Zos you cant: Pts Patch notes...

anitajoneb17_ESO · October 2015

@Mursa :

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain the background of this decision, that is very much appreciated.

However, if I understand it well, it reads like "we've reduced players' abilities in order to preserve our design of the fight".

IMHO, that's not fair. Players' abilities are present to beat the game and its design, and if they're too strong, I feel you should change the design, not the players' abilities, especially on a case-by-case basis.

Regardless of "fairness", the result is that no player will invest anymore in diverse builds, special abilities or unique sets. Simply because we'll know we cannot trust it, and these abilities will not be available whenever it did not suit "the devs". Nobody wants to invest in a non-reliable build.

As a consequence, everyone or at least most people will invest in "sure, reliable buffs" such as more magicka/stamina, more spell/weapon damage, more regen. All these leading to one and unique feature : brute force / max DPS, which in turn is the best guaranteed way to bypass the mechanics and design of NOT ONLY this stage of Maelstrom Arena, but ALL mechanics and design of ALL fights in the game, like we all did (even average to mediocre players) with Hiath the Battlemaster and countless other encounters.

Tweak the mechanics, not the players' abilities.

byrom101b16_ESO · October 2015

Mursa wrote: »

Hello everyone,

With the Strangler Pull, internally we had many of the same complaints about the Pull feeling cheap, so we tried allowing you to stop it by blocking or using player abilities like Immovable. However, over time in our internal playtests and watching streams of Maelstrom Arena, the dominant player behavior became to either use an ability to ignore the Stranglers, or just ignore them all together because they took so long to kill.

We weren’t hitting the desired play experience that we expect from an Arena Trap with the Stranglers. An Arena Trap should challenge you to have more situational awareness; it should make you think about the Arena as something more than just waves of monsters.

So, with that in mind we went back to making the Pull completely unavoidable. However, we also greatly reduced the Stranglers health on both Normal and Veteran Mode. Now, when you are Pulled by a Strangler, you can turn around and quickly kill it. Or if you pay attention to the edges of the playable space, you can easily kill Stranglers before they even get a Pull off. This change makes the arena much easier than it was before – regardless of your build, everyone can now deal with the Stranglers if you choose to focus on them.

... and the rubber banding?... and them pulling you into water that takes 75% of your health?... and how badly the mechanic of 'clear first or die' punishes melee massively?

They are bugged as all hell, and that was last night AFTER the patch. You just have to get lucky with when and where they spawn to get through, because in nearly every try at this arena level you'll be pulled by a boss and then pulled by a strangler straight after if you miss one.

The water hit me for 16K with 20K spell resistance last night at one point... and if you do manage to pull of an instant dodge when pulled, about a third of the time you MUST dodge into an aoe covering the only available land nearby.

Moreover, if the lightning is going of at the time, you are instakilled.

I got through it last night without using any power-ups, but it was bugged and too random to be any fun at all.

byrom101b16_ESO · October 2015

Double Post

byrom101b16_ESO · October 2015

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

@Mursa :

As a consequence, everyone or at least most people will invest in "sure, reliable buffs" such as more magicka/stamina, more spell/weapon damage, more regen. All these leading to one and unique feature : brute force / max DPS, which in turn is the best guaranteed way to bypass the mechanics and design of NOT ONLY this stage of Maelstrom Arena, but ALL mechanics and design of ALL fights in the game, like we all did (even average to mediocre players) with Hiath the Battlemaster and countless other encounters.

Tweak the mechanics, not the players' abilities.

They do this because it's easier to gate content that way.

High health, high dps, one-shot instants, punishing mechnics you cannot use counters for...

... lazy game design, and catering ONCE AGAIN to those who have no life but ESO and [24 hours minus sleep/eat duration] time to play.

tinythinker · October 2015

I think that these teams are pressed by deadlines and sometimes have to make decisions based on what they can do quickest to find a satisfactory resolution for the feel of a level, so I am sure that they *could* rework things to have appropriate challenges that let you use all of your skills but not in time for the initial release of the zone.

An idea that popped into my head a few hours after reading about this issue, which may or may not be good, helpful, or workable for future changes/updates after the Orsinium release, goes like this:

Stranglers have vines that try to snatch you. These vines have large thorns. If you are unable to be moved to the strangler, those thorns rip into your flesh as the vines pull away (with a nice scratching/tearing sound) for a major bleed DoT.

You can choose whether you want to take that DoT and the large amount of damage it inflicts or let your character get yanked around.

Scyantific · October 2015

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

@Mursa :

As a consequence, everyone or at least most people will invest in "sure, reliable buffs" such as more magicka/stamina, more spell/weapon damage, more regen. All these leading to one and unique feature : brute force / max DPS, which in turn is the best guaranteed way to bypass the mechanics and design of NOT ONLY this stage of Maelstrom Arena, but ALL mechanics and design of ALL fights in the game, like we all did (even average to mediocre players) with Hiath the Battlemaster and countless other encounters.

Tweak the mechanics, not the players' abilities.

They do this because it's easier to gate content that way.

High health, high dps, one-shot instants, punishing mechnics you cannot use counters for...

... lazy game design, and catering ONCE AGAIN to those who have no life but ESO and [24 hours minus sleep/eat duration] time to play.

This is exactly the opposite of "catering to the hardcore crowd" as you put it.

anitajoneb17_ESO · October 2015

tinythinker wrote: »

Stranglers have vines that try to snatch you. These vines have large thorns. If you are unable to be moved to the strangler, those thorns rip into your flesh as the vines pull away (with a nice scratching/tearing sound) for a major bleed DoT.

You can choose whether you want to take that DoT and the large amount of damage it inflicts or let your character get yanked around.

Exactly the kind of solution I'd personally like to see considered and eventually implemented, rather than making players' abilities useless on so many case-by-case occasions.

byrom101b16_ESO · October 2015

Scyantific wrote: »

byrom101b16_ESO wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

@Mursa :

As a consequence, everyone or at least most people will invest in "sure, reliable buffs" such as more magicka/stamina, more spell/weapon damage, more regen. All these leading to one and unique feature : brute force / max DPS, which in turn is the best guaranteed way to bypass the mechanics and design of NOT ONLY this stage of Maelstrom Arena, but ALL mechanics and design of ALL fights in the game, like we all did (even average to mediocre players) with Hiath the Battlemaster and countless other encounters.

Tweak the mechanics, not the players' abilities.

They do this because it's easier to gate content that way.

High health, high dps, one-shot instants, punishing mechnics you cannot use counters for...

... lazy game design, and catering ONCE AGAIN to those who have no life but ESO and [24 hours minus sleep/eat duration] time to play.

This is exactly the opposite of "catering to the hardcore crowd" as you put it.

No it isn't - cookie cutting and alt prepping for FOTM is a massive time sink, as is practicing the instance ad nauseam for weeks to get it down months faster than most players... and then there is the usual crappy RNG you have to grind through.

Thank GOD I don't need any gear from the place.

nimander99 · October 2015

Here's what I've learned about boss fights in 18 years of mmo-ing; Boss abilities trump player abilities

Morimizo · October 2015

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

However, if I understand it well, it reads like "we've reduced players' abilities in order to preserve our design of the fight".

.

This was the number one reason for my disgust with the IC base game patch. Nerfing player stats, gear, and (sometimes outright ruining) abilities, while increasing stats and abilities of enemies seems to be the tried and true formula for maintaining interest in an MMO. And like most, I thoroughly enjoy climbing the mud mountain for eons, dreaming of a nice view, when "BAM!" here comes the next update, and the incline is steeper, the muck is deeper, and still no view.

Game should be called,

"Adapt to THIS Online" (voiced by Trinity from The Matrix)

I_killed_Vivec · October 2015

nimander99 wrote: »

Here's what I've learned about boss fights in 18 years of mmo-ing; Boss abilities trump player abilities

And it's not exactly as if this is the first example of a skill "failing".

Some people are playing a very much easier game than I am if they've never seen "Target invulnerable", and I'm talking regular mobs, not even bosses!

nordickittyhawk · October 2015

.

redspecter23 · October 2015

Personally, my change would have been to remove the stranglers altogether as the jagged movement pull is buggy and feels sloppy. Either that or reduce the range at which they can pull so that you aren't being yanked from 20 miles away.