Update 35 PTS Combat Feedback & Upcoming Changes

Ghaleb

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.

To preface: I am away from my client and on mobile and hence, I will limit my reply to one specific area for now, as I think there is a lot off / wrong with your post.

But back to your quote: What you propose was available up to some weeks ago. It was the Class Rep Program which was decommissioned. An active YouRube endgame community member and creator of Project Vitality made a video about that being sunset.

That group of people could have given feedback. Maybe they even did so, as according to the statement from ZoS they spent considerable time on this update.

Jazraena

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

I agree with much being said here, but I'd like to emphasize something else. As much as I can empathize as a former regular raider in other games about reprogressing, change fatigue is affecting many stratas of play. I know you were focusing on the endgame POV, but as shown in a multiple of threads lately, ZOS runs into the real danger of frustrating endgamers, mid-tier players, entirely casual people and really everyone else alike at the moment.

Trial Groups are forced to reprogress. Mid-Tier players or people who create more thematical builds see their builds being torn apart before they even got used to them properly, or even before they got done recovering from the last round of changes; often apparently due to issues perceived by ZOS that have no immediate relation to how the affected play.

And above all, they don't see why, because there appears to be no apparent end goal in mind. This has to to be addressed. Or at some point, as it seems to be happening with the endgame community right now, people will just break away and leave. Not because ESO is a bad game, but because it changes too much, and thus you spend too much time adjusting instead of having fun.

Rimskjegg

@Eigh1_Puppies That is one epic post right there! During this period of endgamers exhausted by testing ever more rushed ideas, it's really encouraging to see there are still dedicated players like yourself posting such excellent and precise freeback. I really hope ZoS takes note!

Above all else, this patch has shown that the game badly needs a pre-PTS testing team. Now, in a post this long there's always going to be some details some might disagree with. It seems some take issue with the idea that the prime qualification for such a testing team should be being an "elite player". Making this the main qualification unfortunately plays into this stupid perceived divide we have between "elitists" and "casuals". I wonder what would happened if that qualification was put a little differently. What if we didn't make it about being the "tippity top.". What if the qualification was instead that the testers were people who spend considerable time TEACHING the game to new and midtier and beginning endgame players. You know, prog run raid leads. Remaining Project Vitality raid leads. Tank, healer and DD teachers. ESO Uni professors.

Nobody knows how to actually make the game more accessible better than the people who watch other players try their best but frequently fail, analyze why, and then help them improve. So don't make a new class rep program. Make a class TEACHER or teacher/tester program. You yourself sound like a prime candidate. I could mention others. Nefas, Skinny, Kaan and Maya of Ninja Pulls. Maybe even TC Lee of the Tank Club could be brought back if ZoS made that kind of effort to actually increase accessibility in an informed way without rushing things so much. But jist to be clear, the requirement should NOT be to be a successful content creator, I'm just mentioning these because they are people that you might recognize.

Even if I had more skill I wouldn't want a position like that myself. However, with the meagre experience I have trying to help guildies do a little more DPS (which tends to lead to them outDPSing me by far), I can confirm the #1 INGAME obstacle to teaching anything at all right now is that whatever you try to teach, you never know if it will still be true in 3 months. That is demotivating to both teachers and students.

In fact such a teacher program might end up with the same people as the "tippity top" but it'd be obvious to everyone the point wouldn't be to design the game around the most hardcore performance. But instead, actually increase accessibility. Raise the floor.

I mean, many calls have been made for more tutorials, but I kind of get why ZoS doesn't want to stuff the game with those. It's not easy to make them immersive and interesting enough for story-mode players (which I don't mean in a bad way - I run story trials on normal myself!) But the logical move then if you want the game itself to talk about story, not numbers, is to really bring on board the PLAYERS who DO act as TUTORS and listen very carefullly to what those players have to say.

Jaraal

Jazraena wrote: »

Mid-Tier players or people who create more thematical builds see their builds being torn apart before they even got used to them properly, or even before they got done recovering from the last round of changes; often apparently due to issues perceived by ZOS that have no immediate relation to how the affected play.

Considering that it can cost upwards of two million gold to gold out a set of armor, this is an especially tone deaf appearing aspect of all the yo-yo changes. The focus seems to be numbers crunched on a spreadsheet, with little regard for how it will affect the average player in their day to day gaming. And we get repeated acknowledgement that they realize change fatigue is rampant, but nothing ever changes.

A little compassion would go a long way. But years of developmental and managerial disinterest make that seem so out of reach.

LashanW

Hello there,
Some context about me first. English isn't my native language so bear with any mistakes.

I mainly play Sorcerer but I also play other classes from time to time (20 characters spanning all roles and classes), Templar being my second favorite. Been playing for ~5 years, 8500+ hours of playtime. I mostly play endgame PvE, but used to play PvP as well.

Now that PTS is finalized I can safely say that this is my least favorite update so far. For the past couple of years the amount of fun things to do in this game has been slowly reducing for me. PvP is still nigh unplayable thanks to my main server (PC-EU) still running on decade old rusty hardware and some regions having unbearable lag.

PvE endgame is the only fun thing left for me in live version. And that will face major problems thanks to update 35. You are making combat more boring, butchering unique class skills and make things much harder for everybody trying to progress challenging content. As a sorc, the upcoming nerfs are downright insulting. All the 3 combat pets are heavily nerfed and need perfect uptime on Daedric Prey to do noticeable damage. Yeah that'll raise the floor and reduce skill gap.

I find it really disrespectful that you are going so far to reduce light attack damage. Reduction on scaling, Empower changes, Removal of Bound Armament's passive and you are even changing the maelstrom staff, a popular weapon that has been in the game for what, 6 years? I actually felt targeted when I saw all those nerfs.

I don't even want to talk about medium weaving becoming meta. If this is not intended at least do the players the courtesy of letting them know.

All my energy is drained trying to catch up with the non-stop combat changes for the past 2 years (I don't have THAT much free time as I also have to do a 40+ weekly hour job). Many endgame players I knew ended up leaving the game in last 2 years. You keep adding overtuned sets to sell chapters and DLCs and then nerf everybody to keep the power creep in check. How is that a good approach? I have now lost all my faith in dev teams/management, your solution for all the hefty dps and healing nerfs are a flat 10% HP reduction for veteran enemies? Yeah Spindleclutch 1 really needed that.

I no longer believe you understand or care what players find fun.

Godslayer progression with my favorite guild was the only reason I kept playing this game in the past couple of months. And last night my team achieved it. We only had 1 minute and 40 seconds left on the speed run timer. All of us were so happy that we got it before this update went live.

And today I downloaded Guild Wars 2. I rather spend time and money on a new game than keep re-learning this one.
Wish you all the best in Tamriel.

shadyjane62

LashanW wrote: »

Hello there,
Some context about me first. English isn't my native language so bear with any mistakes.

I mainly play Sorcerer but I also play other classes from time to time (20 characters spanning all roles and classes), Templar being my second favorite. Been playing for ~5 years, 8500+ hours of playtime. I mostly play endgame PvE, but used to play PvP as well.

Now that PTS is finalized I can safely say that this is my least favorite update so far. For the past couple of years the amount of fun things to do in this game has been slowly reducing for me. PvP is still nigh unplayable thanks to my main server (PC-EU) still running on decade old rusty hardware and some regions having unbearable lag.

PvE endgame is the only fun thing left for me in live version. And that will face major problems thanks to update 35. You are making combat more boring, butchering unique class skills and make things much harder for everybody trying to progress challenging content. As a sorc, the upcoming nerfs are downright insulting. All the 3 combat pets are heavily nerfed and need perfect uptime on Daedric Prey to do noticeable damage. Yeah that'll raise the floor and reduce skill gap.

I find it really disrespectful that you are going so far to reduce light attack damage. Reduction on scaling, Empower changes, Removal of Bound Armament's passive and you are even changing the maelstrom staff, a popular weapon that has been in the game for what, 6 years? I actually felt targeted when I saw all those nerfs.

I don't even want to talk about medium weaving becoming meta. If this is not intended at least do the players the courtesy of letting them know.

All my energy is drained trying to catch up with the non-stop combat changes for the past 2 years (I don't have THAT much free time as I also have to do a 40+ weekly hour job). Many endgame players I knew ended up leaving the game in last 2 years. You keep adding overtuned sets to sell chapters and DLCs and then nerf everybody to keep the power creep in check. How is that a good approach? I have now lost all my faith in dev teams/management, your solution for all the hefty dps and healing nerfs are a flat 10% HP reduction for veteran enemies? Yeah Spindleclutch 1 really needed that.

I no longer believe you understand or care what players find fun.

Godslayer progression with my favorite guild was the only reason I kept playing this game in the past couple of months. And last night my team achieved it. We only had 1 minute and 40 seconds left on the speed run timer. All of us were so happy that we got it before this update went live.

And today I downloaded Guild Wars 2. I rather spend time and money on a new game than keep re-learning this one.
Wish you all the best in Tamriel.

Agree wholeheartedly. Much more eloquent then I could have stated it.

francesinhalover

siddique wrote: »

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.

Cp1310 here, never done vcr3 or vas+ .
I did do vss and vhrc hm though
Most cp 1000+ i know havent even done any hm outside of craglorn trials

renne

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

...Because you don't have to fall into a particular group to advocate for them? I advocate for a lot of players who don't fall into the level I do, because it's the right thing to do.

But you're asking for a group to test content though and having a team who nukes stuff as their base line isn't helpful in realistically measuring metrics on the complete-ability (comletionalbeness? idk) of the content. Or at the very least it shouldn't be the only group, there should be at least a team of endgamers to compare with that are a realistic more average level of ability.

And no, it's not their fault, but the fact is that ZOS keeps tuning content specifically to a hundred or a couple hundred at most players. Which means ZOS is already placing way too much emphasis on what the elitest of the elite can do, I have little confidence that having this team on hand they wouldn't then tune it even more specifically to their abilities.

renne

Razorback174 wrote: »

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.

Ooof yeah okay, thats really shades of ESO, hey. Thats definitely what's been happening with raid content the last couple of years.

Ghaleb

I already left a first reply. But as I am now back on my client, I want to address the remainder of your post.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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?

First and foremost, also a thank you from my side to make the effort. I still think we as a community shouldn't be required to spend so much time on an update as unpaid testers for a patch from a company, where the first look already told you it would be bad; but here we are.

Nefas has published an update on Project Vitality and summarized that they dropped from 220 raid leads to 65 and falling currently. #zosability #accessability

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

And here I start to disagree. Me, and seemingly a lot of others (including also your aforementioned 70% of raid leads in Project Vitality) still consider this patch to be on a bad trajectory - which is eventually the heaviest understatement I will be making today or this week.

Remember the mission statement:

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

The main focuses in Update 35 are twofold: improving accessibility to the game’s combat by increasing the duration of outgoing ability effects (such as damage over time, buffs, and debuffs) and a continuation of the attempt to quell some of the obscene damage production at the high end.

It has been said times and times again that most (all?) people have no objection to that mission. Increase accessibility and quell some obscene damage at the high end.
Issue is that is has been solidly proven that none of the chosen approaches have resulted in achieving any of that.

The overall loss from U34 to U35 can be rather precisely specified. You remain parsing on the 21Mil Dummy (as I did as well). But if you use the 6 or 3 Mil Dummy, you receive specific and comparable results. The loss of ~20% (give and take depending on classes and layout) seems to be a common denominator. With some like Sorc / Warden / Nerco loosing more and some eventually losing less.

So no, it is not hard to estimate the loss in DPS as shown in a ridiculous number of posts in this forum.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

Knowing? No; but testing provides a sufficiently reliable picture. And even though you stated that it is hard to estimate how much DPS loss is there and that not much is wrong with the patch, you now conclude that 15-20% DPS loss can be considered realistic on the PTS and in U35. What is it?

If you from today to tomorrow lost 1/5th of your total assets in real life, you'd consider that a substantial loss. Back breaking? Probably not, but still sufficient that you would start to mitigate losses.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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!

If by outside these changes the game is in a good shape you mean questing, crafting, ToT and overland / normal dungeon content? I tend to agree as most of the changes won't affect these areas. Except the famous light attack weaving bow hurling magicka warden in random groups.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

Agree to the last sentence and disagree to the "yet" in your statement as some of the players gone will be lost for good. But I am curious how you envision to get a healthier community with ZoS seemingly not really caring? Let's go on.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

While I disagree to some of the harsher statements made in some posts, the overall notion from U35 could only have been the conclusion you are now condemning. After the initial post of the combat preview, the thread was 8 pages long after 5-6 hours with a lot of correct conclusions on what this would mean.

A more senior craftsman doesn't get paid more because he/she is working faster or simply because he/she is longer there. It is due to being more experienced and being able to - in a lot of cases - tell you quicker what works and what won't. Expectation needs(!) to be that ZoS has people who are senior in that area. U35 was oozing inability to fully understand the end effects of the envisioned changes.

Except of course the mission statement was wrong and aim was something completely different, as I also outlined in one of my other posts. But we can't tell as we only have the mission statement.

So, people stating, probably in anger, that the Dev's don't play their own game or don't know it good enough, etc does have a certain amount of merit to it.

In regard to caring about the player base? I really hope they do, and I assume their view is that they do. The changes to AwA and now U35, the resulting outcry, lack of communication in total does let me question that.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

The dev team for ESO in fact is one of the most caring and engaged team in all of gaming.

Not disagreeing with the examples you made. But we can play this game the other way around as well with an important figure from ZoS, before the final patch notes dropped, calling the outcry a knee-jerk reaction from the community, and asking for trust and another Dev providing "snarky" replies to SkinnyCheeks for asking on the health nerf on Vet-Bosses. And SkinnyCheeks tries to be so, so positive about U35 that I assume that him, calling the reaction "snarky" probably means there was a way harsher reply. But that is me guessing around, so we can skip that.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

Somebody else pointed it out. There is a difference in "listening" to us and "hearing" us. I think it is the latter, mostly. The changes now applied to U35 are rather "meh" and mostly a boon to not lose too many subscriptions as, as you rightfully pointed out, Zenimax is a company and needs to make money first and foremost.

But companies have also shown an unbelievable ability to take developments into the wrong direction resulting in closing at one point of time. History is full of these examples. Therefore, your point that
- Zenimax needs to make money,
- hence the changes are good,
- U35 being now in a good position, due to the phenominal work ethic by the team
are simply misleading in that context.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

Here we agree, even though this is in stark contrast to your initial statement that not much is wrong anymore with U35?

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

As I outlined in my earlier reply to you, I understand the Class Representative Program to have been that. It eventually was not trial focused but due to the experience of the participants you could expect a good overlap between experience vet raiders and having knowledge about particular class abilities. There was no need to set this team up as it had been disbanded earlier this year.

As I view it, what you propose has been actively discarded by ZoS. Again the "hearing" and "listening" part IMHO.

So, let's move on.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

Agree and case in point regarding ZoS not fully understanding their own game. Or not being transparent about the real vision behind the changes - a lot of people assumed that the changes were more related to server performance (2 second ticks instead of 1) but we don't know. If ZoS would listen and not only hear us, we would have had a reply to the vast amount of questions by players and forum members about how the applied changes fall in place regarding the initial mission statement posted.

But what we got is: <crickets>

Hearing and listening again.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

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.

Of course, it would have been possible. There is a lack of wanting.
And regarding brining enough people back? You could probably get some back but never all. So a net loss would remain.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

[...] It is a gap in knowledge, [...]

Agree to the consensus as had been outlined by a multitude of forum members as well. The gap is mainly in knowledge and "training" than in pew pew.

Eigh1_Puppies wrote: »

[...] We need more communication, we need a clear vision, we need input, and we need to stop with these crazy changes. [...]

Agree but still you and I are here and not in the game.

But getting back to your statement of wanting to get to a healthier ESO community, I do fail to see the the effect of solutions you propose. Let me summarize:
- Ingame tools to help understand your damage better
- less reliance on DPS and more on playing mechanics
- more communication
- less drastic changes

Except eventually the last two items, I don't see anything which would develop a more healthy community. Specifically as we would first need to define what we consider healthy? And then identify where we are on a scaling we also define and agree upon on how to measure that.

You could argue that ingame tools would be handy; as also console players would benefit from these. But the game is now around for so long and no update in that regard. Furthermore, that would require the player to be interested in these metrics which a lot are not. Additionally, that leaves the educating part out which you also outlined with offering to bring any player on live from 60k to 100k DPS with one hours per day for one week. No ingame tool will fix that and the nerfs handed out like water in the desert are also not fixing that.

More mechanics and less DPS reliance are generally positive, as mechanics also allow lower DPS groups to achieve certain goals. But the bigger the stick you carry along, the easier stuff will be generally. Not only because of DPS but also because the players behind these DPS will have invested more time in honing their skills, understanding mechanics, etc.
In my trial group there is a 1:1 correlation between high DPS and playing mechanics better. Or the other way around, the lowest DPS members a) do the least damage generally and b) get killed every 10 seconds by Oaxiltsos acid spots as they have issues applying damage and playing basic mechanics of "move out of kill areas". As a conclusion, even with more mechanics, you would see that teams with more DPS would more easier clear trials even if they would only be mechanics based on no damage would be required to be applied (of course there would be exceptions - but my expectation still stands).

More communication is an item I would consider to contribute to a healthier community. As many others and also I had outlined, maybe the mission statement is wrong and the aim is something else? Or there is a vision and roadmap and this nerf is only a necessary means to get from A to B. But if communicated sufficiently, players would be on board. We have (almost) none of that and that leads of course to an unhealthy situation between players and the Devs.

And last but not least, less drastic changes. Also agree here. A game shouldn't feel like a second job. I already have a job and a family, etc and don't need another one (except ZoS starts to pay me ).

Closing, I appreciate the time and effort you put into streaming and putting your reply together. But this only exacerbates the issue. You and I should be in the game, playing, spending time there and doing what we - or at least I was - paying for. Instead, we spent hours on hours on the PTS to check changes and effects on DPS and classes to, in your case, advise a wider audience on how these changes will affect them and, in my case, supporting my guild in how we can eventually salvage our Thursday raid group with 4 DDs who still need to get way better in applying dmg in vRG.

My take is, we can't, which is why the group will very likely disband with U35.

Sergykid

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

I get it devs, player feedback is scary, but a little trust is much appreciated.

intuiting some of them's attitude, this peak reply will further incentivize that someone to not consider feedback.
seasoned veterans can and will easily understand when a bad change will be horrible right since the concept without needing to test it on gameplay, but it's hard to defeat spreadsheets

shadyjane62

I did not reinstall the PTS to test this whatever it is patch. Seeing the animation on the Templar jabs indicated it would be a waste of time. I have haunted this forum hoping for some, well, hope.

Another waste of time. The Templar I am today will still be the exact same Templar I will be after the patch. It's just too bad there will be no place in the game for me to go.

KMarble

If all you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I don't expect all the devs to know everything about the many, many different systems this game have. I don't believe that the various teams are intrinsically bad at what they do, but this update is showing me that the communication problem goes way beyond being between devs and players. It seems to me different teams aren't communicating properly among themselves.

From what I've seen/read so far I'm inclined to believe that there was a gross miscalculation done that lead to U35 being presented the way it originally was. It was then followed by a series of mistakes (?)/flaws(?) that lead to where we are.

As it was stated in a post before this PTS cycle began (my memory is faulty and it could had happen after), the premise that lead to the combat changes in U35 was tested for 80 hours by parsing on a dummy. No matter how accurate or inaccurate a dummy parse can be, it isn't the same as going into combat. The gross miscalculation was assuming that parsing and real game combat generate the same or similar results, and that kicked off a snowball.

Before presenting the combat changes to whomever is in charge of giving the green light, this should had been brought to the encounter team, so that adjustments to damage and HEALING could be done. It doesn't seem that was the case, since only at the 11th hour was the health of some enemies decreased.

The combat team did what the combat team does - used the tool they have on all the "nails" they saw/were told needed fixing. But it feels like it was done in a vacuum, with no input from other teams. It didn't help that we the players, who have a more well rounded knowledge of the game, were left feeling dismissed and ignored.

In vitro results are cool and exciting when starting, but unless it works in vivo, it has little value. U35 was an in vitro experiment that they not only never tested in vivo, but dismissed results from the ones who did because the testers (players) didn't use a "hammer" like they did.

anvilbert

????? Well its obvious your gonna go ahead with this ridiculous update with all its bandaides intact. Ignoring the pleas of your CUSTOMERS. I have continued to log in during this debate and the cities are like ghost towns. Queuing for randoms is a longer wait than ever after 8PM central time. Fewer and fewer guild mates logging in. Those who do log in and join chat are pissed about update. The game is hurting badly already because of the unwanted changes. It is already starting to feel like every other static solo game out there because you can't get a group to together for normal trials or dungeons. My ESO plus account is already paid for a yr I m not gonna let that go to waste but when it's up for renewal nope,wont be spending any of my cash on crowns or crown store. Greymore I loved Blackwood was disapointing,High Isle was pretty and good story. But you are so out of touch with the PVE community not the top 1% or2% who nuke everything but the lower tiers. You base every update towards the top % and PVP. Can you hear that sucking sound of this game circleing the drain? Because I can.

Necrotech_Master

francesinhalover wrote: »

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.

i dont chase meta, and im talking about individual cases

pillar of nirn for example is not changing, it and other sets with dots will greatly overshadow every skill base sticky dot by like 3-4x dmg

francesinhalover

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

francesinhalover wrote: »

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.

i dont chase meta, and im talking about individual cases

pillar of nirn for example is not changing, it and other sets with dots will greatly overshadow every skill base sticky dot by like 3-4x dmg

Yeah and in 3 months they will destroy it with nerfs. Dont worry sets will also be nerfed. Maybe group buffs also.

My question is, for a guy like me that dislikes special effects on sets, what am i meant to use that isn't garbage?

Onky set that i do like that comes to my mind is a high isle trial set so hard to get (imagine perfected) that i can safely say ill never have it.

fizl101

francesinhalover wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

francesinhalover wrote: »

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.

i dont chase meta, and im talking about individual cases

pillar of nirn for example is not changing, it and other sets with dots will greatly overshadow every skill base sticky dot by like 3-4x dmg

Yeah and in 3 months they will destroy it with nerfs. Dont worry sets will also be nerfed. Maybe group buffs also.

My question is, for a guy like me that dislikes special effects on sets, what am i meant to use that isn't garbage?

Onky set that i do like that comes to my mind is a high isle trial set so hard to get (imagine perfected) that i can safely say ill never have it.

You could get the non perfected version, they generally aren't a big jump in power between the perfected and non perfected.

Jazraena

francesinhalover wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

francesinhalover wrote: »

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.

i dont chase meta, and im talking about individual cases

pillar of nirn for example is not changing, it and other sets with dots will greatly overshadow every skill base sticky dot by like 3-4x dmg

Yeah and in 3 months they will destroy it with nerfs. Dont worry sets will also be nerfed. Maybe group buffs also.

My question is, for a guy like me that dislikes special effects on sets, what am i meant to use that isn't garbage?

Onky set that i do like that comes to my mind is a high isle trial set so hard to get (imagine perfected) that i can safely say ill never have it.

Normal trials all the way up to Dreadsail Reef are very doable. Just hang out in Craglorn a while and try.

Ragnarok0130

Sergykid wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

I get it devs, player feedback is scary, but a little trust is much appreciated.

intuiting some of them's attitude, this peak reply will further incentivize that someone to not consider feedback.
seasoned veterans can and will easily understand when a bad change will be horrible right since the concept without needing to test it on gameplay, but it's hard to defeat spreadsheets

I just took the dev’s own words and used them to make a point. It’s the combat team devs who intentionally poisoned the well and are now acting defensive when people ask why the townsfolk are dying.

warich

Why did you kill warden dps? You have to pay for the class. Why not kill necro too?

Zulera301

this is just another step of many on the "ZOS has no idea where they're going or what they want to do so they're just throwing things against the wall until they stick", as also evidenced by numerous previous patches.

I too got sick of having to relearn the game or throw away all my hard-earned gear every time it got nerfed into oblivion to prompt people to buy the new content to get the meta of the month. At this point most of my former PVP/PVE alts have retired and become crafters because at this point watching the big numbers go up has basically become my reason for playing (not unlike idle games such as Cookie Clicker or Egg Inc, or such).

my current builds still work decently, but I haven't done vet dungeons or trials in years because I dont have the time to grind out whatever new set came out or rework my alts when my main class gets nerfed to hell. Although with this universal DPS reduction, I'm starting to wonder if it'll even be possible to solo world bosses outside of base game zones anymore. The people who thought this was a good idea should really be moved to a different position, far, far away from the combat team.

rexagamemnon

My take on U35:
Like most, im not overly thrilled about the upcoming changes. I do commend ZOS with their intent behind the changes. But as the saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Im not saying that the changes will pave said road, only time will tell.
I am not too concerned about the overall dps nerfs everyone is ranting about. As Deltia mentioned in a video, the end game top tier players will eventually figure out a way around it.
Many of the content creators have brought up how the changes only make it harder for everyone and do the opposite of ZOS’s intent. But i will point out that content creators and the forums have been asking for the difficulty to increase in certain areas of the game.
To sum it all up, as far as my opinion goes….im more middle of the road about the changes overall, with the caveat on the templar jabs being changed from 4hits to 3hits……..KEEP IT AT 4

ThirdEye_PULSE

rexagamemnon wrote: »

My take on U35:
Like most, im not overly thrilled about the upcoming changes. I do commend ZOS with their intent behind the changes. But as the saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Im not saying that the changes will pave said road, only time will tell.
I am not too concerned about the overall dps nerfs everyone is ranting about. As Deltia mentioned in a video, the end game top tier players will eventually figure out a way around it.
Many of the content creators have brought up how the changes only make it harder for everyone and do the opposite of ZOS’s intent. But i will point out that content creators and the forums have been asking for the difficulty to increase in certain areas of the game.
To sum it all up, as far as my opinion goes….im more middle of the road about the changes overall, with the caveat on the templar jabs being changed from 4hits to 3hits……..KEEP IT AT 4

Thats fair. However... kinda feel like PVP is getting a 3 month suspension with u35. I only have 2 reasons... nothing else is that bad for pvp.
#1 Mara Set. Most broken defensive set probably ever introduced into game. Hello, tank meta on steroids.
#2 DoTs: Raised duration to 20 seconds but scaled damage to the 20 seconds rather than keeping it equivalent. Dmg for DoTs on PTS PvE is not good. Add battle spirit to that and i'm afraid most classes wont even be slotting sticky DoTs.

Static DoTs were killed long ago. Now sticky DoTs are going the same direction.

EldritchSun

Feedback? Stop treating the game as if it were still beta testing with all this everlasting combat changing, and focus on minor fixes. The whole topic is annoying and insulting. It sounds like 'Yes, we don't care and rebalance everything again, despite all this negative feedback, but we will consider reverting some of the changes if you ask, maybe'.

francesinhalover

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

rexagamemnon wrote: »

My take on U35:
Like most, im not overly thrilled about the upcoming changes. I do commend ZOS with their intent behind the changes. But as the saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Im not saying that the changes will pave said road, only time will tell.
I am not too concerned about the overall dps nerfs everyone is ranting about. As Deltia mentioned in a video, the end game top tier players will eventually figure out a way around it.
Many of the content creators have brought up how the changes only make it harder for everyone and do the opposite of ZOS’s intent. But i will point out that content creators and the forums have been asking for the difficulty to increase in certain areas of the game.
To sum it all up, as far as my opinion goes….im more middle of the road about the changes overall, with the caveat on the templar jabs being changed from 4hits to 3hits……..KEEP IT AT 4

Thats fair. However... kinda feel like PVP is getting a 3 month suspension with u35. I only have 2 reasons... nothing else is that bad for pvp.
#1 Mara Set. Most broken defensive set probably ever introduced into game. Hello, tank meta on steroids.
#2 DoTs: Raised duration to 20 seconds but scaled damage to the 20 seconds rather than keeping it equivalent. Dmg for DoTs on PTS PvE is not good. Add battle spirit to that and i'm afraid most classes wont even be slotting sticky DoTs.

Static DoTs were killed long ago. Now sticky DoTs are going the same direction.

Depends, some dots have usefull stats for pvp like bleed status