Should balance have a higher priority than new trials?

Zheg · August 2014

I'll start by saying that we can never know for sure how much and at what priority level the devs are working on things, especially since they likely have multiple groups working on different things simultaneously. So please keep the /rage in check.

For me personally, I was highly skeptical at hearing of the new Serpent Trial coming in 4.0. I still refuse to be forced to play my v12 sorc and v12 nb with a resto/resto staff and all light armor; unfortunately, you need to do that in order to be successful in trials. I'm sure there's an extremely small subset of players that can meet the dps check requirements without the cookie cutter magicka build, but they need to work 5 times as hard to get half the output. Moreover, the super majority of groups running trials won't take anything other than the cookie cutter build (I won't even participate in my guild groups because I don't want someone to have to 'carry' my stamina build dps). And these groups aren't excluding other builds out of elitism, they do so because they simply can't complete the dps checks otherwise.

The reason why I scowled when I heard there was a new trial is because balance is still in an awful state (though they get props for the set changes included in 3.0 as a great first step). I would rather see significant efforts invested into game balance, or significant efforts invested into revamping the current mechanics of the AA and HRC trials to promote class and build diversity before they spend time on new trials that will just compound the problem.

Moreover, while I'm pretty stoked at the news of spellcrafting, I'm highly worried this will just push the needle even further in the magicka build rules all direction.

What are your thoughts? Should balance improvements come down the pipe before new trials and spellcrafting?

Gokmak · August 2014

I totally agree.

I refuse to switch my stamina build to a magicka one, so I don't do trials. I don't really play much anymore. It's a shame such a great game is so broken, and taking forever to fix.

TehMagnus · August 2014

Magicka and stamina have balance; The problem is the trials themselves and boss's resistances.

rophez_ESO · August 2014

Yes, work on balance and character progression systems should be paramount. Some of us are VR 12 and twiddling our thumbs. New quests/dungeons won't do us any good because if it's anything like VR Crypt of Hearts, there will be ZERO reason to do them at VR 12. Our characters don't improve and there is absolutely no loot worth the effort of that dungeon. The minority of players that do trials might be excited about another one, but I don't think so.

ZOS should really be pouring every resource into adding/balancing skill lines and pushing out the Champion System. I would also suggest a full revamp of the PVP skill lines to add a lot more longevity and engagement to ranking up in PVP. (and give us another skill bar slot for a pvp ability!!) While I'm at it, I'd also suggest some epic and very rare loot drops from dungeon bosses. Add some rare crafting recipes or ingredients so that crafters can create similar armor/weapons or improve on the rare drops.

BBSooner · August 2014

The creation of new content != less bug fixes and build balancing. Very likely the people building dungeons are not responsible for whether weapon rotation X on class Z has comparable DPS to weapon rotation Y on class Z.

Ideally ZOS employs a division of labor. Lack of new content (stagnation) is a larger problem that MMOs face, imo.

mar1ano1987nrb18_ESO · August 2014

I would love to see a video of the devs and testers finishing the trials and new dungeons with stamina builds.

Nocturnalfox · August 2014

What I basically read was:
Should new content take priority over fixing their game?

New content is for ADD gamers, and there are many of them, who can not stick with a game for years at a time without new content being added or feel entitled to new content or new games every few weeks/months
I don't care for new content if the current stuff is buggy, fix the game, polish the game, then and only then expand on the game.

By the way.
SASHIMONO NOW.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO · August 2014

I am just tired of them raising the vr level, personally.

But really, everyone but pve'rs are getting shafted by this constant pve update crap, and honestly, a lot of pve'rs don't have access to it, so they are doing the majority of the content for a small minority of the game, to appeal to the content locusts that haven't moved on already.

Nox_Aeterna · August 2014

Yeah ... how old are these balance issues again :P?

If we were to wait until they finally manage to have a bright idea of how to balance this game before they launch any new content , we would have nothing new to do until atleast new years.

Not that i really consider this update anything for me to do really , but atleast others will use it im guessing.

jrgray93 · August 2014

There are a ton of things in this game that are fundamentally broken and some of it should have been fixed long ago. That silly promise of updates coming out so frequently is doing more to detract from the game than anything else.

firstdecan · August 2014

I'm not sure where I stand on this.

Ideally I would want them to "fix" the balance issues, although I'm not sure how quickly they can do that.
1 - balance will never be perfect, but there can be much less disparity
2 - changes they make have to be carefully crafted, otherwise they will trade one set of imbalances for another.
3 - In order to carefully craft changes, they would have to implement small changes incrementally over time, in order to verify the changes they made had the intended effect, or correct imbalances they accidentally introduced.

They should keep new content in the pipeline, although at this stage a new trial may not be the ideal new content. With the issues still surrounding "stick and dress" builds being the only viable builds, new content centered around a DPS fest may not be well received by many players.

I hope they are focusing new content efforts on dynamic dungeons (random designs and difficulty scaled to group) as well as improving the grouping mechanics (scaling players to leader level so they can quest / delve together). I also hope they have an eye on the magicka / stamina build disparities, and will continue to tweak stam builds until the disparity is reasonably minimal.

So, assuming they have balance fixes in the pipeline, I would still like to see new content, but hope they prioritize content that would appeal to the widest base of players. Another trial will not appeal to a wide range of players, but it may be low hanging fruit to develop when compared to other things in the roadmap.

timidobserver · August 2014

Content>All

Zheg · August 2014

To address some of the posts so far,

@BBSooner yes, please read the very first part of my post. I do wonder though if maybe they need to provide additional resource to the team that works on balance, because frankly not enough is being done soon enough.

@mar1ano1987nrb18_ESO that might just be the best idea I've heard yet on the topic of stamina vs. magicka balance. If you can't complete the trial with half of your dps being magicka and half being stamina, the trial shouldn't be released.

@rophez_ESO agreed, there needs to be unique sets that drop (at max vet level) from dungeons that are actually useful. I just finished my second v12 character, and whether I was in queue as a tank, dps, or healer - the lfg tool was just utterly useless for vet dungeons because everyone is grinding in craglorn until their ears bleed. There needs to be incentive to go to the vet dungeons.

UPrime · August 2014

I think one of the things that they're trying to do is not buff something where it becomes the new FotM and then nerf it again. Which means, you have to balance small increments. For better or worse it's the approach they're taking which means you can't do too much at once. You make a change, and see how the players react and iterate forever.

Zheg · August 2014

UPrime wrote: »

I think one of the things that they're trying to do is not buff something where it becomes the new FotM and then nerf it again. Which means, you have to balance small increments. For better or worse it's the approach they're taking which means you can't do too much at once. You make a change, and see how the players react and iterate forever.

True, they've said that's what they're doing. But these were problems that were identified in beta, and now 4+ months after launch are still major issues. At this point, I'd say tiny incremental changes do more damage to players' outlook than any consequences from a slightly overbuffed stamina build.

They're releasing spellcrafting soon, which sounds to be something that will just push the needle even further towards magicka builds.

Edit: to take it one step further, the issue isn't even that stamina builds are worse than magicka builds - they aren't even viable in trials in a super majority of cases. When was the last time you saw a few people using 2H, DW, and/or bow in a trial group? Because the ones I just mentioned make up HALF of all available weapon skill lines. It's not a problem that's best addressed by tiny changes over another 4+ months. And for good measure, I'll give a shout out to the depressed WW threads that remain a shameful reminder of the dev's neglect.

kulganoz · August 2014

My 2 cents;

Sorry, but new content and fixing balance issues/ bugs should not be mutually exclusive! As a professional organisation there is absolutely no reasonable explanation for a failure to simultaneously handle key tasks, simple.

Samadhi · August 2014

I'll be interested to see what kind of balance changes are in 1.4 when the patch hits PTS.

Companies don't tend to make a youtube video about bug fixes and balance changes, but that doesn't mean they won't be in the patch itself.

zhevon · August 2014

Ability to handle new material and fix old material should not be mutually exclusive - but apparently they are. Based on the issues with 3 I would guess there are significant configuration control issues that are being exacerbated by working on both simultaneously. I think they need to step back take a deep breath and get stuff fixed and maybe balanced, before serious new material is added.

Ojustaboo · August 2014

Personally I would rather the team responsible for new content carries on developing it at the current rate, but they introduce more of it less frequently, say every 3 months.

That gives us about 12 weeks before each major update.

The past updates have caused numerous problems for many players, whether it's PvP being almost unplayable or whatever.

That would allow longer testing for most of it, we would still get the same amount of content but we should also have a more stable game for about 10 weeks out of 12 rather than the current 4 weeks out of 6.

Balancing is a huge problem, they should be able to do both as they will have various teams working on various projects and it could be that if they put everyone on it, they would get under each others feet and slow it down.

The only concern I might have is whether they have the most skilled staff developing the new content, and less skilled working on the other stuff., If this is the case (and it probably isn't) then yes imo they need to re prioritise.

Mendoze · August 2014

Balance should of course be their main priority, but I think it's different teams that handle game mechanics and which create new content. That being said, I fear that it's the same team that makes the content for PVE and PVP, so Imperial City probably has to wait until hard core raiders are happy, and since they never are, it will never come.