Upcoming PTS Combat & Balance Adjustments

Ambrose_Malachai

If this is what you believe is best for the long-term health of the game, fine. But don't change things so drastically within such a short period of time. Take more time to understand the effects of these changes will have on proc sets, arena, dungeon, and trial fights on an individual basis, and adjust them all slowly. This is not a project that could be done in a standard PTS cycle. It needs 6 months of content adjustments to go along with the combat adjustments, not a few weeks of sporadic changes to player combat.

Putting this on PTS is fine, but only if you commit the next several months to actually adjusting and aligning everything to your vision before you put it on live.

Nomadic_Atmoran

xaraan wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

xaraan wrote: »

5. Are you just insistent on pushing through these changes in some form to save face b/c you think it would look back to admit you were wrong and scrap most the changes outright? Sounds like I silly question, but I've seen you guys argue about changes and push them through before only to slowly revert things as time goes on or make changes a few patches later. This goes to trust. If you can't admit you were wrong and do what's best for the game, then no use asking people to trust you.


At this point in the game, you shouldn't be completely reworking combat or anything else. Every patch should just have minor tweaks and balance changes and that's all that was needed now. Some classes are a bit over or under-tuned (or some abilities) and needed adjusting. If you want to nerf light attacks, you could use one patch to do that and only that and see how it effects everything else, instead of also changing hots/dots and abilities and not truly knowing how it will play out in in-game situations (something that spreadsheets alone don't tell you). Small changes each patch could have been used to finish hybrid changes, polish racial changes that were never truly balanced, work on CP (and maybe return some Quality of Life aspects players lost from the changes where we ended up losing quality of life features even with 3x the applied CP). And frankly, some of the end game trials needed adjusting for vet and HMs even without any nerfs to the the power level if you truly want your content "more accessible".

i think this nails it on the head

its kind of almost feeling like we are getting more communication due to the massive blowback

zos would have internal numbers to people who are pre-emptively canceling their subs at a minimum and im getting the feeling like they had some kind of internal meeting that was like "we got to do something"

combat is in a pretty decent spot right now and should only need adjustments to fix problem areas, blanket nerfing us, and now including the blanket nerf on enemies (at least partially) feels like its unnecessarily massively swinging the game balance

as others have noted just the fact they even put these massive changes out there is already leaving a bad taste in players mouths and its not even live yet

its like using a sledgehammer to put the final nail in a birdhouse, you might get the nail in the wood but your going to destroy the birdhouse in the process

Well, considering $$ are the biggest piece of feedback they would listen to, I wouldn't doubt they've seen some impact. I know I've already closed my eso+ personally, as well as a couple friends. A few others in my circle that were starting to play more now that lag was improved (though I dont think they had resubbed yet) and looks like they are just not going to continue to get back into it. The prog trial team I was on will probably shut down b/c of losing too many players. I know Nefas has mentioned a few other instances (he sees a lot more community wise than I would) with large numbers of raid leads leaving their discord and quitting. He also mentioned how the pricing of gold mats has already started dropping because of less players at end game buying stuff for upgrades. There is obviously some impact and I believe they are more likely listening because of that than just because of feedback in general (anecdotal or numbers based).

If they want trust, they should try earning some. Someone should step up and say, "we messed up" but they rarely, if ever, admit to making mistakes. At this point I think they will roll enough of it back to stop the hemorrhaging, smooth over things with those players left and keep coasting on that sweet elder scrolls name that has carried them this far.

I suspect that its bigger than that. Endgamers are the tip of the iceberg here. Anyone mid-tier or in general been here a while and trying to slog through the constant changes sees what this really means for them. One large nerf that has one too many stated goals competing against each other. You cant lower the ceiling AND raise the floor with the original changes they were looking to make. Anyone hoping to climb up that ladder of difficulty are farther behind where they were even a year ago. You cant go wiping out that amount of progress wholesale and not expect an absolute exodus.

I guarantee by the end of week one whatever metrics they follow to indicate how well they are doing in sales/whatever. The people monitoring that were losing it and making frantic calls up and down the call list.

Jaraal

ajkb78 wrote: »

washbern wrote: »

Yeah. In many cases I think it's too late. I begged for communication from ZOS. When it came I think I was even more disappointed. Nothing they said has been the actual truth, I feel. Asking us to have faith in their plan and then frantically backpeddling in the last weeks of testing shows that there was a plan to be had. How can we trust them now? Most people see this and the exodus has begun. Unfortunately ESO is not as big as WOW and every person leaving is a big deal.

I really have no idea how this breach of trust can be repaired and playerbase brought back.

It's easy. They need to propose combat changes here on the forum the cycle before they appear on PTS,and actively listen to the feedback.

Never happen. They love their secrecy, like to spring surprises on us. They won't even answer simple questions about whether multiple people can get leads from safeboxes, so to expect them to be forthcoming before the guar guano hits the fan is unreasonable.

washbern

ajkb78 wrote: »

[

It's easy. They need to propose combat changes here on the forum the cycle before they appear on PTS,and actively listen to the feedback. if the update 35 week 1 changes had been presented here back in April / May, all the stupidity of them would have been pointed out ahead of time and we could have gone in to week 1 of PTS with something much more like what tomorrow's change will probably look like and smoothed it out a bit further during PTS. I mean, ideally they would also act like there is some kind of overarching plan for where combat needs to get to and stay permanently, but failing that just giving the community more time to help them shooting themselves in both feet again like they've done this patch would be a start.

That would only work if they didn't pretend to know better than everyone else. Week 1 pts comes out and what do we get? "Knee Jerk reactions from the lot of you. Trust our vision!"

So people provide pages upon pages of data. What do we get? Week 3 pts motes that barely address anything.

Week 4 they finally did something because probably enough people talked with their wallets.

Jazraena

The knee-jerk comment was prior to the PTS patch notes. And while the prior info worried me as well, some reactions absolutely were knee-jerk negative and aggressive.

The actual patch notes were even worse then, of course, but there has been no knee-jerk comments after those.

washbern

I am just trying to say that there is no plan or vision or even an inkling of a clue to be had. They are spinning plates to justify their existence. So far they have managed to kill class identity, pvp, difficult PVE, several end game raiding guilds, carry guilds, trading guilds. If that's a well thought out plan that we are supposed to trust then .... I mean I don't even know what to say at this point.

WildRaptorX

Please reconsider the awful change to sub assault and the awful flurry animation

Jazraena

washbern wrote: »

I am just trying to say that there is no plan or vision or even an inkling of a clue to be had. They are spinning plates to justify their existence. So far they have managed to kill class identity, pvp, difficult PVE, several end game raiding guilds, carry guilds, trading guilds. If that's a well thought out plan that we are supposed to trust then .... I mean I don't even know what to say at this point.

Their changes have been poorly thought out, no doubt about that.

But the Knee-Jerk / Trust comment has been prior to those changes, so bringing it up time and again is misplaced, and hurts the validity of complaints.

SpacemanSpiff1

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. 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.

i am pleasantly surprised that enemy difficulty was acknowledged.

edit: as another post pointed out, enemy damage was not mentioned. that will be an issue with reduced healing.

Remathilis

renne wrote: »

Remathilis wrote: »

So let me see if I have this right...

There were two goals in this update:
1. Simplify rotation though lower emphasis on weaving damage and longer lasting skills to reduce constant application and bar swap.
2. Lower damage and healing numbers to make content less easy to burn though/skip mechanics on.

The problem is that both goals conflict with each other and worse, synergize to make the experience miserable to play, to the point of losing progress.

So now, ZoS has been forced to choose which is the more important goal as both together is impossible without additional massive overhauls to everything. Naturally, the choice of simplification is the one sacrificed for the lower ceiling.

So if I'm reading everything correctly, the current goals are;
1. Lower light attack damage somewhat to deemphasize but not remove weaving, while keeping it a factor in high DPS rotation and allowing heavy attacks to be viable again.
2. Return timers back to 10/15/20 splits, thus keeping the current level of timer watching and barswap.
3. Lower the general damage and healing across content to make content that is currently being burned though more viable and closer to it's original intent.
4. Lower top end content difficultly back to it's current levels of difficultly or progress.

The net gains are that top tier players are still playing the same but thier numbers will be lower on the logs and mid tier challenges will a little more difficult again. Meanwhile lower tier players will have most of the same struggles as before (weaving, barswap, timer monitoring) and now has a harder time dealing damage.

This feels like you've moved the deck chairs around the Titanic. Everything is the same, except the numbers are now smaller.

The thing is, even if they'd left it as it was, by nerfing almost other sources of damage, weaving remained and remains as important as ever, because it's guaranteed damage. If anything, it's made it even more important.

That and nearly every bis set made that exists in the meta requires LA weave activation, so those that struggle with weaving find sets like Relequin or Kinras to be inoperable.

TechMaybeHic

I am anxiously awaiting being disappointed by today's PTS patch notes

Sandman929

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

I am anxiously awaiting being disappointed by today's PTS patch notes

Always exciting to find out in what way I'll be disappointed.

Holycannoli

Isn't all this backpedaling an indication that maybe all the combat changes in this patch should be scrapped?

Magblade, magden and magsorc definitely need some love though. I'm curious what they have in mind for them.

Elsonso

Holycannoli wrote: »

Isn't all this backpedaling an indication that maybe all the combat changes in this patch should be scrapped?

This ship ain't got no reverse gear.

More seriously, the only way to "scrap it" is probably to continue moving forward, not that I expect they are thinking they are going to scrap it. More likely, they are accommodating the community while internally fretting that the community did not understand what they were trying to accomplish. If that is the case, they will circle around and try again with future changes, after Update 35.

blktauna

Jazraena wrote: »

The knee-jerk comment was prior to the PTS patch notes. And while the prior info worried me as well, some reactions absolutely were knee-jerk negative and aggressive.

The actual patch notes were even worse then, of course, but there has been no knee-jerk comments after those.

You needed only hear the proposed plan to know it would fail. Years of experience speaking on those reactions. There was nothing knee jerk about it.

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.

Jazraena

I expected the same. But there is a difference between being doubtful and skeptic and some rather aggressive and hostile commentary before we even knew the details.

Holycannoli

Elsonso wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Isn't all this backpedaling an indication that maybe all the combat changes in this patch should be scrapped?

This ship ain't got no reverse gear.

More seriously, the only way to "scrap it" is probably to continue moving forward, not that I expect they are thinking they are going to scrap it. More likely, they are accommodating the community while internally fretting that the community did not understand what they were trying to accomplish. If that is the case, they will circle around and try again with future changes, after Update 35.

We understood as soon as the first patch notes were posted that these changes were going to harm accessibility, both because of the nerfed damage and the stale, repetitive rotations the changes created.

That was the point of the changes, right? To increase accessibility?

Ragnarok0130

I appreciate the update Gina but this entire patch is still 100% unnecessary and has caused irreparable harm to the community and destroyed its trust in the combat team for a large part of it. These changes are steps in the right direction but we never should have gone in this direction at all.

I'm a trial healer and I'm very concerned with the fact that healing has been gutted and not even mentioned in the latest update. What is happening on the healer front since we haven't heard anything about outgoing damage from the bosses being nerfed just our healing and the bosses health is being reduced?

Changes as large as this should be tested on the PTS for 3-6 months not 5 weeks because there will be unintended secondary and tertiary follow on effects. A 5 week PTS cycle is fine for fine tuning of incremental adjustments...you know the kind that the combat team committed to do before creating these sweeping changes that they stated they wouldn't do again before update 35.

Elsonso

Holycannoli wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Isn't all this backpedaling an indication that maybe all the combat changes in this patch should be scrapped?

This ship ain't got no reverse gear.

More seriously, the only way to "scrap it" is probably to continue moving forward, not that I expect they are thinking they are going to scrap it. More likely, they are accommodating the community while internally fretting that the community did not understand what they were trying to accomplish. If that is the case, they will circle around and try again with future changes, after Update 35.

We understood as soon as the first patch notes were posted that these changes were going to harm accessibility, both because of the nerfed damage and the stale, repetitive rotations the changes created.

Seems like everyone but ZOS knew, and by the time we get to see it, it's too late. Ship has already sailed. The walking back this PTS cycle is nothing short of extraordinary. If anything that should be a wake-up call.

Ragnarok0130

Elsonso wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Holycannoli wrote: »

Isn't all this backpedaling an indication that maybe all the combat changes in this patch should be scrapped?

This ship ain't got no reverse gear.

More seriously, the only way to "scrap it" is probably to continue moving forward, not that I expect they are thinking they are going to scrap it. More likely, they are accommodating the community while internally fretting that the community did not understand what they were trying to accomplish. If that is the case, they will circle around and try again with future changes, after Update 35.

We understood as soon as the first patch notes were posted that these changes were going to harm accessibility, both because of the nerfed damage and the stale, repetitive rotations the changes created.

Seems like everyone but ZOS knew, and by the time we get to see it, it's too late. Ship has already sailed. The walking back this PTS cycle is nothing short of extraordinary. If anything that should be a wake-up call.

I do believe for ZoS this is a real world example of the "sunk cost fallacy" which is why they stubbornly refuse to scrap this apocalyptic patch. Regarding the request for non-anecdotal data from the Spreadsheets Lords...Mark Twain once said "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damned lies, and statistics". The devs need to rely on both statistical data and experiential data if they intend to create a good patch not solely rely on spreadsheets.

DarcyMardin

Thanks for listening, and for communicating. It is much appreciated by the community.

master_vanargand

Do not remove Veiled Strike's stun.
Remove 100% critical.
I'm despair...game over.

Alendrin

I don't think you appreciate the affect your nearly quarterly massive changes to the game have on the average player. Most of the people I know in game don't read patch notes, this forum, or social media. They might watch the occasional video explaining content or a build. That video will probably be outdated because of such frequent combat overhauls. Players find out stuff changed when they can't do what they used to.

I also think that trying to put this update into a 5 week PTS was...well...insane. You can't hope to make any sense of these changes while also testing new content, fixing bugs, etc. As others said this needed a couple months special PTS cycle before the update.

francesinhalover

hi, sorry to bother, i have checked and thank you for keeping heavy attacks strong

that being said, the durations of skills being 10 sec aoe -20 sec dot single is fine by me. the issue is arena weapon skills are 15 seconds making the rotation really hard.

stampede and endless hail.

would be lovely if just like blockade these morphs were 20 seconds Or stayed at 10 seconds with a damage boost. thank you.



also please reduce the special effects of arrow barrage, the skills white effects are super strong

BretonMage

Elsonso wrote: »

More likely, they are accommodating the community while internally fretting that the community did not understand what they were trying to accomplish.

Not for lack of trying, though.

jecks33

I am so exhausted after all these changes that I barely have the desire to log. I no longer care about my 6 year main templar being devasted, but please leave Dark Cloak as it is on live!
NB tank is my last source of fun, don't kill it or I'm done with this game.

Please @ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Gilliam

Marcus_Justicia

Some of these changes are positive for PVE but PVP remains a bit forgotten.
One thing I've been waiting for a while is for ZOS to rebalance the gain and risk benefit for melee players.
all melee skills should do 10% more damage minimum against players because while you are trying to place your skills a ranged enemy has time to kill you at least once.
In addition, I find the game too smooth, for example concerning uppercut: this skill was much more interesting when it had a casting time of 1 second and much higher damage, it reflected this gain linked to the risk and the time of incantation.
this is also the case for the damage of heavy attacks in melee, it should be more significant in PVP.
he should be punished for using them in stealth however to avoid toxic metas such as a 50% stealth decrease against players.
It would also be necessary to reduce their damage at more than 7 meters to respect the gain and risk ratio.
I think that the crystal weapon skill should respect this concept, it should be left to damage on the current server but apply a 40% damage reduction to it at more than 7 meters.
If you apply changes like this in PVP you can give it a real risk-reward feel that would greatly benefit the fun in PvP.
Sorry for my writing I'm not English

ksbrugh

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.

Sincerely

Here is my suggestion for a solution to the power creep and Gap. That would be balanced and skill oriented. And would get rid of the unnecessary balance changes that the devs have set forth for testing.

My suggestion would be to leave the core mechanics similar to what they are already existing in the game. For these veteran trials and hard modes and veteran dungeons and their hard modes, what should be done is already an existing core mechanic in other parts of the game and could be incorporated into these dungeons and trials.
What I'm speaking of is like for example the Dolmens in Summerset. The harder you come at them and the more powerful you or your group including randoms around you hit it. The more the Dolmens throw at you meaning they get harder and the final boss has more health and becomes more difficult to kill. If you are by yourself and stand there and light attack the ads that come at you taking your time and barely doing any damage the final boss is like a wet noodle. NOW I'm not suggesting if you do like light damage in a trial than the boss would be like a wet noodle there should be a bottom level where all bosses start at in their power and the harder you hit the dungeon from the beginning the more powerful and harder it is for that bosses to be killed including the ads in between bosses and the ads thrown at you during the boss fight would reflect your power output. Essentially veteran mode could be removed (meaning) that the harder you hit the dungeon it becomes veteran because of your damage dealt.
And things like Trifecta and no death runs achievements would only be given if you hit the dungeon from the very beginning with everything you got all the way to the end and you reach a certain score of damage and time it has taken you together for the game to consider you doing it in hard mode vet.
This way people at the bottom of the power level would still be able to enjoy trials and DLC dungeons and learn the mechanics and get better so they could progress, have something to work for while having fun doing it. Which would also mean people at the very top tier, the 1% of gamers could and would still be challenged by a dungeon that's smart enough to know you are coming in there whooping some butt and it's going to throw everything it's got at you just like as if it was that hard mode. And mid-tier gamers would have a dungeon or trial thrown at them slightly less harder than the 1%, but definitely harder than the lower percent of the power band. Rewards and achievements would be given out based on overall performance. Higher performance higher rewards.

Say things like DLC dungeons. Low end players could enter that dungeon and practice and see how far they can get. And say maybe the game would give a scorecard letting them know how far their group was from receiving a vet accomplishment which would include a monster helmet. Not an individual scorecard but a group scorecard knowing the basic damage and time outputs of that group with maybe a few suggestions on what they can do to improve performance. Or (this would probably be better) if you give a individual scorecard let it be private only to that player so the group would not be able to see it but the player would know what they need to do to improve.

So to sum this up.
Smart dungeons & trials that adjust to your power band and give rewards accordingly to your progression through that dungeon or trial. Meaning no achievements unless you come at it full force but still passable by mid and lower tiered players

Leave existing basic combat mechanics that the community has grown to love and gotten used to except for small minor changes adjustments and tweaks.

Implement a group or individual suggestion card for improvement and help after completing said dungeons or trials.

I wholeheartedly believe this would satisfy the upper 1% the upper 2% and the lower end and everything in between. Making the game fun and accessible and challenging for all ESO players from all walks of life. Even the wood elves

anvilbert

I'm an old construction worker so I will use an analogy I know. ZOS you are trying to build a house from the roof down and everyone knows that doesn't work. You are so focused on the top 1% of the community and power creep. While you are kicking the other 99% in the teeth trying to bring them down.The 1%will always find a way to come back up while the rest quit trying. Balance will only be achieved when you separate the pvp and pve from one a other. These changes are exhausting, frustrating,and insane. When these changes hit live servers my game time is going drop drastically, I am already cutting my time down to only run with guild mates. Depending on how many of them stick around will determine if I renew my sub.

Shagreth

Sorry, but.. Vampire rework when?