[Opinion] Removing Veteran Ranks? Well probably not in the way you're thinking...

HeroOfNone · July 2015

So, a lot of folks have been pissed off with veteran rank 16 and keep asking "When are they going to remove Veteran Ranks?" I'm here to say that there is no indication that Veteran Ranks are going away, at least in the context that most think. Instead, it seems much more likely that they will be converted into the leveling system, say level 70 or 80, at be even 100, and the experience grind smoothed out.

The current 14 Veteran Ranks are tied to
- Gear, including 2 tiers of sets (v1 to v5 and v6 to v12/14)
- 14 attribute points
- 14 skill points
- start of veteran mode dungeons
- start of Craglorn
- Trials (being tied to Craglorn)
- start of champion point system
- lock out of non-veteran PVP
- Stats granted by different itemization

Why a lot HATE veteran ranks
- It takes a lot of experience to get a rank
- Your growth between Veteran Ranks is lower than from level to level
- The challenge in each zone is the same, and rarely scales up as you get further
- Certain dungeons/trials have an unsaid mid-level requirement around v6to v8 to be able to survive an be useful with stats and DPS, otherwise that person typically needs to be carried
- In PVP it feels there is a huge survival gap between v1 and v10+

Why the Veteran Ranks works...
Most of these issues can be attributed to the fact they crammed 40 x 2 levels (80 levels) of content into 10 Veteran ranks (the other 2 factions stories), and then another 10 to 20 levels into 2 to 4 veteran ranks (Craglorn). So instead of getting 5 to 10 levels for completing everything in a zone you get a single veteran rank. It is an interesting way to let us experience the stories, most other MMOS would require us to reroll a character. In ESO they let us experience it all over again without the reroll and make it challenging. If they gave the same progression though, most would be veteran rank 14 by the end of the 2nd area, leaving for a dull play through on Cadwell's Silver. But this leaves a huge cliff of experience, and your still not a powerful enough to do most end game content till you hit mid-levels. This led to the current protest most have today.

What options are possible?
- Remove Veteran Ranks and scale everything down to level 50
- Scale everything down, but use Champion points to level lock certain areas and gear
- Lie to us that Veteran Ranks are going to be removed
- Convert Veteran Ranks into more levels, 20 to 40, and rework gear and areas

Detailed opinions on some options (spoiler tagged so you skimmers can skip!)

Remove Veteran Ranks and scale everything down to level 50 - That is a lot to get rid of with the sweep of a hand if they were to just take every Veteran 14 and downgrade them, their gear, and everything else to level 50. While most want to "get rid" of veteran ranks, it is likely to alienate the player base that has stayed here for a long time. If you had a v14 Valkyn Skoria helmet, would you really want it downgraded to level 50 with matching stats to someone's v1 helm? And what would happen to the skill points? Would they just go poof and those hours of grinding would go away? Yeah, that is likely to *** off a LOT of folks. This also would make doing Cadwell's Silver or gold pointless except for some achievements and Champion Point leveling, which grinding already give more. This also would severely care bear the difficulty level on a lot of dungeons and trials.

Scale everything down, but use Champion points to level lock certain areas and gear - Same as above, but this would cause issues due to the account wide sharing Champion Points that has put a gap between year long players and new players. The grind to get a champion point us also fairly high as well, so you’re falling into the same cliff as before.

Lie to us that Veteran Ranks are going to be removed - Some already think this is an option ZOS has taken, but promising to remove it with no real intention to would be fairly stupid. It would be better to defend it or ignore the complaints from a PR standpoint. ZOS has had a habit in the past about leaving out details with things, but for the most part they have carefully chosen their words so you can never say they were wrong. There have been things that they've tried and had to abandoned or is taking longer than expected (spell crafting or dark brotherhood), but I have trouble catching them on anything more than technicalities.

Convert Veteran Ranks into more levels, 20 to 40, and rework gear and areas - this seems the most likely, and the thesis of my post. This will remove some of the cliff and is much easier to convert. Your progression will be much more evident and you'll have more bonuses between prior Veteran Ranks. You're still cramming a lot of content in a few levels though, so there will still be a cliff of EXP unless they raise the cap to 80 or 100, which then in turn would separate a lot of high levels and low levels, and you risk flooding the player with skill point to a point to make them useless. There is still a question how the veteran dungeons, Craglorn, and Champion point system would work, which could kick in at level 50. Though it could simply open up all of them to any level, you'd just have to survive the high levels. The non-veteran campaigns could eventually be level locked as well to give lower levels a better chance, while the battle buff could be made to affect anyone 10 levels below max.

Why is it taking so long?
- Priority was given to the console release for several months
- Imperial city and DLC is likely getting priority to keep folks with plus membership or to buy crowns
- Removing or converting requires reworking the pacing of zones
- Removing or converting requires redoing the itemization
- Removing or converting requires rebalancing the PVP aspects
- Removing or converting requires scaling the dungeon challenges
- Removing or converting requires a LOT of PR (the vocal public views any change as bad)
- Converting requires more skills to dump excess skill points into.
- Change, in general, takes time. We had promises for better stamina builds that took nearly 3/4s of a year since they announced it

Why give us 2 more Veteran ranks?
- Cyrodiil is coming and as @Demonoid has data mined and its speculated there will be a full zone's worth of questing and leveling.
- If they plan to convert, this will lead to a smoother progression for each zone's content
- It gives ZOS breathing time before a conversion and a testing ground for tweaking the pacing.
- It gives us something to progress with other than gear farming or champion point grinding
- Gives ZOS more reason to sell DLC, with 2 new veteran ranks to level up folks are going to be looking for some place fresh to play.
- Gives a new item set level lock level for new sets in the DLC.

So for most of you folks freaking out, I'd say just relax, the bad parts are likely going to be converted over to make the progression simpler. We're seeing some of those changes now and by the time they flip the switch its likely there will be less problems.

Of course most of this is opinion based and if our glorious overlords see fit we could all be turned into cabbage and cheese by the time we see the Veteran Ranks gone =3

Sigtric · July 2015

I've pretty much always thought that VRs are not going to be going anywhere. Yeah, they might keep adjusting required XP to gain a rank, and yeah, maybe they RENAME THEM, but those additional levels above 49 aren't going anywhere.

Excellent post, Hero!

HeroOfNone · July 2015

Sigtric wrote: »

I've pretty much always thought that VRs are not going to be going anywhere. Yeah, they might keep adjusting required XP to gain a rank, and yeah, maybe they RENAME THEM, but those additional levels above 49 aren't going anywhere.

Excellent post, Hero!

As long as you accept it and don't hold lofty expectations =3. A lot have expected this would be a huge game changer or the sky would fall if we got just 2 more vet ranks. Most of it seems like a pretty steady transition that they just need to smooth the EXP cliffs.

Sigtric · July 2015

HeroOfNone wrote: »

Sigtric wrote: »

I've pretty much always thought that VRs are not going to be going anywhere. Yeah, they might keep adjusting required XP to gain a rank, and yeah, maybe they RENAME THEM, but those additional levels above 49 aren't going anywhere.

Excellent post, Hero!

As long as you accept it and don't hold lofty expectations =3. A lot have expected this would be a huge game changer or the sky would fall if we got just 2 more vet ranks. Most of it seems like a pretty steady transition that they just need to smooth the EXP cliffs.

Personally, I'd be perfectly fine with them leaving the VRs alone outside of further tweaking of the XP curve.

Mos-De-Atmo · July 2015

Good post, thanks. I am fine with the current Veteran Ranks but I'm also happy if they work out a better system in the future too!

HeroOfNone · July 2015

The current veteran system doesn't bother me too much, but I've been playing a while as well. giving small steps in between levels though would help a lot of the new player frustration I think.

also edited to clean up some of my grammar and spelling errors. Though I think I probably missed some

NotSo · July 2015

HeroOfNone wrote: »

- The challenge in each zone is the same, and rarely scales up as you get further

This is completely fine, being able to walk past one zone and into the next is something that the 1-50 levels need (with scaling in the case of the level scheme).

Arato · July 2015

The biggest issue with them not dropping VR's is the fact that they said they would and said they're committed to doing it.

GreySix · July 2015

Arato wrote: »

The biggest issue with them not dropping VR's is the fact that they said they would and said they're committed to doing it.

This.

Ysne58 · July 2015

Arato wrote: »

The biggest issue with them not dropping VR's is the fact that they said they would and said they're committed to doing it.

I'll be very surprised if the veteran levels actually get removed. ZOS has a very poor record of keeping to it's stated intentions.

I would not be surprised if they somehow got converted to actual levels similar to 1 through 49.

GreySix · July 2015

If I don't expect a pay raise, I'm not disappointed when I don't get one.

But if my employer promises an upcoming pay raise, and when the time comes they say, "Never mind," then that's a different story.

Same with the VR fiasco. Had Zenimax never stated anything about removing VR ranks, heck I don't care if they pushed it up to VR 999999999999.

But they instead stated one thing and did another.

Arato · July 2015

Right. If ZOS hadn't said they were removing them and then in every single interview and EOS live that mentions VR's restates that they are COMMITTED to removing them, it wouldn't be so much of an issue. Instead I'd be mostly concerned with making sure there was enough content to reach VR cap without grind or repeatable content and getting a variety of content out for leveling veteran ranks, like, a VR1-5 adventure zone (and VR5-10 zone) for leveling in a group rather than solo questing or grinding to VR10+, and VR10+ solo zones, just to accomodate multiple playstyles.

But they said that they'd be removing them, the champ system would be replacing the veteran rank system, and the vertical leveling cap would be 50.

Ysne58 · July 2015

The champ system, despite claims to the contrary, looks more like a vertical than a horizontal leveling system.

If they are going to do anything, I'd like to see each vet level converted to 10 regular levels and work like levels 1 to 49. I suspect that would be much easier than removing them completely.

I think they should allow players to earn CP points at level 1.

noladude · July 2015

Please help me understand what the big issue is with veteran ranks/champion point system. I think it works pretty well. I don't understand what the benefit is of doing away with it. Please explain.

Sausage · July 2015

The question why you guys love VRs so much, Zen has said multiple times they are going to be removed from the game. Theres at least 2-4 new thread every week. They just cant keep going with VRs forever, for every 2 rank they need to put out new materials etc, nobody gives a damn about vr1-12 materials for example. VRs are obvious troll-bait and been too many months already. Tell us why you love it so much, so we can transfer them to CP system.

Wolfshead · July 2015

@HeroOfNone

Im pisss off at ZoS for the went out official on QuakCon and say the was go to remove VR from game if the have not done like this i could care less about VR and also i pisss off the gave us half done justice system which today is really useless in game the only people you need to be worry about when are criminal is NPC no one else.

If ZoS never went public with the fact the was go remove VR from game and only thing that would be big different between player would be CP point nothing else but now we have CP and VR that make alot big different player which i think is silly.

Arato · July 2015

Ysne58 wrote: »

The champ system, despite claims to the contrary, looks more like a vertical than a horizontal leveling system.

If they are going to do anything, I'd like to see each vet level converted to 10 regular levels and work like levels 1 to 49. I suspect that would be much easier than removing them completely.

I think they should allow players to earn CP points at level 1.

Horizontal does not mean 'your character doesn't get more powerful' Horizontal simply means at that point content stops scaling with you, so your character actually does get more powerful in comparison. It's like gear. A VR14 with green gear is going to be less powerful than a VR14 with gold gear, but they'll both be the same vertical progression level as far as hitting and missing goes and level dependent damage calculations, crit chances and such.

HeroOfNone · July 2015

NotSo wrote: »

HeroOfNone wrote: »

- The challenge in each zone is the same, and rarely scales up as you get further

This is completely fine, being able to walk past one zone and into the next is something that the 1-50 levels need (with scaling in the case of the level scheme).

To dome degree you can do the same now on lower levels, however with the current VR system there is less of a ramp up in difficulty for an alliance campaign.

Arato wrote: »

The biggest issue with them not dropping VR's is the fact that they said they would and said they're committed to doing it.

GreySix wrote: »

Arato wrote: »

The biggest issue with them not dropping VR's is the fact that they said they would and said they're committed to doing it.

This.

GreySix wrote: »

If I don't expect a pay raise, I'm not disappointed when I don't get one.

But if my employer promises an upcoming pay raise, and when the time comes they say, "Never mind," then that's a different story.

Same with the VR fiasco. Had Zenimax never stated anything about removing VR ranks, heck I don't care if they pushed it up to VR 999999999999.

But they instead stated one thing and did another.

Arato wrote: »

Right. If ZOS hadn't said they were removing them and then in every single interview and EOS live that mentions VR's restates that they are COMMITTED to removing them, it wouldn't be so much of an issue. Instead I'd be mostly concerned with making sure there was enough content to reach VR cap without grind or repeatable content and getting a variety of content out for leveling veteran ranks, like, a VR1-5 adventure zone (and VR5-10 zone) for leveling in a group rather than solo questing or grinding to VR10+, and VR10+ solo zones, just to accomodate multiple playstyles.

But they said that they'd be removing them, the champ system would be replacing the veteran rank system, and the vertical leveling cap would be 50.

Wolfshead wrote: »

@HeroOfNone

Im pisss off at ZoS for the went out official on QuakCon and say the was go to remove VR from game if the have not done like this i could care less about VR and also i pisss off the gave us half done justice system which today is really useless in game the only people you need to be worry about when are criminal is NPC no one else.

If ZoS never went public with the fact the was go remove VR from game and only thing that would be big different between player would be CP point nothing else but now we have CP and VR that make alot big different player which i think is silly.

These are the typical responses "they said the are getting rid of the Veteran Ranks", but are they really? It is likely double talk for converting Veteran Ranks into something else. We'll probably see a simple rebranding and more levels to remove the undesirable exp cliff and spread out a few more rewards. As for how long they are taking, that's a separate issue, but its easy to assume this was lower priority than imperial city or console release. Most of us can agree something is being planned after talking about its removal for so long, but these things seem to take a year+.

noladude wrote: »

Please help me understand what the big issue is with veteran ranks/champion point system. I think it works pretty well. I don't understand what the benefit is of doing away with it. Please explain.

Mostly the large EXP cliff an limited rewards, plus a very slow and dran oUT respoused to "remove them". If there was something unclear in the "Why a lot HATE veteran ranks" section you'd like me to expand upon let me know.

Ysne58 wrote: »

The champ system, despite claims to the contrary, looks more like a vertical than a horizontal leveling system.

If they are going to do anything, I'd like to see each vet level converted to 10 regular levels and work like levels 1 to 49. I suspect that would be much easier than removing them completely.

I think they should allow players to earn CP points at level 1.

Arato wrote: »

Ysne58 wrote: »

The champ system, despite claims to the contrary, looks more like a vertical than a horizontal leveling system.

If they are going to do anything, I'd like to see each vet level converted to 10 regular levels and work like levels 1 to 49. I suspect that would be much easier than removing them completely.

I think they should allow players to earn CP points at level 1.

Horizontal does not mean 'your character doesn't get more powerful' Horizontal simply means at that point content stops scaling with you, so your character actually does get more powerful in comparison. It's like gear. A VR14 with green gear is going to be less powerful than a VR14 with gold gear, but they'll both be the same vertical progression level as far as hitting and missing goes and level dependent damage calculations, crit chances and such.

If they changed the champion point system to only allow a few active passives at once and capped the affected points it would be. But given the current system you can get so rediculously powerful with CP if you invest enough into it and be able to ignore resource management, up resistances, etc. I can get behind building CPS at level 1, given it may be several levels till you can get a single point, but it does provide incentive to get to veteran rank. As @Arato pointed out though, you're always getting stronger, making it vertices

Arato · July 2015

No, that's not what vertical progression is. Vertical progression is increasing in level, and enemies you face also increase in level in parallel, so you only get stronger vs lower level mobs and characters.

Horizontal progression is where enemies you face stop growing in power but you grow in power through means other than level.

That's exactly what CP are. That's what gear is. That's what traits and skills and talents are in other games. It's ways your character branches out and gets more power independent of level.

What do you think horizontal progression is? Cosmetics?

If you want to look at it another way, in gaining a vertical level, your character gains power in all areas, they get more health, magicka, stamina, they get a skill point, they get an extra attribute point to assign, in calculations of combat, they're less likely to whiff (regardless of aim your attack can just miss an enemy much higher level than you, go fight a level 40+ mob as a level 10, you'll sometimes completely whiff even if your aim is dead on, and they're not dodging or blocking, it just misses), and more likely to crit (against enemies lower level than them. In the same example of a level 10 fighting a level 40, that level 40 will crit almost every single attack), and their armor will be more effective , they're also able to wear stronger gear.
It's in almost every aspect of combat your character gets stronger than someone who is 1 level lower.

However when you gain a champion point, you only get stronger in ONE aspect, the place where you put that point, and maybe if you cross a perk threshold you gain a new passive ability.

That's horizontal progression. You're "branching out" rather than gaining power in every aspect at once.

HeroOfNone · July 2015

Arato wrote: »

No, that's not what vertical progression is. Vertical progression is increasing in level, and enemies you face also increase in level in parallel, so you only get stronger vs lower level mobs and characters.

Horizontal progression is where enemies you face stop growing in power but you grow in power through means other than level.

That's exactly what CP are. That's what gear is. That's what traits and skills and talents are in other games. It's ways your character branches out and gets more power independent of level.

What do you think horizontal progression is? Cosmetics?

I always viewed it as expanding out but still having the same relative strength. Such as you can level up something up but you'd have to swap something out. Griding out gear of the same level or working up other abilities might fall into this category.

With levels, Veteran Ranks, and Champion Points your also growing your character and making them more powerful on the current system. Either way though, since the Veteran Rank system is one of the few outlets of growth after 50, it's doubtful it would simply go away to be replaced solely with Champion Points while also flattening the gear benefits for anything v1+.