@Valymer Ok, I know for a fact that every good MMO has it's own guides in terms of mechanics. So people know how to be efficient in different roles or purposes. However I found Your irony to be rather amusing.

Alleon wrote: »

@Valymer Ok, I know for a fact that every good MMO has it's own guides in terms of mechanics. So people know how to be efficient in different roles or purposes. However I found Your irony to be rather amusing.

No irony my friend, just the sad truth. The fact is that sometime during the beta test ZOS caved to the casuals and roleplayers that didn't want to see anything "under the hood" as far as hard numbers go. That's why the game has been out for a whole year and the vast majority of players have no idea how anything really works.

Some intrepid few have spent their time and gold testing many aspects of the various game mechanics--which isn't an easy task seeing as there is no dueling feature and no test dummies--and some things have definitely been sussed out, but as far as a centralized repository of information regarding the mechanics, I haven't seen one.

In fact these testers are almost always the ones who inform ZOS of broken game mechanics, something which you would have to look no further to see than the recent bug which made the Sharpened weapon trait way more effective than Nirnhorned. Were it not for these testers, a great many game mechanics and systems would undoubtedly remain broken.

The fact that the default UI gives us no real information whatsoever about things going on around us and happening to our characters means that addons are an absolute necessity for any player who would like to improve the combat performance his or her character--something often referred to with disdain as "min-maxing." While they are essential to that task, the use of addons has been linked to game instability, as ZOS makes frequent and oftentimes arguably unnecessary changes to the API on which they are based.

Another recent discussion was the lack of communication about how the scoring in Vet DSA and Trials works. Repeated pleas by players for ZOS to clue us all in on exactly how the scoring works culminated in ZOS basically saying PAFO (play and find out). Here again, we can see that the company is showing an active stance of concealment, for lack of a better word.

So in summary, yes some mechanics have been painstakingly worked out by fellow players, but it will take some scouring of these forums as well as other forums / fan sites to get your hands on all of that information.

Valymer wrote: »

Alleon wrote: »

@Valymer Ok, I know for a fact that every good MMO has it's own guides in terms of mechanics. So people know how to be efficient in different roles or purposes. However I found Your irony to be rather amusing.

No irony my friend, just the sad truth. The fact is that sometime during the beta test ZOS caved to the casuals and roleplayers that didn't want to see anything "under the hood" as far as hard numbers go. That's why the game has been out for a whole year and the vast majority of players have no idea how anything really works.

Some intrepid few have spent their time and gold testing many aspects of the various game mechanics--which isn't an easy task seeing as there is no dueling feature and no test dummies--and some things have definitely been sussed out, but as far as a centralized repository of information regarding the mechanics, I haven't seen one.

In fact these testers are almost always the ones who inform ZOS of broken game mechanics, something which you would have to look no further to see than the recent bug which made the Sharpened weapon trait way more effective than Nirnhorned. Were it not for these testers, a great many game mechanics and systems would undoubtedly remain broken.

The fact that the default UI gives us no real information whatsoever about things going on around us and happening to our characters means that addons are an absolute necessity for any player who would like to improve the combat performance his or her character--something often referred to with disdain as "min-maxing." While they are essential to that task, the use of addons has been linked to game instability, as ZOS makes frequent and oftentimes arguably unnecessary changes to the API on which they are based.

Another recent discussion was the lack of communication about how the scoring in Vet DSA and Trials works. Repeated pleas by players for ZOS to clue us all in on exactly how the scoring works culminated in ZOS basically saying PAFO (play and find out). Here again, we can see that the company is showing an active stance of concealment, for lack of a better word.

So in summary, yes some mechanics have been painstakingly worked out by fellow players, but it will take some scouring of these forums as well as other forums / fan sites to get your hands on all of that information.

I 'Awesome'd' your post because it is absolutely true about what some players have painstakingly tested and brought to light with this game, so much of which players would never know about or know how to make informed decisions about their characters. Personally, I believe ZOS's stance on limiting what info the player has is genuine and a refreshing approach to MMOs. However, at the same time, this approach only works if abilities, mechanics, and everything else are intuitive and actually function correctly -- two things that this game does not have a great track record for. This compounds problems with not knowing what's going on 'under the hood,' and leads to conspiratorial things like "ZOS has no idea what the mechanics are." It would be foolish to think they don't know the mechanics, but there is also proof that some things are broken and they haven't figured out (or have the time) fixes for them (e.g. all the times bugs recur over several months, or when they just change the tooltip to reflect the 'broken' value/effect of something rather than actually changing the value/effect, like with Siphoning Strikes from last last fall).

But as for the vDSA and Trials scoring, I'm glad they didn't divulge everything. A little hint would have been nice, but where's the challenge if you get strategies straight from the devs on how to get high scores? Trials are fun, but they also become boring/formulaic once the mechanics are figured out.

To respond to OP, I would love an official compendium on how the mechanics work, even if they don't divulge all information (e.g. hard cap values).

Alleon wrote: »

seniden_ESO wrote: »

Alleon wrote: »

@Valymer Ok, I know for a fact that every good MMO has it's own guides in terms of mechanics. So people know how to be efficient in different roles or purposes. However I found Your irony to be rather amusing.

...Yeah he's not lying and calling him out without any idea makes you look bad. There is no guide because mechanics are always up in the air in this game. Like it or not, you're not going to find one, and even if you did, it would be inaccurate. Not that you deserve the help.

I didn't "called him out", whatever you meant by that. I'm guessing you're getting bad picture here. My response wasn't offensive in any way. So while we are at clearing this part out, can I deserve the help now?

And to you other guys. Thank you for pointing these all out. However when i was trying to figure what is best enchant for my weapon, or which trait to choose for my gear I came across some in depth clarifications done by some players. So I think maybe there is hope, maybe the stuff I'm looking for is there, just not in one place.

PS: I understand that some players do not like "looking under the hood" of a game, we call them casuals. It's no problem, but it doesn't mean that players who would like to know that kind of things couldn't get them anywhere. These two roads don't have to collide with each other. A simple "show advanced info" button would do the trick.

We dont even need that, just a thorough combat log in the log folder of ESO so we can debug and make sure everything works as intended or even working at all.
No UI invasion or immersion busting there.
Definitely no worse than a crown store marketing message across the middle of a screen in an epic battle.

But as said above...the trust model used by ZOS actually requires us to be 100% certain of their competence to produce accurately described skills that actaully work as described and intended..
This they have failed to show time and time and time again with persistantly and repeatedly bugged or broken skills.

The idea of opacity is also ill thought out anyway.
If the idea was to deter the min-maxers ...the actual effect is the min-maxers pull the code apart anyway and the only people who dont get access to the data is everyone else.
So essentially, the min-maxers get an advantage over everyone else as to them the data is transparent and to everyone else its opaque. It basically creates a game focused on exploits because all the min-maxers find the exploitable skills and become invincible and silent about said skill.

vis-a-vis..if ZOS idea was to prevent min-maxers getting data to keep parity with everyone....the exact opposite has been the result.

Valymer wrote: »

To be honest I have doubts that ZOS itself really understands how some of the game mechanics work.

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