ZOS, please get actual Top PvPers for PvP-Development

ZOS_GregoryV

Greetings,

After removing a handful of comments, we would like to remind everyone that all members of the community are to keep the Community Rules in mind when posting.

Regards,
-Greg-

StihlReign

blktauna wrote: »

StihlReign wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

StihlReign wrote: »

gariondavey wrote: »

Excellent post.
It would be really nice if zos at least spoke to dedicated, experienced, competent and competitive pvpers.

In the most respectful and polite way of asking this: does anyone at zos pvp competitively? I would be absolutely blown away if the answer to this was yes.

I'd LOVE to see a zos dev or management team make a 4 man bg team and fight against some of the population. Be a part of the game community with us. See how the game is when you play competitively.

The Devs have mentioned they currently play "hardcore" PvP...

While it may seem impossible to believe they have written posts and made the claim.

Can you please link to one of these posts where the devs, any dev, says they PvP in Cyrodiil? (Any statement on or before Jan. 1, 2020 will suffice)

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We do have members of our team who play PvP regularly both at work and personally. Both in a casual and more hardcore setting. But unless those team members want to share their accounts, we do not provide that information. Privacy and whatnot.

They sure couldn't prove it by me. The cloak nonsense alone shows a spectacular lack of awareness. Also the sledgehammer changes in the name of 'balance' that have been warned against repeatedly in PTS feedback and the dire predictions that so oddly come to fruition do not lead me to the conclusion any of the pvp devs actually play in Cyro.

Agree 100%

SaffronCitrusflower

Aldoss wrote: »

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Yaeg wrote: »

I really cannot possibly accept to even think about you beeing real about this and this not beeing a very early april fools prank.

The Sets you introduced will absolutely smash group pvp (40% more dmg through crit- debuff set). You just erased BGs completely. Now it is about smashing the other group in about 10 seconds and annihilate their will to fight. The last couple BGs I had after update 44 were over after 30 seconds. The enemies were smashed and gave up. They just proceeded to dance and spam emotes instead of fighting, because they knew they lost.

Why did you not combine some queues into a random queue like before? Why did you take out the 4v4v4 Queue? Why did you not introduce Custom-Game-Mode?

<snip>

Its just hard to accept, to see a game with the potential to be best PvP-Game there is, to just be destroyed by greed. I never saw a game like ESO in terms of PvP.
Other games usally have chain-CC, where you cant move for many seconds and can only counter it twice in 1 minute with skills/items with cooldowns.
Also most other games dont have clean animation cancels that eso allows to perform. Most games have autoattacks instead of weaving into skills. Or in other words: most other MMORPGs dont have any potential to have good PvP. <snip>

In the end I know I will have to accept this. Because even though you said you want to have feedback of players, you just wont listen to them. You wont listen to me either.

<snipped for Bashing/Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation>

I have been playing this game for over nine years and, if I had to pick an exact moment in time when I believe the game devs started to take the game in the absolute wrong direction it is when they introduced Dark Convergence and began breaking the rules in the game.

Since then we,ve had terrible entry after terrible entry into pvp that says to me the devs are taking the game in a direction that just isn't fun and balanced listed below. (representative but not complete list) why would you introduce a set that is broken on delivery because of lag and doesn't follow the rules? Worst decision ever.

ROA

Two second DOTS

Nb heal not impacted by battle spirit

Broken soul (oaken)

Sorc ward

The mentioned 40% crit resist set

Dark Convergence as above

New Battlegrounds

Removing dm queue

Plague break calculating off npcs

Yada yada...

Please feel free to add anything I've missed.

Hrothgar double dipped for that entire DC patch as well. It was hitting for 10k and couldn't be blocked.

I took a break that patch.

U35 was the worst patch delivery and caused my wife and I to cancel our subs and stop buying anything from ZOS until they made a course correction demonstrating their willingness to bring their combat back to balance. Nearly 10 patches since then and we haven't opened our wallets back up.

Scribing seems fun, but I'm good.

Same here. Haven't given ZOS any money since U35 and nearly every day it seems there is a new reason to continue not paying for anything ESO related. Now the last couple days can't even repair keeps in Cyrodiil. It just keeps getting worse and worse by essentially every measure.

What is going on at ZOS anyway? From the end user perspective it looks like chaos.

SaffronCitrusflower

StihlReign wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

ZOS has said a lot of things in the past that have turned out to apparently not be true, mostly in terms of "they're working on it" but nothing ever pans out after they make that statement. The state of Cyrodiil is the proof.

Maybe I've just been around longer...

I've heard ZOS say "working on it" plenty of times and witnessed a positive result in the work and product produced.

Unless you've been playing since alpha you haven't been around longer.

I don't know anyone who's been playing since 2014 that shares your confidence or optimism.

The selective editing around here is very telling.

baguette_poolish

That would be a terrible decision, ESO players have proven time and time that they can't be unbiased and will always try to push whatever agenda fits them and deliver feedback in bad faith. The only pvpers that could help with certain itemization would be some EU players that actually seem to be fair with their assessment. Otherwise hard pass on "top pvpers" anywhere near development.

manukartofanu

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Love how this turned into a race car argument. I've posted this before but it's worth reposting, from the lead dev of Magic: the Gathering, a much bigger game which made a billion dollars last year alone.

And what? Did he ever say that a person designing a game shouldn’t understand it? Did he ever say that a person designing a game shouldn’t love it and play it themselves? No, he only said that a person designing a game should understand it better than an ordinary player. If we are to draw parallels with doctors, then yes, they don’t ask the patient how to treat them, but they do know much more about health, the body, and everything related to treatment than the patient. Moreover, they constantly apply this knowledge to their own body. There’s no need to pretend that anyone who simply calls themselves a doctor, and doesn’t even believe in medicine, understands the problem better than the patient.

xylena_lazarow

When you let players make the calls you get faction locks and unkillable ball groups.

gronoxvx

Everyone left or doesnt trust zos enough to give them the time of day tbh. Many tried in the past to open lines of communication between the devs and the pvp community only to be shafted and stuffed around so much that the ones trying to initiate it gave up, moved onto games they felt appreciated the community or vowed to never touch anything zos related again.

Its too late for them imo.

StihlReign

Soraka wrote: »

I vaguely remember a post awhile back from zos about time to kill and their aim for pvp, but I can't find it. That may have some info on what they wanted at the time. I don't remember it well, but I suspect it's not exactly matching where we are now. Does anyone remember?


Edit: this is all I can find, but I thought it was more recent (and I guess they did want fights to last longer/more survival and overshot?):

ZOS_Gilliam wrote: »

Greetings!

Today, the combat team would like to share what we’ve been working on since Update 30! While this update won’t have too many large-scale changes, there are a number of little things. We’d like to highlight a few of the more noteworthy changes in this post as well as talk about some behind the scenes work we’ve been doing.

Let’s start with something we’ve seen a lot of discussion on: Time to Kill (TTK) in Player versus Player environments. Compared to previous updates, the amount of damage is higher across the board than it was previously, but simultaneously, defensive power is lower too. This is mainly caused by two things: the balance standards that Champion Point 2.0 was held to in Update 29 where we introduced more choices between either offensive or defensive options, as well boosting up stats on fresh characters with the introduction of base Weapon and Spell Damage, and the base Maximum Resource adjustments from Update 30. Between these two, many builds are making more choices in improving their ability to deal or take damage while experiencing a sharper operational loss of the other. As many player builds lean towards dealing damage in PvP environments, this creates a situation where TTK lowers. While we’ve identified specifics, such as base stat adjustments, we wanted to stay focused on where the problem was felt, which was exclusively related to PvP. Our main adjustment in Update 31 will be to Battle Spirit and focusing on the damage taken portion, increasing it so the base character takes 60% less overall damage, rather than 50%. Aside from this and a few more specific, smaller adjustments, we’re still monitoring many of the moving parts (such as proc set scaling) and discussing measures we can take in future updates that won’t adversely affect parts of the game where problems aren’t as severe.

In relation to TTK and PvP in general, we’re also doing a substantial pass on player abilities, item sets, and passives in Update 31 in regard to how they operate with both Stealth and Invisibility. This pass focuses on trying to improve the rules on what abilities should and should not hit or remove Stealth or Invisibility on targets, as well as fixing some issues where Sneak attacks were stronger than intended in some areas. To clarify, Sneak attacks, or attacks made from the Hidden state while crouching, should only do the following:

• A guaranteed Critical Strike on one direct damage attack
• 275% bonus critical damage against monsters if it was a melee attack
• 40% bonus critical damage against monsters if it was a ranged attack
• Stun the target if it was a melee attack

In hopes to improve both the ability to utilize or distinctly deny and remove Stealth and Invisibility, we’re adjusting our rules to what player attacks should break these effects, or even attempt to try and hit them. Previously, this was handled purely on the ability level of these effects, like Shadow Cloak, leaving them very susceptible to breaking in a multitude of ways when complex and dynamic abilities were used against them. Now, we’re adjusting a significant amount of player-sourced attacks and effects to have rules applied to them, in addition to the rules built into abilities like Shadow Cloak, reaching a much more streamlined experience.

As far as ball groups go there have been some indications that zos didn't necessarily approve of the play style, but their efforts backfire:

Plaguebreak:
This set now has a cooldown of 20 seconds per target, rather than only against targets that do not already have the DoT on them.
Reduced the Damage over Time by approximately 48%, but this damage can now Critically Strike as it does not have ingrained modifiers built into it.
Increased the damage by explosion by approximately 3%.
The damage from this set now always applies the Diseased status effect.
Fixed an issue where this set was not proccing off some direct damage abilities.
Developer Comment:
Spoiler
This set is being run in far too many situations outside of its target audience. The set was made to punish groups that are stacking purges in tight groups, but due to the current nature of the set, it is punishing those who aren't using a cleanse either as the DoT is dealing sizable damage and has no downtime. With the cooldown window, we hope to introduce more counterplay to the set by giving a window of safety from becoming a carrier again for a time, while still retaining the pain for those who are purging (or dying) too close together.



This post is probably a mess, sorry, hard to do on my phone.

This is a great post, (awesome job on the phone) because it does show a moment in the devs long commitment to solve the issue of healstacking etc with groups via a set, vs addressing/tuning what many consider to be the root issue of the problem.

Four_Fingers

Aldoss wrote: »

PvP is not designed around the concept of a ball group because there's never been a statement made by a combat dev saying as such. Anyone attempting to claim that as a fact in defense of current mechanics and ball group behaviors is gaslighting you and should be ignored.

They never said it was for just small scale or solo either.

Aldoss

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Aldoss wrote: »

PvP is not designed around the concept of a ball group because there's never been a statement made by a combat dev saying as such. Anyone attempting to claim that as a fact in defense of current mechanics and ball group behaviors is gaslighting you and should be ignored.

They never said it was for just small scale or solo either.

I didn't say that, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

As far as I'm aware, there is no statement from ZOS anywhere that alludes to the various modes being designed around any particular group size. What we do know is that PvE combat is built around 4 or 12 players and PvE mechanics mostly work the same as they do in PvP because of how little Battle Spirit actually does.

The devs design PvE combat experiences, so we know for a fact that dungeon content is balanced around 4 players and trial content is balanced around 12. That's really all we get. Players are not the same as trial bosses, but trial behavior has been allowed to slowly/rapidly (depending on your perspective) creep its way into Cyro.

Everyone knows that PvP is not balanced around 1v1 content, but apart from that, anything else is purely speculative. There's no inclination whatsoever that the devs intended for PvP to be designed around the idea that 12 people would stack on each other, be immune from snares, move at faster than sprint speed without sprinting, and all use echoing vigor, radiating regen, or any number of scribing skills that now grant their entire team cross heals and shield stacks.