What Ruined Combat In ESO?

lostineternity

What did you expect?
Brian Wheeler doesn't know that heavy attacks restore resources...

tomofhyrule

lostineternity wrote: »

What did you expect?
Brian Wheeler doesn't know that heavy attacks restore resources...

I’m not one of those people who expects the devs to be pros. Of course the devs won’t be able to get a WR Mindmender or something, that’s unreasonable.

But there is a minimum expectation that the combat team lead should know basic mechanics. I was appalled by that when I saw it. That and the responses we saw on the recent AMA really did answer quite a few combat questions I had… and not in a way that gave me any confidence whatsoever.

My big fear now is that the balance of the game is such a disaster, where are they going from here? Another year of nothing new, which will get more people to leave from boredom? Or more fuel to the dumpster fire of balance? Either way, some group of people will be leaving, and likely more than will be brought in. And if enough people get fed up and leave to make things unprofitable, Microsoft will want their servers freed up.

The fact that the future of the game is resting heavily on the shoulders of someone who has made questionable decisions one after another is… concerning, to say the least.

Rungar

it was always garbage. Thats why eso has always been the least popular of all the big mmo's for a decade. Considering the franchise's potential they may have made some money but they havent really done well with it all things considered.

Sarannah

Personally I really love ESO's combat and how freeroaming it all feels. Except for the high APM(buttonsmashing) and all the constant nerfs which has sucked the fun out of many of the abilities/gear/playstyles.

Hopefully they will focus more on low APM builds for builddiversity like fatecarver-similar abilities for all classes, more mythics like the original oakensoul(un-nerf oakensoul), more heavy attack builds, and other low APM buildstyles/playstyles. Anything to move away from the complicated builds and high APM builds.

MasterSpatula

Marto wrote: »

Do you remember when people were running 10 different DoT effects and no spammables, so they could get Valkyn Skoria to proc as often as possible?

Or when Sorcs in PVP could get 20s shields in the 100k health range?

Or when every patch 1 class would be far above any others, to a degree much larger than even the biggest gaps between Arcanist and Necro in 2023-2025?

Or when PVP performance was considerably worse, because of all the proc calculations?

This was all the fault of Eric Wrobel.

While you can argue that his tenure as lead combat designer had more varied and interesting build opportunities, it was also far less balanced, and far less sustainable for the performance and health of the game.

And yet, there were also periods of time during his tenure where things felt pretty good or like we were going in a good direction. This has not occurred once since his departure.

Simply put, the Wrobel era was marked by bad implementation of good ideas, while the Wheeler era has been marked by decent implementation of horrendous ideas.

Getsugatenso

hybridisation and subclassing and who ever is in charge for that

silky_soft

Subclassing for sure. Right after dropping scribing and not even using it. Absolute joke.

shadyjane62

Aliniel wrote: »

One thing I never understood about ESO is the dread of changes.

The most successful MMORPG of all times, WoW, has a regular change of combat. Classes get tweaked, redesigned, rebalanced, new mechanics are added, old removed... And this keeps the game fresh! This happens with every expansion (~2-3 year cycle). In between that, on patches you get regular balances where numbers get adjusted. And they do this on I-don't-even-know-how-many-classes-and-specs-anymore. Is it perfect? No. But there's enough of diversity to actually find something you enjoy.

We have had beam meta for how long now?

When was the last time a class got truly reworked? Some of the most useless skills Sorc had back on launch are still around. Short of some morph changes, all the skills are still here. None of them were ever completely replaced. Does ZOS consider ESO to be perfectly designed all those years ago? Yeah, sure...

U35 is the only response I have for you.

alpha_synuclein

It's not about dread of changes. It's about expectations. There is only so mamy times we can be disappointed before we stop being positive about anything that they're hyping.

fizzybeef

subclassing and hybridisation were a mistake

Shawn_PT

AlienatedGoat wrote: »

TBH, the combat in ESO has always been uninspired. From the start, the high APM and animation cancelling have made combat a slog for most people. I don't know anyone who plays the game for the combat - most find it perfunctory at best.

I'd argue it's the opposite. ESO works more like an action game than an MMO. The people I used to play with before they left due to all these nonsensical changes enjoyed ESO exactly because it required effort, reflexes, and finesse to master. Other MMOs you just stand there. Hit a button. Starting ability. Casting now, animation plays.... *Checks watch.* Still casting. *Goes make some tea* Ability almost ready! *Drinks the whole cup* Ability cast! Your group is now buffed for the next 10 minutes. Uh. Boring. The ones I keep in contact with claim exactly that. Other MMOs just don't please because compat feels like a slog since everything is so slow. And things are generally way worse in terms of P2W. But the combat dynamic is definitely what makes ESO stand from the rest.

Marto

tomofhyrule wrote: »

lostineternity wrote: »

What did you expect?
Brian Wheeler doesn't know that heavy attacks restore resources...

I’m not one of those people who expects the devs to be pros. Of course the devs won’t be able to get a WR Mindmender or something, that’s unreasonable.

But there is a minimum expectation that the combat team lead should know basic mechanics. I was appalled by that when I saw it. That and the responses we saw on the recent AMA really did answer quite a few combat questions I had… and not in a way that gave me any confidence whatsoever.

My big fear now is that the balance of the game is such a disaster, where are they going from here? Another year of nothing new, which will get more people to leave from boredom? Or more fuel to the dumpster fire of balance? Either way, some group of people will be leaving, and likely more than will be brought in. And if enough people get fed up and leave to make things unprofitable, Microsoft will want their servers freed up.

The fact that the future of the game is resting heavily on the shoulders of someone who has made questionable decisions one after another is… concerning, to say the least.

You are aware that this is not true, right?

Of course the lead combat developer knows how heavy attacks work. Of course anyone in the combat team knows what sets do. Or what the basic pros and cons of different skills are.

Who do you think made those skills and sets in the first place? Or do you think it was Skinnycheeks who came up with the idea of using Tome Bearer's Inspiration you only need to cast 2 Flails before casting Beam?

I get criticizing the design and decisions. But let's be reasonable here, please. Let's not listen to the needlessly pessimistic angry comments of outrage merchants who actively look for reasons to be upset.

Zyaneth_Bal

Stamicka wrote: »

I think the downfall of ESO's combat has been an unfortunate mixture of things from the start. It's not nearly as simple as a leadership position change. You also seem to be forgetting that hybridization and the standardized values that led to homogenization were largely part of Gilliam's design philosophy.

So first, I think part of the issue is an identity crisis. There's ESO as an MMORPG and ESO as an Elder Scrolls game. It seems like at some point the developers decided to lean more into the Elder Scrolls part. Over the years ESO has shifted into a more casual solo focused game that just happens to be in a shared world with others. They've really taken a step back from ESO's original MMORPG elements and embraced the "play as you want/you belong here" mantra. I think that scribing, subclassing, and hybridization were done in an attempt to make the game feel more like an Elder Scrolls game. Balance seems like a secondary concern or an afterthought to just getting those features added.

Another big part of all of this is accessibility gone wrong. ESO was in a pretty difficult position in terms of it's combat system. On one hand it had a faithful player base who loved the fast no cooldown combat with animation canceling and bar swapping. On the other hand there's a group of people who are used to slower cooldown based combat. Another thing to consider is that a large portion of gamers have gotten to the age where ESO's combat system is hard on their hands. I've ran into quite a few older ESO players who say that their hands just can't do it or they have arthritis/other joint issues. I truly think that there are people out there who want to participate, but just can't for physical reasons. ZOS rightfully doesn't want to leave people out.

To be fair to ZOS, keeping the high Actions Per Minute (APM) crowd happy while keeping the game accessible is hard, but I do think it's doable. Unfortunately, ZOS went about accessibility the wrong way. For example, Oakensoul was meant to allow for lower APM playstyles and eliminate the need for bar swapping. The Arcanist beam + Velothi also seems like it was meant to offer a lower APM play style for those who physically had trouble with ESO's combat. ZOS also tries to keep the game as easy as possible. I also think that the massive increase in DPS and ease of achieving it over the years was likely very intentional.

A lot of combat changes start to make sense when you look at it through the lens of ZOS trying to improve the game's accessibility and combat participation rates. It's a noble goal, but in my opinion accessibility has worsened in other ways due to their decisions. A lot of things that were intended to improve accessibility ended up completely over performing compared to everything else (look at the arcanist beam). Making things overly easy, nerfing combat and simplifying mechanics for everyone isn't a good approach to accessibility though. Instead they should've kept ESO's original core combat intact while offering a balanced alternative that still required skill, an understanding of mechanics, and good timing. Heavy attack builds were close, but missed the mark. Anyway, I could say much more about all of this, but I made a post about it in the past for those that are interested: Here.

Another big factor involved in the game's declining combat system is game performance. In the "year of performance" (2019) ZOS made some changes to block, block canceling, and more. Also in the next upcoming update ZOS made some animation changes to use less memory. Even though it's states that these things won't have an impact on the feel of the game, they do. Combat has felt much slower, less responsive, and different since 2019... it never quite recovered.

There's probably even more reasons that I'm forgetting right now. The current design philosophy from leadership has definitely played a big role though.

TLDR: The decline of ESO's combat comes from:
1. Trying to make the game more Elder Scrolls like
2. Attempts to make the combat more physically accessible with lower Actions Per Minute
3. Failed attempts to improve the game's performance

Probably more... but this post is too long.

It's funny to even compare eso's great combat to that of other tes games that barely have any combat at all.

If zos truly wanted to make the game more accessible and easy they would introduce a proper tutorial! I just can't stress enough how grave of an oversight it is. Beams, oakensouls, ha never made any difference because players don't know how to play the game. It's impossible for zos to have not noticed that over the years, so they obviously simply choose to ignore this subject. At the same time they supposedly still try to make the game more accessible by any means other than addressing the problem directly, it's baffling.
Eso is in desperate need of a tutorial, one that really teaches and explains combat. As well as more clear stats and calculations. Most players have no idea that most stuff in reality works totally different from what the tooltip says, and there's no way to learn such information other than by testing or amassing knowledge from other players that might be mistaken themselves.

As for "disabilities", in no other game players complain and blame everything on their real or supposed conditions nearly as much as in eso. It's almost difficult to find an eso player who would say they are healthy, which naturally leads one to question if all those claims are actually true and players don't just use it as an excuse to not improve. Just my observations

sweatapodimas

HalvarIronfist wrote: »

So I want to preface this by saying I've been here since the beginning. I've played since the OG closed beta, and I have a deep love for this game that includes content creation. However, with the state of combat balance in ESO, I needed to stop in for a minute and just bring up some stuff.

https://youtu.be/CseicXC0A9M

A TLDR for those who don't want to watch it, summarizing about 12 minutes of yap:

I think 2019's replacement of Eric Wrobel with Brian Wheeler as the lead combat developer was probably a monumental mistake as combat has completely been simplified, homogenized, and sterilized beyond any recognition of what it once was. Scribing and Subclassing killed any last semblance of "class identity" and "class balance".

Pure classes are basically worthless now. Pure classing is a numerical detriment to your performance in mid to late game content.

Under Brian Wheeler, an extensive amount of combat reworks, skill reworks, fundamental changes, and even random "out of nowhere" changes get made with seemingly little response to the community that has to end up playing with them.

These patches include, but are not limited to Updates: 21, 23, 24, 33, 35, 41, 46, and the upcoming/PTS for 48, which includes (AFAIK) no substantial changes to the broken mess of subclassing balance released in U46.

Let me know what you think!

Perfectly said, +1 to pure class being made useless. Multiclassing is terrible...not paying anymore, first time in 10 years.

emilyhyoyeon

when physical and magical breach were combined into one

Pepegrillos

I think Wheeler's and company entire project has been to standardize combat. Hybridization, homogenization, and sub-classing are all part of that. Their spreadsheet balancing is a consequence of this standardization as well. The overall result of standardization is that it has made their work easier, but the game worse.

Gabriel_H

Rungar wrote: »

it was always garbage. Thats why eso has always been the least popular of all the big mmo's for a decade. Considering the franchise's potential they may have made some money but they havent really done well with it all things considered.

Most sources put ESO in the top 5 Fantasy MMORPG for player numbers.

jirusan

Fully agree with OP, the combat was made bland for a community that generally didn't really care or even notice, and drove out mmo endgame enthusiasts.

Eric Wroebel was way more consistent, and not arrogant as we've sometimes seen since. The Morrowind apocalypse is totally overblown, it simply established sustain as a counter to button mashing.

Whether it ever changes will depend if they find fresh energy, and if it is a priority for the company at all. They've been bragging about their 2 billion dollars all year so they seem quite satisfied with their result, and it probably reflects who the real customers are.

Conversely there is a dungeons and trials design team that has an amazing record of creating fun combat mechanics and hard challenges every year. Special appreciation to them.

Noisivid

Another Beta player here. Me and my monkey.

IMO the problem started back in the design stage when the decision was made to balance PvP and PvE together rather than treating them as the separate game modes that they are. The Devs of the time apparently thought the player base wouldn't be able to handle skills and sets that operated a bit differently in PvP than they did in PvE. (or maybe too much workload, I don't know.)
Balancing these together will probably always be a futile process that compromises both game modes. (not to mention placing essential PvP sets and skills behind a PvE grind, and vice-versa.)

Getting rid of Softcaps on attributes. This happened a long time ago and imo was a bad move.

After that I don't think anyone really had any firm idea what they were trying to achieve in terms of combat or class balance in ESO.
There doesn't seem to have been any real design philosophy since shortly after Wrobel was made the lead cmbt designer and since then it seems like most changes have been band-aids or purely reactive.

I think they still don't really know what they are trying to achieve.

"subclassing" seems to be purely a "hey, you know what would be cool" kind of change. There's no way to take it back though.

this isn't even touching on performance issues.

I'm not expecting much to change.
ESO is still my favorite MMO.