Thoughts on last few years of combat development

vgabor

And yes, they are criticising thoughts. Not just this update 35 but the last few years of combat development.


A.) First of all, why keep doing wide sweeping changes in update after update continuously going into entirely different directions?

Looking at the last few years combat changes I fail to see or find any overarching direction or concept consistent throughout the years. What I see is the recurring pattern of some wide swing of changes made with the belief of "this will surely solve things" falling hard on the reality check of deployment to live and then some corrections in subsequent updates moving things backwards where everything started, just in a different mixed up state. Then another wide swing to another direction with the same "this will be great" belief and then another fail with step backs again afterwards. All of them leaving things half finished, causing problems and clashes with each other and after these several widely different iterations is just making a big mess of everything, while at the same time ending up reducing game diversity.

Many players in these forums have used the expression "change fatigue". Too many changes in too short time towards divergent and inconsistent directions. A good combat design isn't about drastically changing the whole game and player experience in every few months, it's not widely swinging the driving wheel left and right but keeping the car of game steadily cruising and making gentle adjustments to follow the desired road. The success of a great combat team isn't about how many changes they make in a year but how much those changes are in sync with the long term goals and concept, and in fact the less follow up changes needed over the time the better and well thought the design work actually is.

After these few years I have to question what is the long term goal and concept of the combat team, or even is there any? Because in these recent years I do not see consistency just a spinning compass chasing random magnets of ideas all over the place and it really feels like seeing a dog madly chasing it's own tail endlessly. Would it be possible please to stop this wide spinning circle of changes and slow down the speed a bit, leaving more time both for the players to enjoy the game without the need for continuous complete build adjustments and for you guys to see though things properly? And maybe fixing some long overdue bugs and problems along the way, like stuck in combat and such, I'm pretty sure a great and overall improvement of the game state would be very well welcomed by most players.

And to why I'm saying "dog madly chasing it's on tail endlessly", it's an ongoing argument for changes to bring down the dps ceiling. Well, let's look at it then how that goes, esologs for sunspire yolnahkriin hardmode dps (which is pretty much just a live dummy):
update 34 update 33 update 32 update 31 update 30 update 29 update 28 update 27

Apart from the exceptions of sudden spike jumps in update 28 and 32 the dps numbers across updates stayed in similar range. But what's much more interesting is how the color scale of the players representing the classes changes from update to update, showing how wide swings happen between updates on class usage. A good performing class gets overnerfed and as result it's color mostly disappear in next update with a new color and class showing up instead, and this just repeats itself over and over from update to update. The rainbow is just spinning from color to color but the numbers staying similar, "a dog madly chasing it's own tail endlessly"...

B.) Why so disconnected from actual game reality, with doing on spreadsheet looks good game and combat design?

Seriously this whole update 35 is just like a big living proof of apparently how disconnected the combat team function both from players and from other ZOS development teams responsible for the content where those combat supposed to be used. I mean the content team declaratively said that they want to make the content more fast paced and dynamic and doing so since several updates. And now the combat team changes the damage and heal over time skills to double length with half the tick frequency, which change goes directly against the declared and followed content design principles since several updates. It makes me seriously question, does the combat team knows or even aware of what the content team doing, do they actually talk with each other? Do the combat team has actual knowledge ad experience of the content where those combat skills and mechanics are supposed to be used by players? And why the content and combat not developed apparently in sync with each other?

I think not just me but many many players at this point really would like to see some videos/stream where the combat team demonstrates the combat changes they propose in actual veteran content on PTS and show that they can prove the changes are viable and feasible in the actual content. Because currently - and I'm sorry to say that - but this whole update 35 has the very look of just spreadsheet acrobatics with no knowledge or even awareness of how content works and how that content is developed by other ZOS teams. Do you guys in the combat team can do the actual veteran content with the current changes on PTS? Have you guys tested doing it, let's say vKA or vRG HM or similar end game content on PTS? If yes then I - and many many other players too - will be thrilled and excited to see a video of it. And if you haven't tried such veteran content with the changes then honestly on what ground you are making these changes?


C.) Why ignoring so many of the players feedback?

Please, we players are not your enemy, even if sometimes feels that way Most players express their opinion and thoughts because they care about the game. There are lot's of players - thousands and thousands of players -, doing every imaginable and also many not expected things in the game, and they give their feedback on what they do and experience. It's a simply a numbers game, with so many more thousand players than ZOS employees/developers it is pretty much guaranteed that players in overall will have a much wider and deeper view of how things actually work in practice. And when many players start giving not just functional bugs about something not working but question the overall direction of changes and/or the majority of the proposed changes then might be worth to seriously consider what and why all those players saying all of that, if is there a possibility that the development team may missed some things entirely?

In the several recent PTS cycles it was a recurring pattern that some player feedback was fully or partially ignored during PTS and changes were pushed through to live anyway. Then in live game those PTS feedbacks and predictions were proven again by now the wide userbase, and later in subsequent updates they needed to be corrected. Which is really not good, neither for the game itself not for the players view of the game development. Why is so many of the player feedback ignored during PTS? I don't imagine it's directly on purpose as many feedback are taken account of and acted on, but it looks like questioning cornerstone key parts of the updates unfortunately are ignored in many cases.

Is it because it's just not feasible changing these main parts during a 5 weeks of PTS or because removing/rolling back them would make the update itself look like meaningless? If it' the earlier then maybe a longer PTS cycle would help and if the later then maybe a more iterative development feedback procedure where players not just face the ready made changes outright but first there is a conceptual round with it's own feedback cycle and then based on that the actual development occur, so we players and developers don't end up in a situation where the main player feedback on already implemented changes is that "could you just please roll back it all?"


@ZOS_BrianWheeler @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Finn

Jaraal

My feeling is that they feel pressured to do too much at once, either because of budget constraints or the aggressive content release schedule. And they have acknowledged the existence of widespread change fatigue, but still keep making wild combat balance swings every three months.

Unfortunately, we’ll never know if it’s a management issue, a competence issue, or something else. All we can do is choose to continue to play the game, or not.

Tannus15

A) Really interesting. Damage on the latest 2 patches looks to be slightly higher than they would like, 10% or so, but hardly enough to justify the sweeping nerfs we're seeing in PTS. It's worth noting that while they adjusted the timers, they didn't adjust the damage at all, which implies that the parses we're posting are the intended level of dps.

B ) I'm starting to think they actually don't care if HM can be cleared or not.

Like, it literally doesn't matter. As long as vet can be done easily enough, then HM clears is irrelevant. When you look at it from that perspective the combat changes are mostly fine. Vet content in general just isn't difficult enough and HM can "adjusted later".

I think they are over looking that there are people who can only just clear vet and the impact these nerfs will have will shift that to just unable to clear vet, but i guess they just need to 'git gudder'? Also anyone progging HM content can just wait I guess...

C) This one is messy. I think a lot of it is either too hard to "fix" in the 2 sprints of PTS where they can make changes or they lack enough convincing data. This PTS is really unusual in that we're seeing entire trial groups get on PTS and log their runs in an attempt to alert ZoS to fact that these changes are really really bad.

I also think they have a terrible habit of breaking up their changes into chunks and doing them a bit at a time. So we're getting these combat changes now, then content changes next update all while they are still working on the hybridization changes. This means we get some updates where things just don't make sense that will be better later. I think this update is one of those "it'll get better later!" updates which will leave us with 3 months of limbo while we wait for the fix.

umagon

I am always surprised how ZOS has the time and budget to repeatedly change the same skills over and over; yet in 8 years only has made only two new classes and only one combat line (Psijic Order). There has been zero new weapon lines, no new morphs for the skills trees that add additional options for play styles, and the only expansion of the combat system has been mostly vertical power increases. The only new tool has been a grappling hook.

MashmalloMan

umagon wrote: »

I am always surprised how ZOS has the time and budget to repeatedly change the same skills over and over; yet in 8 years only has made only two new classes and only one combat line (Psijic Order). There has been zero new weapon lines, no new morphs for the skills trees that add additional options for play styles, and the only expansion of the combat system has been mostly vertical power increases. The only new tool has been a grappling hook.

Totally agree, very sad for an MMO to fail it's combat system this much. I'd point out they have made some new skills in the past 6 years as well:

• Copy/pasta Crystal Weapon from Psijic Order with new visual effects.
• Copy/pasta Bound Armaments from Nightblade with new visual effects.
• Copy/pasta Poop Fist animations stomp from DK's kit while copy/pasta the orbs from a mob or boss if I'm not mistaken.
• Stampede changed from gap closer with slow debuff to ground aoe dot. Pretty sure the visual effects are from a mob as well, but can't remember what.
• Copy/pasta Flying Blade morph to become a gap closer that literally no one in the game uses.. like seriously, when was the last time you saw someone use this in pvp?

Every other class has had adjustments, but those are the only 5 abilities in the game that were "new" and they each copied from what was already available.

We also lost Volley's Flame AOE DOT morph.
Caltrops use to last 30 seconds and covered like 12-15m - I use to love this on stam sorc for VMA runs.

A lot more adjustments to skills were made in the first 2 years that saw them completely change in visuals and function. Like I'm pretty sure Hurricane was a new skill, not native to the base game - but that whole beginning period is a blur to me as I played very casually.

francesinhalover

Was pretty good imo, i loved hibridi of skills, proc sets can crit,

Its just this one update we have now that is bad for me

Tannus15

francesinhalover wrote: »

Was pretty good imo, i loved hibridi of skills, proc sets can crit,

Its just this one update we have now that is bad for me

agreed, until this update i've very happy with the direction of eso combat

Of course I had a list of issues that i'd like to see changed

stampede was too strong
lightning staff is too weak
nightblades need love
crystal weapon needed fixing

but "lower dps by 20%" wasn't on my list for some reason...