Update 35 PTS Combat Feedback & Upcoming Changes

silver1surfer69

Dear Gilliam, if you find the time pls take a brief look into the fossilize bug (its only a little bit off topic, it is not pts related but concerns the game for a long time now).

It is all described here, whats the cause of this bug and what needs to be done to fix it. Im very positive that the fixing should not be too complicated and will be done relatively quick. This bug is in the game for over 1.5 years now.


The post which describes the bugs cause in detail with replication is the 3rd to last post on page 1:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/586263/fossilize-bugged-in-cyrodiil/p1

TY!

PrincessOfThieves

CyberSkooma wrote: »

The main thing I don't understand is why it is felt by the dev team that changes need to happen in the first place. ESO is eight years old, and somehow the combat has not fully settled into its foundation. At some point this has to happen, and you guys have to stop changing how things work.

You say that you want the combat to be more "accessible", but I can tell you for sure, that the least accessible thing you can possibly do for players of ALL skill levels is to continue changing how the combat system functions in the first place. I don't know for sure how many hours you guys spent on these changes in-office, but if it were my decision, I would revert every single change you have made EXCEPT for the very specific change to light attack damage. That's the only thing that makes any kind of justifiable sense.

We just want things to stop changing. I am so tired.

This. These changes are unnecessary and they don't make the content more accessible.
If they want to keep the idea of dots being weaker but lasting longer, they could just use morphs for that. Currently we have a ton of abilities that have one clearly superior morph and a second one that nobody uses. So they could simply make these unpopular morphs last longer and do a bit less damage. So that people have a choice.

Moonspawn

Sandman929

Moonspawn wrote: »

I honestly, and anecdotally, can't remember ever dying to the power of minefield. Thank goodness ZoS addressed this.

Rex-Umbra

20 second timers I very much like for all dots. They just need the dmg higher.

Rex-Umbra

The Necro nerfs must not go live it kills multiple skills and builds.

Elsonso

blktauna wrote: »

My question is, what constitutes no anecdotal feedback?

I don't run cmx anymore and I don't hump dummies. I went out onto the PTS with my toons and simply did the stuff I usually do with ease, and discovered it was no longer easy. I was unable to solo several dungeons I can do easily on live.

That's not an anecdote.

That is exactly an anecdote, and it is similar to what I did.

I didn't provide them with numbers, parses, or combat logs. I just told them what I thought from direct testing. How the game feels. What I am able to do, and how I feel about the changes.

How I **feel** about the game combat is what will determine whether I continue to play, and if I do, to what degree. If my DPS is down 10% but the game feels good, I am happy. If the game feels like a microwaved turd from the back yard, then I am much less happy, even if my DPS is higher.

This is one way that I feel that the development team is off in a direction that I am not interested in. I really don't care about ESO at the mathematical level. If the math works, great, but I am here for the fun. Update 35 PTS Week 1 and Week 2 are not fun, even if they have some sort of mathematical perfection.

blktauna

>.< I consider an anecdote, "my friend told me x did y" not "I did this using the same character with the same skills in the same place where on live I can walk through with no effort but on PTS I was not able to complete". But I respect your opinion.

This is my point. Parsing doesn't show crap, honestly, I'm actually playing the game. It should be enough we alert them to the issue. I have been playing many years and I know the drill on simple dungeons, so when I can no longer solo them on PTS as I do on Live using the same skills, the changes are not good. Why do we have to do all their work as well. I mean everyone is willing to pitch in but I'm not installing a load of addons just to feed numbers to people who are not even going to look at them anyway. Do they not have data folks who can query their game logs?

How many hoops do we need to jump through for them to possibly consider maybe what we have to say might be maybe worth glancing at?

Faulgor

Elsonso wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

My question is, what constitutes no anecdotal feedback?

I don't run cmx anymore and I don't hump dummies. I went out onto the PTS with my toons and simply did the stuff I usually do with ease, and discovered it was no longer easy. I was unable to solo several dungeons I can do easily on live.

That's not an anecdote.

That is exactly an anecdote, and it is similar to what I did.

I didn't provide them with numbers, parses, or combat logs. I just told them what I thought from direct testing. How the game feels. What I am able to do, and how I feel about the changes.

How I **feel** about the game combat is what will determine whether I continue to play, and if I do, to what degree. If my DPS is down 10% but the game feels good, I am happy. If the game feels like a microwaved turd from the back yard, then I am much less happy, even if my DPS is higher.

This is one way that I feel that the development team is off in a direction that I am not interested in. I really don't care about ESO at the mathematical level. If the math works, great, but I am here for the fun. Update 35 PTS Week 1 and Week 2 are not fun, even if they have some sort of mathematical perfection.

ZOS has always taken pride in their data-driven development.
I'd prefer it being fun-driven.

Sandman929

Faulgor wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

My question is, what constitutes no anecdotal feedback?

I don't run cmx anymore and I don't hump dummies. I went out onto the PTS with my toons and simply did the stuff I usually do with ease, and discovered it was no longer easy. I was unable to solo several dungeons I can do easily on live.

That's not an anecdote.

That is exactly an anecdote, and it is similar to what I did.

I didn't provide them with numbers, parses, or combat logs. I just told them what I thought from direct testing. How the game feels. What I am able to do, and how I feel about the changes.

How I **feel** about the game combat is what will determine whether I continue to play, and if I do, to what degree. If my DPS is down 10% but the game feels good, I am happy. If the game feels like a microwaved turd from the back yard, then I am much less happy, even if my DPS is higher.

This is one way that I feel that the development team is off in a direction that I am not interested in. I really don't care about ESO at the mathematical level. If the math works, great, but I am here for the fun. Update 35 PTS Week 1 and Week 2 are not fun, even if they have some sort of mathematical perfection.

ZOS has always taken pride in their data-driven development.
I'd prefer it being fun-driven.

Somehow their "data" changes directions more often than Pac Man. We've all lived through them bowing down to Spreadsheet Messiah...when everything needed to be whole numbers one update, when DoTs needed a buff, then DoTs needed a nerf, then maybe several rounds of every experiment under the sun with timers and whatnot, then yada yada yada.
Have a vision, for once, and explain it fully, then implement it all in one go. If that vision is a boring spamfest, so be it, I can go elsewhere.

siddique

Sandman929 wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

My question is, what constitutes no anecdotal feedback?

I don't run cmx anymore and I don't hump dummies. I went out onto the PTS with my toons and simply did the stuff I usually do with ease, and discovered it was no longer easy. I was unable to solo several dungeons I can do easily on live.

That's not an anecdote.

That is exactly an anecdote, and it is similar to what I did.

I didn't provide them with numbers, parses, or combat logs. I just told them what I thought from direct testing. How the game feels. What I am able to do, and how I feel about the changes.

How I **feel** about the game combat is what will determine whether I continue to play, and if I do, to what degree. If my DPS is down 10% but the game feels good, I am happy. If the game feels like a microwaved turd from the back yard, then I am much less happy, even if my DPS is higher.

This is one way that I feel that the development team is off in a direction that I am not interested in. I really don't care about ESO at the mathematical level. If the math works, great, but I am here for the fun. Update 35 PTS Week 1 and Week 2 are not fun, even if they have some sort of mathematical perfection.

ZOS has always taken pride in their data-driven development.
I'd prefer it being fun-driven.

Somehow their "data" changes directions more often than Pac Man. We've all lived through them bowing down to Spreadsheet Messiah...when everything needed to be whole numbers one update, when DoTs needed a buff, then DoTs needed a nerf, then maybe several rounds of every experiment under the sun with timers and whatnot, then yada yada yada.
Have a vision, for once, and explain it fully, then implement it all in one go. If that vision is a boring spamfest, so be it, I can go elsewhere.

I can almost predict Update 36, for example: wall will now cost xxxx instead of xxxx.
Whip now again uses magicka only.
Bla bla bla.

Update 37: drastic combat changes. Destroy what everyone learnt in two updates again.

Elsonso

blktauna wrote: »

This is my point. Parsing doesn't show crap, honestly, I'm actually playing the game. It should be enough we alert them to the issue. I have been playing many years and I know the drill on simple dungeons, so when I can no longer solo them on PTS as I do on Live using the same skills, the changes are not good. Why do we have to do all their work as well. I mean everyone is willing to pitch in but I'm not installing a load of addons just to feed numbers to people who are not even going to look at them anyway. Do they not have data folks who can query their game logs?

How many hoops do we need to jump through for them to possibly consider maybe what we have to say might be maybe worth glancing at?

Well... first, keep in mind that the ship sailed long before anything was put on PTS. PTS is for fixing the ship the best that they can before August 22. This ship arrives on schedule, even if they have to get out and drag it along the bottom with ropes. No one in a corporate bureaucratic environment treats The Schedule lightly.

Second, the combat team uses numbers. As I see it, they don't like Anecdotal Evidence (any definition) as much as numbers and facts because they cannot compare what is being seen by players to what the calculations say should be seen.

How many hoops? First, you need to get hired by ZOS and placed on the Combat Team... That is really the only way to have influence into decisions made months before the players are even aware of them.

VaranisArano

Elsonso wrote: »

blktauna wrote: »

This is my point. Parsing doesn't show crap, honestly, I'm actually playing the game. It should be enough we alert them to the issue. I have been playing many years and I know the drill on simple dungeons, so when I can no longer solo them on PTS as I do on Live using the same skills, the changes are not good. Why do we have to do all their work as well. I mean everyone is willing to pitch in but I'm not installing a load of addons just to feed numbers to people who are not even going to look at them anyway. Do they not have data folks who can query their game logs?

How many hoops do we need to jump through for them to possibly consider maybe what we have to say might be maybe worth glancing at?

How many hoops? First, you need to get hired by ZOS and placed on the Combat Team... That is really the only way to have influence into decisions made months before the players are even aware of them.

Yep, especially since the Class Representative Program has ridden off into the sunset.

Not that the assurance that actual players had seen these decisions months ahead of time really helped. Even then, it was pretty clear that the Devs had their own vision for how things were going to change and the class reps weren't going to change anything the Devs had their heart set on. See the speed nerfs in Cyrodiil that predictably left everyone except the ball groups slowed down, the nerfs during Murkmire that didn't actually lower the ceiling, and the major combat shifts between Scalebreaker and Dragonhold.

Most patches, there are some things that the Devs are willing to budge on and some things they won't. If they won't budge, then it doesn't matter what feedback they get.

(Well, that's not entirely true. The feedback they get will be cited in the next update's patch for why combat is dramatically changing again.)

Falcon_of_light

resolving vigor is buff for everyone but nightblades, majore resolve is useless for nb cause we have it already on cloack, so for nightblades its just a nerf of the only usable healing ability in stam build...

gronoxvx

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

I still don't get how after 8 years you guys don't have a consistent vision for how you want the combat to be. This should have been something thought about before the game was finished and you should have stuck to your guns. I could understand it if you wanted to shake things up once or twice throughout the years to try something new, but not more or less 35 times.

100% this. This is why a lot of us are so burnt out/fatigued with how drastically things are changed every 3 to 6 months. You even told us in the past this was going to stop after player feedback, but here we are. Again.

Falcon_of_light

Add to resolving vigor majore protection isntead of majore resolve, protection will fit it much more and its will be not just pure nerf of stamblade...

xylena_lazarow

Falcon_of_light wrote: »

resolving vigor is buff for everyone but nightblades, majore resolve is useless for nb cause we have it already on cloack, so for nightblades its just a nerf of the only usable healing ability in stam build...

It pretty much deletes "stam" as a playstyle or build archetype on all classes. The unique HoT/burst combo of old Resolving Vigor was anti-spam and could be used to set up offensive burst windows, it will be missed, it allowed for a form of dynamic combat that is now replaced by mag burst heal spam. I'm not sure where the new Resolving Vigor fits, probably only on DK where the weak HoT is better than the weak DoT, and they already get all the relevant passives from Coag Blood.

LordRukia

Wikter_Bravo wrote: »

But why do changes no one has asked for?

They gotta fix what isn't broken. Development 101. It doesn't matter if we want it or not, it justifies their jobs and gives them something to mess with.

I'll be back when its all reverted/cancelled. Again. Maybe they just don't want us to play, wrong demographic, maybe we don't spend enough in the shop. Devs are universally allergic to their players requiring any sort of prefrontal cortex usage, and universally it always backfires in their faces, yet they still do it. Its an endless wheel of stupidity, we live in a matrix

Tannus15

A friendly reminder that providing data always helps us far more than anecdotal feedback, though both are still welcome.

The frustrating thing about this is we knew, we KNEW as soon as we read the patch notes what these changes were going to do.

Any end game PvE player looked at those patch notes and could see how bad they were going to be in content, actual, real content and we knew what the out come was going to be.

And we also knew that ZoS wouldn't believe us.

So groups organised to spend hours of their time on the PTS for the express purpose of demonstrating to the dev team what a disaster they had made. Codes, Nefas and others didn't do those runs for themselves.
They already knew.
They read the patch notes, they knew what the outcome was.

They and other did those trial runs to educate the people in charge and to show them what a huge mistake they were making because they knew that ZoS wouldn't believe them.

And now what, they have to go back in to the PTS after week 3 to show them that the changes aren't enough? Why do the players have to spend hours and hours of their time showing ZoS that their decision making is flawed, that the premise they are basing all their assumptions on is flawed?

I don't know how many people need to say it, I don't know why ZoS won't listen.

• You don't increase accessibility with nerfs.
• If your aim is to lower the ceiling then stop putting the goal posts on the roof.
• No one cares what the "tippy top" are doing other than to say congratulations. Stop Balancing Around Them.

Mackinsar

Please scrap all these proposed nerfs and leave the game the way it is.

Why do you feel a need to change the combat system completely every update cycle?

I think that you have no idea how demoralizing, irritating, and aggravating all of this is to your core customer base. I saw where one of your developers called the reactions “knee-jerk” but they are anything but that. These are badly-thought-out changes. They will impact our enjoyment of the game. They are likely to make a number of us leave it.

Please stop and scrap the nerfs.

Howda

Hi

Despite that it feels like players are providing feedback and game developers are ready to make the changes, still there is something off.

- Why having so many Dots? the combat is not the strong side of the game, animation wise, so generalizing DoTs, will make the game even more boring.
- Lets make HoTs named buffs, so they only stack 2 times, where the second cast or any other secondary increased the effect by certain percentage per player. (1%-2%)
- Give us skills that apply the major buffs and debuffs instead of DoTs, (give us more buffs and debuffs, like elemental dmg, frontal weak points, flank weak points etc.)
- Create flank, front dmg directions makes the heals important from where they are used instead of DoTs
- We can even go with DMG increase so trial bosses die more quickly.
- It feels like combat design team does not want to risk it here and goes with the safe/easy route.

I ll be back

Twohothardware

Any changes where a dot or heal does less damage or healing per second needs to be reverted. Full stop. Stop trying to make it work by differentiating “sticky” and “static” skills, those type of changes are not going to improve the gameplay for anyone at any skill level. It’s a nerf to everyone

Baccarooda

Revert the changes, nerf oakensoul in pvp and fix savage werewolf, then go back to the drawing board and stop with these sweeping changes.

Sultan0fSwing

I'm a returning player, and I have probably always have been near the "floor" level, as far as my stats and skills go. Maybe one of the few casuals who would bother posting on forums, so hear me out.

From what I understand of this update, it's supposed to kill "end-game" player damage output, in order to bring it closer to mine. Also, make it easier for me to keep all buffs, debuffs and DOTs active - while rendering them less impactful at the same time.

Reading this, as a floor player, I don't feel helped at all. I don't feel that I will have an easier time with the game, or that it will be more accessible ; but I feel I won't get to really progress at all, as if knowing what you do did not matter anymore. I can just keep, you know, try to weave with more or less efficiency. Launch effects when I remember I have them slotted.
And overall, I feel that high-end players are just punished and downgraded to my level, while difficulty remains untouched. I don't feel pleased about it. I gain nothing from it. But they lose much.

Platemale

I've been playing ESO+ since July of 2014 and see many things I have a great contention with. Sometimes it's even difficult to associate updates with any reasonable vision of the original game, knowing full well that all things must evolve, but certainly not in the capacity that ESO has. It seems to me that no matter what, anything that has potential or merit in benefiting the players must and is nerfed. This is so distressing to me and has made me ponder the continuance of myself in the game from time to time.
Secondly, the absolute LOSS of our endeared Apex Predator mounts that have all become items "for sale" in the crown store is obviously a grab for more profit to the game staff and owners. I hope this affects the same mentioned insomuch that it has destroyed the fun in purchasing crates in order to get those AP mounts that few, and very few had. I can tell you that if this does not change or rectify itself back to the way it was, I will never buy another crate from you, and I have spent thousands of $$ over the years. As B.B. King would sing..."The Thrill is Gone", baby.
I'm so sorry to see the game "devolve" to such a state, of which many more too numerous to mention exist.

Holycannoli

CyberSkooma wrote: »

The main thing I don't understand is why it is felt by the dev team that changes need to happen in the first place. ESO is eight years old, and somehow the combat has not fully settled into its foundation. At some point this has to happen, and you guys have to stop changing how things work.

You say that you want the combat to be more "accessible", but I can tell you for sure, that the least accessible thing you can possibly do for players of ALL skill levels is to continue changing how the combat system functions in the first place. I don't know for sure how many hours you guys spent on these changes in-office, but if it were my decision, I would revert every single change you have made EXCEPT for the very specific change to light attack damage. That's the only thing that makes any kind of justifiable sense.

We just want things to stop changing. I am so tired.

It's ok, they said they're gonna spend the next few patches balancing this patch.

Which basically means reverting these changes and buffing everything that's been nerfed, like we the players all know needs to happen but they stubbornly refuse to admit.

wolfie1.0.

@ZOS_Gilliam

I understand your need for data and stats on combat interactions. But I would like to point out that to obtain those lovely stats you need to install a third party addon that is not native to ESO. Perhaps if you want hard numbers like this in the future you could add such functionality directly into the games ui. Until then expect much of your data to be anecdotal in nature.

I would also add that qualitative interactions are more valuable in than quantitative ones in an entertainment product such as ESO. It needs to be fun and enjoyable. As stated in a post above the game could be perfectly balanced... and not be fun.

Fun, which is a very very subjective and qualitative ideal, is what drives people to play eso.

Please, Show us were the fun is in these changes?

Where are the advantages that lead to more fun?

How are these changes going to be more rewarding?

weights44

Personally I feel like the combat changes are server related. I think less ticks improves performance. I play on console and I’m having issues where in pve and pvp I can’t barswap and I’m randomly dying out of no where. Then suddenly a bunch of attacks hit me after I’m dead for 10-12 seconds. I heard the server upgrades did wonders for pc. But unfortunately on console I think they’d rather rebuild the combat of the game to see if that helps The servers out before they spend money replacing them. In the end that’s just my opinion based on their efforts.

K9002

weights44 wrote: »

Personally I feel like the combat changes are server related. I think less ticks improves performance. I play on console and I’m having issues where in pve and pvp I can’t barswap and I’m randomly dying out of no where. Then suddenly a bunch of attacks hit me after I’m dead for 10-12 seconds. I heard the server upgrades did wonders for pc. But unfortunately on console I think they’d rather rebuild the combat of the game to see if that helps The servers out before they spend money replacing them. In the end that’s just my opinion based on their efforts.

It would genuinely help if the DoTs ticked every 2 seconds but damage per tick was doubled instead of further reduced. If it will take longer to kill everything, the whole fights and related combat calculations will drag on. More sidekicks will spawn during boss fights and they will linger a bit longer, and all those little things have their own AI. The only way it's going to improve server performance is by discouraging people from trying that kind of content in the first place.

wolfie1.0.

@ZOS_Gilliam

8.1.2 patch notes read...

I think we all really need to see the dev team do a legitimate trifecta clear in each of the most recent trials with the pts settings. Show us its possible show us the fun.