I am so frustrated with the state of this game

FlopsyPrince

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Inosaska wrote: »

I've learned that if I'm not having fun playing the video game that I'm playing, then I stop playing it and go play a different game or go do something else other than playing a video game. Do not force yourself to continue to do something that isn't fun anymore. It's not worth getting frustrated over it, and it's taken me a long time to learn this lesson.

It’s hard to do this when you are heavily invested in the game, though it is a smart move.

I try to do what I can to argue why these things shouldn't happen in whichever game I am currently involved in, but here I am just one of the average players who are affected rather than the top dps, which ironically my voice would not be heard as much as them, even though they may not be heard either.

You just get tired of having to move on every time.

Exactly!

We are not talking a single player game you can do without repeating.

I want an MMO I can play and enjoy for a decade or even more. Not one that is going to either dislike me or change so much it becomes "not fun". Not any good examples that I can find. Though I did just buy and am checking out FF XIV now.

shadyjane62

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Inosaska wrote: »

I've learned that if I'm not having fun playing the video game that I'm playing, then I stop playing it and go play a different game or go do something else other than playing a video game. Do not force yourself to continue to do something that isn't fun anymore. It's not worth getting frustrated over it, and it's taken me a long time to learn this lesson.

It’s hard to do this when you are heavily invested in the game, though it is a smart move.

I try to do what I can to argue why these things shouldn't happen in whichever game I am currently involved in, but here I am just one of the average players who are affected rather than the top dps, which ironically my voice would not be heard as much as them, even though they may not be heard either.

You just get tired of having to move on every time.

I'm moving back to wow for nostalgia and see what they have been up to in last 8 years. Quite a few changes make games seem new plus we get the classic games free with sub. It has been enormous fun.

I left a Vanilla Field Marshal so I get recruited by good pvp guilds so there is that.

My husband and I have also subbed to FFIV and that will be a new experience.

Should Templar changes ever be reverted I would come back in a heartbeat esp as I still have 232 days on my sub. I will come in for daily gift and writs and any endeavors that don't require combat.

I will not use the pool noodle. And I am now useless in any group for damage or healing so there is no place for a Magplar.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

shadyjane62 wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Inosaska wrote: »

I've learned that if I'm not having fun playing the video game that I'm playing, then I stop playing it and go play a different game or go do something else other than playing a video game. Do not force yourself to continue to do something that isn't fun anymore. It's not worth getting frustrated over it, and it's taken me a long time to learn this lesson.

It’s hard to do this when you are heavily invested in the game, though it is a smart move.

I try to do what I can to argue why these things shouldn't happen in whichever game I am currently involved in, but here I am just one of the average players who are affected rather than the top dps, which ironically my voice would not be heard as much as them, even though they may not be heard either.

You just get tired of having to move on every time.

I'm moving back to wow for nostalgia and see what they have been up to in last 8 years. Quite a few changes make games seem new plus we get the classic games free with sub. It has been enormous fun.

I left a Vanilla Field Marshal so I get recruited by good pvp guilds so there is that.

My husband and I have also subbed to FFIV and that will be a new experience.

Should Templar changes ever be reverted I would come back in a heartbeat esp as I still have 232 days on my sub. I will come in for daily gift and writs and any endeavors that don't require combat.

I will not use the pool noodle. And I am now useless in any group for damage or healing so there is no place for a Magplar.

There hardly ever has been (place for a templar)

It's been one spot and that spot is generally contested by Necromancers for the past 3 years.

Blame the DLC packages more than anything else in regards to people not wanting to take your Magplar. People are silly and only think via spreadsheets they see elsewhere, strategies someone else made and our producer banks on it.

It's time for people to actually break from the 'zombie meta' trend in my opinion.

Find a better group, poster.

psychotrip

People are silly and only think via spreadsheets they see elsewhere, strategies someone else made and our producer banks on it.

It's time for people to actually break from the 'zombie meta' trend in my opinion.

I've felt this way for a long time, but it's going to take a LOT more to accomplish this than simply forcing players to change their mindset. It's going to take a completely new type of MMORPG.

These games are designed in a way that pushes players to min-max if they want to play "at their best", and players generally want to play at their best.

Fixing this would require a game that treats things like loot, combat, and progression very differently than how they have been for the past few decades.

For me, a lot of this comes back to prioritizing the RPG aspect of MMORPGs (role-play, questing, exploration, player-driven gameplay), as opposed to pushing everyone toward traditional "endgame" content, but even that's just a small part of a much more complicated solution.

Cirantille

So there are plenty of topics about U35 on the forums recently.
I was not sure on which one to type my opinion but it seems this topic was seen by community managers and taken into account, so I will scribble here.
I don't know if that matters at this point.

I took a break from ESO about 7-8 months ago due to performance in Gray Host.
There was a time performance was semi-okay so we held on for the sake of our love for this game. However, it came to a point where I found myself more frustrated than relaxed while playing so I decided to stop

It is because:
-Skills not firing when you press
-Potions do not register at 4-5 times of trying
-You can try to break free, and it costs stamina-even your character is in animation as if they break free- this repeats 2-3 times, and out of stamina still trying to break free.
-And so on, I could list all the desync, lag issues here but we all know by now.

I came to check the game during Summer/Mayhem because it is always a good fun time in ESO. I saw that Ravenwatch is semi-okay. It surely lags but nowhere near as GH.

Sadly I found two of my favourite classes at the bottom of list. Magsorc + Magblade. Okay, surely devs must be aware and do something about it right? I rolled my third favourite class Magplar and enjoyed my time in Cyrodiil greatly.

Few weeks in devs promised a buff on MagSorc, Magblade and Magden. I was hyped, finally, there would be many varieties to choose from. Finally Magsorc and Magblade could compete, I could even pick a Magden and try a fresh playstyle! Exciting!

The buff we got on sorc was daedric prey now does 45% more damage from 20%. This very same skill was also nerfed few patches ago to 20%. So my question, if this skill was to be buffed back up again why it was nerfed in the first place? Isn't this 180 degree of change? Additionally, daedric prey will not help sorc in PvP at all as you are not killing PvE bosses, we also asked PvP adjustments to the class.

I have been sorc main (or rather was since now I use her only for crafting purposes) these changes threw sorc to the bottom, worse than my magblade. Reasons:

-Applying hybridisation overall however they did not adjust sorc skills as it is a class thriving off of max magicka we still can not be viable in this new vision.
-No reliable self heal. Dark deal can be interrupted (1s). Matriarch cast can be interrupted and it dies quickly (1.5s). Not even talking about double bar-sacrifice for an unreliable heal.

I can not stress enough how much sorc needs a 1 button heal as all the other classes. A heal that is not interruptable, that does not die and leave you defenseless. Shields, forget it, they are already halved and do not replace heals anymore.

This game has been out since 2014. By now classes should have their identities and adjustments settled more or less that these huge fluctuations would not occur.

Anyway, promised buffs did not happen... Additionally, my magplar also got nerfed. A new animation and visual change no one asked for was introduced.

I could pick up another class, but my instincts tell me that it will be nerfed, too.

At this point, I am tired. I scrapped all my gears across my characters since my builds are now obsolete, my ESO+ is much about to expire and I am not planning to resub with this current fluctuation/patch because there is no point since I won't be joining veteran dlc dungeons since my PvE builds are also obsolete. By all means I am not expert in PvE so I don't know how this patch will make veteran PvE more accessible to me by nerfing me. For the last few days I queued into Cyrodiil then just left, because it is time to say good bye to my Magplar too and I am trying to disattach myself from it.

For the first time I did not order/pre-order a chapter. This card game could have been simplified and made into secondary feature, it would be alright. But really, we did not get a new gameplay, skill, class, guild, anything that I find exciting... I actually wanted to buy it because of habit then I thought to myself, what do I want from this chapter and I can not find a reason. I very well knew that Oakensoul would be nerfed by next patch (from experience, see: thrassian, pale order, kilt, malacath)

The fatigue of refarming mythics, gears every 3 months is real. I am also in search of other games where I do not have to turn it into job of refarming gear every 3 months or stress about lag, just log in and PvP, do chill overland stuff or socialise with my friends. Currently, GW2 seems attractive since builds are evergreen.

It is just sad, because I truly love this game, I want to stay and it has huge potential but I am tired.

pklemming

Wife and a quite a few of my ESO friends are in GW2, a similar amount are in FF. Not sure what to play thanks to the split, though as my wife is in GW2 now so I may not have a choice.

The templar animation is awful. When there is a 'bring your kid to work' day, they are not supposed to touch the computers. Solar barrage is pointless. Damage is way down and consequently self healing is down a ton too, but the bosses still hit for the same amount. Yeah, thanks for that.

I also found it convenient that when they balanced the boss health it happened to be 10% for each boss. You would not think after all the calculations that went in to adjusting them, it would happen to be the same percentage. Spooky.

pklemming

psychotrip wrote: »

People are silly and only think via spreadsheets they see elsewhere, strategies someone else made and our producer banks on it.

It's time for people to actually break from the 'zombie meta' trend in my opinion.

I've felt this way for a long time, but it's going to take a LOT more to accomplish this than simply forcing players to change their mindset. It's going to take a completely new type of MMORPG.

These games are designed in a way that pushes players to min-max if they want to play "at their best", and players generally want to play at their best.

Fixing this would require a game that treats things like loot, combat, and progression very differently than how they have been for the past few decades.

For me, a lot of this comes back to prioritizing the RPG aspect of MMORPGs (role-play, questing, exploration, player-driven gameplay), as opposed to pushing everyone toward traditional "endgame" content, but even that's just a small part of a much more complicated solution.

Meta is there for a reason and will continue to remain. Players will chose an optimal build that allows then to complete content in the most efficient manner. Why would you deliberately gimp yourself and make things harder?

You want to role play through the game, that is fine. Running off meta at end game is pretty much hurting you and your trial complete content.

Jaraal

pklemming wrote: »

I also found it convenient that when they balanced the boss health it happened to be 10% for each boss. You would not think after all the calculations that went in to adjusting them, it would happen to be the same percentage. Spooky.

It’s probably part of the “standardization” they are so fond of.

A main boss should hit for 2.3% more than a mini boss, but one third less than a trial boss, except for hard mode which is 15/32 of a trial mini boss…. or something. But 10% is a lot easier than actually modifying each boss separately.

Jazraena

pklemming wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

People are silly and only think via spreadsheets they see elsewhere, strategies someone else made and our producer banks on it.

It's time for people to actually break from the 'zombie meta' trend in my opinion.

I've felt this way for a long time, but it's going to take a LOT more to accomplish this than simply forcing players to change their mindset. It's going to take a completely new type of MMORPG.

These games are designed in a way that pushes players to min-max if they want to play "at their best", and players generally want to play at their best.

Fixing this would require a game that treats things like loot, combat, and progression very differently than how they have been for the past few decades.

For me, a lot of this comes back to prioritizing the RPG aspect of MMORPGs (role-play, questing, exploration, player-driven gameplay), as opposed to pushing everyone toward traditional "endgame" content, but even that's just a small part of a much more complicated solution.

Meta is there for a reason and will continue to remain. Players will chose an optimal build that allows then to complete content in the most efficient manner. Why would you deliberately gimp yourself and make things harder?

You want to role play through the game, that is fine. Running off meta at end game is pretty much hurting you and your trial complete content.

Yes and no.

One of the nicer aspects of PvE is that you don't need to be the best, you just need to be good enough for whatever content you're attempting. Now, that bar is high enough at endgame to indeed require meta setups, but that's something that ZOS could address - and they're trying to, if not very successful given they continually hurt non-meta setups harder; not to mention it would require more adjustments to difficulty than just 10% less boss health.

But it's achievable to bring these both closer together and allow off-meta builds to partake in most content. There's just an insane amount of work that way.

psychotrip

pklemming wrote: »

Wife and a quite a few of my ESO friends are in GW2, a similar amount are in FF. Not sure what to play thanks to the split, though as my wife is in GW2 now so I may not have a choice.

The templar animation is awful. When there is a 'bring your kid to work' day, they are not supposed to touch the computers. Solar barrage is pointless. Damage is way down and consequently self healing is down a ton too, but the bosses still hit for the same amount. Yeah, thanks for that.

I also found it convenient that when they balanced the boss health it happened to be 10% for each boss. You would not think after all the calculations that went in to adjusting them, it would happen to be the same percentage. Spooky.

Jeez. I think the devs might be under a lot of pressure here, maybe not getting the time and resources they need to fix whatever problems they were told to fix. I cant imagine even they're happy about the state of things right now.

Jaraal

psychotrip wrote: »

pklemming wrote: »

Wife and a quite a few of my ESO friends are in GW2, a similar amount are in FF. Not sure what to play thanks to the split, though as my wife is in GW2 now so I may not have a choice.

The templar animation is awful. When there is a 'bring your kid to work' day, they are not supposed to touch the computers. Solar barrage is pointless. Damage is way down and consequently self healing is down a ton too, but the bosses still hit for the same amount. Yeah, thanks for that.

I also found it convenient that when they balanced the boss health it happened to be 10% for each boss. You would not think after all the calculations that went in to adjusting them, it would happen to be the same percentage. Spooky.

Jeez. I think the devs might be under a lot of pressure here, maybe not getting the time and resources they need to fix whatever problems they were told to fix. I cant imagine even they're happy about the state of things right now.

Yeah I can't imagine it's all fun and games for them with all the blowback and the upcoming deadline. It's hard to imagine everybody in the studio being on the same page about such a polarizing update. But I guess we'll just see what happens.

Jazraena

I'd be surprised if no one on the dev team had warned the rest ahead of time about how this would turn out, yep.

Hurbster

I'd been invested since Beta, loved the game. Still moved away when I got fed up of the constant changes, not trusting the devs anymore, the user information on the pts just being ignored and lacklustre content. Also the devs attitude is somewhat reminding me of Blizzard, which is a huge red flag to me

Roztlin45

At this point it would be better to delay the upcoming patch and rethink these changes. Based on many opinions. Also, Trust can not be bought it must be earned. I am taking the wait and see approach.

psychotrip

Jaraal wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

pklemming wrote: »

Wife and a quite a few of my ESO friends are in GW2, a similar amount are in FF. Not sure what to play thanks to the split, though as my wife is in GW2 now so I may not have a choice.

The templar animation is awful. When there is a 'bring your kid to work' day, they are not supposed to touch the computers. Solar barrage is pointless. Damage is way down and consequently self healing is down a ton too, but the bosses still hit for the same amount. Yeah, thanks for that.

I also found it convenient that when they balanced the boss health it happened to be 10% for each boss. You would not think after all the calculations that went in to adjusting them, it would happen to be the same percentage. Spooky.

Jeez. I think the devs might be under a lot of pressure here, maybe not getting the time and resources they need to fix whatever problems they were told to fix. I cant imagine even they're happy about the state of things right now.

Yeah I can't imagine it's all fun and games for them with all the blowback and the upcoming deadline. It's hard to imagine everybody in the studio being on the same page about such a polarizing update. But I guess we'll just see what happens.

I feel for the devs dude. Theres obviously a lot of crap going on behind the scenes, they're likely stressed / overworked, and they're taking all the heat for this trainwreck when they're just following orders from their bosses.

I know we're all pissed. We should be. But just keep in mind the devs reading all this are probably pissed as well, and wish they could do / say more.

Jazraena wrote: »

I'd be surprised if no one on the dev team had warned the rest ahead of time about how this would turn out, yep.

Not to bring up WoW again, but if shadowlands is any indication, I'm near certain there are dissident devs trying to warn them, and being ignored.

Hurbster wrote: »

I'd been invested since Beta, loved the game. Still moved away when I got fed up of the constant changes, not trusting the devs anymore, the user information on the pts just being ignored and lacklustre content. Also the devs attitude is somewhat reminding me of Blizzard, which is a huge red flag to me

Glad I'm not the only one who sees it. Hopefully ZOS is a less toxic workplace...

Jaraal

psychotrip wrote: »

I feel for the devs dude. Theres obviously a lot of crap going on behind the scenes, they're likely stressed / overworked, and they're taking all the heat for this trainwreck when they're just following orders from their bosses.

I know we're all pissed. We should be. But just keep in mind the devs reading all this are probably pissed as well, and wish they could do / say more.

They're not helping themselves with all the contradictory verbiage and actions. For example:

'We need to control all the obscene damage at the top end!'

And what do they do? Nerf trial boss health by 10%, when all the "obscene damage" numbers are being created by organized trial players with maximum group buffs. If they're so afraid of players facerolling the hardest content, then why make it even easier to complete? It makes no sense.

And yet we're the unreasonable ones, because we can't 'trust the process?'

psychotrip

They're not helping themselves with all the contradictory verbiage and actions. For example:

'We need to control all the obscene damage at the top end!'

And what do they do? Nerf trial boss health by 10%, when all the "obscene damage" numbers are being created by organized trial players with maximum group buffs. If they're so afraid of players facerolling the hardest content, then why make it even easier to complete? It makes no sense.

And yet we're the unreasonable ones, because we can't 'trust the process?'

Not saying you're unreasonable. I agree with you. I'm saying maybe dont point the fingers directly at the folks who are being forced to make these changes.

If the patch makes as little sense as everyone is saying, this may be more of an issue with management than anything else. The rank and file devs are reading this thread, and I want to make sure they know we're not just attacking them.

It's hard to find the balance between justifiably harsh criticism and attacking people when they're already down. That's all I'm trying to get across.

ThirdEye_PULSE

psychotrip wrote: »

They're not helping themselves with all the contradictory verbiage and actions. For example:

'We need to control all the obscene damage at the top end!'

And what do they do? Nerf trial boss health by 10%, when all the "obscene damage" numbers are being created by organized trial players with maximum group buffs. If they're so afraid of players facerolling the hardest content, then why make it even easier to complete? It makes no sense.

And yet we're the unreasonable ones, because we can't 'trust the process?'

Not saying you're unreasonable. I agree with you. I'm saying maybe dont point the fingers directly at the folks who are being forced to make these changes.

If the patch makes as little sense as everyone is saying, this may be more of an issue with management than anything else. The rank and file devs are reading this thread, and I want to make sure they know we're not just attacking them.

It's hard to find the balance between justifiably harsh criticism and attacking people when they're already down. That's all I'm trying to get across.

Yeah i honestly think thats the problem here. The creatives arent the ones in control of the financial department in large succesful corporations. Weve seen this trend in AAA gaming the last decade and the bottom line is its been terrible for the industry. Seen the same trends happen in many industries and its almost always the beginning of the end for the popularity of that industry/genre.

I dont think games will ever go away. But already theres been a huge push back towards the roots of what made games great or successful. More and more so gamers are fed up with the big business mentality that has seeped into our favorite games and genres. Gamers and content creators are increasingly moving away from p2w and predatory business tactics in their favorite games.

Underground, indie games which are not about huge profits but just wanna get their work out that for people to enjoy have suddenly become what underground is for "Hip-Hop".

Thats not to say "Pop" or popular AAA games are going away anytime soon. But theres going to be a large shift of attention towards developers not using those sorts of tactics with the goal of making insane profit.

Doesnt matter how much money you throw at a game. We thought New World was gonna be good just because Amazon was throwing money at it. But it lacked identity. It lacked being unique. It lacked being revolutionary. It basically lacked soul. Peoples values are changing for what they want in a good game. More and more so gamers are craving authenticity in their gaming preference.

The same trend has happened in the entertainment industry with podcasting. At least until big business moves in and corrupts it.

Jaraal

psychotrip wrote: »

They're not helping themselves with all the contradictory verbiage and actions. For example:

'We need to control all the obscene damage at the top end!'

And what do they do? Nerf trial boss health by 10%, when all the "obscene damage" numbers are being created by organized trial players with maximum group buffs. If they're so afraid of players facerolling the hardest content, then why make it even easier to complete? It makes no sense.

And yet we're the unreasonable ones, because we can't 'trust the process?'

Not saying you're unreasonable. I agree with you. I'm saying maybe dont point the fingers directly at the folks who are being forced to make these changes.

If the patch makes as little sense as everyone is saying, this may be more of an issue with management than anything else. The rank and file devs are reading this thread, and I want to make sure they know we're not just attacking them.

It's hard to find the balance between justifiably harsh criticism and attacking people when they're already down. That's all I'm trying to get across.

Don’t get me wrong. I know as well as you do that the coders are just doing what they are told. It’s clearly a management issue, and ultimately it’s the Studio Director who is signing off on all these yo-yo changes.

psychotrip

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

They're not helping themselves with all the contradictory verbiage and actions. For example:

'We need to control all the obscene damage at the top end!'

And what do they do? Nerf trial boss health by 10%, when all the "obscene damage" numbers are being created by organized trial players with maximum group buffs. If they're so afraid of players facerolling the hardest content, then why make it even easier to complete? It makes no sense.

And yet we're the unreasonable ones, because we can't 'trust the process?'

Not saying you're unreasonable. I agree with you. I'm saying maybe dont point the fingers directly at the folks who are being forced to make these changes.

If the patch makes as little sense as everyone is saying, this may be more of an issue with management than anything else. The rank and file devs are reading this thread, and I want to make sure they know we're not just attacking them.

It's hard to find the balance between justifiably harsh criticism and attacking people when they're already down. That's all I'm trying to get across.

Yeah i honestly think thats the problem here. The creatives arent the ones in control of the financial department in large succesful corporations. Weve seen this trend in AAA gaming the last decade and the bottom line is its been terrible for the industry. Seen the same trends happen in many industries and its almost always the beginning of the end for the popularity of that industry/genre.

I dont think games will ever go away. But already theres been a huge push back towards the roots of what made games great or successful. More and more so gamers are fed up with the big business mentality that has seeped into our favorite games and genres. Gamers and content creators are increasingly moving away from p2w and predatory business tactics in their favorite games.

Underground, indie games which are not about huge profits but just wanna get their work out that for people to enjoy have suddenly become what underground is for "Hip-Hop".

Thats not to say "Pop" or popular AAA games are going away anytime soon. But theres going to be a large shift of attention towards developers not using those sorts of tactics with the goal of making insane profit.

Doesnt matter how much money you throw at a game. We thought New World was gonna be good just because Amazon was throwing money at it. But it lacked identity. It lacked being unique. It lacked being revolutionary. It basically lacked soul. Peoples values are changing for what they want in a good game. More and more so gamers are craving authenticity in their gaming preference.

The same trend has happened in the entertainment industry with podcasting. At least until big business moves in and corrupts it.

Brilliantly put. More people need to recognize whats happening in the industry, and we need to make sure we're pointing fingers in the right direction.

Jaraal wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

They're not helping themselves with all the contradictory verbiage and actions. For example:

'We need to control all the obscene damage at the top end!'

And what do they do? Nerf trial boss health by 10%, when all the "obscene damage" numbers are being created by organized trial players with maximum group buffs. If they're so afraid of players facerolling the hardest content, then why make it even easier to complete? It makes no sense.

And yet we're the unreasonable ones, because we can't 'trust the process?'

Not saying you're unreasonable. I agree with you. I'm saying maybe dont point the fingers directly at the folks who are being forced to make these changes.

If the patch makes as little sense as everyone is saying, this may be more of an issue with management than anything else. The rank and file devs are reading this thread, and I want to make sure they know we're not just attacking them.

It's hard to find the balance between justifiably harsh criticism and attacking people when they're already down. That's all I'm trying to get across.

Don’t get me wrong. I know as well as you do that the coders are just doing what they are told. It’s clearly a management issue, and ultimately it’s the Studio Director who is signing off on all these yo-yo changes.

Glad we're on the same page here. I feel if we try and show some solidarity with the devs, then it'll cool things down. We cant tear each other down. Clearly the issue is with upper management, and everyone else seems like they're scrambling to do what they've been forced to do.

That said, we should also continue to harshly criticize this patch, and ZOS's treatment of its players. Law of Contradictions. You know how it goes.

Zhokar

I'm just done. I had planned to quit Classic WoW with the end of TBC after picking up ESO again last fall. It was the first time I really got into the game, got 2500 hours in since then. I haven't nearly explored all of the content but the way this game is being developed just does it in for me. An endless crusade of balancing for the sake of doing anything at all, in particular watering down class identity, one of the most defining design elements of any MMO. And then deciding to release an arbitrarily "softened up" Update 35 anyway. Because you know they had to, no matter how the feedback turned out. It feels like they're just dead-set on doing their thing while not really knowing what that thing even is, flip-flopping every few months and drastically altering the game. In a way I'm really happy that Update 35 is being pushed through, because WotLK pre-patch has just been announced and no matter how *** of a company Blizz is, you can't mess up a re-release of 15 year old content.

This is not accessibility, this is making everything same-y. Misunderstanding pleasing the community as pandering to potential new players that won't stay, instead of building consistent and rewarding game systems that keep people engaged.

BahometZ

The last few weeks I've been reflecting on the massive volume of bugs that I report every other day, some of which have existed for years. Skills not firing is barely a bug now, it's just a feature that i live with. There are areas where your character can become locked in an endless load screen and become inaccessible for days, sometimes your character cannot leave a group, or upon queueing for a dungeon the group will bug out and players will appear offline, sometimes mechanics are actually invisible, and therefore unplayable, there are certain achievements that will not unlock despite meeting the requirements, barswap lag continues to occur ever since blackwood dropped (never admitted by any ZOS employee), weapon sheathing and unsheathing has become seemingly a deliberately slow chore (never acknowledged by any ZOS employee), tab target takes much longer than it used to for no apparent reason (again no acknowledgement as to whether this is deliberate), many dungeons have glitches that prevent completion, or cause wipes (preventing certain achievements from being possible at the present time), player health bars glitch so that they permanently show low health, weapons appear under your feet rather than in your hands, breakfree doesn't work, or in certain circumstances will prevent you from performing skills until you relog (in fact there are numerous glitches around abilities not firing). Some of these gatekeep content, some of them make engaging in content harder, none of them seem to be on ZOS radar, because many have been in the game for a very long time.

I persist with this game because there is still a lot of good. The aesthetic and mechanical design of a lot of the base game content is still some of the best stuff. DLCs have been spotty but the world is a wonder. Quality of life changes have been slow but steady and huge improvements.

But for all the positives, ZOS seem unable to confront basic issues. There is an aching, desperate need for the devs to fix so very many things that go wrong. I am simply astounded that they will throw a half-cooked hybridisation at the playerbase, and then move on to another fundamental system change. Many players didn't like account wide achievements, many players didn't like hybridisation, many players don't like u35. You're consistently asking the playerbase to put up with the game, rather than enjoy it, or give them time to grow into the changes. Meanwhile we are playing through a lot of bugs and features that make the game bad, that you don't seem to do anything about.

I know it doesn't work this way, but we need the combat team to chill out, and the bug squashing department to step up.

Marto

Jaraal wrote: »

psychotrip wrote: »

I feel for the devs dude. Theres obviously a lot of crap going on behind the scenes, they're likely stressed / overworked, and they're taking all the heat for this trainwreck when they're just following orders from their bosses.

I know we're all pissed. We should be. But just keep in mind the devs reading all this are probably pissed as well, and wish they could do / say more.

They're not helping themselves with all the contradictory verbiage and actions. For example:

'We need to control all the obscene damage at the top end!'

And what do they do? Nerf trial boss health by 10%, when all the "obscene damage" numbers are being created by organized trial players with maximum group buffs. If they're so afraid of players facerolling the hardest content, then why make it even easier to complete? It makes no sense.

And yet we're the unreasonable ones, because we can't 'trust the process?'

The logic of design decisions like this is a lot more nuanced than that.

Nerfing the health of bosses after saying they wanted to reduce damage is not hypocrisy. Nor is it ZOS compromising on their goals. Nerfing the health of bosses is the whole point.

Look at it from another angle.

ZOS wants to make the endgame more accessible and easier to reach.
Why is the endgame not accessible? Because bosses have too much health and deal too much damage, requiring a highly coordinated group with powerful items, high buff uptime, and high DPS.

You'd think the easiest way to fix this would be to just reduce the health and damage of everything. Or to buff the damage at the low end. But that approach would lead to the game becoming mind-numbingly easy for many players at many tiers.

A better solution would be to dramatically lower the ceiling. This allows for the power creep to stop, which makes development and balancing a lot easier.

Ideally, ZOS doesn't want the floor to drop too much. But that's secondary. As long as the ceiling is dropped, the floor can be adjusted without causing too many issues.



Or to put it in words.

ZOS' end goal is to lower end-game difficulty. They can only do that after they lower the ceiling.

Leaving things alone creates power creep. Raising the floor creates power creep. Only lowering the ceiling can mitigate the power creep. And the game cannot be balanced until power creep is mitigated.

Jaraal

They stated that raising the floor was one of their objectives with U35. But how does nerfing low end players damage and healing by 20-40% improve accessibility to end game content?

TaSheen

Jaraal wrote: »

They stated that raising the floor was one of their objectives with U35. But how does nerfing low end players damage and healing by 20-40% improve accessibility to end game content?

It - doesn't of course. /grrrr

EldritchSun

I 100% agree with the topic starter, just wanted to add.

'Thank you' Zenimax, for killing necro support role, by replacing colossus with easy-to-obtain sets and destroying empower. Not for the first time you destroy my favorite playstyle.

BahometZ

Power creep has always been under zenimax's control if they so wished. It's been going up for years, and they continue to release broken sets (to lure purchase of dlc) allowing organised groups to do what they do.

Its not as though its suddenly such an urgent problem, they've mentioned it in previous patches. Why didn't they at any point in the last couple of years just cap damage output to 100k dps and scale everything from there. They could've set the line at any time, and chose not to.

Mumbles_the_Tank

Marto wrote: »

Nerfing the health of bosses after saying they wanted to reduce damage is not hypocrisy. Nor is it ZOS compromising on their goals. Nerfing the health of bosses is the whole point.

Hilarious that you believe all that despite them stating outright - we don’t have plans to nerf boss health - and then frantically back pedalling only once it was a major source of outcry here on the forums.

[snip]

[edited for baiting]

Ph1p

Marto wrote: »

ZOS' end goal is to lower end-game difficulty.

The end goal stated by ZOS was two-fold, as per the Update 35 Combat Preview:

1. Improving accessibility to the game’s combat by increasing the duration of outgoing ability effects (such as damage over time, buffs, and debuffs)
2. Continuing the attempt to quell some of the obscene damage production at the high end.

Nothing specifically about lowering end-game difficulty or nerfing the health of bosses. That only came towards the end of the whole PTS cycle and in the form of a blanket reduction, including content that is definitely not end-game level.

Also, look at your graphs showing the current state and what U35 accomplishes. Even taking them at face value, didn't you notice how you actually highlighted a key issue? It's not about how entry-level player power stacks up against entry-level game difficulty. It's about taking the step to the next level and how much you need to improve to get there. And you inadvertently showed that inexperienced players now face a steeper curve to get to the mid-level.

Marto wrote: »

ZOS wants to make the endgame more accessible and easier to reach.

How does all this help with the stated objective? And what's the point of the fifth graph showing the target end state, if this is only coming after another patch or two? In fact, you could get to practically the same end state by adjusting only the high-end difficulty content and raising the low and mid tier player power in a targeted fashion.

We all support the notion of improving accessibility. But a lot of what we see on the PTS doesn't square up with that objective. Of course, the full picture will come out once everything hits live and maybe we were all wrong... It just feels strange when ZOS says they want to reduce the reliance on weaving, but then introduce a new set that rewards good weaving with a permanent War Horn and a group-wide Barbed Trap

EDIT: Cosmetic edit on picture

Captain_Devildog

I agree with this post, they say they are improving the game for the casual players and the new players. But in the mean time they are destroying the game for everyone! This is not good for anyone.