So, we got a confirmation that we weren't heard

divnyi

Adjustments to U35? On PTS3, so no further feedback is possible?

We don't need any adjustments to U35. U35 is a failure from top to bottom - in the concepts, in the changes, in the new sets. You won't be able to fix it.

VaranisArano

Not to say you can't read the worst into this and ZOS_Kevin's matching comment here, but...

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7657946/#Comment_7657946

It's very normal for ZOS to do small fixes in PTS Week 2, and then do the major changes in PTS Week 3. It's also usually accompanied by Week 2 Panic when everyone thinks that ZOS didn't listen. At least this time, ZOS gave us the timeline.

xylena_lazarow

VaranisArano wrote: »

It's very normal for ZOS to do small fixes in PTS Week 2, and then do the major changes in PTS Week 3.

Yep, they've followed this exact pattern for years now, and they only change a couple things. They'll still push through most of the ill-advised changes and then swing the pendulum wildly in the other direction come u36.

VaranisArano

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

It's very normal for ZOS to do small fixes in PTS Week 2, and then do the major changes in PTS Week 3.

Yep, they've followed this exact pattern for years now, and they only change a couple things. They'll still push through most of the ill-advised changes and then swing the pendulum wildly in the other direction come u36.

Oh, yes, I'm resigned to it at this point. So I'm not getting my hopes up for PTS Week 3, just figuring that these comments were partly aimed at restraining the inevitable "ZOS didn't change anything Week 2" bargaining phase.

I made the Five Stages of Patch Note Grief for Scalebreaker, and it remains appropriate. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483874/5-stages-of-patch-note-grief/p1

xaraan

VaranisArano wrote: »

Not to say you can't read the worst into this and ZOS_Kevin's matching comment here, but...

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7657946/#Comment_7657946

It's very normal for ZOS to do small fixes in PTS Week 2, and then do the major changes in PTS Week 3. It's also usually accompanied by Week 2 Panic when everyone thinks that ZOS didn't listen. At least this time, ZOS gave us the timeline.

Yea, they will make the biggest changes on week 3, but if they put this concept into the PTS in the first place (last time the LA changes were just a 'test' and not even a real PTS) then it's someone's baby they are shoving through no matter what.

And the other problem is, they never fix what needs to fix or balance what needs to be balanced by the time the patch goes live anyway. So they will make some sweeping shakeup to look like they listened in week 3. A few minor things again in week 4 and then nothing as they shove whatever mess into live from there.

They really don't give enough testing time to patches. They should be coming to the PTS just for things they overlooked, wider load testing and random bugs. And not for their customers to fight them to fix their game for them.

GreatGildersleeve

By the time it hits PTS, it’s not testing. It’s QA. The devs have decided what’s going through and they’re using us to find bugs.

I can count on one hand the times where they’ve changed (never reversed) a decision during pts.

merpins

GreatGildersleeve wrote: »

By the time it hits PTS, it’s not testing. It’s QA. The devs have decided what’s going through and they’re using us to find bugs.

I can count on one hand the times where they’ve changed (never reversed) a decision during pts.

I believe you mean you can count on one finger, since it's only happened once if I recall correctly.

xylena_lazarow

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

I believe you mean you can count on one finger, since it's only happened once if I recall correctly.

Cast time on damage shields
Single target silence on Incap
Gaze of Sithis 10k armor
Oakensoul Werewolf
Soldier of Anguish (no idea why people freaked out about this one though)

There's been other stuff, couple things each cycle that they aren't dead set on pushing through

TPishek

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

I believe you mean you can count on one finger, since it's only happened once if I recall correctly.

Cast time on damage shields
Single target silence on Incap
Gaze of Sithis 10k armor
Oakensoul Werewolf
Soldier of Anguish (no idea why people freaked out about this one though)

There's been other stuff, couple things each cycle that they aren't dead set on pushing through

Every single one of those things still got changed regardless. Once ZOS gets something in their head, no matter how much people hate and fight it, they throw a tantrum and then go ahead and do SOMETHING to it anyway. In their view, they can know better than us and make no mistakes. E.g. we fought HARD against the cast time on shields, so instead they cut the max size way way down and remade them to work as essentially extra health.

ZiggyTStardust

They would never completly scrap the entire update 35, that would also include not releaseing the two new dungeons, which surely must be unthinkable for them. There is a small chance that they would delay the update by a few weeks, but I even find that unlikley.
It's possible that they will reverse course on the Light attack changes, the dot changes and some of the skill and set nerfs, but all of that would fit well into "some adjustments for PTS week 3"

Tannus15

My predictions for PTS3

the light attack damage change is staying, and honestly i don't think people care that much.

heavy attacks might get changed, particularly lightning staff heavy attacks. this is a popular casual play style which just sucks on PTS

short dots will be changed to 14s, long dots 20s. the damage ratio to spammables will be adjusted, probably to 1.87 or something.

healing will go back to 1s ticks per second and they will nerf healing in battle spirit to make up for it

Foxtrot39

Nah we're being heard but also getting ignored

Sandman929

We've still got a couple of months before ZoS apologizes again for poor communication and vows to do better.

React

To be honest, at this point from a pvp perspective, I'm just hoping they'll

1) Rework nocturnals. If a way to remove people's buffs comes into the game, the PVP experience is going to become extremely unenjoyable.

2) Buff light/medium/heavy damage by a decent amount. Currentley on the PTS, dueling damage feels much lower than it does on live. It seems to be exclusively because weaving is so ridiculously nerfed in pvp, that without 100% uptime empower and off balance you basically do no weaving damage at all.

Didgerion

divnyi wrote: »

Adjustments to U35? On PTS3, so no further feedback is possible?

We don't need any adjustments to U35. U35 is a failure from top to bottom - in the concepts, in the changes, in the new sets. You won't be able to fix it.

It is easy to fix actually. The changes are not too bad, the numbers just don't make any sense.

Here is how it can be fixed:
- Slightly buff light and heavy attacks, leave it be a plain number if you wish.
- Buffs and Debuffs lasting 20s is ok
- Make dots/hots 10s (6 ticks, or 5 ticks if it has a hit effect)
- Make ground effects 10s (6 or 5 ticks)
- Make burst hots/dots 4s(3 or 2 ticks)

And redo the stamsorc please. That poor class has nothing, no burst, no heals and no ultimates.

RBAP28

Is everyone forgetting the 95 page PTS 33 feedback thread for AwA? This going live was something I didn't think would happen. Even from a business point of view, taking away customers play time? So if history repeats, they nerf us into the ground now, then buff us back up (just in time) for next years release.

merpins

RBAP28 wrote: »

Is everyone forgetting the 95 page PTS 33 feedback thread for AwA? This going live was something I didn't think would happen. Even from a business point of view, taking away customers play time? So if history repeats, they nerf us into the ground now, then buff us back up (just in time) for next years release.

Sounds like something ZoS would do. To be fair though, the outrage for the CP 1 to CP 2 was less than this. it was something along the lines of 40-60 split in terms of players that were happy with it vs players that were unhappy (more like 35-55, with 10% being mixed). I was more unhappy with the CP2 system itself, honestly. But that was a tough 50/50 split. This time around, it's 8-80 with 12% being mixed. A whopping 80% of players agree that they hate this update. Let's hope ZoS doesn't just say "tough ***" and releases it like they did update 33.

starkerealm

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

RBAP28 wrote: »

Is everyone forgetting the 95 page PTS 33 feedback thread for AwA? This going live was something I didn't think would happen. Even from a business point of view, taking away customers play time? So if history repeats, they nerf us into the ground now, then buff us back up (just in time) for next years release.

Sounds like something ZoS would do. To be fair though, the outrage for the CP 1 to CP 2 was less than this. it was something along the lines of 40-60 split in terms of players that were happy with it vs players that were unhappy (more like 35-55, with 10% being mixed). I was more unhappy with the CP2 system itself, honestly. But that was a tough 50/50 split. This time around, it's 8-80 with 12% being mixed. A whopping 80% of players agree that they hate this update. Let's hope ZoS doesn't just say "tough ***" and releases it like they did update 33.

If they do, they're going to lose a very significant chunk of their playerbase overnight.

renne

Can't wait for U36 when they revert everything in a desperate effort to bribe everyone back to the game with a hangdog notes app apology.

Treeshka

Maybe they can buff the Champion Points significantly to increase the effectiveness of the system and overall damage.

TPishek

renne wrote: »

Can't wait for U36 when they revert everything in a desperate effort to bribe everyone back to the game with a hangdog notes app apology.

And then Update 37 will be "We took a long break since the last big combat overhaul, but we still have to finish our work" and we'll see something even more draconian and asinine.

Marto

It simply takes more than 1 week for the devs to parse through all the feedback and come up with tweaks.

Having balance changes in PTS2 is pretty much impossible, as the devs would only have 2-3 days to come up with them. Remember that most of them don't work weekends, and the first day or two are spent doing nothing but reading comments and gathering data.

renne

Treeshka wrote: »

Maybe they can buff the Champion Points significantly to increase the effectiveness of the system and overall damage.

You mean the Champion Points they've been nerfing every patch since CP2.0 to combat power creep?

PrincessOfThieves

starkerealm wrote: »

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

RBAP28 wrote: »

Is everyone forgetting the 95 page PTS 33 feedback thread for AwA? This going live was something I didn't think would happen. Even from a business point of view, taking away customers play time? So if history repeats, they nerf us into the ground now, then buff us back up (just in time) for next years release.

Sounds like something ZoS would do. To be fair though, the outrage for the CP 1 to CP 2 was less than this. it was something along the lines of 40-60 split in terms of players that were happy with it vs players that were unhappy (more like 35-55, with 10% being mixed). I was more unhappy with the CP2 system itself, honestly. But that was a tough 50/50 split. This time around, it's 8-80 with 12% being mixed. A whopping 80% of players agree that they hate this update. Let's hope ZoS doesn't just say "tough ***" and releases it like they did update 33.

If they do, they're going to lose a very significant chunk of their playerbase overnight.

I'm pretty sure about that.
Some people defend this patch because they think that it will actually make content more accessible, and many aren't even aware of what's going on because they don't read forums.
If this patch goes live, the outrage will be way more impactful than it is now. People remember these kinds of things. ESO still gets a bad rap for being released in a super buggy state 8 years ago, and a mass exodus might be fatal for its reputation.
Honestly, I really don't want to see that. I like almost everything about ESO - its setting, dungeon content, quests, housing, even ToT, but these combat changes make me not want to play anymore.

divnyi

Didgerion wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

Adjustments to U35? On PTS3, so no further feedback is possible?

We don't need any adjustments to U35. U35 is a failure from top to bottom - in the concepts, in the changes, in the new sets. You won't be able to fix it.

It is easy to fix actually. The changes are not too bad, the numbers just don't make any sense.

Here is how it can be fixed:
- Slightly buff light and heavy attacks, leave it be a plain number if you wish.
- Buffs and Debuffs lasting 20s is ok
- Make dots/hots 10s (6 ticks, or 5 ticks if it has a hit effect)
- Make ground effects 10s (6 or 5 ticks)
- Make burst hots/dots 4s(3 or 2 ticks)

And redo the stamsorc please. That poor class has nothing, no burst, no heals and no ultimates.

That's not easy. You listed hella lot of things here.
That's the problem, they won't be able to balance things in time, even if they understood the game and did reasonable changes, just because the volume of changes in PTS1. If.

divnyi

PrincessOfThieves wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

RBAP28 wrote: »

Is everyone forgetting the 95 page PTS 33 feedback thread for AwA? This going live was something I didn't think would happen. Even from a business point of view, taking away customers play time? So if history repeats, they nerf us into the ground now, then buff us back up (just in time) for next years release.

Sounds like something ZoS would do. To be fair though, the outrage for the CP 1 to CP 2 was less than this. it was something along the lines of 40-60 split in terms of players that were happy with it vs players that were unhappy (more like 35-55, with 10% being mixed). I was more unhappy with the CP2 system itself, honestly. But that was a tough 50/50 split. This time around, it's 8-80 with 12% being mixed. A whopping 80% of players agree that they hate this update. Let's hope ZoS doesn't just say "tough ***" and releases it like they did update 33.

If they do, they're going to lose a very significant chunk of their playerbase overnight.

Honestly, I really don't want to see that. I like almost everything about ESO - its setting, dungeon content, quests, housing, even ToT, but these combat changes make me not want to play anymore.

This.
But I also understand that if I love this game the best thing to do after this changes land on live is to stop playing entirely, so statistics show the incorrect decision and they fix the game back.

EdmondDontes

Good lord oh mighty. Another critical game related update POSTED ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND NOT ON THE OFFICIAL FORUMS.

It would be funny if it weren't so discrediting to the company.

virtus753

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Good lord oh mighty. Another critical game related update POSTED ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND NOT ON THE OFFICIAL FORUMS.

It would be funny if it weren't so discrediting to the company.

You mean the thing about adjustments? I mean, different words, but the sentiment is very similar:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7657946#Comment_7657946

Or was there something else on social media I missed because I’m not on it?

Ingenon

TPishek wrote: »

renne wrote: »

Can't wait for U36 when they revert everything in a desperate effort to bribe everyone back to the game with a hangdog notes app apology.

And then Update 37 will be "We took a long break since the last big combat overhaul, but we still have to finish our work" and we'll see something even more draconian and asinine.

^ This. Both of these.

Oh, and the PTS week 3 changes? DOT duration will be adjusted to 19 seconds, instead of 20 seconds that was in PTS week 1. Or maybe they will double down on their changes, and make DOT duration longer than 20 seconds ...

kringled_1

I'm expecting aoe dot resource costs to go up, "to better match their increased damage per cast" and noone will run them anymore.

Jaimeh

Even their own schedule, having to address things on week 3, confirms there's simply not enough to time to test and tweak these huge changes they introduce on a 5-week pts cycle... I've build my template character, parsed for hours, even did some content, and reported what I thought, but unless they pretty much revert a lot of the changes, I don't know if there' ll be enough time for them to assimilate the stuff we'll have to now retest on week 3...