For ease of access [PvE] -- why not adjust the content instead of output

Everaen

As a casual player who has never tried a raid/trial/whatever, dabbles in a little PvP, does some random dungeons a few times a week, I don't think ZoS has really sold well who these changes are meant to help.

The content that is not casual or poor-player friendly is the high-end difficult content. It's not the solo experience, for sure, or the random normal dungeons, or the cyrodil pvp zergs. New or bad players can fuddle their way through these things and still do well enough or get carried.

And I imagine all the number tweaking ZoS can do will not notably help the players who would always struggle to contribute meaningfully to difficult content.

So... if you're a dev wanting players to experience the cool things you built, what do you do?

• Maybe create more difficulty levels? A "story-mode" difficulty for people who just want to experience the dungeon/trial and its story where mechanics and boss health are tuned way down (as well as the rewards proportionately), for example. As well as creating another tier in the other direction of "mythic" difficulty or some other epic word beyond "hard mode".
• And for this theoretical "story-mode" difficulty, maybe put it in the group-finder? So randoms could queue for it and experience all aspects of the game without having to submit an acceptable parse to a raiding guild or whatever is required?

IMO, that would be a much easier and better accepted way of providing access to new or poor players.

Better than rolling out changes that basically say "we're making your character weaker in almost every way for the good of the game." You should be wanting the old content to age gracefully and be solo-able and easier than the newer content. That's part of the reward of investing in an MMO. Stick around long enough and accumulate enough experience and amazing gear, and you can feel powerful in the older stuff. And as the power creep goes up, things you couldn't do before open up to you, and slowly you can access more and more achievements due to that power creep.

Also... I would suggest to ZoS -- pick a lane on LA weaving. Either it's an intentional component to every GCD damage-button-press window, or it's not. This balancing act to please everyone (those who never do it and those who have perfected it) isn't sustainable, IMO, and will just continue to cause balance issues if ZoS continues to straddle the fence on the matter. Rip the bandaid off one way or the other.

I'm sure the devs originally intended LA to be a button players pressed only when there wasn't a better button to press (resources are out, geared and skilled specifically for LA damage, etc). I doubt they envisioned how expertly players would weave that LA damage into rotations. So now it's just this extra layer of damage padding that sits out there wholly dependent on player skill.

If it were me designing it, I'd put that LA damage back into abilities, and I'd put LA on a GCD of some sort -- maybe not a long GCD, just long enough that it could not be animation canceled before you cast the next ability. So then it's a tradeoff -- a deliberate decision to press LA to do damage at the cost of a small window of time, not a muscle memory ticking every second no matter what (at this point, it becomes both a meaningful press for damage and a meaningless press for engagement - fire and forget). Then people could build for LA/HA damage and create rooms in rotations to perform it, or they could never press it if they didn't want to or if their build didn't depend on it. But that's just a random idea. Point is, ZoS should take a deliberate stance instead of developing a lukewarm LA experience that pleases nobody and solves no problems.

Amottica

These changes seem more to try to close the gap between the top players and the lower and medium levels of player skill. I believe that is in their stated goal iirc.

I am not suggesting their changes achieve that goal but merely commenting on what I think they are trying to do.

Everaen

Amottica wrote: »

These changes seem more to try to close the gap between the top players and the lower and medium levels of player skill. I believe that is in their stated goal iirc.

I am not suggesting their changes achieve that goal but merely commenting on what I think they are trying to do.

Right, but applying the slightest logic to these changes defeats that goal. How does reducing the gap help anyone? Was that something players have been asking for?

If closing the gap between a poor player and the best player was achieved by generally reducing power across the board (but the best player's power is reduced by a greater degree than the poor player's), the poor player is still less powered than before.

If that poor player was previously struggling in content, that player would struggle even more with these changes.

So... does ZoS believe these changes are to help the lesser skilled players? Or are they purely focused on reducing the damage gap between player skill floors and ceilings? Or does the player's enjoyment with the MMO experience factor at all? How does this gap specifically hinder them from designing content? Etc. I don't feel like they've adequately answered or provided justification that simply didn't invite disbelief or more questions.

maximusrex45

They should do both.

They have to bring down the ceiling to battle power creep, and they should also bring down the DPS requirement for the hardest content so chasing META isn't so important. That would open up more content to more players and make it so that every change isn't such a gear/spec/playstyle shake-up.

Everaen

I still can't fathom why ZOS would put themselves through the outrage wringer for these changes. Why tweak DPS down, and then tweak content down to accommodate lower DPS?

Why not just... leave classes mostly intact and tweak the content? Only the trials and some of the harder vet dungeons are objectively difficult for the average player.

Have a "story" trial/vet mode for the hardest content with dumbed down rewards -- "flawed" instead of "perfected" with 5% less stats or whatever would make sense.

And have a "mythic" mode for the top % who breeze through current content with increased boss damage, increased enemy health, etc., with slightly better than baseline rewards.

Let people achieve and enjoy some of the power creep and more easily tackle content that once was too hard to do.

wolfie1.0.

Everaen wrote: »

I still can't fathom why ZOS would put themselves through the outrage wringer for these changes. Why tweak DPS down, and then tweak content down to accommodate lower DPS?

Why not just... leave classes mostly intact and tweak the content? Only the trials and some of the harder vet dungeons are objectively difficult for the average player.

Have a "story" trial/vet mode for the hardest content with dumbed down rewards -- "flawed" instead of "perfected" with 5% less stats or whatever would make sense.

And have a "mythic" mode for the top % who breeze through current content with increased boss damage, increased enemy health, etc., with slightly better than baseline rewards.

Let people achieve and enjoy some of the power creep and more easily tackle content that once was too hard to do.

It's probably to allow for more development and set generation options. For example if zos keeps the empower changes then they can now release a new item set that increases light attacks or consecutive light attacks without it being and stacking with empower.

Basically it allows them to release something "new" to replace something that they removed due to the global changes they made, while still claiming that they reduced the gap.

Everest_Lionheart

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Everaen wrote: »

I still can't fathom why ZOS would put themselves through the outrage wringer for these changes. Why tweak DPS down, and then tweak content down to accommodate lower DPS?

Why not just... leave classes mostly intact and tweak the content? Only the trials and some of the harder vet dungeons are objectively difficult for the average player.

Have a "story" trial/vet mode for the hardest content with dumbed down rewards -- "flawed" instead of "perfected" with 5% less stats or whatever would make sense.

And have a "mythic" mode for the top % who breeze through current content with increased boss damage, increased enemy health, etc., with slightly better than baseline rewards.

Let people achieve and enjoy some of the power creep and more easily tackle content that once was too hard to do.

It's probably to allow for more development and set generation options. For example if zos keeps the empower changes then they can now release a new item set that increases light attacks or consecutive light attacks without it being and stacking with empower.

Basically it allows them to release something "new" to replace something that they removed due to the global changes they made, while still claiming that they reduced the gap.

Set doubtful, mythic item more likely.

VaranisArano

Because ZOS traditionally relies on data from the Live servers to pinpoint pain points in Vet Content for adjustment.

So they have to nerf DPS, then gather data over the next three months, and then start adjusting stuff in tailored ways as opposed to a flat 10%-ish HP adjustment to bosses and bannermen.

If you want a look at what the Patch Notes look like when ZOS actually rebalances Vet content for accessibility, it looks something like this from 2019: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/461982/pc-mac-patch-notes-v4-3-6

We're not seeing tailored adjustments this patch. We'll start getting them after the content team has the Live data from whatever groups stick around to run the content.