Dear ESO Community,


I generally avoid posting my grievances on the forums as player-posted complaints and suggestions never seem to elicit the attention they ought to from gamemasters. Nevertheless, with the game-breaking problems of the Imperial City looming, I feel it’s necessary to attempt even the most meager rally to salvage the game. The core of the problem resides in two parts of the Imperial City: the new Tel Var Stone currency and the mobs of the Imperial City and how these aspects as well as the combat changes in 1.7 will kill small scale pvp as a presence in pvp and as an effective way of collecting Tel-Var-Stones. With the release of the new vr16 item sets in Update 1.7, there will be an influx of generally exclusive pvers to the Imperial City in order to gather Tel-Var-Stones to obtain the new sets. This will flood the PvP population with pvers trying to obtain these sets as quickly as possible. This method will inevitably be zergballing. Despite the divvying of Tel-Var-Stones amongst members of the group, the near impossibility of small-scale is a glaring deterrent to any other mode of collection. With the increase of damage mitigation in Cyrodiil (a whopping increase from 15% to 50%) and the removal of the dynamic ultimate regeneration system of 1.5 (wherein the regeneration of ultimate was obtained by the number of enemies your skills hit, not the amount of basic attacks you land). This destroys soloers and small group’s ability to quickly burst players and thereby level the playing field (the 1.6 1vX meta) or burst/out sustain people with ultimates (a la 1.5). Despite the problems these presented, their removal has nonetheless eradicated small scale and 1vX’s viability to collect Tel Var Stones or even function. Thereby pvers and pvpers will inevitably resort to zerging to collect Tel Var Stones. No matter how many times Proximity Detonation is buffed small groups and soloers will not be able to kill groups of over 5 people in this meta! Therefore even with the reduction of tel var stone gains from individual players, zerging will be the most efficient and preferred method of collecting tel var stones due to the reduced frequency of deaths and the increased frequency of kills.


The mobs of the Imperial City are another constant plague to small group and solo gameplay in the Imperial City. While testing on PTS I have been hit for attacks as high as 20 and 30k from bosses (many of these insta-cast) and 10k by regular mobs. Try to sustain 20k instant dps while fighting other mobs as well as enemy players. Furthermore, many of these mobs DO NOT LOSE AGRO and it is a waste to run from the mobs who do (generally the regular mobs) as the Imperial City is overloaded with mobs. More than likely you will simply agro another cluster of mobs. This leaves killing the mobs as the only viable mode of dealing with them. Killing a single mob may be a mere triviality, but killing 3+ mobs while fighting enemy players is slightly trickier I’d say . Moreover, boss mobs have an excessive health pool which is usually only dispatched by a collection of approximately 6 players, or it takes a titanic and unwelcome amount of time to kill by a soloer or small group.


The Tel-Var-Stone system and the mobs of the Imperial City create an environment where zerging destroys small groups or soloers and pvers are forced to aid to the destruction in order to fully optimize their PvE setups. A solution to this problem may be to simply eliminate tel var stone gains for groups of more than 5, evenly distribute stones for groups of 5 and under, and give full tel var stones to soloers. This will encourage small group and solo play as well as dissolve zergs. Having the new vr16 sets drop from high end pve content (Namely trials, DSA, and the new Veteran Dungeons) would reduce the mass flow of pvers to Tel-Var-Stone farming zergs. The dynamic ultimate generation system of 1.5 and the burst of 1.6 unquestionably had their problems (OP dragonknight battle roars, bat swarm spammers, 1-2 shot ganks) but the nerfing of mob number, damage, and health would aid small group/soloers immensely in the Imperial City. These solutions are certainly not optimal but ought to be built upon and discussed to remedy the Imperial City.


Peace

•Jinkins


@ZOS_BrianWheeler, @ZOS_GinaBruno, @ZOS_EricWroebel, @ZOS_PaulSage