We used 3 kk dummy.

DPS is not some thing skilled or true exped to do.

A lot of players are not interested a lot do not know some thing.
Community is to eletist to learn players things that needs 3 days to learn and become better than they are.

So all you see is "wiwing" everywhere.

Players who just come from other games (friends) already on 160+ cp do damage 30k+ on their 3-7 days of play.

But they did not like a game and walk away ... . Some dissapoitment.

Real difference is betwin game styles and builds. A lot of unnesessary nerfs and changes destroy tons of builds.

Not a lot of people even want to do anything in game now. May be just do some true high end content = housing.