@TehMagnus asked me to post this for him since he’s unable to do so. He will create a Thread on Tamrielfoundry soon and I will put the Link here if you want to discuss stuff with him. At least there you dont get banned for not having the same opinion
Those are his words.

Here is the Thread on TF:
http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/the-unofficial-road-ahead-champion-system-needs-fixing-and-game-is-golden/

I’ve banned for a long time from official forums but I still read what’s said around here and I see tensions are still rampant and more and more people are displeased and getting very impatient about Zenimax, yet, for me, things have never looked better (or less bad if you want). From my point of view, things are finally looking up and we have received hints that the game might finally be going in the right direction (some issues aside)!



Facts

- Console development is over.

- Most of the manpower of ZOS was invested in console release.

- There are bugs on console but nothing gamebreaking (and for the people QQing about not being able to play, you don’t know how PC release was like: your game is not broken and server access is likely mostly hardware issue which will get fixed).


This means that the workforce working hard on console dev is currently most likely ironing the bugs and there is more room to improve on the game and move forward with both platforms.


And moving forward we are (even though this might not be obvious because of ZOS’s amazing communication skills).



Moving Forward:

- Paul Sage has left the boat, he was lead creative director and the guy basically making a lot of decisions (including the ones regarding the user interface).

- It’s no coincidence, that the API function for accurate Buff/Debuff tracking are being released nor is it a coincidence that Zenimax has officially stated it’s going to implement OPTIONAL buff/debuff tracking into the base user interface: this may be linked to Paul Sage’s departure as well as Maria’s & Nick’s since we know that there has been internal fights about the UI and it seems the good guys are finally winning the war!

- The fact they are willing to rework the UI for something as complex as buff tracking leads me to believe we’re going to get some quality of life adjustments soon to the game UI and they’re gonna be more open to implementing changes to the guildstore search, bank management, inventory management and son on (@ZOS_RichLambert, if you’re /lurking: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/142204/monthly-fix-your-ui-zenimax-post-2 is a nice recap of what we’ve been asking for over a year).

- PVP buffs are being removed from PVE and they announced their plans to improve the PVP experience which do sound nice in my opinion. It will refocus the game on PVP and make buff servers disappear. Strats will vary from server to server, players won’t be able to hop campaigns and thus make it harder for a single faction to dominate everything etc etc etc.

- More presence in forums. I think that besides Paul Sage’s post stating ”can’t fix Cyro guys, stop playing like you like and spread up a bit”, he hasn’t said much in the forums since launch. Rich’s /lurks show us at least one thing: They are reading, he is reading, Zenimax is at least listening now.



We can expect the game to stop stalling and move forward, improve. For me ESO TU is the real launch of the game, I know it launched over a year ago for PC and we have had no new content etc, I’ve been mad about it for months, but now comes acceptance (after rage, denial, rage, denial, depression, rage), and if like me you’re still here, then you’re not mad enough to quit anyways so might as well look forward from now on.



The next steps:

- New content, it’s almost ready, it’s gonna come. Not soon enough for our taste, but it will get here.

- Fixing the game, ZOS seems to be working on that already, next major update will probably bring a lot of bugs (as usual) but it should be fixing a lot of stuff and I don’t think we will ever again wait 5 months for totally broken mechanics like nirn to get fixed.

- VR16: I originally wrote this before VR16 was announced. In my opinion VR16 doesn’t matter, the real progression is Champion Point progression, two lousy levels that allow us to acquire end game gear are ridiculous and for new players it changes nothing except they will need even less experience to get to VR16 than they used to need to get to VR14. I don’t think the VR will be removed any time soon since they’d need to revamp big parts of the game so the players and their gear aren’t nerfed. It’s likely VR will become levels and in any case, extra VR levels where never the issue in the game (every game has leveling), the problem is the way you earn them and the ridiculous ”you finished the game, let’s kill your replayability by making you do all the quests from the other alliances <= and this is unlikely to be fixed any time soon as well because it would take too much time.

-Blockcasting: Same as for the VR16, I wrote this before no stam regen when blocking was announced. IMO, the simplest way would be to introduce this only in PVP. As for PVE, I think it will make taking harder and according to some tanks I’ve spoken with, it might be much much much harder to tank in some trials. That being said, I just notice that one of the biggest problems of this game is that it’s too easy, people QQ because it’s too easy, and when they make it harder, people QQ as well .





-= The Champion System =-

In my opinion, the last part of the game that is endangering it and needs serious inspection and rework is the Champion System. Since the VR16 announcement, many players and vocal people from the community have commented on this system and expressed some ideas.



Here’s some facts:

- With 1000 CP and smart point allocation you will more or less mitigate more than 50% more damage than someone with 0 CP, you will also deal more or less than 50% damage than someone with 0 CP (this depends on the class chosen and how well you spend your points of course), your sustain will also be greatly advantaged with 25% cost reduction, 25% extra regen of stam & magicka + added cost reduction to other stuff like sprinting, blocking & so on.

- The more CP you get, the easier the game gets and not only is the game already quite easy, but the new zones will scale to player’s level which means it’s unlikely the difficulty will increase thus making the game totally unchallenging for people who get a lot of CP.

- CP makes competition unfair in PVP as in PVE. You do not win by being the best at what you do, mastering your skill rotations or carefully theorycrafting your gear, you can win by just spending hours killing zombies or trolls and running in a circle.

- The Champion System are hidden levels, it’s not horizontal progression. You earn points you improve your stats, except instead of improving only your health/mgck/stam, you improve other aspects of your character (while still getting hp/mgck/stam for each point you invest). 3600 CP is actually 1440 VR levels. In reality, the level cap of this game is VR 1454.

- CS discourages new players from engaging in any competitive PVE or PVP thus slowly killing the game since most won’t bother trying because they will get excluded from groups.



ZOS spoke of Catching up mechanisms, they are not the solution:

ZOS stated that they would eventually implement catching up mechanisms to help people reach 400 CP sooner, in my opinion this won’t help. You can compare leveling (and CP grind is just like leveling) to climbing a mountain. When a player gets a catching up mechanism (elevator that takes you half the way up), this is acceptable to the player because he knows that he’s half the way to the top where the old players who begun maybe years ago are. Not only does this make the grind feel easier, but it also helps to know that maybe the level cap will increase a bit while he’s catching up to those players but at least the gap between the new level and the old player is getting smaller and smaller. It is different with the CS because even if you get to 400 CP faster thanks to catching up mechanisms, the guy who’s at 1K cp still has 600 more CP than you and by the time you reach 1000 CP, chances are he’ll be getting closer to 2000 CP. I don’t need to have a degree in psychiatry to tell you most people won’t even bother with such a long grind and will just quit before, we are not Korean players.



But I play more, so I should be stroner:

Debatable, and untrue. Not because I say so, but because when everybody reaches 3600 CP, you can keep playing and grinding experience, it will not make you stronger. There is a cap in the game but it’s far away. Once you come to admit the fact you will eventually stop progressing, you need to ask yourself if by the time you get to the point where you can’t progress anymore you want the game population to be healthy or not. If the system stays as it is, it will not be healthy and being imba in an empty game isn’t really fun IMO.



What’s the solution:

The system is so frelled that I don’t even see a solution anymore If Zenimax had listened to us during Champion System PTS where we predicted the issues people are only discovering today, this might have been avoided. It would be unfair to deny the power increase to the people who have spend hours and hours grinding their characters and earning CP. Removing the system is not an option either, not anymore, too much has been invested into the making of the system.



Some ideas:

- Implement a CP cap which will be raised slowly when new content gets released (this is the idea @Deltia expressed in his VR16 video). The system is still there, still salvageable, but at least you contain the power gap between the have and the have nots. This also helps you manage better the amount of ”catching up” experience you eventually give to newer players since you control where the top of the mountain is and how it moves.

- Remove CPs or implement a CP cap for end game content (trials/vdsa and PVP) which can be elevated gradually or adjusted if needed. Since you have implemented battle level to put all players entering Cyro at max level, IMO, all Cyro players should be CS leveled to 3600, that way the playing field IS even. For trials, you can also cap everybody at max level or choose another approach and cap the CP acording to the difficulty of the encounters. This will make the competition even while still allowing people with more CP than others to be stronger but only up to a certain point. This also helps you create harder content with higher CP cap and also a minimum recommended CP level to enter thus creating raiding steps for the new and old players to enjoy equally (but also giving newer players a chance to compete in equal grounds versus the older players).

- Lower the exp needed to gain CP or implement ways to earn experience at VR14 (the changes in exp gain seem good but probably won’t be enough). If the 3600 cap can be reached in a couple of months, then there really is no problem with the system .

- Do something else, but something should be done.





TLDR:

There’s a glimpse of hope of the game moving in the right direction now that the real launch (ESO TU) has been done. Paul Sage left, we got a new Creative Director and first steps in the right decision to fix the UI have been taken. New content will be coming soon (not soon enough but still, we are still here, still haven’t quit, so it’s time to move forward, this new start is the last chance we have to make this game a great and memorable one, thus, Champion system needs to be looked into since it’s wrong in so many ways.



Remember, don’t shoot the messenger, thanks for reading till here,



Teh Magnus.