Happy thoughts on a rainy monday regarding the PTS

seventyfive

Most ESO-players do not spend time on the forums.

Zenimax has all the statistics. Ability/class usage over time, outcomes of all sorts of engagements, what abilities make up for what percentages of damage in pve and pvp and so on.

People usually are far more vocal when they're dissatisfied. This means the dissatisfied will often make up an unproportionally large share of the feedback.

It's valuable to keep employees motivated - especially in creative fields like game development. Perhaps some of us should tone down the negativity - your criticism might even have more effect that way as the person who might eventually read it will take you more seriously. Add a thing you enjoyed about the patch as well so they get a better appreciation for what makes both you and them happy, and not just how to avoid being unhappy.

Long term, over the course of many years, zenimax has done an incredible job with ESO. I was one of many of us who pre-ordered the game and quit after a couple weeks. Perhaps even the changes we were most unhappy about had certain upsides after a while. Even the less popular changes inject some novelty to keep that dopamine-pump from slowing down to a complete halt.

The only other thing I'm thinking about right now is this - who do you want to be and how do you want to be viewed? Don't people care about that sort of thing? Or perhaps their answers are just wildly different to mine.

1.1 Method

Jazraena

Take a look at the changes.

Plenty people have said they agreed with the intent of ZOS, but that the changes fail to deliver them, and above all, are unfinished. Incomplete. A first draft. Even things I asked for and greatly would enjoy like harmonized DoT durations miss the mark because they're not harmonized in practice.

There are already more issues to address than they can in the remaining PTS, and if they go through with this, me and many others have to redo half their character lineup or more. Some characters I'll probably just shelf because I can't see how to rework them while remaining within the theme. Who knows what other issues are yet to be discovered.

So sorry, but 'Well meant but not working out' is the best many of us can offer right now, even though I'd otherwise agree with your statement.

biminirwb17_ESO

I have played since beta - have the monkey etc.

I have eighteen characters many of them were my "main" until something changed, and they got parked in the select screen, some have been resurrected due to yet more changes, but they are all still playable.

My magblade may finally make a comeback in pvp one day, she got to Grand Overlord and retired to play Tribute.

My Templar is sad right now and has taken a jab to the knee, but she will be back.

My DK will still be whipping up a storm but perhaps not?

Could take one of the wardens out for a run or get my Nighblade to spam a skill at last.

But I know I will have lots of choices and it will take me a while to work out what I want. This is why I like ESO I have to change as the game changes, sure it's easier for me with sixteen max level characters to respec but I don't think things will change its the nature of the beast.

Or maybe I will start a new character from my two altoholic slots and see what happens.

Jazraena

So, in summary, you are okay with content becoming inaccessible in a patch that is meant to increase content accessibility?

ectoplasmicninja

I don't enjoy anything about this patch. It's not a matter of personal animosity toward anyone, or that I'm being aggressively reactionary or hate the game - I love this game, I have two accounts, I have played for almost 12,000 hours on my main - but I just don't see this fixing anything that needs fixing.

I would say I'm mediocre skill-wise. I can do vDLCs and some hardmodes, and easier vet trials. Sure, having more content become more accessible to me would be great, but this patch achieves the opposite. I do less damage, my rotation is less interesting and dynamic, combat is more difficult in general. Content that was becoming easier for me is now harder. Things are less accessible, not more.

I'll leave possible alternative solutions to folks like Code and Nefas who understand the nuts and bolts of the game much more than I do, because I don't want to make recommendations from a place of relative ignorance, so all I can speak to is my personal experience - and my personal experience is that this patch makes my play feel worse.

divnyi

Most ESO-players do not spend time on the forums.

Which is why what we have now will be amplified by 20 once more casual players notice the damage difference to jabs, for example.

SirLeeMinion

As I have stated elsewhere, I personlly like the longer DoTs and buffs, but they should have retained their current DPS. Fewer bar swaps means fewer times I think I've swapped bars but instead find that I was lag locked onto the same bar. So, yes, I like this part. However, mobs move and many of them die long before the DoTs expire. The nerfed DoTs look okay-ish against the test dummy, but irrelevant elsewhere.

There are a host of reasons this patch is just one more mess coming down the pike. But, rather than reiterate what will not be read or have any impact on development, I'll simply say that I'm jealous that you are getting rain.