Maintenance for the week of January 13:
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – January 13
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – January 13
The maintenance is complete, and the PTS is now back online and patch 10.3.0 is available.
Devs dont seem to understand so Ill take the time to point every issue we have and a solution:
wolfsilver00
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First of all, if I forget something please comment and I'll add it, if you can put a solution Ill add it too if I find it not to be about *** the other half of the community.. so here we go..
(All my solutions will go towards a more balanced play without losing on the fun aspect, with an emphasis on the game not being the same for everyone, not all builds being the same, having actual choice and having skill and practice matter)
1) Power creep.. Oh baby we start strong here with one of the worst things happening to the game, Ill proceed to explain why this is happening and propose a solution for every one of them.
a) One Tamriel.
I love it, I like playing with my friends wherever I want, but One Tamriel carries with it the absolute realization that at the end of the day, if all content is "scaled" then you cant do much progression in the form of rewards for harder experiences. This is somewhat defeated by trials, but needs more work put into it to differentiate stuff... so here come my proposed solutions
- Make vet dungeons part of the item progression (for example, perfected versions of normal dungeon sets), give us a reason to farm in vet instead of in normals (except for the fact that vet drops purples), the vet dungeons being more difficult already is in place, so lets take advantage of that. Ill go into item progression later which will explain how this progression can and should not affect power creep.
- Make CP matter again, CP 2.0 was a step in the right direction but too limiting, when you limit options you dont leave much choice right? Which is why almost every build will use the exact same nodes, I propose a limit of 6 stars to give more wiggling room but nerfing the points required to unlock them, players would be immediately nerfed but they would feel the progression for far longer, having to spend more points to unlock stuff but being able to use more of it.. I find that being able to fill all 6 stars with 600cp is a good investment of time for that reward, so around 80cp instead of the currect usual 50cp for a normal star. Progression is important, rewarding players for their continued effort matters, and when players are told that "once you reach 1200 cp you just dont progress anymore on it" is not good
- Make DLC zones more difficult, sort of a vet version of normal zones, all of them balanced the same, like a "vet one tamriel", players will be able to do that content pretty fast, like they can do vet dungeons, and make those zones rewarding for all styles of play.. Let crafters have a bit more of materials from nodes, increase the gold drop a bit, little stuff like that, rewarding for those who put in the effort but not game changing (dont just go 50% more materials.. a 5 to 10% would be more than high enough for players to justify a lil bit more effort)
- Quest progression.. I get it, lets all play together.. But why do all quests need to have the same difficulty? Why the start of a quest that needs me to collect some materials from a crab leads to killing some dremora that die just as easy as the crab? Introduce a difficulty spike on questing, balanced around 160CP. Most players can reach 160CP in a couple days, hell, a dedicated one with all the exp boosts that you give can do it in a day... But for new players, those couple days are important, and the feeling of being defeated to then come back stronger, is important. It also teaches them to try their hardest to learn the mechanics, cause maybe if they did, they could defeat that boss 10 levels prior.. And they will try it, and they will be rewarded for it. Then once they reach 160cp they have at least an understanding on game mechanics that they wouldnt have if they could just rush through it all by pressing left click.
So a map of progression would look like this: Tutorial (with a proper combat mechanics tutorial) > First zone balanced like usual OT > Some questing > Main quest (With the difficulty spike previously mentioned) > Other zones > Other zones main quest (with the difficulty spike) > Normal Dungeons > Vet Zones (accessible by anyone at any point in time, but balanced around 300cp or so) > Vet zones main quest (with the difficulty spike) > Vet Dungeons (giving the perfected version of normal equipment) > Trials > Vet Trials > New mysterious step that I will mention later
b) Gear.
The other half of power creep. Why? Because every new expansion, new sets are introduced and for them to matter you had to make them stronger than things before.. Thats power creep by design just to sell an expansion... So here are my proposed solutions:
- Stop putting out new sets for a while. Yup.. Thats it.. Thats one of the first things that could be done to alleviate this problem.. STOP. PUTTING. ***. OUT. When you introduce a trial, yeah, of course, give us a new set (with some considerations that I will mention next), but you dont have to introduce new sets all the time, you can instead start introducing perfected versions of UNDERUSED stuff. BUT WAIT! you say.. Wouldn't that increase the power creep too? Making those perfected craftables more powerful than already present stuff? Well, here comes my solution number 2 that ties this up nicely
- Stop putting insane stats on sets. In a game about choice, putting out a set that outperforms everything is not choice. I get it, youve got to sell the expansion or the dlc.. So you want people to WANT to buy it, so they have access to it.. But what if, and hear me out here because this will sound insane, what if you put out FUN *** instead of powerful ***? I know right? Its crazy, but its a solution.. Lets cover one example:
Shalidors curse, a couple stats and the 5 piece bonus? You heal with LA if under 50% health.. I love the concept of this set, the potential it has for solo players..But no one would use it, because its ***. But its really not my dudes! Its a fun set, another option for low self healing classes, a real choice to be made! And why? Because it doesnt try to be more than it needs to be, a couple stats on 1-4 and a game changing 5 piece bonus...
So.. What to do? Well, make them better. When more things become viable, then we have more choice. So the first step?
-Rebalance EVERY. SINGLE. SET. Make them all viable but with a catch.. No more "You just do X more damage and thats it".. bahseis is a perfect example on how this can be done.. Risk and reward, you want that damage? work for it, learn the mechanics for it.. Plenty people still use False, why? Because its easier, you can just spam like crazy because your sustain is amazing.. Does it bring less DPS? Yes it does.. Does it still see use? Yes it does! Because for some people its just more fun and they dont mind losing 5k dps.. People in end-game are not even as close to obsessed with high numbers as most people think they are and the main reason they are mad about this update is because its just nerfing for no reason and making the game BORING. So, introduce a deviation in power on all sets, of course, but let them all fall under a bell curve.. With the most demanding skill wise sets on the top of it, while the others, WHILE STILL VIABLE, may be less demanding for a similar output in effectiveness. And make the fun sets, the niche sets, the "this build could use this" sets, better. No craftable set should have no use in this game, and if it does not have it, then it needs fixing.
-New trials progression.. We've been talking for years about class identity, so this is what you do, you start putting out trial sets that are not just a number pump, but actually do something for your play style instead.. What am I talking about? Im talking about skill modifying gear, we have a couple of those but not nearly enough.. I'm talking about Maelstrom staff being basically the meta for who knows how long already.. Well, new trials are a good place to start correcting this.. Trials centered around a faction to start, for example, a trial centered around the fighters guild.. With a set that modifies (NOT JUST A BUFF IN NUMBERS) the way abilities work. Its important to note the distinction of "make X ability do X more damage" and "make X ability behave wildly differently, with the potential for some wacky combos, some new buff uptimes, some new form of sustain, etc.." I will give an example that Im just making up so dont take it seriously..
New 5 piece set, heavy, thought for tanks of course, gives some health, maybe some hp regen, but then a 5 piece bonus: Circle of protection.. A skill not used too much, used sometimes.. Now? Instead of a rune on the ground its an AoE centered around the player, friendlies in that area receive the buffs already given by the ability (which if im not mistaken are minor protection and endurance, PLUS a shield of, I dont know, lets say 8k, for 0.5 second. Now your tank has a way to protect the team from an area attack that he sees is about to connect, and between the reduced damage and the shield, a well timed, well orchestrated circle of protection with this modification, could be amazing for fights in which you have, for example, a heal check. Its just an example and you dont have to take it seriously, but I believe the future of ESOs identity is in making more ability modifying stuff instead of just pumping numbers.. And people will want it anyway, even if its not "THE BEST", because in some situations it will be, something like this would be amazing for SS for that healing check on the third boss... (which with current changes to hots is going to be a pain in the ass so big i may get hemorrhoids).. Then you just do the same with class abilities.. But why start with guild abilities if I'm talking about class identity? Ill talk about it in 3..
So.. What would the gear progression look like? Well, it would stop being about the new sets released overpowered to justify sells and it would be about collecting the right set for the right place, for your build.. It would be about how you want to play the game instead of everyone running the same 3 sets in every build.. And how do we do this? We leave trial sets as they are (as in, giving stats) and rebalance the underused ones to be useful, if they need a new mechanic that just "gives more numbers" then lets give it to it. Then we balance dungeon gear to give less stats than trial gear, but be useful enough to do trials, again, more rebalancing so they are all usefull or at least a vast mayority of them, the ones that would have no place just because there are too many of them doing the same ***, rebalance them for pvp or for pve exclusively, using slayer or aegis, a new healing buff for pve, or introducing a new minor buff for pvp that can be gotten from dugeons, to start a pvp build, while the Major pvp buff comes only from gear gotten by pvp. That way you have an entry level for pvp but you also have progression within it. No pvp gear should be BiS or even close for pve.. Im looking at you deadly.. Change that ***, all pvp 5 piece bonuses should reward pvp, not pve. And I say that as a templar who is absolutely glad he has deadly for his cast of sweeps, but its a sacrifice ill gladly take for the health of the game. And then, lastly, overland and craftables.. Overland should be, in my opinion, thematic to their zone. Overland sets should have a 5 piece bonus that reflects the zone they drop in, again, not just a stat pump, leave only trial sets as stat pumps, because you dont need stat pumps anywhere else thanks to one tamriel.. And finally craftables.. They are the easier sets to get your hands on, so they SHOULD NOT BE SO GOOD. Orders wrath is an atrocity to the games variation, there is not a single reason for any dd that is playing this game, to run anything but orders wrath as soon as their character is created and up until they either have the money/pvp skills for deadly, or they start farming kinra/trial gear. So, craftable gear should be ALL ABOUT IDENTITY. We have so many zones with craftable gear that we could have 10 sets per class, each one of them modifying a skill for their class.. And because they are craftable, there would be no fighting over the "class locked equipment" because everyone would have access to it.. (different than trial sets class skill modifying in which the same set would modify different abilities, there should not be a set for every class, cause that would be a really stupid grind).. I'm serious, there is so much potential in craftable sets to have some wacky builds.. They could also be used in a pinch after changes *** up some class or another (im looking at you stamplar), in which if there is 5 stamplar craftables, there is plenty of chance to fix it for the time being with a little buff here and there, while the devs take time to put out a proper patch with fixes for the class..)
3) Class Identity...
It doesnt exist. Most builds are all the same, hell, sometimes even across classes they are the same.. for example, most magika dds will have the 6 skills that are the same, no matter the class.. the main culprits being wall and ball, followed by trap and light, sometimes beast, sometimes harness some meteor and dawnbreaker too, definitely dwing daggers.. And so on.. Thats bad and if you think about it, if more than half your skills come from non class lines, then your class doesnt really matter that much at the end of the day does it? I mean, whats the thing that makes a templar dd a templar dd? Sweeps. Thats it.. They are not known for something else, just for one ability.. Yeah, they have other useful abilities like radiant or light, some living dark for pvp.. But mainly they are a sweep spamming class. No matter if they are stam or magika, no matter if pvp or pve.. They. just. spam. sweeps. So.. How do we solve this?
- STOP NERFING CLASSES.
- START NERFING NON CLASS LINES
- Non-class lines should be used to patch holes in classes, not as an ever present big boom. Specially ultimates, no class should ever feel the need to put an ultimate just because its better than all of its ultimates.. As a magplar, it pains me that I can use my ults only when im healing, but when dding, dawnbreaker and meteor are just the better option, like in many other classes, with notable exception being the necro who can slot 2 of his ults and be perfectly fine
- If possible, don't give us a new skill line.. Many people will not like what I'm saying here.. But with quantity, comes similarity.. if we get a new class line on every class, there will probably be much overlap.. So instead of that I think the skill modifying gear is the way to go to create unique options and actually have some choice.. Why? Because it could be about the most underutilized skills in a class, giving them new life..
4) Skill Identity..
First every skill goes to 20 seconds.. now the divide between stickies and statics.. we dont like this.. and there is no reason for it.. here is how you solve it:
- All skills should fall under a bell curve, like I said before, skills with higher risk and technical skill required should output more damage, NOT ALL SKILLS SHOULD FOLLOW THE SAME POTENCY
- Skills do not need to have the same duration, duration can be a factor of damage, buffing, static or sticky, secondary effects, cost, etc.. Real diversity should be important..
- Introduction of cd's. I know people wont like this, but hear me out.. Be it by means of a "specific" cd (on the same target, like a debuff that wont let you use that ability on that one you just did, but it will let you use it on another target) or by using ultimate charge, so.. NOT A REAL CD. This would allow you to use a strong ability, with high power coefficient at the expense of your sustain, on packs, or every now and then on a boss, for a big hit. Its just an example.. What I'm getting at is that there needs to be difference between damaging skills, some skills should cost more and do more, some others should cost less and do less.. Some skills should cost normal and do more, but with a caveat of circumstance.. All of them should be viable at the end, again, the bell curve I like to talk about, but SKILL SHOULD BE REWARDED, and then on either side of skill, you got low sustain high output and high sustain low output, buffs should be considered here..
- Introduction of a utility slot... Just let us pop gallop there, or light there, or something like that... Its one slot that is always present, no matter the bar.. That will free up some space, and not force people to have the same skill buffing by passive on 2 bars, limiting their versatility.. Just one is enough.. One little slot for that omnipresent *** we always put somewhere, to give us access to 2 more slots that could be filled with class specific abilities or guild/weapon/armor ones, tho, most likely, the utility slot will have the non class ability that buffs...
- Skills SHOULD NOT BE BORING.. Spamming a skill forever is boring. Dont force us to do so.
5) New players, old players, the duality of the player base and the solutions to their issues:
- New players want to do content.. Nerfing them to hell and back is not the way to help them, and you just did that.
- Older players want the game to be better, to grow, and we know that you just *** new players over FAR MORE than you *** us.. So when you tell us you changed things because of accessibility and for new players sake, we feel insulted, disrespected, lied to.. because we understand how the game works.. [snip] The community is losing any faith it had, and while some of us reacted badly (i admit it, I did.. because im *** pissed at spending so much time and effort into getting better at the game for the devs to tell me "*** your effort, you should not be rewarded for putting the time into getting better") the truth of the matter is, we have been saying the same *** for years now.. We are tired of being in a beta in which the devs never hear our feedback, and only when there is an outcry and people start blowing their *** minds, only then you listen but just enough to say "yo, we hear you" and you just do a small change like the timers, and ignore everything else.. We are tired, annoyed and there is so much pushing against your community that you can do until the community gets pissed. I'm not saying "knee jerk" reactions are the way, but come on, how many times you want to put the finger in our blisters without us just saying enough is enough? if you were at least honest with us and say "we are trying to fix powercreep" then maybe, just maybe, the community would not be so angry.. Because dishonesty is something we are starting to get pretty *** tired of.
- New players had it fine with oakensoul.. It was a really good item for them, a mid point between normal gear and trial gear.. It was still part of the progression and just needed a bit of adjusting, the easiest way would have been to take off some buffs, the overperforming ones, and turning them into slayer and aegis.. Thats it.. That way youve got a good pve item without the pvp component of.. well, being absolutely op.. We all know you wanted to sell your expansion, with a cardgame no one asked, without the changes we have been asking FOR YEARS, so you put some op *** in there, oaken, orders wrath, and call it a day (shout out to the questing and zone team, they outdid themselves with high isle, its amazing and im not saying otherwise) because you knew that people would buy it even if they didnt want to, because they would get *** in pvp, because EVERY SINGLE ONE BAR BUILD. would get updated to oakensoul and be far better.. You knew it.. How you knew it? Because we told you so.. And you did it anyway.. We know you have to keep the lights on, but if you keep trying to keep the lights on (after selling us the game AND the subscription) while destroying the balance of the game, then nerfing it so you can do it all over again and even lying to us that you are doing it "for the new guys"... yeah no, we are not gonna take that *** calmly, people have put thousands of hours, passion, effort, and you are *** them over cash.. of course we are going to react.. I hope to be able to react better from now on, but the dev team needs to do a mea culpa here and start being honest with the community that got you this far.
- Weaving.. You had to do something about this 8 years ago, you didnt do it.. Now do not. ***. touch it. We've put so much *** effort into getting good at it, you owe it to use to not *** on us. On our effort.. Besides, it may look a bit wonky, I admit it, but its fun, its a skill to be learned by the player, not something you can buy, not something you can take from others, but your own effort shows.. What did you expect would happen when you messed with that? And its not like the nerf makes any sense, weaving light attacks is still very necessary and the new players who didnt do it consistently are going to do even less damage now.. You helped no one. Skill should be rewarded, its an MMO, it has progression, why are you so scared of differences between players? Im mediocre at best but I want to get better.. I dont think that my guild leader who has 5k hours in this game should deal less damage for no reason other than to get him closer to me.. And you can not balance the game around people with disabilities.. It may sound *** but thats the truth, for people with disabilities you can, maybe, not *** with an oakensoul big ass nerf.. But if you make the game less reactive to help those with disabilities, instead of giving them a choice to help them, then you basically force all of us to lower our ceiling.. You can make both of us happy, or you can use the prior as an excuse to fix your power creep *** up while *** them too.. Your choice. But I insist, even tho this doesnt sound good, the truth is you cant balance this game around people who cant click, its a *** pc game, im so sorry people have difficulties playing it, but where do you draw the line? Whats next? Make it so the game plays with just one button because there are people paralized who can only click once on one location? Come one, we are not stupid, we dont believe a word about this accessibility thing, you are just using them as an excuse so that if we go against it, we are just ***..Yet even the disabled community is telling you, "you *** us up" which I think is something to consider.
6) Healing.
Honestly this is one of the most problematic parts of this update..(and has been a problem for long) Im glad its been addressed a little bit with the changes to HoT (static).. but still there is much that needs to be done for healing to be more reactive..
- Right now healers are DDs who heal.. so basically they dont feel much difference in their gameplay other than.. keep dots, keep hots, do a rotation.. I think they should be reworked a bit with some reactive gameplay like the tank.. mechanics that, again, reward skill and effort put into getting better.
- A healer only stat in a bunch of sets, as previously mentioned, some class sets with this heal stat would be amazing for crafting.. (and then in trial equipment) Make heals better, make healers feel less of a hybrid between damage and healing, they can increase the damage overall by clever utilization of buffs, letting dds use less place holder abilities just for their buffs, while healers can concentrate on just healing and buffing.. Of course im not saying you take away what we have now, but that you give healers the option to go balls deep into a healer buffing beast. Reactivity is good, skill is good...
Lastly but still very important.. Not everything is numbers, sometimes you need to hear to anecdotal experience, because some *** wont show up in numbers, for example, the loss of dps on numbers is just that, numbers.. but wont tell you about the fact that we are pissed cause that dps comes at the expense of fun. It wont tell you that longer fights with harder healing make for a bad match, for a boring match.. You have great fights with good mechanics, well differentiated and with a good distance between them so they dont get boring and the rotations dont get boring also.. Don't mess with that, the amount of dps we do is perfect, new players need a bit of a buff (oakensoul was a step in the right direction there, even tho it was a bit OP on some classes, fixed by the aforementioned changes) and a tutorial that explains to them GCDs, weaving and the importance of using buffs alongside skills..
PvP is also something to consider, even if it is a small part of the game, for many its the endgame as much as trials are.. Stop *** up PvP to sell stuff.. First of all, either remove mythics completely from PvP or make them accessible to everyone, no pay wall, no nothing. Mythics at this point are p2w and its sad that we have a p2w mechanic in such a great game, I'm all up for you guys getting money from stuff, but things that give stats and are not accessible without credit card usage, should not have a home. A good example is jewelry.. You may not have the dlc, may not pay the +, but you can still go and ask others to craft you some jewelry.. You are not able to do that with mythics. Another solution would be to give free players plus access every month, just one day, so they can slowly but surely progress through some stuff.. At the end of the day you are just getting free marketing of the features of +.. And they would be able to farm those mythics with enough dedication.. I still believe the best way forward considering how important and game changing they are (again, with the personality of builds stuff which I find incredibly important for the future of the game) is to just.. give it for free.. make it part of the base game.. But if you dont want to, at least a middle point can be achieved by either a free day per month (different days so that people with jobs can still make use of them) or introduce lesser versions via crafting, available to all, which would still be kind of p2w because more money=more stats, but at least they would have access to the change in gameplay, which again, for me is a much more important factor than better stats, and considering how the progression works, I think that we have reached a good cap in dps, in which top players can output +100k dps with a lot of effort, technique and time.. Thats 30% more than what a mediocre player like me can do with my 70k dps, (or, if you want to be pedantic about how percentages work, its a 42% increase), I think a player with all perfected gear, an amazing rotation and skill/awareness should be rewarded by being 40% better than me, with my non perfected, still learning ass.. And I dont find that to be bad, actually I find it to be awesome, because I know I can do better and when I do, I feel great, I feel like I've achieved something.. We should celebrate our differences, not try to make it the same for everyone.. Imagine if you were to change chess so that pawns could only move one square on their first move, because top players are able to move them far better than low rating players.. Everyone would say thats insane.. Its the same thing you are doing here, taking the ceiling down but also crashing it on the low end players who still have room to grow.. No one wins.
Please, start listening to your community.. What I gave here are just things that come out of my imagination, some may be wrong and I dont think everything I say will be good for everyone, but I'm pretty sure they are far better than what you are doing now.. And if not, I will be corrected by the community, by players who know the game better than I do.. And I wont be mad.. Because that happens, sometimes you are just wrong.. And I understand that as developers you think you know best.. But sometimes you don't.. Sometimes the hundreds of players experiencing something like a player, instead of like a developer, is worth something.. Because you dont make this game for yourselves, for the developers.. This is a product, a product for the players.. So start treating your customers with some respect and maybe, just maybe, the customers will stop having knee jerk reactions.. You could learn a lot from the PoE developers and how they treat their players, and also, what the players response is to that treatment, that fairness, that "not getting the hand on my wallet" thing..
Either start doing *** correctly or the game will end up losing its top end players, then there will be no one to carry the new players into the hard content, so you will end up buffing everything again but having lost a part of your community.. [snip]
Do better and your community will answer better.. Do better and the players will appreciate it and will want to support this game further, there is many ways to money, what you are doing is one of them, yeah.. But at what cost? You are gaining money but losing one really precious resource for a game.. Players.
[edited for bashing]
Edited by ZOS_Icy on July 24, 2022 3:36PM (All my solutions will go towards a more balanced play without losing on the fun aspect, with an emphasis on the game not being the same for everyone, not all builds being the same, having actual choice and having skill and practice matter)
1) Power creep.. Oh baby we start strong here with one of the worst things happening to the game, Ill proceed to explain why this is happening and propose a solution for every one of them.
a) One Tamriel.
I love it, I like playing with my friends wherever I want, but One Tamriel carries with it the absolute realization that at the end of the day, if all content is "scaled" then you cant do much progression in the form of rewards for harder experiences. This is somewhat defeated by trials, but needs more work put into it to differentiate stuff... so here come my proposed solutions
- Make vet dungeons part of the item progression (for example, perfected versions of normal dungeon sets), give us a reason to farm in vet instead of in normals (except for the fact that vet drops purples), the vet dungeons being more difficult already is in place, so lets take advantage of that. Ill go into item progression later which will explain how this progression can and should not affect power creep.
- Make CP matter again, CP 2.0 was a step in the right direction but too limiting, when you limit options you dont leave much choice right? Which is why almost every build will use the exact same nodes, I propose a limit of 6 stars to give more wiggling room but nerfing the points required to unlock them, players would be immediately nerfed but they would feel the progression for far longer, having to spend more points to unlock stuff but being able to use more of it.. I find that being able to fill all 6 stars with 600cp is a good investment of time for that reward, so around 80cp instead of the currect usual 50cp for a normal star. Progression is important, rewarding players for their continued effort matters, and when players are told that "once you reach 1200 cp you just dont progress anymore on it" is not good
- Make DLC zones more difficult, sort of a vet version of normal zones, all of them balanced the same, like a "vet one tamriel", players will be able to do that content pretty fast, like they can do vet dungeons, and make those zones rewarding for all styles of play.. Let crafters have a bit more of materials from nodes, increase the gold drop a bit, little stuff like that, rewarding for those who put in the effort but not game changing (dont just go 50% more materials.. a 5 to 10% would be more than high enough for players to justify a lil bit more effort)
- Quest progression.. I get it, lets all play together.. But why do all quests need to have the same difficulty? Why the start of a quest that needs me to collect some materials from a crab leads to killing some dremora that die just as easy as the crab? Introduce a difficulty spike on questing, balanced around 160CP. Most players can reach 160CP in a couple days, hell, a dedicated one with all the exp boosts that you give can do it in a day... But for new players, those couple days are important, and the feeling of being defeated to then come back stronger, is important. It also teaches them to try their hardest to learn the mechanics, cause maybe if they did, they could defeat that boss 10 levels prior.. And they will try it, and they will be rewarded for it. Then once they reach 160cp they have at least an understanding on game mechanics that they wouldnt have if they could just rush through it all by pressing left click.
So a map of progression would look like this: Tutorial (with a proper combat mechanics tutorial) > First zone balanced like usual OT > Some questing > Main quest (With the difficulty spike previously mentioned) > Other zones > Other zones main quest (with the difficulty spike) > Normal Dungeons > Vet Zones (accessible by anyone at any point in time, but balanced around 300cp or so) > Vet zones main quest (with the difficulty spike) > Vet Dungeons (giving the perfected version of normal equipment) > Trials > Vet Trials > New mysterious step that I will mention later
b) Gear.
The other half of power creep. Why? Because every new expansion, new sets are introduced and for them to matter you had to make them stronger than things before.. Thats power creep by design just to sell an expansion... So here are my proposed solutions:
- Stop putting out new sets for a while. Yup.. Thats it.. Thats one of the first things that could be done to alleviate this problem.. STOP. PUTTING. ***. OUT. When you introduce a trial, yeah, of course, give us a new set (with some considerations that I will mention next), but you dont have to introduce new sets all the time, you can instead start introducing perfected versions of UNDERUSED stuff. BUT WAIT! you say.. Wouldn't that increase the power creep too? Making those perfected craftables more powerful than already present stuff? Well, here comes my solution number 2 that ties this up nicely
- Stop putting insane stats on sets. In a game about choice, putting out a set that outperforms everything is not choice. I get it, youve got to sell the expansion or the dlc.. So you want people to WANT to buy it, so they have access to it.. But what if, and hear me out here because this will sound insane, what if you put out FUN *** instead of powerful ***? I know right? Its crazy, but its a solution.. Lets cover one example:
Shalidors curse, a couple stats and the 5 piece bonus? You heal with LA if under 50% health.. I love the concept of this set, the potential it has for solo players..But no one would use it, because its ***. But its really not my dudes! Its a fun set, another option for low self healing classes, a real choice to be made! And why? Because it doesnt try to be more than it needs to be, a couple stats on 1-4 and a game changing 5 piece bonus...
So.. What to do? Well, make them better. When more things become viable, then we have more choice. So the first step?
-Rebalance EVERY. SINGLE. SET. Make them all viable but with a catch.. No more "You just do X more damage and thats it".. bahseis is a perfect example on how this can be done.. Risk and reward, you want that damage? work for it, learn the mechanics for it.. Plenty people still use False, why? Because its easier, you can just spam like crazy because your sustain is amazing.. Does it bring less DPS? Yes it does.. Does it still see use? Yes it does! Because for some people its just more fun and they dont mind losing 5k dps.. People in end-game are not even as close to obsessed with high numbers as most people think they are and the main reason they are mad about this update is because its just nerfing for no reason and making the game BORING. So, introduce a deviation in power on all sets, of course, but let them all fall under a bell curve.. With the most demanding skill wise sets on the top of it, while the others, WHILE STILL VIABLE, may be less demanding for a similar output in effectiveness. And make the fun sets, the niche sets, the "this build could use this" sets, better. No craftable set should have no use in this game, and if it does not have it, then it needs fixing.
-New trials progression.. We've been talking for years about class identity, so this is what you do, you start putting out trial sets that are not just a number pump, but actually do something for your play style instead.. What am I talking about? Im talking about skill modifying gear, we have a couple of those but not nearly enough.. I'm talking about Maelstrom staff being basically the meta for who knows how long already.. Well, new trials are a good place to start correcting this.. Trials centered around a faction to start, for example, a trial centered around the fighters guild.. With a set that modifies (NOT JUST A BUFF IN NUMBERS) the way abilities work. Its important to note the distinction of "make X ability do X more damage" and "make X ability behave wildly differently, with the potential for some wacky combos, some new buff uptimes, some new form of sustain, etc.." I will give an example that Im just making up so dont take it seriously..
New 5 piece set, heavy, thought for tanks of course, gives some health, maybe some hp regen, but then a 5 piece bonus: Circle of protection.. A skill not used too much, used sometimes.. Now? Instead of a rune on the ground its an AoE centered around the player, friendlies in that area receive the buffs already given by the ability (which if im not mistaken are minor protection and endurance, PLUS a shield of, I dont know, lets say 8k, for 0.5 second. Now your tank has a way to protect the team from an area attack that he sees is about to connect, and between the reduced damage and the shield, a well timed, well orchestrated circle of protection with this modification, could be amazing for fights in which you have, for example, a heal check. Its just an example and you dont have to take it seriously, but I believe the future of ESOs identity is in making more ability modifying stuff instead of just pumping numbers.. And people will want it anyway, even if its not "THE BEST", because in some situations it will be, something like this would be amazing for SS for that healing check on the third boss... (which with current changes to hots is going to be a pain in the ass so big i may get hemorrhoids).. Then you just do the same with class abilities.. But why start with guild abilities if I'm talking about class identity? Ill talk about it in 3..
So.. What would the gear progression look like? Well, it would stop being about the new sets released overpowered to justify sells and it would be about collecting the right set for the right place, for your build.. It would be about how you want to play the game instead of everyone running the same 3 sets in every build.. And how do we do this? We leave trial sets as they are (as in, giving stats) and rebalance the underused ones to be useful, if they need a new mechanic that just "gives more numbers" then lets give it to it. Then we balance dungeon gear to give less stats than trial gear, but be useful enough to do trials, again, more rebalancing so they are all usefull or at least a vast mayority of them, the ones that would have no place just because there are too many of them doing the same ***, rebalance them for pvp or for pve exclusively, using slayer or aegis, a new healing buff for pve, or introducing a new minor buff for pvp that can be gotten from dugeons, to start a pvp build, while the Major pvp buff comes only from gear gotten by pvp. That way you have an entry level for pvp but you also have progression within it. No pvp gear should be BiS or even close for pve.. Im looking at you deadly.. Change that ***, all pvp 5 piece bonuses should reward pvp, not pve. And I say that as a templar who is absolutely glad he has deadly for his cast of sweeps, but its a sacrifice ill gladly take for the health of the game. And then, lastly, overland and craftables.. Overland should be, in my opinion, thematic to their zone. Overland sets should have a 5 piece bonus that reflects the zone they drop in, again, not just a stat pump, leave only trial sets as stat pumps, because you dont need stat pumps anywhere else thanks to one tamriel.. And finally craftables.. They are the easier sets to get your hands on, so they SHOULD NOT BE SO GOOD. Orders wrath is an atrocity to the games variation, there is not a single reason for any dd that is playing this game, to run anything but orders wrath as soon as their character is created and up until they either have the money/pvp skills for deadly, or they start farming kinra/trial gear. So, craftable gear should be ALL ABOUT IDENTITY. We have so many zones with craftable gear that we could have 10 sets per class, each one of them modifying a skill for their class.. And because they are craftable, there would be no fighting over the "class locked equipment" because everyone would have access to it.. (different than trial sets class skill modifying in which the same set would modify different abilities, there should not be a set for every class, cause that would be a really stupid grind).. I'm serious, there is so much potential in craftable sets to have some wacky builds.. They could also be used in a pinch after changes *** up some class or another (im looking at you stamplar), in which if there is 5 stamplar craftables, there is plenty of chance to fix it for the time being with a little buff here and there, while the devs take time to put out a proper patch with fixes for the class..)
3) Class Identity...
It doesnt exist. Most builds are all the same, hell, sometimes even across classes they are the same.. for example, most magika dds will have the 6 skills that are the same, no matter the class.. the main culprits being wall and ball, followed by trap and light, sometimes beast, sometimes harness some meteor and dawnbreaker too, definitely dwing daggers.. And so on.. Thats bad and if you think about it, if more than half your skills come from non class lines, then your class doesnt really matter that much at the end of the day does it? I mean, whats the thing that makes a templar dd a templar dd? Sweeps. Thats it.. They are not known for something else, just for one ability.. Yeah, they have other useful abilities like radiant or light, some living dark for pvp.. But mainly they are a sweep spamming class. No matter if they are stam or magika, no matter if pvp or pve.. They. just. spam. sweeps. So.. How do we solve this?
- STOP NERFING CLASSES.
- START NERFING NON CLASS LINES
- Non-class lines should be used to patch holes in classes, not as an ever present big boom. Specially ultimates, no class should ever feel the need to put an ultimate just because its better than all of its ultimates.. As a magplar, it pains me that I can use my ults only when im healing, but when dding, dawnbreaker and meteor are just the better option, like in many other classes, with notable exception being the necro who can slot 2 of his ults and be perfectly fine
- If possible, don't give us a new skill line.. Many people will not like what I'm saying here.. But with quantity, comes similarity.. if we get a new class line on every class, there will probably be much overlap.. So instead of that I think the skill modifying gear is the way to go to create unique options and actually have some choice.. Why? Because it could be about the most underutilized skills in a class, giving them new life..
4) Skill Identity..
First every skill goes to 20 seconds.. now the divide between stickies and statics.. we dont like this.. and there is no reason for it.. here is how you solve it:
- All skills should fall under a bell curve, like I said before, skills with higher risk and technical skill required should output more damage, NOT ALL SKILLS SHOULD FOLLOW THE SAME POTENCY
- Skills do not need to have the same duration, duration can be a factor of damage, buffing, static or sticky, secondary effects, cost, etc.. Real diversity should be important..
- Introduction of cd's. I know people wont like this, but hear me out.. Be it by means of a "specific" cd (on the same target, like a debuff that wont let you use that ability on that one you just did, but it will let you use it on another target) or by using ultimate charge, so.. NOT A REAL CD. This would allow you to use a strong ability, with high power coefficient at the expense of your sustain, on packs, or every now and then on a boss, for a big hit. Its just an example.. What I'm getting at is that there needs to be difference between damaging skills, some skills should cost more and do more, some others should cost less and do less.. Some skills should cost normal and do more, but with a caveat of circumstance.. All of them should be viable at the end, again, the bell curve I like to talk about, but SKILL SHOULD BE REWARDED, and then on either side of skill, you got low sustain high output and high sustain low output, buffs should be considered here..
- Introduction of a utility slot... Just let us pop gallop there, or light there, or something like that... Its one slot that is always present, no matter the bar.. That will free up some space, and not force people to have the same skill buffing by passive on 2 bars, limiting their versatility.. Just one is enough.. One little slot for that omnipresent *** we always put somewhere, to give us access to 2 more slots that could be filled with class specific abilities or guild/weapon/armor ones, tho, most likely, the utility slot will have the non class ability that buffs...
- Skills SHOULD NOT BE BORING.. Spamming a skill forever is boring. Dont force us to do so.
5) New players, old players, the duality of the player base and the solutions to their issues:
- New players want to do content.. Nerfing them to hell and back is not the way to help them, and you just did that.
- Older players want the game to be better, to grow, and we know that you just *** new players over FAR MORE than you *** us.. So when you tell us you changed things because of accessibility and for new players sake, we feel insulted, disrespected, lied to.. because we understand how the game works.. [snip] The community is losing any faith it had, and while some of us reacted badly (i admit it, I did.. because im *** pissed at spending so much time and effort into getting better at the game for the devs to tell me "*** your effort, you should not be rewarded for putting the time into getting better") the truth of the matter is, we have been saying the same *** for years now.. We are tired of being in a beta in which the devs never hear our feedback, and only when there is an outcry and people start blowing their *** minds, only then you listen but just enough to say "yo, we hear you" and you just do a small change like the timers, and ignore everything else.. We are tired, annoyed and there is so much pushing against your community that you can do until the community gets pissed. I'm not saying "knee jerk" reactions are the way, but come on, how many times you want to put the finger in our blisters without us just saying enough is enough? if you were at least honest with us and say "we are trying to fix powercreep" then maybe, just maybe, the community would not be so angry.. Because dishonesty is something we are starting to get pretty *** tired of.
- New players had it fine with oakensoul.. It was a really good item for them, a mid point between normal gear and trial gear.. It was still part of the progression and just needed a bit of adjusting, the easiest way would have been to take off some buffs, the overperforming ones, and turning them into slayer and aegis.. Thats it.. That way youve got a good pve item without the pvp component of.. well, being absolutely op.. We all know you wanted to sell your expansion, with a cardgame no one asked, without the changes we have been asking FOR YEARS, so you put some op *** in there, oaken, orders wrath, and call it a day (shout out to the questing and zone team, they outdid themselves with high isle, its amazing and im not saying otherwise) because you knew that people would buy it even if they didnt want to, because they would get *** in pvp, because EVERY SINGLE ONE BAR BUILD. would get updated to oakensoul and be far better.. You knew it.. How you knew it? Because we told you so.. And you did it anyway.. We know you have to keep the lights on, but if you keep trying to keep the lights on (after selling us the game AND the subscription) while destroying the balance of the game, then nerfing it so you can do it all over again and even lying to us that you are doing it "for the new guys"... yeah no, we are not gonna take that *** calmly, people have put thousands of hours, passion, effort, and you are *** them over cash.. of course we are going to react.. I hope to be able to react better from now on, but the dev team needs to do a mea culpa here and start being honest with the community that got you this far.
- Weaving.. You had to do something about this 8 years ago, you didnt do it.. Now do not. ***. touch it. We've put so much *** effort into getting good at it, you owe it to use to not *** on us. On our effort.. Besides, it may look a bit wonky, I admit it, but its fun, its a skill to be learned by the player, not something you can buy, not something you can take from others, but your own effort shows.. What did you expect would happen when you messed with that? And its not like the nerf makes any sense, weaving light attacks is still very necessary and the new players who didnt do it consistently are going to do even less damage now.. You helped no one. Skill should be rewarded, its an MMO, it has progression, why are you so scared of differences between players? Im mediocre at best but I want to get better.. I dont think that my guild leader who has 5k hours in this game should deal less damage for no reason other than to get him closer to me.. And you can not balance the game around people with disabilities.. It may sound *** but thats the truth, for people with disabilities you can, maybe, not *** with an oakensoul big ass nerf.. But if you make the game less reactive to help those with disabilities, instead of giving them a choice to help them, then you basically force all of us to lower our ceiling.. You can make both of us happy, or you can use the prior as an excuse to fix your power creep *** up while *** them too.. Your choice. But I insist, even tho this doesnt sound good, the truth is you cant balance this game around people who cant click, its a *** pc game, im so sorry people have difficulties playing it, but where do you draw the line? Whats next? Make it so the game plays with just one button because there are people paralized who can only click once on one location? Come one, we are not stupid, we dont believe a word about this accessibility thing, you are just using them as an excuse so that if we go against it, we are just ***..Yet even the disabled community is telling you, "you *** us up" which I think is something to consider.
6) Healing.
Honestly this is one of the most problematic parts of this update..(and has been a problem for long) Im glad its been addressed a little bit with the changes to HoT (static).. but still there is much that needs to be done for healing to be more reactive..
- Right now healers are DDs who heal.. so basically they dont feel much difference in their gameplay other than.. keep dots, keep hots, do a rotation.. I think they should be reworked a bit with some reactive gameplay like the tank.. mechanics that, again, reward skill and effort put into getting better.
- A healer only stat in a bunch of sets, as previously mentioned, some class sets with this heal stat would be amazing for crafting.. (and then in trial equipment) Make heals better, make healers feel less of a hybrid between damage and healing, they can increase the damage overall by clever utilization of buffs, letting dds use less place holder abilities just for their buffs, while healers can concentrate on just healing and buffing.. Of course im not saying you take away what we have now, but that you give healers the option to go balls deep into a healer buffing beast. Reactivity is good, skill is good...
Lastly but still very important.. Not everything is numbers, sometimes you need to hear to anecdotal experience, because some *** wont show up in numbers, for example, the loss of dps on numbers is just that, numbers.. but wont tell you about the fact that we are pissed cause that dps comes at the expense of fun. It wont tell you that longer fights with harder healing make for a bad match, for a boring match.. You have great fights with good mechanics, well differentiated and with a good distance between them so they dont get boring and the rotations dont get boring also.. Don't mess with that, the amount of dps we do is perfect, new players need a bit of a buff (oakensoul was a step in the right direction there, even tho it was a bit OP on some classes, fixed by the aforementioned changes) and a tutorial that explains to them GCDs, weaving and the importance of using buffs alongside skills..
PvP is also something to consider, even if it is a small part of the game, for many its the endgame as much as trials are.. Stop *** up PvP to sell stuff.. First of all, either remove mythics completely from PvP or make them accessible to everyone, no pay wall, no nothing. Mythics at this point are p2w and its sad that we have a p2w mechanic in such a great game, I'm all up for you guys getting money from stuff, but things that give stats and are not accessible without credit card usage, should not have a home. A good example is jewelry.. You may not have the dlc, may not pay the +, but you can still go and ask others to craft you some jewelry.. You are not able to do that with mythics. Another solution would be to give free players plus access every month, just one day, so they can slowly but surely progress through some stuff.. At the end of the day you are just getting free marketing of the features of +.. And they would be able to farm those mythics with enough dedication.. I still believe the best way forward considering how important and game changing they are (again, with the personality of builds stuff which I find incredibly important for the future of the game) is to just.. give it for free.. make it part of the base game.. But if you dont want to, at least a middle point can be achieved by either a free day per month (different days so that people with jobs can still make use of them) or introduce lesser versions via crafting, available to all, which would still be kind of p2w because more money=more stats, but at least they would have access to the change in gameplay, which again, for me is a much more important factor than better stats, and considering how the progression works, I think that we have reached a good cap in dps, in which top players can output +100k dps with a lot of effort, technique and time.. Thats 30% more than what a mediocre player like me can do with my 70k dps, (or, if you want to be pedantic about how percentages work, its a 42% increase), I think a player with all perfected gear, an amazing rotation and skill/awareness should be rewarded by being 40% better than me, with my non perfected, still learning ass.. And I dont find that to be bad, actually I find it to be awesome, because I know I can do better and when I do, I feel great, I feel like I've achieved something.. We should celebrate our differences, not try to make it the same for everyone.. Imagine if you were to change chess so that pawns could only move one square on their first move, because top players are able to move them far better than low rating players.. Everyone would say thats insane.. Its the same thing you are doing here, taking the ceiling down but also crashing it on the low end players who still have room to grow.. No one wins.
Please, start listening to your community.. What I gave here are just things that come out of my imagination, some may be wrong and I dont think everything I say will be good for everyone, but I'm pretty sure they are far better than what you are doing now.. And if not, I will be corrected by the community, by players who know the game better than I do.. And I wont be mad.. Because that happens, sometimes you are just wrong.. And I understand that as developers you think you know best.. But sometimes you don't.. Sometimes the hundreds of players experiencing something like a player, instead of like a developer, is worth something.. Because you dont make this game for yourselves, for the developers.. This is a product, a product for the players.. So start treating your customers with some respect and maybe, just maybe, the customers will stop having knee jerk reactions.. You could learn a lot from the PoE developers and how they treat their players, and also, what the players response is to that treatment, that fairness, that "not getting the hand on my wallet" thing..
Either start doing *** correctly or the game will end up losing its top end players, then there will be no one to carry the new players into the hard content, so you will end up buffing everything again but having lost a part of your community.. [snip]
Do better and your community will answer better.. Do better and the players will appreciate it and will want to support this game further, there is many ways to money, what you are doing is one of them, yeah.. But at what cost? You are gaining money but losing one really precious resource for a game.. Players.
[edited for bashing]
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wolfsilver00✭✭✭Btw, all changes proposed are a bubble.. So for example if you were to give us 2 more nodes for cp, some rebalancing and stuff.. I think a 10% DPS cut all over the game would be a good step forward to make the last HM Vet Trials still challenging..0
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the1andonlyskwex✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Who is "we"? I'm pretty sure I disagree with almost all of your suggestions.
The only things I sort of agree with are:
1) ZOS needs to stop releasing overpowered items
2) All sets need rebalancing (but they shouldn't all be turned into kiss-curse bonuses like you've suggested)
3) Healing should be more reactive (but I think such a change would mostly require content changes to remove/reduce one shots, not skill changes)9 -
Casdha✭✭✭✭✭
✭They should have never moved away from each section of the community and game being valuable.
A few Examples that could have all worked together:
1. Early on they made statements along the lines of "no looted gear will ever be better that what a skilled crafter can make" This made those who spent all of their time and skill points in crafting valuable.
2.Enchanting was the hardest skill to learn and the nodes only gave one type of rune. It took a lot of time to find a node with Kuta in it. This made those who like to farm mats and do overland content Valuable and it kept crafters valuable (something similar happened to Jewelry crafting when it was added)
3. Materials zone locked, if you wanted a certain crafting material you had to visit old or new zones. This made the entire continent valuable, no getting done with a zone and never visiting it again. It could be faulty memory but I seem to remember certain mats at one time could only be gathered in Cyrodiil which would have made PvP valuable (reason for cannon fodder, like me, to visit more often. Who would care if they died a few times as long as they got to keep what they gathered). Some crafting mats are still PvE endgame locked but crown trait stones and trading take care of that one.
Anyways, what I'm getting at, if you did not want to do a certain aspect of the game you didn't have to because the trading community could fill in the gap and everyone had a way to get something they needed and it could have had value.
ZOS first seemed to listen to various communities and trying to follow the voices of "I don't want to" and these 3 got changed. Gear sets were introduced which far outclass what could be made, Nodes were made character level dependent, and Enchanting nodes,,,, well I bet if anyone has too many of anything in this game it came from an Enchantment node.
Then the same thing started happening with styles of combat and game play and the game has remained broken ever since and who it is broken for seems to rotate from season to season.
They have tried to go back and fix some of these thing since like first making gear sets character locked and then making them tradable and collectible and creating events that entice players to do content they wouldn't normally do to gather prize boxes. Also, introducing Skrying and Excavating to make you revisit zones and open up a chance at some content locked mats. (edit: and good grief I can't believe I forgot to say this, lets not forget the endless combat balancing)
The one thing that has gotten progressively worse is crafting. It is the only aspect of this game that can be mastered entirely with real life money (P2W), if you have enough of it, vs. spending the required time to learn it and/or gather motifs. Because of this, it can never be fixed and go back to the original statement because it really would be P2W then. (well I guess you could say mount training as well to be entirely mastered with real life money, if you consider it a skill needed to win)
TLDR;
The more ZOS listens to only the loudest voices, the more this game becomes broken regardless of which group has the loudest voice at the time.
Edited by Casdha on July 23, 2022 2:32PMProud member of the Psijic Order - The first wave - The 0.016%4 -
TPishek✭✭✭✭✭Your Bahsei example for rebalancing sets is very poorly thought out. It takes a lot of very specific adjustments and precision to squeeze out all the power from Bahsei. Making all the sets in the game skill based makes the skill gap even wider and more apparent.3 -
Jaimeh✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭wolfsilver00 wrote: »
b) Gear.
The other half of power creep. Why? Because every new expansion, new sets are introduced and for them to matter you had to make them stronger than things before.. Thats power creep by design just to sell an expansion... So here are my proposed solutions:
This is such an important point... for years they are talking about how they are trying to counteract power creep, but they keep coming out with sets having OP buffs. They introduce the sets to sell the content, but the sets contribute to dps getting higher and higher, especially when you consider all the synergizing between buffs during group play. So then they have to nerf weapon skills and class skills instead, and no one is happy.4 -
wolfsilver00✭✭✭Your Bahsei example for rebalancing sets is very poorly thought out. It takes a lot of very specific adjustments and precision to squeeze out all the power from Bahsei. Making all the sets in the game skill based makes the skill gap even wider and more apparent.
I dont think all sets should be balanced like that, as I've said, i think there is a time an place for simple stat pumps, and sets that dont require more skill but only change your gameplay, allowing you to do things differently or cover your class weaknesses..
On the other hand, I dont see anything bad with the skill gap... Thats why I talk about that bell curve.. Let less skill required be viable but reward skill. Which I said a couple times, so.. No, I dont want everything to be bahseis, there needs to be progression and stuff that fills in the gaps, as the player gets better, and I think my example of bahseis vs false god explains that, but if not, then let me put it on the record that all sets being only usable by skilled players is not something I think is healthy.
Yet, not for this reason in particular, I still believe that a skill gap is not something to shy away from.. People get better at ***, thats part of it.. I dont see whats bad about it... The only reason we have carries on trials, in which new players can learn, is because there is players that have the skill to carry..0 -
wolfsilver00✭✭✭the1andonlyskwex wrote: »Who is "we"? I'm pretty sure I disagree with almost all of your suggestions.
The only things I sort of agree with are:
1) ZOS needs to stop releasing overpowered items
2) All sets need rebalancing (but they shouldn't all be turned into kiss-curse bonuses like you've suggested)
3) Healing should be more reactive (but I think such a change would mostly require content changes to remove/reduce one shots, not skill changes)
1) You "sort" of agree that they need to stop releasing overpowered items? What is there to "sort of" agree with that? Its clearly damaging to the game, even if you dislike all my other proposals, this one I think is just not up for discussion if we want to keep the game balanced and the power creep to a minimum...
2) Didnt say all of them needed to be like that, some of them yes, some other retain their function..
3) Well, we are already getting skill changes.. and I dont see them going over the whole game modifying every encounter, (which in fact would be nice, even tho one hits are still an important mechanic in my opinion), so some skill changes and some more "in depth" specialization into healing could be a nice fix to make them more fun.. Which is my main goal here, make it more fun for healers to heal, then more people will heal.. And more will get better at it, then harder content becomes more viable to less skilled players, as they have a good healer to rely on.
And to your first disagreement with almost all my suggestions, as Ive said, id love to hear your proposals on the matter to colate them into the post.. Like I said before, Im not declaring I carry the truth here, I just went ahead and gave some constructive criticism and some solutions, but they dont have to be the ones, if youd like to come forward with suggestions of your own im pretty sure they could be useful.. As for who is we.. Well, players, you may not agree with my proposals, but a lot of people would, we are not just one group with one mind, we just need to put a bit of effort into not being *** towards each other/ the devs, so that they dont have an excuse to call us such, or talk about knee jerk reactions, if we just give them our feedback with no trouble, straight to the point and we even give some solutions, they are left with no excuse and either the ignore us or they dont, but we stop being the "guilty party" here0 -
xHotguy6pack✭✭✭[snip] I don't know why people even bother posting criticism or feedback on the forums lol
[edited for bashing]Edited by ZOS_Icy on July 24, 2022 3:06PM0 -
the1andonlyskwex✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭wolfsilver00 wrote: »Your Bahsei example for rebalancing sets is very poorly thought out. It takes a lot of very specific adjustments and precision to squeeze out all the power from Bahsei. Making all the sets in the game skill based makes the skill gap even wider and more apparent.
I dont think all sets should be balanced like that, as I've said, i think there is a time an place for simple stat pumps, and sets that dont require more skill but only change your gameplay, allowing you to do things differently or cover your class weaknesses..
On the other hand, I dont see anything bad with the skill gap... Thats why I talk about that bell curve.. Let less skill required be viable but reward skill. Which I said a couple times, so.. No, I dont want everything to be bahseis, there needs to be progression and stuff that fills in the gaps, as the player gets better, and I think my example of bahseis vs false god explains that, but if not, then let me put it on the record that all sets being only usable by skilled players is not something I think is healthy.
Yet, not for this reason in particular, I still believe that a skill gap is not something to shy away from.. People get better at ***, thats part of it.. I dont see whats bad about it... The only reason we have carries on trials, in which new players can learn, is because there is players that have the skill to carry..
A skill gap is fine, but I can't get behind set bonuses that are designed to widen the skill gap. More skilled players are already going to perform better than less skilled players. Why should ZOS design gear whose sole purpose is to make the game even easier for people who already find the game too easy?1 -
wolfsilver00✭✭✭the1andonlyskwex wrote: »[
A skill gap is fine, but I can't get behind set bonuses that are designed to widen the skill gap. More skilled players are already going to perform better than less skilled players. Why should ZOS design gear whose sole purpose is to make the game even easier for people who already find the game too easy?
But those bonuses already exist in the form of bahseis for example.. Again, I dont want them to make "stronger bahseis", that make that skill gap wider, if you read my post I talk a lot about making fun ***, variety is the spice of life, and to leave those stat pumps to trials, where they already exist... Im not asking for more of them, I'm actually asking for less of them.. asking for basically half of we already have to stop being a stat pump and be more about class identity.. And then, yeah, some skill stuff, but again, if the skill stuff is balanced, like I repeated many times, in a bell curve with the less skilled stuff, then the gap doesnt widen, it just allows more playstyles..
Again, the skill gap already exists and its fine as is, I dont want it to widen but I dont want it to be destroyed as ZoS keeps mentioning wants.. But, for the third again.. Im not asking for "more skilled bahseis" but to there be a curve in which, bahseis as an example, is the top of the curve
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wolfsilver00✭✭✭xHotguy6pack wrote: »[snip] I don't know why people even bother posting criticism or feedback on the forums lol
Because just saying that ZoS doesnt care is not going to fix anything.. And I really like the game, so I at least want to be on the side of the fence that tried the "good" route, and if they dont give a ***.. Well, at least they cant say we didnt try, or that we are disrespectful or anything else, it will be on them and when this *** show explodes, they are the ones losing their job, [snip]
[edited for bashing & to remove quote]Edited by ZOS_Icy on July 24, 2022 3:08PM0 -
the1andonlyskwex✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭I would argue that the current skill gap is way too wide and sets like Bahsei's need to be rethought. Instead of rewarding the most skilled players with even more power, ZOS should be rewarding them with the flexibility to experiment with new and interesting builds and mechanics that still cap out at about the same power level as other gear.
For example, ZOS could use high-skill sets to enable frost DPS builds, instead of struggling to develop frost skills that are good for both PvE damage and tanking without being overpowered in PvP. The goal is to reward higher skill players with the ability to do competitive frost DPS while also providing more interesting/challenging mechanical options, without artificially widening the skill gap with gear that is OP when it's potential is maximized.Edited by the1andonlyskwex on July 23, 2022 6:44PM1 -
wolfsilver00✭✭✭the1andonlyskwex wrote: »I would argue that the current skill gap is way too wide and sets like Bahsei's need to be rethought. Instead of rewarding the most skilled players with even more power, ZOS should be rewarding them with the flexibility to experiment with new and interesting builds and mechanics that still cap out at about the same power level as other gear.
For example, ZOS could use high-skill sets to enable frost DPS builds, instead of struggling to develop frost skills that are good for both PvE damage and tanking without being overpowered in PvP. The goal is to reward higher skill players with the ability to do competitive frost DPS while also providing more interesting/challenging mechanical options, without artificially widening the skill gap with gear that is OP when it's potential is maximized.
Have you tried both bahsei and false god? The amount of skill required, as you said, is quite big for bahseis but the different in output is not that much... And we are comparing a set DESIGNED for damage, to a one designed for sustain.. Even comparing pears to apples, what you get for bahseis is not really that much.. And I think thats good.. I dont know how to say this anymore, I dont want them to add sets that are stronger and to reward them "with even more power".. I think what bahsei brings to the table is good enough.. And yes, im asking for the flexibility to experiment with different builds, but also for the flexibility to have more than one bahsei, not better ones, but more than one way to achieve that dps with skill.. But Im completely against "capping out" and rewarding skill with just things to experiment.. You would never say something like that in a sport.. Like "Hey, that player is more skilled, so lets take a point from him every time, but let him use those weird shoes that make you run funny, he is skilled enough to pull it off".. Thats not rewarding, thats punishing. Experimenting is something that should be available to all players, not only skilled ones, and skilled ones should be rewarded with the fruit of their labor, a bit more dps, which again, is not really that much and when that skill, that *** starts to happen, at the top end of the game, if you do 100k or 110k dps, it really doesnt matter.. at that point its just bragging rights, you can do vSS non-HM with only 40k dps (on dummy, around 20k on actual fight is good enough).. So its not like it really matters if bahsei gives you 3k more dps on that fight.. and its a lot of skill for such low reward, but it is still progression and it is still worth it to some folks to push themselves for that.. We measure our skill in the percentiles in this game, the skill gap is not about dps my dude, the skill gap is about mechanics.. Most people dont know mechanics, some dont even care to learn them, and im not just talking about trials mechanics, im talking about even basic stuff like knowing how criticals work, its limits, penetration, which buffs stack or not.. your skill to do a good rotation will give you power, 100% true, but its not that much, it shouldnt be and its fine as is, because its important to have something to strive for, while players who dont care about minmaxing (I dont know how to say this anymore) should have access to stuff that.. Falls within a bell curve, pretty close to the high skill stuff....
As for the rest.. Frost dps builds should just work.. Skill or not.. Thats the point. Why even have it if it doesnt work, thats no choice, and it definitely should not be a reward for skill, everyone should be able to play on the same field and if someone's better.. well someones better.. it happens.. But everyone should be able to pick a build they like and use it, even if they dont have top skill.
Again, and for the last time, I dont want to widen the skill gap, I want them to leave it as is and instead of widening it releasing stuff thats better than bahsei, I want them to release stuff that makes other types of build, even low skill ones, viable.1 -
the1andonlyskwex✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭wolfsilver00 wrote: »But Im completely against "capping out" and rewarding skill with just things to experiment.. You would never say something like that in a sport.. Like "Hey, that player is more skilled, so lets take a point from him every time, but let him use those weird shoes that make you run funny, he is skilled enough to pull it off".. Thats not rewarding, thats punishing.
I like your sports analogy. Current high skill sets in ESO are like making every goal scored by a star count as two points, while goals scored by ordinary players only count as one. They widen a gap that already exists due to differences in skill level. I don't want to punish high skill players, I just want to avoid granting them additional (gear) bonuses that aren't available to lesser skilled players.1 -
wolfsilver00✭✭✭the1andonlyskwex wrote: »wolfsilver00 wrote: »But Im completely against "capping out" and rewarding skill with just things to experiment.. You would never say something like that in a sport.. Like "Hey, that player is more skilled, so lets take a point from him every time, but let him use those weird shoes that make you run funny, he is skilled enough to pull it off".. Thats not rewarding, thats punishing.
I like your sports analogy. Current high skill sets in ESO are like making every goal scored by a star count as two points, while goals scored by ordinary players only count as one. They widen a gap that already exists due to differences in skill level. I don't want to punish high skill players, I just want to avoid granting them additional (gear) bonuses that aren't available to lesser skilled players.
I would go for "Stars score more because they have either the talent/the practice to be one".. I insist, in high end gear is not really what makes you great, you can see this for yourself, grab a non high skill ceiling build used by any top player, lets say.. kinras + false god.. Iceheart for monster set, and put a nice non skill based mythic like that one ring that gives you stacks just by being in combat.. Then go do a parse.. Top players with the exact same build, exact same gear, will do much more damage than you, even if no skill is required for the gear.. and if you put something like bahseis in, it just gives them a bit of an edge, but most of their overperformance comes from skill, gear is just icing on the cake.. And I think gear that exploits their skill is good.. Again, I'm not a top player by any means but I respect the effort they put into this stuff.. And all bonuses are available to all skill levels, bahseis increased my output quite a lot (around 4k dps, I know I could do better but still need work), even if my skill level is mediocre at best compared to these players.. So its not like the effects are only useful if you are frikking master.. You need to be a master to pull off that last bit of damage, that sustain at very low % of magika.. But thats what? A 1% increase? 2% increase maybe? Are you really complaining that top players can get 2% more damage because they perfected their rotation to do so?
It just feels like you dont like the fact that there is better players, some people are just better.. I'm an old *** and Im aware Ill probably never be as good as a 18 year old just *** around all day in the game while I have a job, a house to keep and my studies.. But I couldnt give less of a *** about people being better than me.. Thats just life! And it actually makes my life easier if I'm honest.. Because I had my first runs on vSS because people with that skill could help me carry myself and get better at the game.. I also have something to strive for, and every bit of damage I can squeeze out of my build and my skill as a player feels like progress.. If you are not interested in that and you want to be able to do the same *** as they do, without putting half the effort the put in.. Well, you are wrong
I get it, but you are wrong.. You should be able to enjoy the game however you want, play all of it and be viable in all of it, which is why I ask for the changes that I ask, for some more viable builds and for some buffs overall to lower performing sets.. But some people enjoy the game by min-maxing andit really does not hurt you at all.. You just dont want the skill gap to widen? Why? Why does it bother you so much that there are players that outperform you if you are able to do all content? If it doesnt hurt your playstyle, if its not doing anything against you, why are you so against them? Why do you use the sport analogy as stars goals counting as 2? It feels as if you feel its unfair that they get to do better because they are better, you count them as having 2 points for one, but maybe they are good and just scored twice, while with your skill you can score only once.. I know it because I can definitely only score once.. But I can score.. And thats what matters.. And they scoring twice actually helps me score too.. So why are you so against rewarding effort put into the game? You said it yourself, bahsei takes skill.. Skill takes time, effort, dedication.. Theyve put it in and you didnt, but you get to play the game how you want (or at least I want you to to be able to), so why not let those that want to compete, compete? All gamestyles should be allowed, even min-maxing.. Even more when you are taking stuff like bahseis as an absolute, when they are definitely not one.. Its not a "if you are top 10% this bonus unlocks".. As you get better, the 5 piece bonus works better.. And for those who outskill us, they dont get more than a measly 1 or 2% out of it, thats nothing dude, on a 100k parse, thats 2k more for that last bit of skill.. But if you are doing 100k in a parse, then you are the real *** deal and lets be honest, in a trial.. what keeps you alive is not dps.. its not gear itself.. its not standing in stupid and knowing mechanics.. Same in pvp.. Knowledge of the game outperforms any gear 1 -
the1andonlyskwex✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭wolfsilver00 wrote: »the1andonlyskwex wrote: »wolfsilver00 wrote: »But Im completely against "capping out" and rewarding skill with just things to experiment.. You would never say something like that in a sport.. Like "Hey, that player is more skilled, so lets take a point from him every time, but let him use those weird shoes that make you run funny, he is skilled enough to pull it off".. Thats not rewarding, thats punishing.
I like your sports analogy. Current high skill sets in ESO are like making every goal scored by a star count as two points, while goals scored by ordinary players only count as one. They widen a gap that already exists due to differences in skill level. I don't want to punish high skill players, I just want to avoid granting them additional (gear) bonuses that aren't available to lesser skilled players.
I would go for "Stars score more because they have either the talent/the practice to be one".. I insist, in high end gear is not really what makes you great, you can see this for yourself, grab a non high skill ceiling build used by any top player, lets say.. kinras + false god.. Iceheart for monster set, and put a nice non skill based mythic like that one ring that gives you stacks just by being in combat.. Then go do a parse.. Top players with the exact same build, exact same gear, will do much more damage than you, even if no skill is required for the gear.. and if you put something like bahseis in, it just gives them a bit of an edge, but most of their overperformance comes from skill, gear is just icing on the cake.. And I think gear that exploits their skill is good.. Again, I'm not a top player by any means but I respect the effort they put into this stuff.. And all bonuses are available to all skill levels, bahseis increased my output quite a lot (around 4k dps, I know I could do better but still need work), even if my skill level is mediocre at best compared to these players.. So its not like the effects are only useful if you are frikking master.. You need to be a master to pull off that last bit of damage, that sustain at very low % of magika.. But thats what? A 1% increase? 2% increase maybe? Are you really complaining that top players can get 2% more damage because they perfected their rotation to do so?
It just feels like you dont like the fact that there is better players, some people are just better.. I'm an old *** and Im aware Ill probably never be as good as a 18 year old just *** around all day in the game while I have a job, a house to keep and my studies.. But I couldnt give less of a *** about people being better than me.. Thats just life! And it actually makes my life easier if I'm honest.. Because I had my first runs on vSS because people with that skill could help me carry myself and get better at the game.. I also have something to strive for, and every bit of damage I can squeeze out of my build and my skill as a player feels like progress.. If you are not interested in that and you want to be able to do the same *** as they do, without putting half the effort the put in.. Well, you are wrong I get it, but you are wrong.. You should be able to enjoy the game however you want, play all of it and be viable in all of it, which is why I ask for the changes that I ask, for some more viable builds and for some buffs overall to lower performing sets.. But some people enjoy the game by min-maxing andit really does not hurt you at all.. You just dont want the skill gap to widen? Why? Why does it bother you so much that there are players that outperform you if you are able to do all content? If it doesnt hurt your playstyle, if its not doing anything against you, why are you so against them? Why do you use the sport analogy as stars goals counting as 2? It feels as if you feel its unfair that they get to do better because they are better, you count them as having 2 points for one, but maybe they are good and just scored twice, while with your skill you can score only once.. I know it because I can definitely only score once.. But I can score.. And thats what matters.. And they scoring twice actually helps me score too.. So why are you so against rewarding effort put into the game? You said it yourself, bahsei takes skill.. Skill takes time, effort, dedication.. Theyve put it in and you didnt, but you get to play the game how you want (or at least I want you to to be able to), so why not let those that want to compete, compete? All gamestyles should be allowed, even min-maxing.. Even more when you are taking stuff like bahseis as an absolute, when they are definitely not one.. Its not a "if you are top 10% this bonus unlocks".. As you get better, the 5 piece bonus works better.. And for those who outskill us, they dont get more than a measly 1 or 2% out of it, thats nothing dude, on a 100k parse, thats 2k more for that last bit of skill.. But if you are doing 100k in a parse, then you are the real *** deal and lets be honest, in a trial.. what keeps you alive is not dps.. its not gear itself.. its not standing in stupid and knowing mechanics.. Same in pvp.. Knowledge of the game outperforms any gear
There is so much wrong in your post; I'm not even sure where to start.
1) I'm fine with more skilled players getting better results. What I'm not fine with is the current situation where a player that's twice as good gets results that are three times better because gear like Bahsei's is designed to accentuate differences in skill level. It's not just specific sets though, ESO is full of mechanics where a small improvement in skill (both mechanical skill and meta/build skill) produces in a huge improvement in results.
2) Large skill gaps are a problem because they prevent most players from benefiting from half the content that ZOS produces. New overland content is way too easy for the high end, and new dungeons and trials are too hard for everyone else. ZOS basically has to make twice as much content as they would if there were a smaller skill gap. This increases their development costs and reduces everyone's enjoyment of new DLC.
3) High performing players can absolutely harm the play experience for lower skill players. How do you think new players feel when a DPS god in their random normal rush-solos a dungeon? How about when someone gets one-shotted in PvP (which is a gap in meta/build skill more than mechanical skill)? Heck, even someone rapidly clearing an overland zone can hurt the experience for a lower skilled player who's trying to do the story quests.
4) None of the above situations where high skilled players are hurting the game for low skilled players are particularly fun for the high skilled players either. In most cases, they're just mindless grinding to get some necessary reward/resource. With a smaller skill gap, those activities might actually be fun/challenging again.
5) We definitely don't currently have a situation where everyone can do all of the content in the game. As-is, we already have tons of players who refuse to engage with newer DLC dungeons because they're too hard, and at least as many people who don't do trials because of guild DPS requirements.
6) You don't know anything about my skill level. Some people care more about the health of the game than they do about gaining the biggest advantage over other players.
We all benefit when the game is fun for everyone. With a huge skill gap, ZOS either divides its resources (resulting in everyone being disappointed), caters to the high end (resulting in most players leaving and the game dying), or caters to the low end (killing the game by pushing away the top tier players that drive engagement). Something needs to be done, and leaning into (i.e. widening) the skill gap like you're suggesting is the exact opposite of a solution.3 -
wolfsilver00✭✭✭the1andonlyskwex wrote: »All of it
1) You said it, its not just gear, gear is just one part and I dont believe its that problematic at all.. And if it is, you are still ignoring that I'm asking for much more than skill gear and stat dumps that also accentuate your skill gap that you are against.. [snip]
2 and 3) Yes, new overland content is easy for high end players, and going to play ball with 5 year olds would be easy for messi, its called progression, its a part of the game, [snip] Sometimes *** gets easier. [snip] I did my first trial when I was at 10k dps, no one kicked me, no one blamed me, yesterday I did vSS with a guildmate who had parses of 20k, probably was around 5 to 10k on the trial itself, no one blamed him, no one kicked him and he could do it.. Yeah, he died a couple times, but not because of gear but because it was his first time in that trial and he wasnt used to the mechanics.. [snip] I repeat, dd, vSS (which is not known to be one of the easiest end game contents, is it?), not even 10k, first mother *** time in the trial, yet he did good, and we helped him. Also, ZoS makes content for all levels, god damn it dude why dont you understand its an MMO RPG and it has progression? We are talking about basic stuff here, of course there is harder content, [snip]
4) Yeah, its not fun, which is why i presented them also as a problem and presented some solutions. [snip]
5) Again [snip], anyone can do the content, [snip] I repeat, a <10k dps player on vSS. He did fine, he died more than us as it was his first time but he did fine, we didnt require any dps cap, no nothing, and I'm definitely not in a "we carry you" guild.. It was just a pug I made with random people from my 5 guilds and some from belkarth, and it also was my second time there, but I was able with my less than ideal DPS and my ignorant ass, to do it too, and even perform well in the mechanics. On my second *** try. And I dont even have many clears of nSS, [snip] They have to put the effort to learn, yeah, but dont be *** lazy, thats it.. If you cant do it, its because you are skipping mechanics, not learning or just simply not caring about them, but you can do them whenever you want, in fact, thanks to that skill gap, people with bad dps like me with a mediocre 20k or that dude with less than 10k can do it, because people can help us where we lack if we learn the mechanics.. And even if for some people some content is too hard.. whats the problem with that? THERE NEEDS TO BE HARDER CONTENT, NOT ALL CAN BE WONDERLAND.. [snip]
6) Completely agree, which is why I proposed so many solutions to the same *** problems you are talking about, [snip]
[edited for flaming & profanity bypass]Edited by ZOS_Icy on July 24, 2022 3:24PM1 -
the1andonlyskwex✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Try doing vSS when all of the DPS are 10k or less. Carries don't tell us anything about the skill gap.
Edit: Actually, carries tell us that the high end is probably way too strong right now.Edited by the1andonlyskwex on July 24, 2022 1:24PM2 -
Rex-Umbra✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Can you make a tldr version of this postXbox GT: Rex Umbrah
GM of IMPERIUM since 2015.3 -
Amottica✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭1T is not the cause of power creek. In fact before 1T most zones were even worse than it is now so it makes no sense to even mention it.
Power creep has come directly from set bonus added to the game and changes to skills/buffs. Most games counter power creep by rebalancing the game but Zenimax doesn’t seem interested in that.
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wolfsilver00✭✭✭Can you make a tldr version of this post
It could go into far more detail than I did, it actually is an abbreviated version of my thoughts.. but the shortest I can do it is:
Stop making the game boring, rebalance gear to not just pump numbers and to add interesting mechanics instead of "orders wrath" and thats it, rebalance skills so that class skills are better and other skill lines are used to plug holes in classes or builds, and not just used in every build.. And add some zone variety and a reason for experienced players to do them, so that they are not just spamming rnd normals and ruining the experience, let skill matter instead of dumbing down everything and.. well, honestly? a 10% dps cut all over the board but in gear, not in skills. Also better healing mechanics so that they become more entertaining to play0 -
wolfsilver00✭✭✭the1andonlyskwex wrote: »Try doing vSS when all of the DPS are 10k or less. Carries don't tell us anything about the skill gap.
Edit: Actually, carries tell us that the high end is probably way too strong right now.
yeah, you cant do it with a full party of <10k, but if you are one you can still do it with friends that help you out, but you want everyone that does less than 10k dps to be able to do vSS? Some content is supposed to be hard my man, there needs to be some progression and you keep complaining about it.. [snip] taking away all of the challenge is not the way to make this game more entertaining.. and if everything was the same, then there is nothing to strive for, just.. Its antithesis to the core mechanics of any game, even frikking game has a learning curve dude, [snip] so.. lets agree to disagree and call it a day
[edited for baiting]Edited by wolfsilver00 on July 24, 2022 3:23PM0 -
wolfsilver00✭✭✭1T is not the cause of power creek. In fact before 1T most zones were even worse than it is now so it makes no sense to even mention it.
Power creep has come directly from set bonus added to the game and changes to skills/buffs. Most games counter power creep by rebalancing the game but Zenimax doesn’t seem interested in that.
Oooh I definitely agree that everything was worse before OT, but I do think that OT is one of the causes of power creep (alongside new gear), I thought I explained it well enough but let me put it this way..
All zones are the same, as in balance wise, Id argue that once youve got 2 days into the game (as in around 50 hours) you are just able to do vet dungeons no problem.. But the questing, the zone progression, the WW hunting, etc..etc.. are all done in zones and all balanced the same.. Once you hit level 50 you can do almost all of it without batting an eye depending on your class, once you reach 160 and get some dungeon gear.. well, you start soloing WW.. And you hit 160 very frikking fast.. So, without "harder" content in every expansion, as in content balanced around, lets say, 300cp instead of 160, every time you add an item that is better than the ones before, it has no reason to exist (except of course, for high end content which is not what everyone does).. A good example is orders wrath.. They included it in high isle because they have to include new stuff every expansion, and for that stuff to be interesting they make it stronger (which as Ive said in the post, I'm against and proposed the changes that I did because of this), but introducing stronger stuff when the content remains balanced around 160, is just more power creep.. Thats why I think is 50-50 OT and gear, because the new gear has no reason to be so strong in a world where everything is "the same" (again with exceptions).. Which is why I think modifying OT so that players that had the time and experience to get stronger gear, have more difficult zones to partake in and a good reason to do so. Another way of stopping a bit of power creep is to divide harder content from low end content, which is already done in a way by slayer and aegis only applying on dungeons and trials.. But I think the 5 piece bonus of trial gear should also only apply on trials and dungeons and not overland.. and definitely not in normal dungeons.. Thats one fix I just came up with, may not be balanced, but I definitely believe that gear should be rebalanced but also the game and how we deal with OT in a game that has been out for so long and has so many top end players...0 -
Oakenaxe✭✭✭✭
- True...that at the end of the day, if all content is "scaled" then you cant do much progression in the form of rewards for harder experiences
- Sounds good to me as long as the perfected version drops from the hard mode.Make vet dungeons part of the item progression (for example, perfected versions of normal dungeon sets)
- I agreeso around 80cp instead of the currect usual 50cp for a normal star. Progression is important, rewarding players for their continued effort matters, and when players are told that "once you reach 1200 cp you just dont progress anymore on it" is not good
- At first it sounds good, problem is it wouldn't make much sense imo, as we would bounce back and forth in terms of difficulty if we are following the chronological order of the chapters. What they could do is rework Craglorn to make it more attractive and from time to time relase new "veteran zones", DLC or not.Make DLC zones more difficult, sort of a vet version of normal zones, all of them balanced the same, like a "vet one tamriel"
- Yes, the ending of the main questline is a perfect example. Molag Bal is as easy as other things we faced along the way. An increase of difficulty as you progress in certain questlines (main ones) is a good idea imo.But why do all quests need to have the same difficulty? Why the start of a quest that needs me to collect some materials from a crab leads to killing some dremora that die just as easy as the crab?
- Yes! This is horrible! They should be another option, not THE best option -b) Gear.
(...) Because every new expansion, new sets are introduced and for them to matter you had to make them stronger than things before.
I wouldn't mind either. At least slow down, 1 per new update is enough -Stop putting out new sets for a while
- YES! Stop releasing overpowered stuff in order to sell content just to nerf it later -Stop putting insane stats on sets. In a game about choice, putting out a set that outperforms everything is not choice
- Yeah, the more you realease new powerful sets, the more some of the older stuff becomes obsolete.Rebalance EVERY. SINGLE. SET. Make them all viable but with a catch.
- This is a fair valid point...First of all, either remove mythics completely from PvP or make them accessible to everyone, no pay wall, no nothing. Mythics at this point are p2w and its sad that we have a p2w mechanic in such a great game, I'm all up for you guys getting money from stuff, but things that give stats and are not accessible without credit card usage, should not have a home.
- I think most people feel the same way, myself included.Weaving.. You had to do something about this 8 years ago, you didnt do it.. Now do not. ***. touch it. We've put so much *** effort into getting good at it, you owe it to use to not *** on us. On our effort..
a.k.a. Leo
non-native English speaker
200-300 ping and low fps player1 -
Amottica✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭wolfsilver00 wrote: »1T is not the cause of power creek. In fact before 1T most zones were even worse than it is now so it makes no sense to even mention it.
Power creep has come directly from set bonus added to the game and changes to skills/buffs. Most games counter power creep by rebalancing the game but Zenimax doesn’t seem interested in that.
Oooh I definitely agree that everything was worse before OT, but I do think that OT is one of the causes of power creep (alongside new gear), I thought I explained it well enough but let me put it this way..
All zones are the same, as in balance wise, Id argue that once youve got 2 days into the game (as in around 50 hours) you are just able to do vet dungeons no problem.. But the questing, the zone progression, the WW hunting, etc..etc.. are all done in zones and all balanced the same.. Once you hit level 50 you can do almost all of it without batting an eye depending on your class, once you reach 160 and get some dungeon gear.. well, you start soloing WW.. And you hit 160 very frikking fast.. So, without "harder" content in every expansion, as in content balanced around, lets say, 300cp instead of 160, every time you add an item that is better than the ones before, it has no reason to exist (except of course, for high end content which is not what everyone does).. A good example is orders wrath.. They included it in high isle because they have to include new stuff every expansion, and for that stuff to be interesting they make it stronger (which as Ive said in the post, I'm against and proposed the changes that I did because of this), but introducing stronger stuff when the content remains balanced around 160, is just more power creep.. Thats why I think is 50-50 OT and gear, because the new gear has no reason to be so strong in a world where everything is "the same" (again with exceptions).. Which is why I think modifying OT so that players that had the time and experience to get stronger gear, have more difficult zones to partake in and a good reason to do so. Another way of stopping a bit of power creep is to divide harder content from low end content, which is already done in a way by slayer and aegis only applying on dungeons and trials.. But I think the 5 piece bonus of trial gear should also only apply on trials and dungeons and not overland.. and definitely not in normal dungeons.. Thats one fix I just came up with, may not be balanced, but I definitely believe that gear should be rebalanced but also the game and how we deal with OT in a game that has been out for so long and has so many top end players...
1T is static. It is the constant. That means other factors are behind lower creep.0 -
ColtonBrown✭✭✭The problem with all of this is that people assume that power creep is bad. Devs should just embrace the power creep and that would also have the unintended consequence of letting people feel like they were actually progressing again, even if it results from OP gear/mythics each patch/dlc. Instead of spending years and all this wasted time trying to balance skills and classes, they could just spend a fraction of the time tuning the actual content instead. Handle the pvp balance with battle spirit changes. The problem of losing fun and class identity is because they base their nerfs off of the resulting damage after everything has ran through the buffs and group synergies which is just a magnifying lens. Let the power run wild and just tune the game content to adjust for it every so often. Much healthier for the players and community. Makes more sense from a logical perspective also. If I've beaten a certain boss numerous times and I keep getting more powerful and beating him easier and easier, it makes more sense that the boss would become stronger and harder to kill through it's own experiences (dev tuning) and that would be much easier to swallow than my actual character becoming weaker and weaker every couple of patches! Same end result for the devs, with a much better feeling playerbase. Nobody likes being told they wasted their time doing something, so we are taking it away.1
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Tannus15✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭@ColtonBrown nailed it.
The assumption that power creep is a problem is just false. It doesn't matter. it has no impact on anyone that really good groups are getting amazing times in old content.
In fact, power creep has allowed players who were previously incapable, to get their vet clears. to do older content that were previously unable to finish.
this is a good thing.
the less than amazing but still good players can now get vCR+3 because of power creep. Who is hurt by this?
Less than amazing players are thinking "maybe we CAN get god slayer" because of power creep. Who is hurt by this?
Seriously, who is suffering because of power creep?3 -
MidniteOwl1913✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭@ColtonBrown nailed it.
The assumption that power creep is a problem is just false. It doesn't matter. it has no impact on anyone that really good groups are getting amazing times in old content.
In fact, power creep has allowed players who were previously incapable, to get their vet clears. to do older content that were previously unable to finish.
this is a good thing.
the less than amazing but still good players can now get vCR+3 because of power creep. Who is hurt by this?
Less than amazing players are thinking "maybe we CAN get god slayer" because of power creep. Who is hurt by this?
Seriously, who is suffering because of power creep?
I couldn't agree more. I'm on the low end of average and the knowledge that they are people doing hard mode vet content in less time than it takes me to sneeze doesn't bother me anywhere near the fact that I will probably struggle with overland after this patch.
And I will be chasing whatever set looks best *because* I'm on the low end of average and want to be able to at least still do DLC dungeons on normal.
PS5/NA1 -
wolfsilver00✭✭✭While I disagree that power creep is good, I understand where you 3 are coming from.. As colton said, yeah, characters get nerfed after they put out OP gear, that is not good as ive stated previously, but to just put out OP gear that invalidates all else is not good either.. One can just get in game as a new player, have a crafter make orders wrath (with whatever other set suits him depending on stamina or magika) for him with training, then again when he's 160, and thats it.. The power creep here is something that makes stuff that came previously just become decon fodder.. Except for high end trial stuff... We have such a vast game that this is really *** bad (even more in a game about choice)..
But let me put it this way.. I agree with some power creep, as long as it comes from the character getting better due to CP, skills, player skill.. But not from gear.. And I think that we do are at a good point right now, as ive said previously, some people can hit 110k with a lot of effort, and I dont mind that, I just dont want it to get worse, while I want ZoS to allow the creep that has come until now, just rebalancing it so that the classes and skill matter, and its not all about gear.. When there is 2 BiS for every magika build and 2 more for every stamina build, and we use 2 sets (not counting monster helmets here cause I like that there is plenty of them viable even in high end content).. Then it is like there is no other sets.. Its boring as hell..
As for who's suffering from power creep? Well.. Us dude.. This whole update was designed to counteract the power creep, because the devs have no idea on how to stop it because power creep is what brings them revenue by forcing people to buy the new expansion, with the new OP mythic, the new BiS craftable, and then the new trial gear.. And while I think that trial gear should always be top of the line, mythics are just p2w, and craftables can be sold so I dont mind that, but one craftable set basically invalidating a decade of content is not good.. For anyone.. Also lets be honest here, the power creep is usually brought back once they sell the new expansion.. so then again, us getting rammed because they need to nerf stuff later, and its not uncommon for classes to keep getting nerfed.. I mean, at this point, a magplar uses more abilities from weapon and guild lines than it uses from its own ones.. and most classes are like that, with notable exception the necro that just.. you know, necros with his own class abilities mainly..
So.. I want people to still be able to get amazing times on good content, but I want a reason to do harder content, I want people to be able to help newer players clear content (had a whole discussion with a guy already who didnt like the skill gap and the difference between players) and as ive said previously, people need to be rewarded for their effort... So truly, power creep is something that we have, and has come to a nice place, now I think it needs to stop and devs need to start rebalancing *** so that it becomes more interesting, and if you read my post you will see that when I talked about it, I never said that power creep was bad because people kept getting stronger, but that it was bad because it starts to invalidate the older content.. there is no *** reason to have a decades worth of content if its null and void once one dps with more than 300cp and a good build gets in there.. New players see top players run in their dungeon basically doing everything in a second and they dont get to experience anything.. Vet dungeons too, except for dlc ones you just run them like crazy.. Which is also boring, which is why I keep asking for the devs to rebalance the content and not the players.. In a way we agree, its just that I see power creep as the biggest problem because I see it as the cause of the issues we have, even tho by itself does not hurt us that much, the resulting effects do, and vastly0 -
BlueRaven✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭wolfsilver00 wrote: »First of all, if I forget something please comment and I'll add it, if you can put a solution Ill add it too if I find it not to be about *** the other half of the community.. so here we go..
(All my solutions will go towards a more balanced play without losing on the fun aspect, with an emphasis on the game not being the same for everyone, not all builds being the same, having actual choice and having skill and practice matter)
Ok…wolfsilver00 wrote: »Make DLC zones more difficult, sort of a vet version of normal zones, all of them balanced the same, like a "vet one tamriel"]
And I stopped reading.
Vet pve players have content in 3 of the 4 content patches per year.
Players who never set foot in a dungeon, who don’t bother you at all, can only utilize 2 of the 4 content patches per year. And you want to take those patches away from them as well.
Why would a player, who wants NOTHING to do with vet content, be inclined to keep paying for eso+, buying chapter expansions, or even continue to play eso?
There has been a lot of talk about sub 10k dps players and how they dominate the dungeon scene, overland is perfectly balanced for this group.
And also, think of that same sub 10k player, now make them level 6 new player, and you are throwing them into vet overland content?2