Update 35 PTS Combat Feedback & Upcoming Changes

siddique

Jazraena wrote: »

Kirawolfe wrote: »

Greeed2025 wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert

Knee jerk reactions... while not unexpected, they are still tiresome and disappointing.

I get it, change is scary. At the same time though, a little trust would be much appreciated. At least experience the actual changes before guessing and going off the deep end...

This is incredibly insulting.

He ignores the fact that they have tested it, and ignores the fact that these players are smart and not just being 'emotional' 'going off the deep end'.

He consigns people who are rightfully concerned about U35 to that convenient, easily dismissed bucket of 'people afraid of change' when the majority are so very far from that - content creators that know this game better than he does and know the impact these changes will have at every level of gameplay.

I am disappointed in the 'leadership' being shown here.

That was before the PTS. Thus people have, in fact, not tested it.

They were right anyway in the end, but still, let's not muddle the facts.

Which shows how everyone knew before he did. 😄

Jazraena

Ayup.

renne

Literally just straight up ignoring all the issues templars have with the Burning Light and Jabs/Sweeps nerfs, because I guess we just don't matter or count if templar is our main.

This is exactly why when my yearly sub expired last week I never renewed it. Nearly $200 bucks is a lot to put into a game [snip]
[edited for bashing]

Dojohoda

My feedback would be the same as it was every year for the last few years. I really dislike the amount of sweeping changes that you make to the various and numerous mechanics of skills, gear, classes, and how things are calculated. There are far too many details to unlearn and relearn every few months and doing so is a waste of my time. Despite liking the game and enjoying how beautiful it is, my interest is waning.

TalosOfDoom

Was there anything mentioned about the cutting defense scaling being changed in the patch notes on PTS? I haven't seen anything stated about it there was only a statement about the potions and enchantments proc being fixed but nothing about a nerf to scaling or scaling not working properly:

Live values with major resolve:


Live value without major resolve:


PTS values without major and minor resolve:


PTS values with major resolve:


PTS values with major and minor resolve:


The scaling is terrible on the PTS or practically non existent can this be looked into ? Or can you point us to the source of the change where it's commented by the developer?

Ragnarok0130

Jazraena wrote: »

Kirawolfe wrote: »

Greeed2025 wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert

Knee jerk reactions... while not unexpected, they are still tiresome and disappointing.

I get it, change is scary. At the same time though, a little trust would be much appreciated. At least experience the actual changes before guessing and going off the deep end...

This is incredibly insulting.

He ignores the fact that they have tested it, and ignores the fact that these players are smart and not just being 'emotional' 'going off the deep end'.

He consigns people who are rightfully concerned about U35 to that convenient, easily dismissed bucket of 'people afraid of change' when the majority are so very far from that - content creators that know this game better than he does and know the impact these changes will have at every level of gameplay.

I am disappointed in the 'leadership' being shown here.

That was before the PTS. Thus people have, in fact, not tested it.

They were right anyway in the end, but still, let's not muddle the facts.

So the end game players who play this game for thousands of hours were able to simply look at the patch notes and identify the issues that without playing PTS which the devs who work on the game could not. It seems the devs should actually listen to player feedback rather than just receive and discard it when it doesn't reinforce their desired end point. I get it devs, player feedback is scary, but a little trust is much appreciated.

Jazraena

Oh no, you misunderstand. That comment was before the patch notes, even.

KMarble

Jazraena wrote: »

Oh no, you misunderstand. That comment was before the patch notes, even.

I don't understand why so many people keep on bringing this up as a means to dismiss the gravity of his statement. He knew what was coming when he posted that. IMO, the tweet is even more worrisome because he knew that what was revealed at that point was just the tip of the iceberg.

Jazraena

KMarble wrote: »

Jazraena wrote: »

Oh no, you misunderstand. That comment was before the patch notes, even.

I don't understand why so many people keep on bringing this up as a means to dismiss the gravity of his statement. He knew what was coming when he posted that. IMO, the tweet is even more worrisome because he knew that what was revealed at that point was just the tip of the iceberg.

I am not dismissing anything.

As you correctly say, the fact that people saw this coming is more damning, not less. I have advocated to check out the actual patch first out of fairness but was every bit as concerned about their initial preview as others were. But muddying the facts as to when or in reaction to what that comment was made only harms the credibility of complaints, so lets keep those straight.

KMarble

Jazraena wrote: »

KMarble wrote: »

Jazraena wrote: »

Oh no, you misunderstand. That comment was before the patch notes, even.

I don't understand why so many people keep on bringing this up as a means to dismiss the gravity of his statement. He knew what was coming when he posted that. IMO, the tweet is even more worrisome because he knew that what was revealed at that point was just the tip of the iceberg.

I am not dismissing anything.

As you correctly say, the fact that people saw this coming is more damning, not less. I have advocated to check out the actual patch first out of fairness but was every bit as concerned about their initial preview as others were. But muddying the facts as to when or in reaction to what that comment was made only harms the credibility of complaints, so lets keep those straight.

Sorry. I didn't mean to imply you were dismissing anything. I apologize for putting you on the spot.

Jazraena

Not to worry!

IonicKai

Please do not go through with these changes. We have seen major combat shake ups virtually every patch for the last 3 years... Slow down. Take incremental changes. Spend more time analyzing. Come up with a complete vision. Finish your previous work.

If you want to target accessibility in content please look at a more complete picture of the data. Compare raiders that have attempted vet to those that complete vet to those that complete vet with high scores and faster times. Do the same thing for hms. Break down even further for teams that get a trifecta complete compared to those that set world records. Categorize the differences between these groups. Try to determine what of it is just player skill vs coordination. Determine which buffs are too rare on lower end teams and which combinations of gear are granting too much to the high end without any real use on the lower end and make decisions on if the buffs need to be easier to access (improve the floor) or adjusted to not be as strong (lower the ceiling). The nerfs should be very selective and careful because you tend to mess with the floor and mid tier and even some of upper tier so it should only be an option when it truly wasn't intended and is more on the scale of exploit.

Please don't release the combat changes of this patch and go back through with a scalpel instead of swinging at combat balance with a sledgehammer. Fundamentally high ilse offers a more open gameplay and I would much rather see changes like making sustain easier (something in the patch) or the buff to PA rather then arbitrarily doubling down on a nerf to light attacks and reintroducing medium weaving as the META. All you are doing is exhausting your player base.

deleted221205-002626

Can we get dark convergence returned back to its 15sec cooldown as the real problem is rush of agony set with little to no visual, 8sec cooldown and no cc immunity so it can be stacked with dark convergence for a double pull. If anything change rush of agony to 15sec and add cc immunity as well. Then problem solved.

lpfan678

Will the folks at ZOS consider either increasing the number of transmute crystals in geodes or lower the cost of reconstructing gear via transmutation for the week after big patches like this? I have 13 characters, and I'm feeling pretty discouraged by the fact that I'm going to have to revisit every one of them post-U35.

Maybe put some crystals in the login rewards for September? Anything would be great.

Necrotech_Master

lpfan678 wrote: »

Will the folks at ZOS consider either increasing the number of transmute crystals in geodes or lower the cost of reconstructing gear via transmutation for the week after big patches like this? I have 13 characters, and I'm feeling pretty discouraged by the fact that I'm going to have to revisit every one of them post-U35.

Maybe put some crystals in the login rewards for September? Anything would be great.

i dont think much of the gear is really changing too much, there wasnt that many gear nerfs in there

now having a week of free respecs to sort out the mess with the skills would be more useful

Dojohoda

I want to add to my other comment in which I mention how difficult I find it to keep up with combat related changes. The slew of changes in the patch will turn me on my head as usual, but I find some of the changes are catching my interest, one of which is the connection that is being made with using concealed weapon and path of darkness.

lpfan678

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

lpfan678 wrote: »

Will the folks at ZOS consider either increasing the number of transmute crystals in geodes or lower the cost of reconstructing gear via transmutation for the week after big patches like this? I have 13 characters, and I'm feeling pretty discouraged by the fact that I'm going to have to revisit every one of them post-U35.

Maybe put some crystals in the login rewards for September? Anything would be great.

i dont think much of the gear is really changing too much, there wasnt that many gear nerfs in there

now having a week of free respecs to sort out the mess with the skills would be more useful

Just because a set doesn't change in terms of functionality, which there definitely are in this update, doesn't mean their usefulness stays the same in a new meta.

MindOfTheSwarm

This is the problem with big changes. As these changes happen they can make sets in the game useless or broken to the point of worthless. Deadly Strike is a prime example of this. This set in particular has gone from a good endgame set for players before they get their trial stuff, to something that has 0 value. With these DoT nerfs, this set in particular should have been buffed significantly to compensate.

Rimskjegg

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

This is the problem with big changes. As these changes happen they can make sets in the game useless or broken to the point of worthless. Deadly Strike is a prime example of this. This set in particular has gone from a good endgame set for players before they get their trial stuff, to something that has 0 value. With these DoT nerfs, this set in particular should have been buffed significantly to compensate.

I have no doubt that in 3 months once we've almost found new rotations that work, all the sets will get rebalanced again too, because lots of changes means lots of overlooked implications which means lots more changes to correct for those

Everyone is saying Deadly Strikes is a set that needs a tweak so I guess you're right, but I don't have a good set copy to PTS test it with, and I'm too dumb to understand why this specific set is now so bad. Sure, the DoTs buffed by the set do less damage, but so do the light attacks that it doesn't buff. Pretty much the only thing that didn't get nerfed is our spammables. Rapid Strikes is the new strongest single target spammable and it's channeled. Deadly Strike buffs channeled abilities, so it buffs Rapid Strikes. What makes Deadly Strikes fall behind more than it did already?

Jazraena

Rimskjegg wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

This is the problem with big changes. As these changes happen they can make sets in the game useless or broken to the point of worthless. Deadly Strike is a prime example of this. This set in particular has gone from a good endgame set for players before they get their trial stuff, to something that has 0 value. With these DoT nerfs, this set in particular should have been buffed significantly to compensate.

I have no doubt that in 3 months once we've almost found new rotations that work, all the sets will get rebalanced again too, because lots of changes means lots of overlooked implications which means lots more changes to correct for those

Everyone is saying Deadly Strikes is a set that needs a tweak so I guess you're right, but I don't have a good set copy to PTS test it with, and I'm too dumb to understand why this specific set is now so bad. Sure, the DoTs buffed by the set do less damage, but so do the light attacks that it doesn't buff. Pretty much the only thing that didn't get nerfed is our spammables. Rapid Strikes is the new strongest single target spammable and it's channeled. Deadly Strike buffs channeled abilities, so it buffs Rapid Strikes. What makes Deadly Strikes fall behind more than it did already?

Deadly Strikes is what I'm using on my Stamplar.

With both Jabs and DoTs being nerfed hard, it's relative effectiveness is falling way down, and I'm literally better served just running a random stat set. Similar things can be said for the Elf Bane I'm running on my MagDK with the utter mess of DoT Damage and DoT Durations.

Let's be clear here, for your specific example: Flurry only got a minor buff. It wasn't worth running Deadly Strike much on it before, and it's even less now due to DoTs being nerfed. It had a niche because of Jabs.

Eigh1_Puppies

I streamed for 28 and a half hours, with the primary goal of the stream being to test the content on the PTS and see how it compared to fight times on live. This was in response to the Health Changes that were not clearly outlined, coming in at the literal last possible second. Throughout the course of the entire stream, I posted in 3 discords with over 1000 people in an attempt to get runs going with a team performing a clear on Live and then on the PTS. Of the 29 hours, I was able to put together a grand total of 0 runs. Instead, I was only able to test classes on the parse dummy, tests which were simply futile as the dummy has been updated so much over the course of the patch, that getting a realistic comparison regarding the extent of the damage loss we’ve seen this patch is simply impossible.

I need to start this message by emphasizing how update 35 nearly single handedly destroyed interest in end game. I wish that I were overexaggerating, I wish that I was just a dramatic upset Phanatic, I wish I was wrong. But never in my entire time playing this game, since the initial introduction of the Craglorn Trials, have I ever seen this type of mass exodus from endgame. I would estimate that over 50% of all teams have completely disbanded, another 20% have stopped raiding to see how this update will affect their progression, some of the biggest carry discords that have existed for years evaporated over night, and Project Vitality, the biggest endgame initiative to date, has seen over 70% of the raid leads in charge of the teaching runs to quit the game. Why has this happened? Can we fix it? What can we do to prevent this in the future?

So with that said, what is still wrong with the current version of update 35? Quite frankly, not much! My biggest complaints are that we had no way to test and see if the health changes were sufficient enough to avoid reprog for teams, especially in the newest content, and that the changes to heavy attacks have allowed Medium Weaving to become stronger than LA weaving. It seems that the Medium Weave was not intended, so I assume that’ll be fixed at some point during U35, but the Health issue is much more pressing. It’s hard to estimate about how much lower damage is from U35 compared to U34, mainly because A) people don’t even want to raid on live much less the PTS and the dummy has gotten Major Slayer, Minor Courage, and EC which has dramatically inflated parses compared to last patch, while, granted, making the dummy a bit more accurate when comparing the buffs you get in raid: this was the original intention of the 21 mil. On top of this, the set ups for classes in U35 is much different than that of U34 due to all of the changes with the Maelstrom weapons AND the shift in damage that has made sets like Bahsei and Riptide less preferable. As a quick note, these sets most benefited players doing a lot of damage. If damage goes down “damage done” sets become less preferable than sets that do strong damage on their own, like Rele and Pillar, as the damage difference between these options are already really small on the live server. With all of this in mind, I anticipate a damage loss of about 15 to 20% on the PTS compared to live. I could be wildly wrong. One of the biggest points to make is nobody has any true way of knowing. Major Slayer gives 10% increased damage which scales to not actually be exactly 10%, Minor courage gives a ton of weapon/spell damage which is tough to factor in, and EC shouldn’t effect the dummy very much, because it really only gives a couple more % of crit damage than we already had while allowing us to run a different CP slottable. I was hitting 115K my DK and 130K on my cro on the live server, while on the PTS I hit 122.5k and 123.5k respectively. Take the 115K parse for example, and give maybe 15% increased damage for Slayer + Courage and another 3-5% increase for EC, and that parse on live with these buffs is estimated to be at about 135 to 140K, resulting in about a 15% damage loss on a “non meta” class. Take the Cro though, which took external nerfs to the class itself, and you’re looking at about a 20% loss in DPS.

Yet trials were nerfed by about 10% health with a very minimal difference boss to boss. This is probably just fine for all content up to the two most recent trials. Keep in mind that these dummy differences are considering a pure single target fight. The first two bosses in both Rockgrove and Dreadsail require a considerable amount of AOE damage. With the 122k and 123K parses being achieved in Rele, we’d have to opt for an option not as strong, like Bahsei, Riptide, or Siroria, to compensate. These options are within 5K dps of eachother, but still adds to the deficit in the most difficult content. This is an even bigger issue for console players, as we have to decide if and when it is worth stopping to take the time to change our entire set up, even further making speed runs much more difficult.

The next most oppressing issue, is seemingly the lack of adjustment in healing. We saw changes very early on that were mostly revoked, but healing output itself is still much lower on the PTS than it is on Live. I think these changes aren’t the end of the world, but it will definitely cause a bit more reprog in the vast majority of groups. Really only the endgamers will be okay. This concept contradicts the entire intentions portrayed by update 35.

These are the current issues with the current patch. Outside of these, the game is in good shape I think. Classes and Sets are balanced well, I’m not upset about ditching the ridiculous resource based sets in terms of DPS, we have two phenomenal new dungeons, when all said and done, U35 is pretty good! So why is endgame dead? I believe the PTS in U35 presents a unique opportunity to not only work to build the game to fit the vision of the devs, but also to learn from a massive mistake that, if addressed, will ultimately result in a much healthier ESO community moving forward. At this point, I don’t think that there are any changes that can be made to bring the player base that has quit back in. At least, not yet.

I want to preface the second half of this discussion by addressing a notion that has brought us to this point. I am being brutally honest when I say, if you reading this are somebody who has intentionally attempted to degrade or disregard the devs as a team who “does not care about the game” or “does not care about the player base” or “who does not play their own game” you are simply a part of the problem. You share responsibility in this moment. Like it or not, this statement is downright insane, and players who adopt this ideology, regardless of whether or not you had good ideas, put yourself in a position to be ignored. Though I can’t say I don’t understand the reason you might say these things or feel that way, it just logically does not track. The dev team for ESO in fact is one of the most caring and engaged team in all of gaming. As a sort of testimonial, I want to say that Finn takes the time to be in so many places where he receives both constructive and abrasive feedback, while continuously taking it with an open mind and working to make the game better by directly engaging with those who play it in organized settings. Gilliam very directly interacts with trusted names in the game to get thoughts and opinions about the direction some of these updates take, as well as being a phenomenal and informed player himself. Gina Bruno saw a random tweet from a twitter account with less than 200 followers pop up on her feed, containing a google doc that said “What did Raiding on the PTS Tell Us?” clicked on it, read it, and shared it with her team. The very next day, Zos_Seiffer was lurking in the stream and literally thanked us for our feedback. THEY DO LISTEN. THEY DO CARE. These people are incredibly invested in their craft, they take it very seriously, and they put forth a phenomenal work ethic to do so. Sometimes they miss the mark. It is human nature. And if you don’t believe this, you at bare minimum have to believe that Zenimzax makes a lot of money on this game, and that it is within a company’s best interest to keep its consumer base happy. Period.

That said, a large reason the endgame community has disbanded is for one of two reasons. Either, players have a grievance against the direction the game is headed and want nothing more to do with it, or the amount of reprog that has resulted from the last year of intense changes in the game has become unbearable. I feel it’s easier to first discuss the “sweeping changes” that has played a large part in this burn out first.

As an endgame raider, the absolute most frustrating challenge presented in the game is roster prog and reprogression. It completely kills the fun of content, because, rather than progging the content itself, you are spent setting time away in your week to progress this content, only to be the most challenged by finding qualified interest in the content being progressed, or by having to relearn things that you as a team have already progressed. Especially in extremely difficult content, it’s so important to have the exact same 12 every week, otherwise you waste entire days reprogressing content for subs, regardless of their own skill and experience levels. If you are missing your OT in a PB prog, it doesn’t matter if you pull in the best OT in the world, they will cause reprogression, if not for learning the fight the way the group is used to performing it, then for the simple sake of tank synergy on Bahsei. That alone will waste an entire night of raiding. And when each patch has either presented a variety of completely new sets and skill to acquire, as well as completely new concepts in maximizing damage, whether it be something fundamental like a rotation or something more advanced like situational burst, you create a race to finish a prog before the patch so as to avoid reprog. Who in their right mind wants to be stressed about having the ability to complete content before a major change possibly prevents you from being able to do so? Or even at that, who wants to completely relearn the trial with potentially different strats due to a massive decrease in damage that was not properly adjusted? For ANY group, a newer team with an average burn will now have to go through the pains of having to learn how to handle more mechanics in a fight, potentially having to adopt a more difficult strat that’s more damage focused, rather than a safe one that’s more focused on survivability. On the high end, teams progressing the most difficult content will now have to spend weeks, if not months, relearning the most effective ways to do damage in a particular fight in order to meat a previously met burn. This is bad for everybody. Once you break the game with high damage, you can’t just go and take it back, at least not when this massive power creep has existed for years, allowing MORE PEOPLE to get into endgame, only to rip it away from everybody, destroy progression, and create reprog for every single team. Even teams pushing World Records will not be able to do so in new content anymore. It will simply be impossible, because damage used to be higher. This entire philosophy resulting around making content more difficult by decreasing damage output, is not only counterintuitive to the goal of making content more accessable, but simply bad for everyone.

And that brings us to reason number two. About half of the endgame casualties occurred in week one. People didn’t care if the changes made it live or not. The mere implications of, evidently poorly tested, ideas and concepts imposed yet another case of a direction, philosophy, and lack of awareness that killed people’s interest in endgame. The entire concept of making the game “more accessable” is one that very few people oppose. That said, every single major change to combat with no exception, simultaneously and significantly strayed away from this goal, while making combat dull and boring. A lot of this was corrected later on but it was too late. A large portion of the player base is led to believe that the devs “Don’t know their own game” because of some of these blatantly obvious poor decisions. To be fair, that statement is crazy. But coming from an endgame perspective, a correct rephrasing of that, would be to say that, “The Devs don’t play their own game at this level.” That is a true statement but an unfair expectation. I don’t think the devs should have to play the game at a top 1% level to continue to do the phenomenal work that they do. But maybe what they should consider doing, is recruiting a team of the best, of the most elite, to test this content for them, and to provide feedback and suggestions before presenting these ideas, to ensure that their changes align with their goals. Update 35 had three main changes in week one; Healing DOTS ticking once every two seconds compared to damage that ticked every 1 second, Combat dulling by allowing DOTs to tick every 2 seconds, and light attack nerfing. The healing changes made strong heal checks and even strong DOTS against players much more difficult to heal through, making content much more difficult, and requiring much more expertise to compensate for. This is a change that would have been very annoying but mostly possible to reprog for endgamers, leaving average players to struggle much more with much less room for error. The dull combat mainly effected endgame players, and the changes made to this I feel are sufficient. The one that even struck me as okay initially was the changes to light attacks. This seemed to make sense. By making weaving less important, there should have been a smaller skill gap between players. The Ninja Pulls team proved this to be the complete opposite of the truth, demonstrating logs to compare on Falgraven Hard Mode from a team progging DB and one only progging SOTN. The logs from the 21 minute sotn prog proved to have a higher damage % coming from light attacks than the much higher parse from the 10 minute DB prog, with about a 5-10% difference. Newer players don’t maintain rotations as well as endgame players, making light attacks even more important, because they’re always at least constantly performing that action. Absolutely NONE of these changes helped forward the goal of accessibility. This patch even in week 5 does not forward that goal in any way, maybe outside of slightly stronger heavy attack builds. Beyond this, all of these changes in week one were not even presented in a “go test them and see if they do what we hope they will” type of format it was a “this is happening, it will work, and trust us” type of format, creating a massive divide in a community that ultimately supports this goal.

And with that, quite frankly, nobody knows what’s going on. The vison Zos seems to present is wildly contradicted by their own actions, making the true vision incredibly unclear and hard to follow. On top of this, the communication regarding these changes, regarding the direction of combat, even regarding the issues people really care about seem to be very weak. Granted, stronger than the communication has been historically, but still not enough. This is a very united and invested community. We all care about the game on a level stronger than it being “just a game” and its players want to know, not only what changes Zos plans on making, but when to finally expect an end to these earthshattering changes patch to patch to patch. Endgamers just want to progress without the constant threat of the patch looming over our heads every 3 months. We need clarity. We need something more organized. We’d like to be more informed going forward, without actions contradicting statements. Trust has, admittedly, been lost from the endgame community.

I don’t want to discredit the hard work and dedication that is put into this game. But it has to be said. A large reason the endgame community has dissipated with no hope of return in the near future, is due to the constant changes, lack of communication, and lack of clear vision regarding these changes. Nobody knows what’s going on anymore, nobody knows what to expect, and so many people are simply over it.

So now that we’ve identified the issues, I feel that it’s important to address the solutions. Unfortunately, I feel the most optimal solution to update 35 would simply be to undo the current combat changes and revisit them at a later date. Though I do feel that this is not possible, nor would it bring enough people back to really “save” endgame either. So more realistically, Medium Weaving needs to be fixed, mainly by changing empower to be worded as Fully Charged Heavy Attacks as well as maybe reduce the damage of Medium Attacks themselves, and boss/add health percentage for Rockgrove and Dreadsail need at least another 5% nerf. These changes alone, I believe, will save update 35, but not endgame. Rebuilding endgame requires a much more long term solution.

The next solution involves defining a better idea of where the issues in accessibility lie, and I believe Zos has wildly misinterpreted the gap in power that exists. It’s been identified as a “Skill Gap.” By their own definition, they consider mid tier players to hit, at most, 60K on a dummy, as well as complete and progress some vet and vet hard mode content, but definitely not the most recent trials. So, if it is believed that “skill” is the primary factor when comparing players that hit 60K and players that hit 140K, there in lies the issue. This gap is not properly identified. It is a gap in knowledge, and there is no better proof in this than the console player. I don’t mean this next statement as a way to boast about my own knowledge but simply to make a point, I could quite literally take any player hitting 60K on live and get them to 100K if they gave me one hour a day for a week. Easily. A more accurate representation of a skill gap would be my 127K parse compared to Charles’ 131K parse on a cro. This difference in skill really only comes down to weaving and likely crit as well. The main issue is not a person’s ability to hit certain skills in a certain order, it is knowing and understanding the fundamentals and nuisances of doing damage as a whole. Somebody hitting 60K needs to understand that light attacking between skills is the most important thing, followed by a consistent static rotation, and then understanding how to recover from mistakes in a static rotation, how to Prebuff a parse, very likely an alteration to their set up in some kind of way, what to do in execute, if the class has burst phases and how to use them, which skills are the most important, and the list only gets greater the higher the parse. A player hitting 120K could increase their parse by 5K with maybe a slightly better Prebuff and stam dump as well as a better burst in execute. These are all things players need to know and be taught. And the game has no way of doing that. No change to combat in any way shape or form will ever fix this. What players need, is an in game supported source of knowledge that teaches them most of these things, at least the basics of a rotation and weaving. There is no better example of this gap than when you compare Console and PC clear rates. The difference is clear! Add ons make a big difference, but not the ones you might think! Console doesn’t need an add on telling them when to roll dodge or when a certain mech is happening, we’ve figured that out. What we DO need are add ons that give us information about damage and uptimes. An in game implementation of CMX and maybe an integration with ESO Logs would be a game changer for the platform!!! On top of this, include a short and simple tutorial of how CMX works, what’s important, why it’s important, and what certain stats mean about your damage. Add an option to toggle on a “parse helper” which might identify weak points in your CMX and provide suggestions on how to improve them, this would change everything. All of a sudden, players hitting 60K will jump to 80k or 90k on their own with these tips.

Next, it needs to be recognized exactly what players find interesting about endgame. For most, it is not the simple challenge of the content itself. In fact, some of the most challenging fights in the game are my absolute least favorite. Take for example Bahsei Hard Mode, arguably the most difficult progression in the game. This is a fight that I would consider to be challenging, but not for any other reason than its poor design. The number one cause of death is the one shot curse mechanic. The fact that these AOEs are as small, fast, and incredibly difficult to see as they stand now, while maintaing such strong significance is insane to me. Another fight that I would consider to be challenging, but 100 times more fun is the first boss in vDSR Hard Mode. This fight is SO WELL DESIGNED. What players enjoy about content, is the tiers in strategies that exist to be able to handle them. This fight punishes bad damage, punishes damage that’s too high, and still leaves room for the top 1% to damage their way through most mechanics, while still maintaining a respectable 5 minute fight time outside of records. There isn’t an absurdly long invuln phase, and the phase that does exist requires coordination with massive penalties for failing in. There is a clear safe strat that involves burning atros and weapons as a priority. There is a burn strat that involves making the fight a bit more risky and challenging if you do not achieve the burn. And then there is also a step above that where you simply attempt to just nuke everything. There are multiple ways to handle the fight: you can split the group to handle the execute phase of the fight and try to kill the bosses at near the same time, or you can opt to mostly kill one boss, then kill the other, like old school vhof first boss style strats. This fight presents so much room for creativity in every single way that you look at it, laced with mechanics that aren’t inherently difficult, but definitely require progression. Fights like THIS are the type of fights endgame players find challenging and fun, because it allows us to make the fight harder on ourselves with the benefit of a better fight time, with a reasonable cap on just how fast the fight can be. Bahsei could be this way, if it weren’t simply for the curse mechanic.

They need to stop making content so challenging to simply clear. That is not what endgamers find to be fun, and, beyond that, it makes content so inaccessible to newer players. If accessibility is the goal, there needs to be a shift in incentive in endgame. Right now, everybody is simply title happy. This leaves room for people to leave endgame once that incentive has expired. 90% of players who get all of their titles quit, and the other 10% go on to scorepush when “world record” patches allow them to. If Zos were to start implementing radical incentives that pushed players to naturally progress from trifectas to scorepushing, endgame would be so much healthier. Even if it’s not for the number one spot on the board, even if it’s not for a record, incentivize the leaderboards in general for players to make this natural jump, and watch this area of endgame explode as time goes on. ESPECIALLY if they keep making well layered fights like in vDSR. And if you give, say 500 geodes to every team on the leaderboard in addition to a ton of upgrade mats, you can include new meta options every patch, and nerf old sets a little, to try to keep the game interesting because the players concerned with getting those sets asap will be prepared from their previous push. Don’t make the damage difference huge, but make it worth it for leaderboard pushers, while keeping the other sets strong enough to clear content without reprogression for what would become the new “mid tier” player.

Beyond that, what players really need to see is some more communication. Players will continue to claim that the “Devs don’t play the game” until they see them clear the content the top 1% pushes for. This doesn’t seem realistic to me, nor should it be, so it may be in the best interest of them to recruit teams or players like they did during the Class Rep Era. That program was one of the best things to happen to the game in general. Class diversity expanded dramatically, and class balance rose to the point it’s at now. In Update 35, it’s pretty much a coin toss when discussing which class will be “meta” when the patch goes live. We need more communication, we need a clear vision, we need input, and we need to stop with these crazy changes. Perhaps testing these ideas much like they have in the past with certain PvP scenarios or even the way they manage event testing on the PTS would be the most beneficial. Implementing a well refined combat update in one massive overhaul, rather than spreading out big changes over the course of a year, including a change great enough to alter an entire progression once every three months, is simply not working. If these changes were allowed to brew for an entire year and released with the major chapter when players are looking to get back into the game anyway, there would be much less recourse, as long as these ideas were well tested, fully developed, and only occurred once a year. Rely on phenomenal content to expand interest in the game rather than attempting to keep it fresh every three months. This idea of constantly changing the fundamentals of a game and providing an ever shifting meta are the same principles that have killed some of the most popular games in time. Fortnite, Call of Duty, Halo, and so many more games all died trying to implement these ideas in this type of fashion. Minecraft however, has stood the test of time, because it’s a game that has only ever gotten a little better with a major update in terms of content, and hasn’t fundamentally changed much. It’s the same ol game that it was when I played it as a kid.

Keep putting out fresh and phenomenal content, give us a clear vision and let those who are invested in the game assist in bringing that vision to fruition.

renne

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

But maybe what they should consider doing, is recruiting a team of the best, of the most elite, to test this content for them, and to provide feedback and suggestions before presenting these ideas, to ensure that their changes align with their goals.

Absolutely not. The last thing they need is a "team of the best, of the most elite" to test stuff for them because people who can burn through all content without seeing mechanics is in no way representative of the vast, VAST people who play the game. Nor representative of the population of endgame raiders pre-PTD 35.

The "the best, of the most elite" is how we've ended up with update 35, sledgehammer nerfs and all the problems we're getting in this patch AND the issues with the HM content they've been releasing lately. They shouldn't be specifically tuning hard content just for these people.

They definitely need actual players who are trying to complete the content to test stuff, this I absolutely agree with, but people who won't actually see most of the content (i.e. mechanics in longer fights, etc) because they are "the best, of the most elite" are not helpful for that. You want to see people who don't hit the highest numbers on the dummy, or aren't the best tanks or healers. That's where the useful data comes from.

They also need to replicate console conditions and use that for testing. That would be the most helpful for all systems including PC, because console is representative the hardest version of the game you can play.

Razorback174

renne wrote: »

The "the best, of the most elite" is how we've ended up with update 35, sledgehammer nerfs and all the problems we're getting in this patch AND the issues with the HM content they've been releasing lately. They shouldn't be specifically tuning hard content just for these people.

Starting to get Wildstar vibes here...

renne

Razorback174 wrote: »

renne wrote: »

The "the best, of the most elite" is how we've ended up with update 35, sledgehammer nerfs and all the problems we're getting in this patch AND the issues with the HM content they've been releasing lately. They shouldn't be specifically tuning hard content just for these people.

Starting to get Wildstar vibes here...

I... don't know what that means.

Razorback174

renne wrote: »

I... don't know what that means.

Wildstar was a fairly recent MMO that started to cater greatly to the hardcore audience. In doing so, they managed to alienate all the other tier players from the game. Among other problems, many cite that one in particular as what caused the game's population to collapse and ultimately resulted in the game being shutdown after only 4 short years.

francesinhalover

lpfan678 wrote: »

Will the folks at ZOS consider either increasing the number of transmute crystals in geodes or lower the cost of reconstructing gear via transmutation for the week after big patches like this? I have 13 characters, and I'm feeling pretty discouraged by the fact that I'm going to have to revisit every one of them post-U35.

Maybe put some crystals in the login rewards for September? Anything would be great.

Wont help with the new gear i gotta farm and the overexpensive jewelary upgrades.
700k to purple, nice.

francesinhalover

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

lpfan678 wrote: »

Will the folks at ZOS consider either increasing the number of transmute crystals in geodes or lower the cost of reconstructing gear via transmutation for the week after big patches like this? I have 13 characters, and I'm feeling pretty discouraged by the fact that I'm going to have to revisit every one of them post-U35.

Maybe put some crystals in the login rewards for September? Anything would be great.

i dont think much of the gear is really changing too much, there wasnt that many gear nerfs in there

now having a week of free respecs to sort out the mess with the skills would be more useful

Kinra's isn't even meta anymore, sorc uses pet gear, and im not even sure how mag meta changed.

shadyjane62

Razorback174 wrote: »

renne wrote: »

The "the best, of the most elite" is how we've ended up with update 35, sledgehammer nerfs and all the problems we're getting in this patch AND the issues with the HM content they've been releasing lately. They shouldn't be specifically tuning hard content just for these people.

Starting to get Wildstar vibes here...

More like SW Galaxies.

Eigh1_Puppies

renne wrote: »

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

But maybe what they should consider doing, is recruiting a team of the best, of the most elite, to test this content for them, and to provide feedback and suggestions before presenting these ideas, to ensure that their changes align with their goals.

Absolutely not. The last thing they need is a "team of the best, of the most elite" to test stuff for them because people who can burn through all content without seeing mechanics is in no way representative of the vast, VAST people who play the game. Nor representative of the population of endgame raiders pre-PTD 35.

The "the best, of the most elite" is how we've ended up with update 35, sledgehammer nerfs and all the problems we're getting in this patch AND the issues with the HM content they've been releasing lately. They shouldn't be specifically tuning hard content just for these people.

They definitely need actual players who are trying to complete the content to test stuff, this I absolutely agree with, but people who won't actually see most of the content (i.e. mechanics in longer fights, etc) because they are "the best, of the most elite" are not helpful for that. You want to see people who don't hit the highest numbers on the dummy, or aren't the best tanks or healers. That's where the useful data comes from.

They also need to replicate console conditions and use that for testing. That would be the most helpful for all systems including PC, because console is representative the hardest version of the game you can play.

How do you end up with players like myself then who fall into that category advocating for players who don't? It's not the fault of the players who do nuke content that they have responded in a way that has led to the scaling we've seen. The opinions of these players aren't considered, only their capability. There are very few top tier players who wouldn't advocate, or who haven't advocated for that matter, that the newest content is overtuned. When it comes to the concept of considering the implications of the ideas the devs have regarding their overall vision, they need to consult the players who can tell them whether or not their ideas will actually hold true in reality. This "test team" would not exist for the sake of determining what's possible, but simply to more accurately test and determine genuinely good ways to achieve the accessibility goals the devs have.

siddique

Devs should realize that a pov of UA or another score pushing group nuking content is not reason enough to say "dps is too high."

The majority of playerbase cant even finish a vAS+2 or vCR+3. You dont make content more "accessible" by lowering dps. You make it accessible by helping groups keep up their buffs and debuffs.

But oh well. They killed it themselves.