Update 35; Good or Bad? (over 11,000 votes)

merpins

I won't go into detail about my opinion. Here's a bunch of polls that have been done over the last couple weeks about Update 35, all of which relate to this poll and add to the approximate value of its numbers;

Is your feedback valued? (616 votes)

Skinny Cheeks' "Are you happy with U35 changes" (5,100+ votes)

PTS Changes (279 votes)

Roll-Back U35? (320 votes)

Like or Dislike U35 Changes (182 votes)

Reddit Positive or Negative (2,400+ votes)

Don't Nerf Petition (1,300+ signs)

https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/don-t-nerf-dps-in-eso?source=rawlink&utm_source=rawlink&share=e5970293-21a8-4b3f-9d35-49f0dc78140c

Raid in Peace Petition (1,000+ signs)

https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-tewks-let-us-raid-in-peace?redirect=false

Jabs Visual Change 1 (99 votes)

Jabs Visual Change 2 (162 votes)

Flurry Changes (81 votes)

As you can see, it's not the vocal minority that's concerned here.
This is a sample size of over 8,000 votes, and more than likely more than 5,000 total people participating in these votes, with it being universally at least 70%-80% weighted towards disliking the changes.

AlterBlika

I didn't play on PTS, waiting for the update to go live, and then I'll see if it's bad or not. If they only lowered dps and adjusted dungeons, I kinda don't see the problem there. If I need to change build/rotation then it's great, as I'd like to try something new.

GreatGildersleeve

As a console player I can’t pts but the patch notes are not encouraging.

ZoS is lucky. The player base being so up in arms about U35 means people still care about the game. If it ever gets to a stage where people respond with ‘yeah, whatever’ then ZoS is really in trouble. Apathy is much more worrisome than rage.

merpins

GreatGildersleeve wrote: »

As a console player I can’t pts but the patch notes are not encouraging.

ZoS is lucky. The player base being so up in arms about U35 means people still care about the game. If it ever gets to a stage where people respond with ‘yeah, whatever’ then ZoS is really in trouble. Apathy is much more worrisome than rage.

So true. As a note, this poll here is to prove that it's not a vocal minority that are here and are worried. This is over 5,000 people with it possibly being over 8,000 people. But total votes doesn't mean that many people voted, it's not unlikely that many of these polls I've shown have people voting in more than one of the polls. But it's still a simple size over over 5,000.

Fhritz

[snip] Sure, some things are wrong, but they adressed most of the complaints. LA change ? "reverted" (still a nerf, but it scale again). Content adjustement due to the dps loss ? Vet boss health are reduced. Nocturnal ploy ? nerfed.

They can't make everyone happy, and ESO got way worse patch back then compared to this

[edited for baiting]

merpins

Fhritz wrote: »

[snip] Sure, some things are wrong, but they adressed most of the complaints. LA change ? "reverted" (still a nerf, but it scale again). Content adjustement due to the dps loss ? Vet boss health are reduced. Nocturnal ploy ? nerfed.

They can't make everyone happy, and ESO got way worse patch back then compared to this

Even if half the people haven't tested it, I guarantee you that at least half of that half will still dislike the changes. And if that's the case, it's still a sample size of over over 5,000 votes that say they dislike the changes, and it's still the vast majority of over 60% of players disliking, with 20% being mixed, other, or overall not caring. Meaning at most only 25% of players like the changes.
Can't make everyone happy, but you can make the majority happy, and when it's weighted so heavily like this, most people means 75%, you usually want to go with that 75%.

[edited to remove quote]

Ragnarok0130

Fhritz wrote: »

They can't make everyone happy, and ESO got way worse patch back then compared to this

But apparently devs who say they listen but do the opposite can make a large portion of the player base extremely unhappy. I can't actually think of a worse patch since Beta to be honest...Morrowind is up there but I think we may have surpassed that one. Is there one you think is worse?

KlauthWarthog

Yes, I tested stuff on the PTS, weeks 1 and 5.
Main templar, secondary warden.
I don´t think I need to say a whole lot more.

merpins

KlauthWarthog wrote: »

Yes, I tested stuff on the PTS, weeks 1 and 5.
Main templar, secondary warden.
I don´t think I need to say a whole lot more.

I also main templar and second warden. My third was an oakensoul stam sorc. lol.

On a positive note, I was able to remake my oakensoul stam sorc on the PTS and deal about the same amount of damage as before, 50k-55k dps on the 3mil dummy, which translates to about 80-85k on the live trial dummy. It's also a very easy rotation! Less fun to play and super weird though. But it was possible to make a new build that matched the damage I do on live without doing a heavy attack build. This will not be the case for most oaken builds, oaken is still nerfed into the ground for the most part, and it's only a slight consolation after my mains get gutted.

boi_anachronism_

Fhritz wrote: »

[snip] Sure, some things are wrong, but they adressed most of the complaints. LA change ? "reverted" (still a nerf, but it scale again). Content adjustement due to the dps loss ? Vet boss health are reduced. Nocturnal ploy ? nerfed.

They can't make everyone happy, and ESO got way worse patch back then compared to this

Literally no one who actually had thoughtful data driven criticism of the patch cared about the la nerf, it was about moving to flat damage from scaling which effected heavy attacks hugely and there by the majority of new and casual players who tend to use it more then anyone. A lot of end game players had actually said la should be nerfed including skinny and nefas for a while. Empower with medium weaving is a huge issue that they created and needs to be addressed because it widens the skill gap. The way they changed sticky dots and hots is a huge issue. They nerfed damage by 20%+ and then nerfed bosses by only 10% so ultimately the content is even more inaccessible. There were major framework choices that were made that were just not good. People were also complaining about endless combat change fatigue. It is now something like 12 patches in a row of combat changes. People are tired of rebuilding their toons every six months because the game functions more like a beta then one that was released 8 years ago.

They specifically said the goal was to increase accessibility with this patch and that is an objective failure based on hard data.

Additionally console players don't HAVE the option of hoping on pts so that's pretty disingenuous. A lot of people are here specifically because they read the patch notes. I personally never used eso forums until I read the notes. There is ample data out there from folks who have been testing for weeks and released logs as well countless hours of streaming directly from pts. No. People are here because they care and understand what is happening.

[edited to remove quote]

Dulkur

A number of people put in the needed work to understand the changes and game impact, more than what the developers appear to be doing, but end up ignored. This happens every update. Eventually the live servers get another patch that corrects the problems pointed out by pts players before it went live, so much player unhappiness could have been avoided if the developers just listened.

People are often unhappy with change, they don't like their overpowered ability or exploit to be fixed, those people need to be ignored when making changes. But too often the Developers are ignoring people pointing out very obvious flaws in what they are doing, failure to listen when that happens is a problem.

I have quit this game for years at a time due to specific issues that have too large an impact on my game experience, issues that I see major criticism of in chat and have no idea how anyone could see as a good game play experience. When I come back those issues are unaddressed, still being criticized in chat, I only last as long as my tolerance for those issues exists then I will leave again. ESO has only received my return business because for what I want out of a game no real competitor exists.

U35 just seems a repeat of bad development decisions of the past. Major game changes without addressing game issues, done in a way to make players unhappy.

p4l4mu7

Zos be like
knee jerk reaction

Necrotech_Master

im still kind of "waiting and seeing" till this goes live to actually see how this affects my toons, majority of the gear is not changing, but i might have to completely redo my skill bars on some toons

Tannus15

AlterBlika wrote: »

I didn't play on PTS, waiting for the update to go live, and then I'll see if it's bad or not. If they only lowered dps and adjusted dungeons, I kinda don't see the problem there. If I need to change build/rotation then it's great, as I'd like to try something new.

it's mostly fine now, but the first iteration of PTS was very not fine.

Fhritz wrote: »

[snip] Sure, some things are wrong, but they adressed most of the complaints. LA change ? "reverted" (still a nerf, but it scale again). Content adjustement due to the dps loss ? Vet boss health are reduced. Nocturnal ploy ? nerfed.

They can't make everyone happy, and ESO got way worse patch back then compared to this

that's because the people who formed popular opinion did so by actually going into pts and doing content. we provided so much evidence of how badly this update was going to go that they have backed off a lot of the changes

the ground dots changes were reverted after it was proved that PvE healing was gutted and content such as vKA HM were basically impossible to clear.

the "light attack" changes were reverted not because of light attacks, but because of heavy attacks. it was shown that heavy attack builds were basically unusable because of the week 1 changes.

the vet boss health nerf was introduced because it was proven that content was significantly harder when we lost 20% of our dps.

the list goes on. make no mistake, we're getting a far superior version of update 35 because of all the hard work put in by the ESO PTS player base.
Week 1 was an unmitigated disaster and a lot of the ill will towards this update is the utter horror of the original "vision" here.

there are a bunch of changes we were unable to do anything about.
unfortunately we didn't manage to save mag warden, in particular frost warden builds.
sorcs are now more reliant on pets than before and rapid strikes is better than jabs.

healing is still going to be an issue, I have real concerns for specific content such as tanking bahsei, but at least most content will be fine.

[edited to remove quote]

Cyber10

Hey @ZOS_GinaBruno and @ZOS_RichLambert maybe you guys should pay attention instead of ignoring the community.
Or are these polls based on a 4 week "knee-jerk" reaction to a patch that has been terrible from the start?

merpins

Tannus15 wrote: »

there are a bunch of changes we were unable to do anything about.
unfortunately we didn't manage to save mag warden, in particular frost warden builds.
sorcs are now more reliant on pets than before and rapid strikes is better than jabs.

healing is still going to be an issue, I have real concerns for specific content such as tanking bahsei, but at least most content will be fine.

That jabs change just hurts. Been maining Templar since beta since I love jabs. Nerf or buff, been templar regardless just cause it's my favorite skill. Now I absolutely hate the skill. It's such a bad animation.

merpins

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

im still kind of "waiting and seeing" till this goes live to actually see how this affects my toons, majority of the gear is not changing, but i might have to completely redo my skill bars on some toons

Probably. Hard to say, but it's a major nerf across the board.

Ghaleb

Tannus15 wrote: »

it's mostly fine now, but the first iteration of PTS was very not fine.

If by fine you mean
- a retained loss of 20% and more from your DPS with a flat nerf to boss health of 10%,
- loss of a good amount of class ability usefulness with Templars, Wardens, Sorcs, Necros,
- a new Medium-Weaving-Meta which will only fuether the divide between endgame-raiding community (of those who stay) and
- an increasing amount of the more popular streamers / YouTubers in Eso Either already stating that they either won‘t do videos or at least no builds for U35 (Skinny) or like BrahWeGotThis, not being sure if he is at all going to update his builds for U35?

Then yes, the patch is now fine.

Rimskjegg

Ghaleb wrote: »

Tannus15 wrote: »

it's mostly fine now, but the first iteration of PTS was very not fine.

If by fine you mean
- a retained loss of 20% and more from your DPS with a flat nerf to boss health of 10%,
- loss of a good amount of class ability usefulness with Templars, Wardens, Sorcs, Necros,
- a new Medium-Weaving-Meta which will only fuether the divide between endgame-raiding community (of those who stay) and
- an increasing amount of the more popular streamers / YouTubers in Eso Either already stating that they either won‘t do videos or at least no builds for U35 (Skinny) or like BrahWeGotThis, not being sure if he is at all going to update his builds for U35?

Then yes, the patch is now fine.

And TheTankClub reducing their ESO focus and moving into other games.

I love ESO. I want it to do well. But this update is a straight downgrade and has already caused so much damage. Must we really just brace ourselves for the additional fallout when the players who don't follow PTS start to feel the pain on live?

Rimskjegg

@Ghaleb Wait Skinny won't do builds for U35? Where'd he say that?

ramdrop

I main a Warden, I've tried the PTS and I'm not interested in continuing. Ever since I lost the ability to feel rewarded in playing other characters (AwA) my interest has slowly been declining. There were many posts about how this was bad but nothing was communicated across to us.

We were promised this was going to improve server performance. It did not. Cyrodil is still as awful as ever.

ZOS wrote that they would only make minor adjustments through High Isle - well what is this then? It's a pretty big "minor" adjustment.

This patch has not been thought through and some random changes have gone through to disguise the bad ones.

I've spent the last few weeks reading the comments on the forum and I'll admit that I and a lot of others jumped off the cliff when the patch notes were announced. This is such a fundamental change to the game happening within a 5 week period of testing - testing that the playerbase is providing. How long were these changes in the pipeline?

This "knee jerk" reaction post from Rich who works as the creative director is appalling. There are dedicated players on here providing their time for free trying to work a solution around this and then something like that gets posted.

Well the faith you want in the community will never be yours until you start interacting with your community on a serious level.

merpins

Rimskjegg wrote: »

@Ghaleb Wait Skinny won't do builds for U35? Where'd he say that?

23:14. He says it around there, just listen from that point and he'll explain what he is and isn't doing in U35. I queued the video to start at that time, but ESO forums cancel the queue of youtube videos, so you'll have to skip there manually.
https://youtu.be/HHUfvKxUoOA?t=1394

Ghaleb

Rimskjegg wrote: »

@Ghaleb Wait Skinny won't do builds for U35? Where'd he say that?

In his last video regarding PTS week 5 jump to minute 23:20. He states that he won't be doing the hour long DPS guides for U35 and probably reserves them for U36 again even though he mentions that he will still put out videos (whatever that means content-wise).

Last statement could also be more tailored to the YouTube-algorithm though than the want to do content for U35 at all, as I have the impression that he tries so, so hard to be positive about the changes from PTS week 1 to PTS week 5. But that is of course only my impression.

merpins

ramdrop wrote: »

There are dedicated players on here providing their time for free trying to work a solution around this

If you think about, it, we're not providing our time for free. We paid to provide our time by buying the game, expansions, and stuff in the cash shop. So we're not getting paid to do this but instead providing our money to do so.

Ghaleb

Rimskjegg wrote: »

And TheTankClub reducing their ESO focus and moving into other games.

Just seeing that statement of yours myself... Where can I find that statement as I missed that one as well? o.O

Wolfkeks

Ghaleb wrote: »

Rimskjegg wrote: »

And TheTankClub reducing their ESO focus and moving into other games.

Just seeing that statement of yours myself... Where can I find that statement as I missed that one as well? o.O

I think they meant this statement ^^

https://twitter.com/TheTankClub/status/1554860116595310594

Wolfkeks

I also dislike the changes.
Tested the first 3 weeks with my raid team vSS hm, some dungeons and vVH myself and yeah... most of my the peeps in my raid team quit because most of them didn't want to start from zero again. Can only hope U36 fixes things and really make things more accessible for more peeps.

Ghaleb

Wolfkeks wrote: »

I think they meant this statement ^^

Thanks for sharing. Gee.

Is it a bad sign for the health of a game if major content creators and supporters of a game pivot to other games / content? Asking for a friend...

doesurmindglow

The part that bugs me the most about it, I think, is my sense, or rather, my certainty that the DPS nerf combined with the sloppy implementation of heavy attack buffs and hasty 10% health reduction on all veteran bosses is going to be reverted in Update 36.

I wish we'd just skip ahead to that, and spare the playerbase the silly persistence in changes that ultimately are not going to work.

Tommy_The_Gun

The only thing I find positive about this next patch are NB's Aspect of Terror & Assassin's Blade changes. Literally every other change is either "meh" or "mostly bad".

kind_hero

I switched to casual play for 2 years. All I can say is the changes they keep doing to combat systems aren't going to make me play vet dungeons or invest more of my play time in gathering meta gear or whatever. The frequent changes aren't the reason I stopped doing vet content or even dungeons, but the way they have no direction and are against what most players want.

One the major issues for me is how I have to use weapon or guild abilities instead of class abilities to be effective. Also, I dislike how the class abilities are more of the same for each class, and the level of customization for abilities is still so low, despite hundreds of sets. The devs are constantly trying to make everything homogeneous, scale the same, balance, but in the end, the experience of playing a class is diluted so much, there is little difference from playing a sorc or a templar, because most of the abilities on the action bar are the same, or just have a different animation.

There is no statement of a strategy, or a goal, aside from permanently homogenizing things. I am not sure players want each class to be perfectly balanced compared to another. Say nightblades: they could do more damage, like burst damage, than other classes, but be overall more squishy, which is something typical in RPG games. Or a templar, could have more defenses and heals, yet have less burst damage opportunities. This kind of difference / trade off makes people try different play styles and love/hate certain classes. Unfortunately ESO doesn't try to offer that.