Deltias's Gaming - State of ESO

MidniteOwl1913

Dr_Con wrote: »

I really don't agree with him on the changes to oakensoul not being justified for PVE, and I don't like how he says it's so good for solo players then emphasizes how comparable it was to trial builds as if they are the same thing.

solo players should not be receiving all the buffs at all times available from trial dummies, and yet that seems to be the expectation people want. many of the trial buff passives come from other classes being in your group and activating an ability.

It had major berserk, major force, and major heroism at all times. it still retains all the major buffs- specifically sorcery, prophecy, brutality, savagery and 2 bar builds have 1 source of minor force, and then 2 skills dedicated to the rest of the abilities on the backbar. This leaves room for 1 class ability and presumably stampede or unstable wall of elements with an appropriate arena weapon or a backbar to activate another set to manage their stacking effects. Unless the source of minor force was trap or major sorc/brutality was mage's guild entropy, the only way to account for a loss of dps is stampede/wall of elements, or another proc set, or a lack of skill or oversight on his part of what oakensoul really offers.

to put it into perspective, major berserk is available as a proc on a 5 piece set or from synergizing with a storm atronach for 8 seconds and major force is a 10 second buff with warhorn or available through 5 piece trial sets each time a group member uses an ult, duration scaling off of how much ult being used, or off of the healing staff ult for 8 secs. The major protection was unneeded, who 1 bar tanks in pve? But regardless, minor aegis and major resolve are on the ring, which is more than any tank can ask for as they don't need to sacrifice a helmet set or ability on their bar to provide it. All this really does is make the DPS unnecessarily more tanky. Additionally, they still get all forms of minor recovery, which is an effect from using tri-pots or an effect from a templar slotted passive.

Users still got access to minor protection and minor slayer, which are available on 5 piece trial sets typically. If they weren't pre-buffing they'd still be doing the same damage as major berserk -> minor berserk was a 5% decrease and adding major slayer was a 5% increase, effectively cancelling eachother out. No real change there, but now they have to build kinras for major berserk. DPS for solo PVE players was untouched yet he makes it a big point in his video that it was.

Then they got access to minor force, which is 10% crit damage increase. Most people are forced to pre-buff this on their backbar which gets forgotten. Warhorn in trials/groups was less incentivized due to pre-nerf oakensoul as its main pull is allowing for 10 seconds of 20% increase crit damage to the group, allowing for burst phases to be more effective. a loss of 10% crit damage can be built around with khajiit passives or other gear/mundus stones, so no major loss here.

Major heroism is just not something you get in the game from many viable sets, and yet here it was as a seemingly extra thing that really has no place as ultimate generation should happen at the same pace as other players, not at an accelerated pace. This is really a case of tampering with something they wouldn't have done comprehensive testing with as all the classes would have to be balanced around this mythic. I would go so far as to say that even minor heroism isn't needed on this mythic as we can create potions that give us heroism, the cost of these alchemical reagents is high and minor heroism pots are used in many 2 bar top tier dummy parsing guides, it should be used in 1 bar top tier parsing guides as well. Still, it's not as bad as it could be, it's just superficial and unneeded. While I can be permissive of oakensoul having minor heroism in PVE, I will stand firm in saying it has/had absolutely no place in PVP as a major and minor variant, and only encourages prolonging fights, running around and staying in combat- further incentivizing this cheesy balorghs/vd/burst meta.

21 minute vs 20 minute on vet vateshran is basically nothing, he's performing basically the same with only a 5% time difference. if p =0.05 it still wouldn't be significant enough to show a difference in solo, and yet he is saying there's a 20% difference in dps with 2 bar vs 1 bar. Even factoring for time running there should be at least a 10% better time than using an oaken build (~2 minutes) (not factoring for time there should be at least a 4 minute better time). He also doesn't consider that he could be performing different based on the outcome he wants to see or how familiar with the build he is- if he was forced to use 1 bar his entire time playing the game, i'm sure he would get better numbers, but the fact that he performs so close to a 2 bar build with it only being released more recently is very telling.

the major to minor courage change is so minor it's not worth even talking about. Suffice it to say that both of these buffs are already provided in many trial as well as groups and it is unneeded, its only place is for solo. Major/Minor courage is even present in group dungeons so it's not a pain point to remove it off the mythic entirely and shift the bonus to something else.

He said in the unnerfed state it raised the floor and didn't impact the ceiling. Accomplishing the goal ZOS had for it until it was nerfed for "balance" with PVP. I totally agree with that statement.

dmnqwk

ESO is fairly bad at actually achieving it's balance goals.

Because everybody can be everything, people often complain about homogenization and 'well class X feels too much like class Y'. This occurs often when the focal point of balance is aimed at the wrong point.

MMO raiding has always been about cutting edge techniques- finding ways and exploits to achieve goals, changing classes to suit raids (I recall a time in another major MMO where one of the four healer classes missed out on a final icy monarchs first kill because they just didn't cope with the burst healing and got replaced with holy peons with more restraint).
As a high end raider, if you only raid as a single class/role then you're not really suited for that environment. (too many times people think 'play as you want' means 'do anything, get the results you want regardless'. It's the same mistake people have with what 'free speech' is.)

So why do I bring that up?
Because the focal point of balancing classes needs to be situated much lower - if the high end raiders are hitting 130k dps, then balancing around each class hitting this isn't beneficial to a large enough segment of the audience. The balance point would need to be moved down to about 70k mark - the INITIAL POINT of Veteran raiding (not the end point). If the Fulcrum was situated there, you'd be in a better situation to balance the floor and then if the ceiling gets out of whack, I'd actually be shocked when you also implemented more changes below.

On top of this issue regarding where the fulcrum is, I also feel too many set designers are given free rein to create whatever they fancy, with only minimal balance. Powerful Assault, a marvellous set for healers, is a prime example of this issue. It's a set with a strong effect that creates an unrestrained bonus. Why is it unrestrained? Because in a system full of major and minor buffs, with max crit chance and crit damage, what real need is there for this to grant 307 spell damage when it could simply grant a named buff instead (or a capped bonus, like it offering 4% crit chance)!

If they wanted to try and create a more intuitive system, they would need to peel back a lot of these free bonuses and confine them into a more promising system. Order's Wrath and Back-Alley Gormand combine to offer 21% crit damage, which is fine as a free buff considering it's in a capped structure, but imagine if they were direct spell damage instead? That's how the bloat occurs.

I recall playing 3rd edition dnd when it came out (yes I am old) and loving the number crunching - finding ways to add +1 here and +2 there to create the most broken character possible, because that's how the game was written. But having playing 5th edition, I definitely feel the strength of 5th edition is the bounded accuracy - making it tougher (but not impossible, see 13th level Necromancer/7th level Oathbreaker Paladin for details) to break things and creating a fairer play across the board. DnD is a cooperative game, just like ESO and ensuring that we get past the situation where:
New players have 5k dps
Average players have 15k dps
Good players have 30k dps
Great players are 50k+ dps (yes, 10 times a new player - insanely bad for balance)
would be ideal - because it has very strong knock on effects (like fake tanking) that are detrimental to people's enjoyment.

Finally, I'd like to mention the mistake ESO made in trying to 'fix weaving'. Your attempts to bridge the gap between new player dps and great player dps by reducing how much damage light attacks do was awful, truly awful. Why, you ask?

1) Relequen - Not just this set, but a large majority of sets require you to light and heavy attack to gain additional bonuses. These bonuses add up fast (on a trial dummy, relequen is worth about 7-10% of your damage) If you let it drop off because you don't weave and bar swap effectively, it's a lot of damage gone. Is it always your fault? Not necessarily for those with 250ms pings. Expecting people to maintain these bonuses is fine, but honestly - control the number of stacks better so we don't get the ridiculousness of Tzogvin's 10 stacks lasting 5 seconds and make stacks 3-5, but have them last 15 seconds so it really only affects target switching and ramping at the start of a fight.
2) Merciless Resolve. So you choose to be a nightblade and you want to dps? Well, you better become an expert at weaving or your damage will stink. This is the equivalent of if they made Blastbones require 3 light attacks before you could activate it. Perfect timing is required to get 5 stacks every 5 seconds, but also to get the 5th stack to fire it off without waiting too long for latency to register the 5th hit and for you not to simply refresh this ability on 4 stacks).
You created Blastbones and Scorch as cooldown abilities, but half assed it. I think it's about time you simply created actual cooldown abilities for every class that has them, without demanding perfect weaving.
If Bound Weapons, Blastbones, Merciless Resolve all had cooldowns instead of what they currently have you would greatly enhance the damage floor without impacting the ceiling - a move that would actually HELP players. Giving Blastbones a cd would also enable you to fire one off and not be impacted by the travel time (being at range often means you can only blastbones once every 4 gcds, not every 3 like being in melee).

I understand there will be complaints against why should it be made easier for new people? But honestly - reducing light attack damage was the wrong move when there are so many abilities which would benefit from a cooldown to create a MUCH BETTER effect to raise new player dps up. And the more new players who get better, the more end game raiders will benefit.

Jaraal

blktauna wrote: »

Deltia loves this game deeply and I'm sure this was not a pleasant task for him, but it was needed.

But like all of us, we love playing and want to continue to play. I just don't understand why TPTB keep trying to throw giant spanners in the works.

The only part of the “vision” that we’ve been enlightened on is that they want to ‘curb obscene damage numbers’ and ‘increase accessibility,’ neither of which seem to have occurred with the last two updates. So, until we have a clearer picture of what the actual plan is, we just have to accept that there may not even be a plan. The fact that they published two conflicting plans to the PTS with U35, combined with the continued silence about any vision for the future is certainly not an encouraging sign.

IncultaWolf

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

IncultaWolf wrote: »

It's funny how fast the Tales of Tribute game died, like, most of the player base doesn't even acknowledge it anymore, and there's only like a dozen people left who still play it.

Do you have any data to back up that claim? As someone who plays ToT every day on two servers, no matter what time of day I go there, I always see other players entering or leaving the Gonfalon gaming hall to pick up or turn in their ToT dailies, which leads me to believe that there must be a lot more than "only like a dozen people" who are actively playing ToT.

Now, if you're talking about people who play in the ranked matches, I have no idea how many there are. But there are still a lot of people who play against the NPCs.

Yes, on the server I'm on, I play every day to get the 3 player wins daily reward, in the past 2 months, I have been constantly matched with the same exact names every time I queue in casual, and these players are extremely sweaty, I guess most of the player base got all their achievements and bailed. I also reached rubedite tier in ranked, and again, I see familiar names all the time. I have 100% all the ToT achievements already so there isn't much reason to play anymore, except the purple and gold bags are dropping new motifs that are selling for up to 1m gold. Like I said, it doesn't even feel like the game exists outside of that zone, I have NEVER heard of any other player mention it in any of my guilds, and I have a single friend that has gotten past the tutorial, most people I mention it to who own the chapter, don't even want to do the tutorial. It was a flop, maybe if it wasn't so heavily rng based it would have been picked up more?

NeKryXe

Billium813 wrote: »

NeKryXe wrote: »

I love the game, I agree with almost everything, but I love ToT too and I've been more on ESO because of it. Most of my time in ESL moved to ESO/ToT.

I feel like I hear this a lot. The players that play ToT seem to primarily play just play ToT... and I think that makes sense based on it's design. If you enjoy ToT, that's great. However, the gameplay of ToT has absolutely nothing to do with the main gameplay loop of ESO. It is in a completely separate UI, it has it's own rules, it doesn't use combat or skill lines or anything from the main game (yes, I'm going to call ESO the "main game" when compared to ToT because ToT is stapled onto ESO; it is a secondary game within ESO).

One of the biggest complaints about ToT I've heard, from those that play it, is that it doesn't seem to be a large enough game to stand on it's own. But yet it's also time consuming enough that other activities in ESO are pushed to the wayside. Queuing for dungeons or grouping for Trials or playing PvP or Arenas all kind of fall to the wayside when you play ToT. It demands all of your attention and also doesn't involve any other aspects of the main game. It requires separate knowledge to play; a "competitive" game with unique rules you have to learn.

So, now we seem to have players that log in, do their writs, then go off and play ToT... it's now its own subgame mode of ESO.

Compare ToT to some other thing that was added to the game: Arenas. These are side activities that take away from Trials and Dungeons and PvP too! Except... they reuse the main gameplay elements. They reuse skills and set bonuses and combat. They are solo content, but I would have much rather ESO added something more akin to a 1v1 Arena-style, instanced combat thing than a card game that uses nothing from the rest of the game. It's just bloat.

That's not my case, and probably not the case of many others. Thanks to ToT, and since I've been playing it a lot, I now have enough transmutes to motivate me to renew all my old builds. So, I've been doing tons of dlc dungeons to complete grind for missing pieces and I've been using finally the armory to create a new build to all my characters. Since I moved from ESL to ToT, I've been playing way more non-ToT ESO.

Also... Every time I finish an intense vet dlc dungeon, I like to play a couple of casual ToT matches to relax. It's way better than fishing. And when I'm playing ranked I always run a dungeon between matches. I even play matches at Craglorn when trial calls are low.

I'm not playing less main ESO content due to ToT, I'm playing way more and with more dedication because now I don't leave the game so often to play ESL.

Miragent

Deltia's concerns are legit (not that I agree with all of them, it's a matter of preference, such as ToT), moreso because he seems so sincere. The talk needs to happen, but let's not pronounce the patient who's just caught some cold, dead yet.

It's been a couple difficult years for everyone, the world is in a bad shape and probably will be for a while, so let's not pretend it doesn't affect people in one way or anothers. Cut them some slack.

ESO is a relatively old and enormous game, creative people can't go on mass producing masterpieces non stop, they're bound to hit the wall at some point, run out of passion and inspiration for their work for a while. Happens to everyone who love what they do, just sometimes get distracted and wander off to explore some back alleys in search for inspiration. But ESO devs are no ODing rockstars, they're professionals, and I'm sure they know exactly what they need to do to get themselves and their full force production going. They got this!

LukosCreyden

Here is my take an the situation, which I'm copy-pasting from a reddit thread from a couple weeks ago:

"ESO as a whole is not receiving as much attention for certain reasons;

1. The game is old and they are struggling to pull in any significant quantity of new players.

2. They are working on a new IP, an MMO I believe. This new game will no doubt be the focus of their time, with ESO being in a sort of "soft maintenance mode". Not ACTUAL maintenance mode, but nothing like it was before. Minimal effort.

3. They cannot or are unwilling to add new combat content to the game. This could be due to engine limitations, or the reason above. This, I believe, is why they are now scraping the bottom of the proverbial barrel for new stuff to sell. New gathering and teleport animations? Wooooo. No new classes or skill lines in literal years for this combat focused MMO. This is also why I think we are getting so many weird and wacky balance changes; its the only way they can make combat feel fresh.

Also, as an aside, communication has never been a strong point for ZOS (I do genuinely wonder what community managers are for. Legitimately, please someone shed some light for me.) Recently, ZOS has been even more quiet than they usually are. ZOS_Kevin has been doing admirably for someone who ISN'T community manager, but even he has no definitive answers for us for the now-infamous meme, the U35 Q&A.

So, in summary, I do believe ESO is winding down in preparation for ZOS' new game to take its place. We will still get new stories and new, distracting features, bit I think the times of substantial quality are behind us.

Sorry for the negativity. I know I am not the only one to feel this way, which means that even if I am wrong, something is simply not working out as ZOS intends. I genuinely hope that I AM wrong, as I love this game very much and want to see it continue for years to come and be every bit the game I know it can be."

I posted this in response to a thread in which the the op was sharing their concern over ESO's future after playing Firesong. The thread is filled with people who share similar sentiment.
As I say in the post, even if we are all wrong and everything is going fine and to plan for ESO, the fact that so many people are thinking this way about the game means that something has gone very wrong.

Parasaurolophus

I do not understand all this negativity around the U35. My damage has changed. Yes, I had to change my build a little and farm new sets, but playing this game for a long time I got used to it and I think it's normal.
But I agree that the game is stagnating. Overland and questing are boring. Even the quality of writing falls. For the second year there will be no combat content in q4 dlc.

tsaescishoeshiner

I enjoy 1-3 games of Tribute most days, and I've been hoping for the new style pages to sell. Not sure where people get the impression that it's dead or a flop. But it only gets a major update twice a year, so I would guess the population is meant to fluctuate.

Based on the feedback I hear in-game, it seems to have been a success overall. Druid King and Orgnum could still use some tweaks, though.

_Zathras_

Miragent wrote: »

It's been a couple difficult years for everyone, the world is in a bad shape and probably will be for a while, so let's not pretend it doesn't affect people in one way or anothers. Cut them some slack.

Using Covid as an excuse was valid a year and a half ago. The business world has moved on.

This is a cultural problem.

SerafinaWaterstar

Why would having another MMO in production stop them being fully attentive to ESO?

It’s not going to be the same, so why put all their eggs in the new shiny basket when with not much effort they could have 2 successful MMOS running?

From a business point of view, that would be foolish. Especially if the new one has similar issues at the start as this one did, without the Elder Scrolls brand to keep it going?

Malthorne

_Zathras_ wrote: »

Miragent wrote: »

It's been a couple difficult years for everyone, the world is in a bad shape and probably will be for a while, so let's not pretend it doesn't affect people in one way or anothers. Cut them some slack.

Using Covid as an excuse was valid a year and a half ago. The business world has moved on.

This is a cultural problem.

It’s a cultural problem and that starts at the top. WoW, ffxiv, Lost Ark, GW2, and New World are putting out some of their best work right now. Those companies also chose to majorly delay a lot or all of their content to give their teams the time and resources needed to adapt to the global pandemic.

It feels like the current leadership has mentally checked out and moved on the new MMO. So much so, that they can’t even be bothered to respond to a simple Q and A that was promised.

SPR_of_HA_community

COVID can be exuse why work was delayed, but not because it was made bad.

BalticBlues

Deltia is spot on, as always.
ESO as an MMO is almost dead since the U35 combat changes.

ZOS knowingly released U35 despite the biggest consumer protests ever.
ZOS also ended the ESO Class Representative Program before.
The responsible people just DID NOT WANT TO LISTEN to any customer feedback.

What can ZOS do now?

1. Acknowledge that U35 was a total failure regarding customer experience/feedback/satisfaction.
2. Ask customers for forgiveness for damaging their favorite game with U35.
3. Acknowledge that the devs in charge of the U35 combat changes and the release are responsible.
4. Start a new ESO Combat Representative Program of established ESO content creators.
5. Replace the responsible devs with devs willing to work with the ESO customer community.
6. Revert all U35 combat changes completely to restart.
7. Start 2023 with a clean slate instead of an almost dead product.

ForzaRammer

Just way too much drastically changes way too frequently, this is a much bigger problem for casuals than tryhards.

VinnyGambini

Just curious. Will ZOS leave any reply to all this threads that game is dying? Do they even care?

blktauna

VinnyGambini wrote: »

Just curious. Will ZOS leave any reply to all this threads that game is dying? Do they even care?

only to close the thread

Necrotech_Master

people have been saying the game is dying since launch lol, zones still seem pretty populated to me, still join trial runs sometimes up to 5 days a week

u35 made me tweak my templar build, but im now doing more dps than i was pre-u35

ToT is fun, i like playing it when working from home because it doesnt require my full attention and it gives good mats, and ill agree it is much better than fishing

the only thing i would say they need to improve is the quality of writing, and maybe add more side quests, it hardly feels like theres any in some of these small zones (or even go back to other small zones to add more side quests, like hews bane and gold coast are pretty empty outside of the thieves guild/dark brotherhood)

U35 isnt the first time ive heard people complaining about "nerfs to everything" (ive been playing since launch, this is probably at least the 3rd or 4th large round of nerfs ive seen, such as the huge nerfs after the dot meta when that was OP)

Miragent

_Zathras_ wrote: »

Using Covid as an excuse was valid a year and a half ago. The business world has moved on.

This is a cultural problem.

It's human fragility.

Kesstryl

_Zathras_ wrote: »

Miragent wrote: »

It's been a couple difficult years for everyone, the world is in a bad shape and probably will be for a while, so let's not pretend it doesn't affect people in one way or anothers. Cut them some slack.

Using Covid as an excuse was valid a year and a half ago. The business world has moved on.

This is a cultural problem.

They were probably working on this DLC during Covid as it takes a couple of years from design to finished product with year long stories. But I agree with the person who said Covid is a valid reason to delay a product, and that would have been preferable in this situation.

blktauna

Delay would have indeed been preferable.

Jaraal

Kesstryl wrote: »

_Zathras_ wrote: »

Miragent wrote: »

It's been a couple difficult years for everyone, the world is in a bad shape and probably will be for a while, so let's not pretend it doesn't affect people in one way or anothers. Cut them some slack.

Using Covid as an excuse was valid a year and a half ago. The business world has moved on.

This is a cultural problem.

They were probably working on this DLC during Covid as it takes a couple of years from design to finished product with year long stories. But I agree with the person who said Covid is a valid reason to delay a product, and that would have been preferable in this situation.

The problem with delaying new content is that that minimizes the cash flow. If people are willing to pay for an inferior or incomplete product, then there’s no reason to wait…..at least from a marketing standpoint. There is little profit to be made from working on and improving an already paid for product. And salaries, overhead, and other bills still need to be paid.

blktauna

Lots of people didn't buy it. And honestly if they put some super cool houses that people have asked for in the crown store, they'd make up that delay loss in the blink of an eye.

SammyKhajit

If they’d delayed it, yes there will be initial losses but this is a large company, not an indie store with a cashflow problem.

It would’ve been preferable to postpone and fine tune everything instead of these issues that we have now.

KnightFalz

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Why would having another MMO in production stop them being fully attentive to ESO?

It’s not going to be the same, so why put all their eggs in the new shiny basket when with not much effort they could have 2 successful MMOS running?

From a business point of view, that would be foolish. Especially if the new one has similar issues at the start as this one did, without the Elder Scrolls brand to keep it going?

They don't need to put all their eggs in a new basket for them to be less attentive to the old one. Some resources that would have gone to ESO are likely instead being diverted to the new project. To the extent this is so it will likely negatively impact ESO to some degree. Their resources are finite after all, so some give will require some take.

SPR_of_HA_community

When you played 1 project of some studio if it was bad - it makes you feel bad about studio, so you will not may be play there other project.

The same time if some one do new project, you read about its creator. If it already failed on some project you may be will not play it,because you understand that after some time it can be the same scenario.

DemonicGoat

And believe me,how the company treats us here WILL be carried over to whatever their next project is.

olsborg

I saw they couldnt give EU new servers until sometime in march 2023, I immediately stopped playing. Havent played since, been off ESO for 3 months now or so, I might try it again if and when they actually improve EU server.

Tandor

VinnyGambini wrote: »

Just curious. Will ZOS leave any reply to all this threads that game is dying? Do they even care?

They'll ignore them because they know the game isn't dying from their own data.

YandereGirlfriend

DemonicGoat wrote: »

And believe me,how the company treats us here WILL be carried over to whatever there next project is.

THIS! People have long memories and word gets around on the internet.

Tandor wrote: »

VinnyGambini wrote: »

Just curious. Will ZOS leave any reply to all this threads that game is dying? Do they even care?

They'll ignore them because they know the game isn't dying from their own data.

At the very least they appear to have squandered the giant influx of new players brought about via Covid and then WoW hemorrhaging players to other MMOs. On Steam, we're nearly back down to 2019 numbers. Final Fantasy 14? It's still more than double its 2019 numbers. So one of these companies appears to have capitalized on the opportunities that were presented to it and the other one didn't. Yes, the game makes money but the point is that it could be making a lot more money if it had managed to retain those 2020-2021 players.

Things to closely examine would be: cadence of content release, content of content release, game performance, and the developer relationship with the community of players. All of these things currently provide unfavorable comparisons with Final Fantasy and likely contribute to the divergent outcomes experienced by the two games.