We need more frequent balance patches.

CameraBeardThePirate

The current cycle of PTS>Feedback>Implementation is far too slow, especially considering that there often seems to be a disconnect in what players view as needing a change vs what the devs view as needing a change. With the coming patch, DK's and Nightblades will remain at the top, and classes like Templar and Necromancer will stay floundering around at the bottom.

There's no reason that with the number of posts on Templar and Necro over the last patch, that players should have to wait another 4 months to see meaningful changes that should have come this cycle.

Backlash and its morphs are bugged, and despite the amount of posts and comments pointing this out, will continue to remain bugged for at least another 3 months because we only get 4 patches a year.

Necromancer has a completely gutted class kit with unreliable and clunky mechanics, and will continue to live like this for at least 3 months.

Sorcerers will continue to struggle in PvP, where their healing and survivability is laughable compared to the rest of the cast. They will continue to struggle for at least another 3 months.

I understand there's a lot of red tape and hoops that have to be jumped through in regards to getting patches approved for Playstation and Xbox, but there is absolutely no reason that things like Backlash, which has been an issue for 4 months already, should continue to be an issue just because new content doesn't come out for a while.

New content should not dictate balance changes. I'm not suggesting we should have huge balance patches every month, but small tweaks (which are already something that everyone has been asking for) should be implemented often. Frequent, small changes would lead to a healthier state of balance overall, and would eliminate the firestorm of opinions that come with sweeping changes every 3 or 4 months. I don't want to seem ungrateful or demanding, but balance changes need to be more frequent. These don't need to be huge changes either - just 2 or 3 abilities changed in these mid-season patches would keep the meta fresh and address balance concerns without completely shaking up the meta. I know of many players that won't be playing anymore next patch than last because the problem points of balance were not addressed, and thus will not be addressed for months.

@ZOS_Kevin Please pass this along to the balance team. I know this topic has been brought up before, but I (and hopefully many others) think it's time for this to be seriously considered. By releasing more frequent incremental patches with smaller changes, the team would have more time in full patches to focus on the new sets and new content, rather than splitting their focus across old balance issues and new balance issues.

Solariken

It's extreme negligence for sure. It could have been solved for good, at any time, all the way back to beta development, by getting rid of the awful and meaningless rigid class system we've been stuck with for over a decade.

jaws343

The problem with more balance passes is that you are basically asking them to maintain 3 separate builds of the game.

The live game build
The PTS build for upcoming content and balance changes
And an "Update" build that includes incremental stuff

Given the apparent dev cycle, this just seems incredibly problematic to maintain across all three environments. The PTS build will always have to also include the Update build content. Which poses problems unto itself. I mean even the company I work for, that maintains a Dev, UAT and Live environment has fundamental issues when testing between the 3 because Dev, UAT, and Live all have various stages of software progression for different applications. Causing testing in Dev to often not be as reasonable as testing in UAT, which may still end up with things going live that break since the builds are slightly different.

But more than that, just look at the dev cycle we seem to have now:

Firesong launch on PC on Nov 1st and Console on the 15th.
The first 2-3 weeks post Console launch was likely spent debugging any issues that cropped up from the launch.
In fact, we had the first Console patch on Dec 6th, 3 weeks later, that was 3 weeks of non PTS fixes.
Then 2 weeks later, another patch on Dec 19th
Then, we had 1 month before PTS dropped.

1 month of unchanging gameplay before the PTS was provided on Jan 30th.

The issue is, I think people fail to realize that while there were no patches for players during that 1 month period, Zos was likely spending that month preparing and adding some finishing touches to the upcoming PTS patch.

And that cadence seems to follow every patch:
~2 weeks PTS prep
PTS starts
5 Weeks of PTS
1 week of PC patch launch prep
1-2 weeks of PC incrementals
Console launch
2-3 weeks of fixes and QA before a bug fix patch

Repeat 4 times.
That's 12 weeks of the dev cycle likely spent on each patch. Or 48 weeks per year on the current cadence for 4 updates.
If they aren't including balance fixes within the PTS and the major patches, I highly doubt there is room to do so separately.

However, they are adding a major balance patch starting this year in Q3, which should help.

ForumBully

I don't need them more frequently, I need them better thought out by people who play the game well.

katorga

It does not matter how frequent balance passes are if the same two classes are the only ones getting looked at and buffed.

The frenquency at which ZOS is nerfing the other four classes is already too high.

Billium813

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

The current cycle of PTS>Feedback>Implementation is far too slow, especially considering that there often seems to be a disconnect in what players view as needing a change vs what the devs view as needing a change.

This is 100% true

This is generally how things go during PTS:

Developers > We want to make X, Y, Z changes. Please test them on PTS. Thanks.
Community > X is going to be too strong. Y isn't strong enough. Can we please address Q? Also, can we get H fixed? What about G, I'v been waiting on that for years! And then there's J. What about T, make T great again! I'm quitting the game if you devs don't change E right now.

Developers > We made some adjustments to Y. We aren't going to change X until we see how it performs on Live. We hear you on G and T, we will look at future adjustments, stay tuned.
Community > WHAT ABOUT J!!!!! It's literally killing the game! I'm quitting the game if you devs don't change E right now. Why aren't the devs listening to me, I have a great point about L.

*5 weeks later: Changes go Live*

X is warping the meta. T and J are still causing issues. Y is what it is.

Developers > We are monitoring the situation and collecting data. Stay tuned.

* 4 Months later, a new PTS!*

Developers > We are making further adjustments to Z and X based on Live interactions and data. Please test them on PTS. Thanks.
Community > WHY ARE WE NOT TALKING ABOUT Q?! Your changes to Z are pointless! You aren't nerfing X enough. Why is it taking 4 months to make further changes to X? We knew X was a problem last PTS! No one listens to us, why are we even bothering?! Can we PLEASE get T fixed already? I'm quitting the game if you devs don't change E right now. I swear I'll do it this time.

Developers > Thanks for the feedback, we are monitoring the situation. We want to collect more Live data now that X has changed before we make further changes again.
Community > WHY IS NO ONE LISTENING TO US!?! I'm quitting the game if you devs don't change E right now.

*5 weeks later: Changes go Live*

X isn't AS bad, but it's still top of the meta. T and J are still causing issues. E was never an issue.

gariondavey

Dekrypted wrote: »

The current patch schedule does nothing but inflict harm on its own game. As soon as I received confirmation that there were no additional changes coming until Q2, I immediately started looking at other games and really anything else to do to pass my time.

I play this game alot, but this schedule does nothing but cause more harm than good.

@ZOS_Kevin has done a great job this pts cycle in terms of communication, but I wish we could hear from the combat team on a regular basis. It's like we're hoping benevolent gods will bestow us with logical balance fixes for things that have been ongoing for months. Go on streams or something. Talk to us instead of the spreadsheets.

Amen brother

TechMaybeHic

I don't know. I feel the frustration but every time they touch it, it gets worse. So maybe it's a true "be careful what you wish for" sort of thing

Destai

I'm surprised to see this thread. Seeing how many wild balance changes there have been in years, I thought people were having some change fatigue. I know I was.

Personally, I don't want frequent changes. Not to the degree that we've seen in years past, I want a slower more deliberate pace. I just think they're running into capacity issues with what they can resolve.

Dekrypted wrote: »

The current patch schedule does nothing but inflict harm on its own game. As soon as I received confirmation that there were no additional changes coming until Q2, I immediately started looking at other games and really anything else to do to pass my time.

I play this game alot, but this schedule does nothing but cause more harm than good.

@ZOS_Kevin has done a great job this pts cycle in terms of communication, but I wish we could hear from the combat team on a regular basis. It's like we're hoping benevolent gods will bestow us with logical balance fixes for things that have been ongoing for months. Go on streams or something. Talk to us instead of the spreadsheets.

I'm really liking his engagement on the PTS Forums. Good job, @ZOS_Kevin!

I agree, they need to be looking at more qualitative research as well. Numbers don't tell the whole story. Developer presence would be great.

Ragnarok0130

Destai wrote: »

I'm surprised to see this thread. Seeing how many wild balance changes there have been in years, I thought people were having some change fatigue. I know I was.

Personally, I don't want frequent changes. Not to the degree that we've seen in years past, I want a slower more deliberate pace. I just think they're running into capacity issues with what they can resolve.

Dekrypted wrote: »

The current patch schedule does nothing but inflict harm on its own game. As soon as I received confirmation that there were no additional changes coming until Q2, I immediately started looking at other games and really anything else to do to pass my time.

I play this game alot, but this schedule does nothing but cause more harm than good.

@ZOS_Kevin has done a great job this pts cycle in terms of communication, but I wish we could hear from the combat team on a regular basis. It's like we're hoping benevolent gods will bestow us with logical balance fixes for things that have been ongoing for months. Go on streams or something. Talk to us instead of the spreadsheets.

I'm really liking his engagement on the PTS Forums. Good job, @ZOS_Kevin!

I agree, they need to be looking at more qualitative research as well. Numbers don't tell the whole story. Developer presence would be great.

Change fatigue is due to the wild swings in balance that the current combat team seems to enjoy inflicting on the player base. A more frequent schedule of smaller fine tuning adjustments targeting over and under performing skills would in fact help address change fatigue and begin to rebuild some level of trust in the combat team so we don't have feelings of dread before every patch cycle.

VixxVexx

Should be possible now with Google Stadia being discontinued.

Rkindaleft

Agree wholeheartedly with the OP.

Other games have frequent small balance patches every month (or even every couple weeks) to iron out balance issues and it works great for them. You don't have to release one single patch every 3 months just because you want to release content alongside it.

The problem with this whole 3-month patch fiasco is stuff remains unaltered during that time. Templar will suck until then, and what if no changes happen with Templar at Q2? Do we have to wait 6 months until Q3 to have Templar shine again? This issue could be resolved much quicker if they had these kinds of patches without content releases.

Bushido2513

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin Please pass this along to the balance team. I know this topic has been brought up before, but I (and hopefully many others) think it's time for this to be seriously considered. By releasing more frequent incremental patches with smaller changes, the team would have more time in full patches to focus on the new sets and new content, rather than splitting their focus across old balance issues and new balance issues.

Or they could just keep doing the same thing they've been doing while making money. I honestly do hope you get what you want because it would actually be better but their current way of doing business seems to be much more advantageous. I mean they even have a person or persons they've hired to field negative comments so that they ultimately don't even have to be bothered with that. Has anyone heard anyone other than Kevin say anything of note lately? Nope!

Bushido2513

Dekrypted wrote: »

The current patch schedule does nothing but inflict harm on its own game. As soon as I received confirmation that there were no additional changes coming until Q2, I immediately started looking at other games and really anything else to do to pass my time.
.

Problem is that even if you stop playing lots will continue to do so and new players will still come in

ESO_Nightingale

4 balance patches a year is far too infrequent i agree. The speed in which world of warcraft performs balance changes is refreshing

CameraBeardThePirate

Destai wrote: »

I'm surprised to see this thread. Seeing how many wild balance changes there have been in years, I thought people were having some change fatigue. I know I was.

Personally, I don't want frequent changes. Not to the degree that we've seen in years past, I want a slower more deliberate pace. I just think they're running into capacity issues with what they can resolve.

Dekrypted wrote: »

The current patch schedule does nothing but inflict harm on its own game. As soon as I received confirmation that there were no additional changes coming until Q2, I immediately started looking at other games and really anything else to do to pass my time.

I play this game alot, but this schedule does nothing but cause more harm than good.

@ZOS_Kevin has done a great job this pts cycle in terms of communication, but I wish we could hear from the combat team on a regular basis. It's like we're hoping benevolent gods will bestow us with logical balance fixes for things that have been ongoing for months. Go on streams or something. Talk to us instead of the spreadsheets.

I'm really liking his engagement on the PTS Forums. Good job, @ZOS_Kevin!

I agree, they need to be looking at more qualitative research as well. Numbers don't tell the whole story. Developer presence would be great.

I think you're confusing more frequent changes with big changes. What I'm proposing is small changes over time - this would actually help the "huge change-itis" because instead of having tons and tons of changes every 3 months, things could just slowly tweak over time.

Ingenon

Personally I would not want more balance changes per year. I think after this many years into the game, ZOS has proven that it is not possible to make all classes perform identically for end game play. After each balance change patch, there will be a class that is "better" than other classes for end game play.

I do not think it is possible for ZOS to balance the game so that everyone who insists on only playing one class for end game play will be happy all the time. ESO allows many character slots, so a player can have one of each class. If someone is unhappy because they think DK and Nightblade are best this patch, why not play a DK or Nightblade? At least until the next balance patch ...

Luede

it wouldn't be necessary to balance anything more often if talents & sets were adjusted with more care. there is really no patch where ZOS messes up completely with any adjustment or set.

axi

Funnily enough when balance patches were more frequent people were coplaining they change too much too often.

CameraBeardThePirate

axi wrote: »

Funnily enough when balance patches were more frequent people were coplaining they change too much too often.

Again, easy fix to that would be to make more frequent but smaller changes.

Zastrix

Luede wrote: »

it wouldn't be necessary to balance anything more often if talents & sets were adjusted with more care. there is really no patch where ZOS messes up completely with any adjustment or set.

there is really no patch where ZOS messes up completely with any adjustment or set.

So apparently update 35 didn't happen or?

axi

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

Funnily enough when balance patches were more frequent people were coplaining they change too much too often.

Again, easy fix to that would be to make more frequent but smaller changes.

That was also the route ZoS already took with patches. People were also complaining at that.

Thing is that no matter what devs will do people will always complain if they don't see specific changes they want and that is impossible to do.

CameraBeardThePirate

axi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

Funnily enough when balance patches were more frequent people were coplaining they change too much too often.

Again, easy fix to that would be to make more frequent but smaller changes.

That was also the route ZoS already took with patches. People were also complaining at that.

I've been playing since beta. The vast majority of complaints about balancing have been the degree of changes. I.e., the fact that ZOS takes a sledgehammer to balance instead of a scalpel. They have never taken the scalpel approach, at least not consistently. That's all I'm suggesting.

axi

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

Funnily enough when balance patches were more frequent people were coplaining they change too much too often.

Again, easy fix to that would be to make more frequent but smaller changes.

That was also the route ZoS already took with patches. People were also complaining at that.

I've been playing since beta. The vast majority of complaints about balancing have been the degree of changes. I.e., the fact that ZOS takes a sledgehammer to balance instead of a scalpel. They have never taken the scalpel approach, at least not consistently. That's all I'm suggesting.

Well they took scalpel approach now. Seems people are not happy with that because changes are not frequent and impactfull enough.

Thing is they decided to make balance changes only 4 times in a year with every major patch. When they were making small changes inbetween the major patches few years ago, people were also complaining because they for example nerfed a set that was overperforming and many people already invested time and money in it just to get it nerfed few days later so naturally people were complaining. Even small changes can have large impact. Like I've already said, whatever approach they will take it will always be unsatysfying for the players.

CameraBeardThePirate

axi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

Funnily enough when balance patches were more frequent people were coplaining they change too much too often.

Again, easy fix to that would be to make more frequent but smaller changes.

That was also the route ZoS already took with patches. People were also complaining at that.

I've been playing since beta. The vast majority of complaints about balancing have been the degree of changes. I.e., the fact that ZOS takes a sledgehammer to balance instead of a scalpel. They have never taken the scalpel approach, at least not consistently. That's all I'm suggesting.

Well they took scalpel approach now. Seems people are not happy with that because changes are not frequent and impactfull enough.

Thing is they decided to make balance changes only 4 times in a year with every major patch. When they were making small changes inbetween the major patches few years ago, people were also complaining because they for example nerfed a set that was overperforming and many people already invested time and money in it just to get it nerfed few days later so naturally people were complaining. Even small changes can have large impact. Like I've already said, whatever approach they will take people it will always be unsatysfying for the players.

Except they didn't take a scalpel approach this time either. Look at what they did to Harmony. In their words, they wanted to cut down on the amount of solo Harmony necros. The scalpel approach would've been to nerf either Harmony or Graverobber, but they took the sledgehammer approach and nerfed both, effectively deleting that playstyle from the game.

Luede

Zastrix wrote: »

Luede wrote: »

it wouldn't be necessary to balance anything more often if talents & sets were adjusted with more care. there is really no patch where ZOS messes up completely with any adjustment or set.

there is really no patch where ZOS messes up completely with any adjustment or set.

So apparently update 35 didn't happen or?

what?

allan0n

Destai wrote: »

I'm surprised to see this thread. Seeing how many wild balance changes there have been in years, I thought people were having some change fatigue. I know I was.

Personally, I don't want frequent changes. Not to the degree that we've seen in years past,

People are tired of the large sweeping changes, but the problem is that they waited until they had already ruined the game then they went "we hear ya guys! No more large balance changes". That's insanity, youve got lots of work to do now that you've mucked things up. They created a very stale and unhealthy meta where everyone in pvp is in Maras or a siege build and then have proceeded to do basically nothing to address it for 2-3 patches.

axi

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

Funnily enough when balance patches were more frequent people were coplaining they change too much too often.

Again, easy fix to that would be to make more frequent but smaller changes.

That was also the route ZoS already took with patches. People were also complaining at that.

I've been playing since beta. The vast majority of complaints about balancing have been the degree of changes. I.e., the fact that ZOS takes a sledgehammer to balance instead of a scalpel. They have never taken the scalpel approach, at least not consistently. That's all I'm suggesting.

Well they took scalpel approach now. Seems people are not happy with that because changes are not frequent and impactfull enough.

Thing is they decided to make balance changes only 4 times in a year with every major patch. When they were making small changes inbetween the major patches few years ago, people were also complaining because they for example nerfed a set that was overperforming and many people already invested time and money in it just to get it nerfed few days later so naturally people were complaining. Even small changes can have large impact. Like I've already said, whatever approach they will take people it will always be unsatysfying for the players.

Except they didn't take a scalpel approach this time either. Look at what they did to Harmony. In their words, they wanted to cut down on the amount of solo Harmony necros. The scalpel approach would've been to nerf either Harmony or Graverobber, but they took the sledgehammer approach and nerfed both, effectively deleting that playstyle from the game.

Is it really a sledgehammer approach when they nerfed 1 specific playstyle of 1 specific class in 1 specific gameplay enviroment?

And let's be honest would they achieve their goal if they would nerf just necro synergy dmg without touching harmony? Possibly not because still harmony would provide more burst damage in PvP than 3x infused and to effectively reach the value where other traits would be better they would have to obliterate synergy itself to the point it would become useless for playstyles with and without harmony.

Wuuffyy

Werewolf is lacking a whole lot in it’s forced mini-class kit (same with vamp) and will remain this way now for at least 3 months.

Tannus15

I agree that PC should have more incremental updates applied to live with small tweaks and bug fixes and then all of it can be rolled into the latest PTS and go to console from there.

This will allow for class pain points or long term persistent issues to be addressed and actually tested and monitored outside of the PTS cycle.

however I don't think larger changes like the animation change to jabs should be applied in an incremental. A skill rework or change should be done on PTS first, but tweaking the numbers could absolutely happen on live as well as bug fixes.

allan0n

axi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

axi wrote: »

Funnily enough when balance patches were more frequent people were coplaining they change too much too often.

Again, easy fix to that would be to make more frequent but smaller changes.

That was also the route ZoS already took with patches. People were also complaining at that.

I've been playing since beta. The vast majority of complaints about balancing have been the degree of changes. I.e., the fact that ZOS takes a sledgehammer to balance instead of a scalpel. They have never taken the scalpel approach, at least not consistently. That's all I'm suggesting.

Well they took scalpel approach now. Seems people are not happy with that because changes are not frequent and impactfull enough.

Thing is they decided to make balance changes only 4 times in a year with every major patch. When they were making small changes inbetween the major patches few years ago, people were also complaining because they for example nerfed a set that was overperforming and many people already invested time and money in it just to get it nerfed few days later so naturally people were complaining. Even small changes can have large impact. Like I've already said, whatever approach they will take people it will always be unsatysfying for the players.

Except they didn't take a scalpel approach this time either. Look at what they did to Harmony. In their words, they wanted to cut down on the amount of solo Harmony necros. The scalpel approach would've been to nerf either Harmony or Graverobber, but they took the sledgehammer approach and nerfed both, effectively deleting that playstyle from the game.

Is it really a sledgehammer approach when they nerfed 1 specific playstyle of 1 specific class in 1 specific gameplay enviroment?

And let's be honest would they achieve their goal if they would nerf just necro synergy dmg without touching harmony? Possibly not because still harmony would provide more burst damage in PvP than 3x infused and to effectively reach the value where other traits would be better they would have to obliterate synergy itself to the point it would become useless for playstyles with and without harmony.

The problem is that necros have very little going on for them besides harmony builds when it comes to dealing damage, and they chose to nerf harmony and the grave robber synergy without giving them anything else to make up for it. I guess they're still good healers and tanks, but as far as killing stuff goes, there isn't much in their class kit that's worth a damn.