Upcoming PTS Combat & Balance Adjustments

ZOS_GinaBruno

Hi everyone,

We wanted to take a minute to give you some insight into some additional changes coming to the PTS affecting combat and balance.

As we’ve continued reading through your feedback from testing these changes, we determined that some of our goals were actively competing with each other and not reaching the target audiences in ways we intended. We ultimately want to help raise the floor and reduce the ceiling in regard to DPS output, while simultaneously improving class balance in some problematic areas. So far, this has led to competing changes that have hurt some groups of players despite us stating we didn’t want to actively harm playstyles with any particular change; we are committed to following through with additional ways to mitigate these issues while still meeting our intended goals.

With all that said, in next week’s PTS patch you’ll find that we will be re-evaluating some of the adjustments to Light and Heavy Attacks so they are a bit less drastic. Light and Heavy Attacks will once again scale with your stats, just to a lesser extent than before. Overall, there will still be a nerf on Light Attack damage, but this will allow us to give a lot more love to Heavy Attacks and will be less stark of a difference.

There will also be a handful of tweaks to some class abilities in next week’s PTS patch, based on the feedback we’ve received, but the majority of these will come in the final PTS patch. Note that the focus of these adjustments will be on Magicka-based Nightblades, Wardens, and Sorcerers.

Additionally, for Dungeons and Trials, we’ll be reducing the health of all bosses on Veteran difficulty and above in the final PTS patch to account for the overall DPS loss. For Trials specifically, we’ll be reducing the health of all Champions and Bannermen on Veteran difficulty and above. The reduction in health for each boss will vary from encounter to encounter, but the results should be that each Dungeon and Trial boss fight will provide a similar challenge to what is on Live currently. The Trial bannermen and Champions provide a challenge in their own right so we felt additional adjustments were warranted.

We recognize there has been a lot of concern surrounding the combat changes currently on the PTS, and we truly believe with some continued adjustments and iterations, this is the best course of action for the long-term health of the game. We’re also working on a brief Q&A that should help address some of the more general questions surrounding these changes. Thanks for reading and, of course, taking the time to provide so much in-depth and valuable feedback.

PingTheAwesome

This is better. Thank you.

Healer's take: You still haven't said what you're doing to our heals. Additionally, while you're reducing the health of the bosses, you do not mention addressing the damage that they do now that you've made it clear you intend to also nerf heals.

This needs addressing.

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe

Ah, so we continue the cycle of nerf players, then nerf content to compensate for said nerfs. Remind me, what is the point of that? Doesn't that just put us back where we started? It's ridiculous.

P.s. I sincerely hope something is done to ensure Templar spammables are not still weaker than dual wield skills. To mention nothing of the butchered animations, and eviscerated burning light passives.

spartaxoxo

What about Templars? The new spammable looks awful and the feedback I have seen has been universally negative. Also if it ultimately ends up not feeling any different than it does on live (big if) then what is the point? You're not raising the floor of anything if it's just live but worse. You're still putting two incompatible goals against each other. You have to improve the damage of middle tier players or nerf the content in comparison to what is now on live to achieve the goal of getting them into vet content. You can't nerf them and leave the difficulty the same and expect to raise anything. It's simply not possible.

The problem has and will always be the middle-tier dps do NOT have the damage to do those encounters at a reasonable speed.

RaptorRodeoGod

Good question for Q&A:

What's the long term roadmap/goal/plan/vision?

Edit: Another question:

Why have the durations of buffs/debuffs (sets bonuses included) not been increased to improve accessibility as well?

PingTheAwesome

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe wrote: »

Ah, so we continue the cycle of nerf players, then nerf content to compensate for said nerfs. Remind me, what is the point of that? Doesn't that just put us back where we started? It's ridiculous.

I keep hearing players say "but six years ago, the current gameplay is not what they intendeddddddd" which, okay, sure. But they're going to have to let go of that fever dream at some point. The game is drastically different from where it was six years ago or what they might have intended for it to be six years ago.
Not to mention that they're doing this after they promised up and down that there "would be no more major changes".

Galarthor

So ... DPS was too high and you therefore reduced it. But b/c DPS is now reduced you decrease the HP of NPCs. Sounds like a solid plan.

Isair

About Nocturnal’s Ploy tho… has this thing been touched yet?

doesurmindglow

We're getting close to an complete reversion of the Week 1 proposal, which isn't something I'm criticizing, and probably badly needed at this point.

But even so, serious damage has already been done to player trust in the development team, and to the stability of the in-game communities that attract and sustain player participation. Speaking to both of those issues, it would be good to see a more thorough explanation of the general intended direction of the game, including potentially a statement of vision and a roadmap for how that vision will be implemented.

Further, a meaningful and lasting commitment to reducing the volatility of combat balance changes that come with each patch I think would be greatly appreciated, especially by the "casual" or "mid-tier" players that don't have a tremendous amount of time or commitment to adjust to dramatic, and often contradictory, balance changes on a quarterly basis.

Please consider both of these points of feedback in the studio discussions around the way forward, and in communications regarding the balance changes that have released so much player outrage and brought significant bad press to the game.

Thank you, ZOS, for taking the time to review and consider our feedback. It is my hope we can help improve the relationship and the trust between the developers and their customers that has been severely undermined during this PTS cycle.

CyberSkooma

By the Eight.

pamichic

Thanks @ZOS_GinaBruno - we should make this a thing to continue to update as we go. The updates are letting us know that our voices have been heard (even if the tweaks miss some of the marks).

With this being such a controversial PTS cycle, do you think there is any chance of postponing the changes until a following patch so we can maybe do more testing to get it right once it goes live? I think everyone would agree that we would rather have you take your time with the changes to accomplish your goals than to force the change through and spend the next 4 patches redoing / undoing things.

Thanks again for the update - it IS appreciated!

PS: HEALING! What is going on with healing?!? Please try to have some sort of notes around this for all us healers that would like to prepare.

jaws343

Galarthor wrote: »

So ... DPS was too high and you therefore reduced it. But b/c DPS is now reduced you decrease the HP of NPCs. Sounds like a solid plan.

They are both lowering the DPS across the board, and lowering the effective delta between damage required to complete low end and top end content.

So, still meeting the goal of reducing damage. But also making low end and top end content requirements closer and making top end content completable with the DPS changes.

Azyle1

Does this mean magicka based nightblades, magicka based sorc and magicka based Warden or just magicka based Nightblade and stam/mag for the other two?

ZOS_GinaBruno

Isair wrote: »

About Nocturnal’s Ploy tho… has this thing been touched yet?

Yes, there is an adjustment on the cooldown planned for this set in Monday's PTS patch.

code65536

Thanks. This is what we wanted to hear.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

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

I'm actually more concerned about incoming damage. Healing did take a nerf, and this is one of the common themes that I've seen in Update 35's feedback. PvPers are saying that healing is too strong in PvP, so that the nerfs to healing power were needed, but the amount of incoming damage in PvE is pretty intense.

While much of the attention has been focused on damage output, I think, particularly for the three most recent trials, survivability and our ability to deal with incoming damage is just as important.

Mr_Stach

Psssst.

Zos.

Gimme.

My.

Melee.

Spammable.



Also thank you for the weekly feedback and sneak peek. this should happen in every PTS regardless of the Amount of Feedback Received

Troodon80

Out of curiosity, you're decreasing health because of the DPS nerf... are you also decreasing damage done by the mentioned enemies in accordance to the HPS loss? @ZOS_GinaBruno

Chef42

I just got very confused by something here. Gina said "We ultimately want to help raise the floor and....", what has actually been done to raise the floor? This is a serious question. I have seen nothing on the PTS that raises the floor at all.

Back on week 1 of the PTS using the same toon, gear, CP, food, pots, I lost about 20% of my damage dropping from 54K on live to 44k on the PTS. If your raising the floor, with that same setup I should be hitting more than 54k on PTS now? What change made this happen?

Once again, I am not being sarcastic. I would really like to know.

qcell

Cool, if the numbers add up to a proportionally higher dps or shorter fights.

Will damage taken be adjusted? Will the same factor as DPS be used or another one? Can you share an approximate range? 20-30%?

React

I am really happy with this combat update. Thank you for listening to the community.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Isair wrote: »

About Nocturnal’s Ploy tho… has this thing been touched yet?

Yes, there is an adjustment on the cooldown planned for this set in Monday's PTS patch.

Please do not just adjust the cooldown, unless you are planning a 15 second or longer cooldown. This set can remove potion sourced buffs. The game has been entirely built, stat wise, around these buffs. Being able to lose them for 40 seconds potentially is very harmful to the balance in PVP, and it has been almost unanimously agreed upon by PVP players that this set is a mistake.

Parrot1986

Honeslty think this just crazy. Feels like there's a dartboard and you're all taking turns to see what to do next.

Light/Heavy Attack changes were fine for most part. Maybe adjusting heavy attacks for niche/accessability builds wouldve been good, but the flat value actually made sense.

@ZOS_Finn only a day or so ago on a AMA on Twitter, literally just said they werent changing content and waiting to see the impact now all of a sudden we are. It just screams rush job and no communication internally which is really worrrying as a consumer.

We now have LA/HA being more damage again making weaving more important. Add to that that class rotations are more complex due to the varied durations. Magplar now for e.g. has 6 second, 10 second, 20 second, 22 second and 25 second skills to use which is much more difficult than on live. How is this supposed to help those progressing when one of the easier classes is much harder after this.

What should have been a back it out and properly plan in line with actual community participation has just turned into throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. No doubt we will have another 6 months of patching this up before the next big change comes in to further improve it.

Necrotech_Master

will be interested to see how this plays out

Nevidyra

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We wanted to take a minute to give you some insight into some additional changes coming to the PTS affecting combat and balance.

As we’ve continued reading through your feedback from testing these changes, we determined that some of our goals were actively competing with each other and not reaching the target audiences in ways we intended. We ultimately want to help raise the floor and reduce the ceiling in regard to DPS output, while simultaneously improving class balance in some problematic areas. So far, this has led to competing changes that have hurt some groups of players despite us stating we didn’t want to actively harm playstyles with any particular change; we are committed to following through with additional ways to mitigate these issues while still meeting our intended goals.

With all that said, in next week’s PTS patch you’ll find that we will be re-evaluating some of the adjustments to Light and Heavy Attacks so they are a bit less drastic. Light and Heavy Attacks will once again scale with your stats, just to a lesser extent than before. Overall, there will still be a nerf on Light Attack damage, but this will allow us to give a lot more love to Heavy Attacks and will be less stark of a difference.

There will also be a handful of tweaks to some class abilities in next week’s PTS patch, based on the feedback we’ve received, but the majority of these will come in the final PTS patch. Note that the focus of these adjustments will be on Magicka-based Nightblades, Wardens, and Sorcerers.

Additionally, for Dungeons and Trials, we’ll be reducing the health of all bosses on Veteran difficulty and above in the final PTS patch to account for the overall DPS loss. For Trials specifically, we’ll be reducing the health of all Champions and Bannermen on Veteran difficulty and above. The reduction in health for each boss will vary from encounter to encounter, but the results should be that each Dungeon and Trial boss fight will provide a similar challenge to what is on Live currently. The Trial bannermen and Champions provide a challenge in their own right so we felt additional adjustments were warranted.

We recognize there has been a lot of concern surrounding the combat changes currently on the PTS, and we truly believe with some continued adjustments and iterations, this is the best course of action for the long-term health of the game. We’re also working on a brief Q&A that should help address some of the more general questions surrounding these changes. Thanks for reading and, of course, taking the time to provide so much in-depth and valuable feedback.

Can y'all buff jabs and burning light so my class isn't dead? You want to improve accessibility by destroying the most accessible, new-player friendly class.

Fix this. Thanks.

PeacefulAnarchy

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

As we’ve continued reading through your feedback from testing these changes, we determined that some of our goals were actively competing with each other and not reaching the target audiences in ways we intended. We ultimately want to help raise the floor and reduce the ceiling in regard to DPS output, while simultaneously improving class balance in some problematic areas. So far, this has led to competing changes that have hurt some groups of players despite us stating we didn’t want to actively harm playstyles with any particular change; we are committed to following through with additional ways to mitigate these issues while still meeting our intended goals.

I don't know how I'll feel about the actual changes once they come around, but I appreciate this acknowledgement.

Veesk

Please reverse the Templar Sweeps/Jab changes. Not only are the nerfs lowering the floor but the new animation is largely disliked. It feels like this is also taking away from Templar class identity.

Nevidyra

@ZOS_GinaBruno Can us Templars seriously get any news on whether or not we're going to recieve some buffs to jabs? They're being outperformed by rapid strikes, which is actively. destroying our class identity, and Templar is back to being a healer-only spec in PvP as the damage they do is laughable in comparison to other spammables.

I am very concerned as a Templar player for U35 and I'm wondering if I'm going to have to stop playing.

pklemming

While I am very pleased to have some feedback about the potential changes on Monday, I will still have significant reservations due to the sheer amount of things the player-base is unhappy with right now. Hopefully we will be pleasantly surprised on Monday.

Thank you very much for the response, though.

FrankonPC

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Isair wrote: »

About Nocturnal’s Ploy tho… has this thing been touched yet?

Yes, there is an adjustment on the cooldown planned for this set in Monday's PTS patch.

Thank you for keeping an eye out on this set Gina and other devs.

drill

All this talk of “raising the floor” over the years and it’s amazing to me that you’ve never thought to simply provide better information to newer players on how to improve their gameplay. In my opinion, it’s as simple as providing a secondary tutorial (or even multiple, one for each role) upon hitting level 50, and if it were up to me I’d make it so they’re required to complete that tutorial before entering a Vet Dungeon on their particular role. The base tutorials are an absolute joke and just leave players out to dry. It would not be difficult to even just explain the concept of weaving, rotations, dot/buff uptimes, etc so that people aren’t just queueing into vet content and hitting random skills at random times and light attack spamming the rest of the way.

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe

PingTheAwesome wrote: »

Suna_Ye_Sunnabe wrote: »

Ah, so we continue the cycle of nerf players, then nerf content to compensate for said nerfs. Remind me, what is the point of that? Doesn't that just put us back where we started? It's ridiculous.

I keep hearing players say "but six years ago, the current gameplay is not what they intendeddddddd" which, okay, sure. But they're going to have to let go of that fever dream at some point. The game is drastically different from where it was six years ago or what they might have intended for it to be six years ago.
Not to mention that they're doing this after they promised up and down that there "would be no more major changes".

Exactly. Not to mention so called "power creep" is one of the most accessibility friendly things, in truth. As a leader of a training guild, more people than ever have been able to come learn content in vet trials and hardmodes because of the recent evil "power creep". Wouldn't it make sense to let the top >1% of players continue to set their records and what not, whilst letting other players who never had a chance before now enjoy vet content due to the increased power? What's the harm?

Elsonso

Oooh... More interesting changes. Thanks!