Gilliam and combat team, you missed THIS.

FlamingBeard

Marto wrote: »

qcell wrote: »

The lead encounter dev mentioned they won't be changing encounters.

That's literally the opposite of what he said in that tweet.

The lead said it won't happen until next update. 4 months is not a reasonable time-frame for content to be adjusted for all-encompassing game balance changes.

Marto

Xuhora wrote: »

so this essentially means we will have a period of time between U35 and U36 (what is it, 3 months?) in which a significant portion of the endgame playerbase will be set back by a large margin in their progression?
Ill be honest here, maybe ESO could have recovered easy from that 2 years ago, taking a big L for 3 months and then coming back after they did incremental changes. but today? after so many things that have gone wrong, so little communication and devaluated playerfeedback from PTS for too many cicles i believe this will be a hit ESO cannot recover from.

sure a steady flow of new players will allways be there, but the experienced raiding community will be in shambles and said new players will more likely leave again after reaching a point where they would consider doing trials because they realize that there is no one to do it with.

here is to hoping that they will realize sooner rather than later (and i mean soon as in days, not months) that they need to do something and loose their stubbornness and stop clinging on to their changes.

ZOS can't start to adjust dungeon and encounter difficulty until after they have some idea of what DPS numbers are going to look like post U35.

What's the alternative?

To preemptively nerf the health/damage of all dungeon enemies by 50%, and do the balance changes afterwards? And once ZOS decides if damage is going to down by 10%, 20% or whatever... boost the health/damage of dungeon enemies to match?

That's a considerably worse solution, that requires far more work, and has the potential to introduce far more bugs and oversights.

Leaving some content so hard it's unplayable for 3 months is probably the best solution there can be.

pklemming

Not really. They are 'apparently' working off spreadsheet numbers to calculate damage. If this method is so useful, they can work out the active dps and healing possible too.

Saying they need to adjust after means they have no clue what it is going to do to our damage, which renders the whole spreadsheet thing kind of useless.

IZZEFlameLash

pklemming wrote: »

Not really. They are 'apparently' working off spreadsheet numbers to calculate damage. If this method is so useful, they can work out the active dps and healing possible too.

Saying they need to adjust after means they have no clue what it is going to do to our damage, which renders the whole spreadsheet thing kind of useless.

Exactly. They say as if it is one and the only way but it isn't. If spreadsheet is the only thing they consider hard data, why even bother look at how things go? Isn't it all just 'anecdotal' feedback data they are collecting according to themselves?

jecks33

spacefracking wrote: »

I dare these high end players to go in and run some content using off-meta gear, and see if they find that there are whole dimensions to the game they haven't seen from dps creep. Slap on the julianos and mother's sorrow and try some vMHK or something else

julianos and MS is a good non-meta setup for everything, back in the days we completed vhof, vmol, vma, vdsa and more with basically this setup

PrincessOfThieves

qcell wrote: »

The lead encounter dev mentioned they won't be changing encounters.


- Asking for trials to be easier is not happening by U35.
- Just asking for the combat DPS to be kept the same or increased.

I am afraid that when they see the full impact of these changes, it will be too late to fix anything.
Most players don't read forums and patch notes, but when they're hit by U35, they will notice. And they won't be happy.

Troodon80

Marto wrote: »

Leaving some content so hard it's unplayable for 3 months is probably the best solution there can be.

Absolutely not. The irony is in Finn posting that they "try to avoid making changes before they see the complete impact," it's exactly what they're doing by changing one thing with seemingly little to no communication between the people making the content and the people working on the numbers. You cannot do a blanket 15-25% (or more) nerf, making content inaccessible, and then say "We'll look at tweaking this content in some undisclosed future point. It could be 3 months, it could be 6 months, or it might be a year down the line."

The two need to be done at the same time -- yes, it's far more work. But anything less means people who were doing content previously won't be doing content after the patch. They absolutely need to be done at the same time. If they are working on decreasing overall DPS and HPS by around 15-20%, then they should batch nerf all HP and damage done by enemies by the same amount. If they're making it so that heals tick every 2 seconds, then, for example, no damage from anything else should be less than 1s (especially looking at things like Maelstrom during Taleria which ticks every 0.3s), at the very least. If for some reason that makes content easier to clear, then they can tweak it back to an acceptable level of difficulty during that PTS cycle. Not 3, 6, 9 months, or years later.

starkerealm

Marto wrote: »

ZOS can't start to adjust dungeon and encounter difficulty until after they have some idea of what DPS numbers are going to look like post U35.

This is a fair point, though it kinda underlines just how completely insane these changes are. Because, if the game needs a major balance pass after the changes (which even reaches into overland), then maybe that's something that needs to happen... I don't know, before the patch goes live?

You can't really say, "okay, well, we pushed a patch live that made our game unplayable," and leave it there for three to six months, with the idea that the players will come back afterwards. That just doesn't work.

Troodon80

starkerealm wrote: »

Because, if the game needs a major balance pass after the changes (which even reaches into overland), then maybe that's something that needs to happen... I don't know, before the patch goes live?

It needs to be done at the same time, not before or after. The issue with changing content to make it easier before the damage nerf means that people will be used to clearing content they weren't previously clearing because it's now much easier. That lasts for 3 months. Then, when the next patch hits, they'll be back to not clearing it again. A similar thing happened with Thrassian where groups were getting Godslayer, carried almost exclusively on the DPS gain from that mythic item. Once ZOS nerfed it, those same groups were back to struggling to clear hard mode again. That sort of wild, but temporary, imbalance shouldn't ever happen.

code65536

Marto wrote: »

If a trial HM is finished in week 1 of PTS players decry it's "lazy design" and an example of how "ZOS doesn't care anymore"

People complained about vKA's HM being easy (I didn't, even though I would agree that KA HM is on the easy side because it's bereft of difficult mechanics and instead rely solely on massive health and damage numbers to make it hard). Well, really, there's one particular individual who cried about it rather loudly and created multiple threads that mocked the developers for it. And ZOS swung the pendulum way too far in response, and that's how we got Rockgrove. The thing is, the feedback that I saw during Rockgrove's PTS was predominately "this place is overtuned". Particularly the damage on Bahsei (that this feedback was ignored was how we got the Mist Form problem that they had to fix in a later patch) and the DPS check on Xalvakka (which even to this day most people still think is overtuned).

And if you looked at the feedback thread for DSR, it's filled with "this is overtuned" feedback. Players did not ask for RG or DSR to be so grossly overtuned. There might have been a few isolated (and perhaps loud) voices to the contrary, but there's pretty broad consensus that RG and DSR were not well-balanced, and most of the raiding community would welcome nerfs to them.

Players do have a decent sense of what is reasonable, because we are the ones spending hours in there wiping, and we are the ones who become intimately familiar with all of the nuances and pain points of a piece of content. And ultimately, we are the ones who will decide to say, "screw this, it's not worth it" if content balance is out of whack. And I've lost track of the number of people who have done exactly that with Rockgrove.

Varana

Marto wrote: »

ZOS can't start to adjust dungeon and encounter difficulty until after they have some idea of what DPS numbers are going to look like post U35.

And that's why they should have tested this internally, to have a solid understanding of how their changes will affect the game, and adapt content accordingly. (And testing is more than a few dummy parses.)
Before it ever hitting the PTS, let alone Live.

Because what you imply (and you are probably, and sadly, correct) is that they push changes to the combat with no idea about the consequences. And that's, all things considered, a rather damning statement about the Combat team.

PrincessOfThieves

Varana wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

ZOS can't start to adjust dungeon and encounter difficulty until after they have some idea of what DPS numbers are going to look like post U35.

And that's why they should have tested this internally, to have a solid understanding of how their changes will affect the game, and adapt content accordingly. (And testing is more than a few dummy parses.)
Before it ever hitting the PTS, let alone Live.

Because what you imply (and you are probably, and sadly, correct) is that they push changes to the combat with no idea about the consequences. And that's, all things considered, a rather damning statement about the Combat team.

They should have a pretty good idea about the consequences of this patch by now. And still they want to push it, despite the overwhelmingly negative feedback. This is very disheartening.
I understand that they spend time and money on these changes, but if they push it, they will lose even more time and money on repairing the damage.

p00tx

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

I also see no problem with slow increase in DPS each patch. Old hard content gets way too easy? Scale it.
Or leave it. It would actually create the progression ladder without insane difficulty jumps for new players.

The problem you ram into is that players doing lots of damage have a tendency to screw up the experience in the lower level content.

Players don't get to learn much in many base game normal dungeons because your group probably is going to have one or more players that just nukes the snot out of everything.

Only if you random queue. Random queues are for everyone, which means everyone has to deal with whatever the roll of the dice gives them. You have the option to use area text chat to assemble your own group to go through the dungeons at whatever pace you're most comfortable with. It sounds like that would suit you a bit better.

Necrotech_Master

p00tx wrote: »

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

I also see no problem with slow increase in DPS each patch. Old hard content gets way too easy? Scale it.
Or leave it. It would actually create the progression ladder without insane difficulty jumps for new players.

The problem you ram into is that players doing lots of damage have a tendency to screw up the experience in the lower level content.

Players don't get to learn much in many base game normal dungeons because your group probably is going to have one or more players that just nukes the snot out of everything.

Only if you random queue. Random queues are for everyone, which means everyone has to deal with whatever the roll of the dice gives them. You have the option to use area text chat to assemble your own group to go through the dungeons at whatever pace you're most comfortable with. It sounds like that would suit you a bit better.

i think they are mainly trying to highlight the gross content imbalance between vet HM DLC trials, and normal dungeons/overland

if a player is built for the hardest endgame content, they are going to steamroll everything else that isnt end game (hence the thread about overland difficulty)

p00tx

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

p00tx wrote: »

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

I also see no problem with slow increase in DPS each patch. Old hard content gets way too easy? Scale it.
Or leave it. It would actually create the progression ladder without insane difficulty jumps for new players.

The problem you ram into is that players doing lots of damage have a tendency to screw up the experience in the lower level content.

Players don't get to learn much in many base game normal dungeons because your group probably is going to have one or more players that just nukes the snot out of everything.

Only if you random queue. Random queues are for everyone, which means everyone has to deal with whatever the roll of the dice gives them. You have the option to use area text chat to assemble your own group to go through the dungeons at whatever pace you're most comfortable with. It sounds like that would suit you a bit better.

i think they are mainly trying to highlight the gross content imbalance between vet HM DLC trials, and normal dungeons/overland

if a player is built for the hardest endgame content, they are going to steamroll everything else that isnt end game (hence the thread about overland difficulty)

Yeah, that's definitely an unfortunate consequence of the current structure. The wide power spread (I hate the term "power gap" because it implies two linear points on a line plot, which just isn't the case) allows for more people to participate and progress all of the available content though. We all currently have access to the same content, and the same output potential as it stands; barring physical or cognitive accessibility issues of course, which higher dmg potential can even help bypass.

MidniteOwl1913

I wish I knew what was really so damned important about this patch that has to go live come hell or high water.

Because stepping back, it really doesn't make sense and I can't seem to find a way in my mind to make it.

FantasticFreddie

Marto wrote: »

Xuhora wrote: »

so this essentially means we will have a period of time between U35 and U36 (what is it, 3 months?) in which a significant portion of the endgame playerbase will be set back by a large margin in their progression?
Ill be honest here, maybe ESO could have recovered easy from that 2 years ago, taking a big L for 3 months and then coming back after they did incremental changes. but today? after so many things that have gone wrong, so little communication and devaluated playerfeedback from PTS for too many cicles i believe this will be a hit ESO cannot recover from.

sure a steady flow of new players will allways be there, but the experienced raiding community will be in shambles and said new players will more likely leave again after reaching a point where they would consider doing trials because they realize that there is no one to do it with.

here is to hoping that they will realize sooner rather than later (and i mean soon as in days, not months) that they need to do something and loose their stubbornness and stop clinging on to their changes.

Leaving some content so hard it's unplayable for 3 months is probably the best solution there can be.

Ok. And, what are the groups that CANNOT DO THE CONTENT FOR THREE OR MORE MONTHS supposed to be doing?
How is THIS the best case scenario?

How is the best case scenario JOE BIDEN??

SeaUnicorn

code65536 wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

If a trial HM is finished in week 1 of PTS players decry it's "lazy design" and an example of how "ZOS doesn't care anymore"

People complained about vKA's HM being easy (I didn't, even though I would agree that KA HM is on the easy side because it's bereft of difficult mechanics and instead rely solely on massive health and damage numbers to make it hard). Well, really, there's one particular individual who cried about it rather loudly and created multiple threads that mocked the developers for it. And ZOS swung the pendulum way too far in response, and that's how we got Rockgrove. The thing is, the feedback that I saw during Rockgrove's PTS was predominately "this place is overtuned". Particularly the damage on Bahsei (that this feedback was ignored was how we got the Mist Form problem that they had to fix in a later patch) and the DPS check on Xalvakka (which even to this day most people still think is overtuned).

And if you looked at the feedback thread for DSR, it's filled with "this is overtuned" feedback. Players did not ask for RG or DSR to be so grossly overtuned. There might have been a few isolated (and perhaps loud) voices to the contrary, but there's pretty broad consensus that RG and DSR were not well-balanced, and most of the raiding community would welcome nerfs to them.

Players do have a decent sense of what is reasonable, because we are the ones spending hours in there wiping, and we are the ones who become intimately familiar with all of the nuances and pain points of a piece of content. And ultimately, we are the ones who will decide to say, "screw this, it's not worth it" if content balance is out of whack. And I've lost track of the number of people who have done exactly that with Rockgrove.

To add to this, complexity can come from many things. vKA is "easy" for DDs and Healers (sans Falg exe) mechanics wise, pretty boring. It is unreasonably hard on just 1 role - Main Tank and somewhat hard on Healers in execute. It's boring for DDs, you just stand there and parse and press block sometimes. And that is why people complained about it. 8 out of 12 people on the team think its easy, 1 person sweating their ass off and 2 people are being blamed for heal skips in execute. This is unhealthy and disbalanced complexity. And at the same time same people who complained it is easy go back into vKA to and have a lot of fun with burn strats there, because you can burn past all mechanics if you do it right, it is hard to do (requires hyper optimized raid comp and top tier DDs and supports) and it is rewarding because you enjoy burning the stuff that was designed to be done in 3 minutes in 1 minute, pretty rewarding feeling. So yes, trifecta is boring for top 1% because it is arguably easy for that level of player, but score pushing there is not boring for that 1% at all, otherwise they would not go back there and push it.

vRG is more diverse in terms of mechanics, it is still heavily skewed in complexity toward supports, only now all 4 supports are sweating their assess off. Makes it unhealthy and hard to form a trifecta group because there are handful of Tanks and Healers who can handle it, so groups that get trifecta are all basically piggy backing on same sub-set of supports who can handle it. If you look at PCNA PBs its just basically same familiar supports and different DDs across the groups. It so unhealthy for the community, because as aspiring support you can't get into a team, cuz teams want solid reliable supports and not willing to wait till supports progress the trial. But at the same time you have handful of supports available so there are handful of teams who actually are able to get the achievement. And god forbit you loose one of the supports > you get thrown back by a month trying to find another one.

vDSR Twins in my opinion is a step in right direction, where complexity comes not from being able to heal/survive/do *** tonn of damage, but from actual interesting and fun mechanics and everyone gets to do stuff. But then we got Reef Guardian and Taleria, where yet again success of entire operation depends on tanks being able to live and the rest of the people just need to not stand in stupid sometimes.

SeaUnicorn

vRG HM Main Tanks. Same handful of people alternating patch after patch. With the Deadland being a bit more diverse because that was the DK mega-burn patch where you could stack DK and have a bit easier time getting a clear due to massive amount of cleave DKs did. As soon as DKs got nerfed it went back to being limited to 30 or less tanks available for the groups.
High Isle

Acending Tide

Deadlands

Waking Flame

Blackwood

SeaUnicorn

vDSR Tanks. This is across NA and EU...

Jaraal

qcell wrote: »

Well, there you have it in writing. They don't know, or can't predict with any certainty (even with spreadsheets) what these massive changes are going to do. But you can bet they are sure going to push them on us regardless.

And they wonder why the "toxic" community responds with "vitriol."

Jaraal

And they literally just contradicted themselves:

Additionally, for Dungeons and Trials, we’ll be reducing the health of all bosses on Veteran difficulty and above in the final PTS patch to account for the overall DPS loss.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/613388/upcoming-pts-combat-balance-adjustments/p1

MidniteOwl1913

Jaraal wrote: »

And they literally just contradicted themselves:

Additionally, for Dungeons and Trials, we’ll be reducing the health of all bosses on Veteran difficulty and above in the final PTS patch to account for the overall DPS loss.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/613388/upcoming-pts-combat-balance-adjustments/p1

This sort of thing smacks of internal disagreement. That would help explain why none of it seems to make any sense. There is no agreement on the nature and scope of the changes, and so thrashing. Changes, changes, and nothing good coming from any of it.

Ragnarok0130

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

I also see no problem with slow increase in DPS each patch. Old hard content gets way too easy? Scale it.
Or leave it. It would actually create the progression ladder without insane difficulty jumps for new players.

The problem you ram into is that players doing lots of damage have a tendency to screw up the experience in the lower level content.

Players don't get to learn much in many base game normal dungeons because your group probably is going to have one or more players that just nukes the snot out of everything.

And the problem of end game players nuking things will never be solved as long as there's the incentive to run normal RNDs for transmutes. Perhaps make the vet RND be much more transmutes than the normal version and those end game players nuking everything will leave the normals alone and stick to vet? I honestly don't know, but ZoS can't patch competency into the game, but they could at least provide a solid tutorial on the game's combat systems (intended systems like skills/weapons/armor etc, and unintended systems like LA weaving) so new players can learn how to do damage properly and gear for their role.

The combat adjustments whether week 1 PTS or even from a couple of days ago where ZoS walked many things back will still have top tier players nuking things because this disparity isn't caused by a power gap it's caused by a knowledge gap where those at the floor are content to stay there and not learn their class or rotations...essentially playing Skyrim on easy mode because they never have to improve to do the overland story content they like. Those at the ceiling learn how to eek out every last ounce of DPS regardless of how draconian ZoS nerfs everyone and will still nuke things even under a revised system.

Ragnarok0130

FantasticFreddie wrote: »

People have been asking for story mode dungeons for ages. If they made a story mode, designed to be soloed, it would make so many problems go away.
Then you would have fewer first time newbies in the dungeon queue, and less people would get upset at the upper levels farming their crystals

The problem would still be there the first time they run it with a group outside of the story mode because they still need to level their undaunted still line. The only benefit is the mission would be done and they wouldn't have to listen to the dialog which speeds things up. The veteran players would still nuke things and the low levels would still get a hit or two in before things die.