Lord_Dexter wrote: »

Xsorus wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Update 13 has been out on the PTS for almost a week now and there’s been a lot of good feedback and questions posted with regards to the balance changes. I wanted to take a few moments to briefly discuss the overall direction for these changes so you can hopefully start to see why these changes are occurring.

For Update 13, our overall goal was to lessen the gap between the top and bottom. (in terms of overall damage output, coordinated vs. uncoordinated, small and large scale PVE & PVP) This doesn’t mean all classes are perfectly equal in all ways or that we want to remove skill from the game. We want to establish a solid baseline so that we can better tune and tweak balance. For this update we attacked this problem from multiple angles by doing the following:

1. Lowering the ceiling on the top damage
2. Raising the floor on the bottom damage
3. Simplifying some of the more intense rotations to make them a bit easier for players of all skill levels

Some of you will probably ask how the above goals translate into the changes we made. Here are some notes on a couple of the more hotly debated ones so you can see how they fit into the bigger picture:

• Proc Sets – This change falls directly into the “lower the ceiling” category for both PVP and PVE. We wanted to reduce the overall burst potential without dramatically lowering sustain. There have been a lot of comments on this change, specifically from the PVP side where sets not critting will not help because of the Impenetrable trait - Impen does not reduce the chance of being crit - it reduces the damage of the crit that hits you.
• Stun Removal on Blazing Spear – This change falls into the “simplify” category. We increased the duration of the damage on this ability to simplify the rotation. In addition we removed the stun component. Now the morph choices are more damage or more resources and disorient. (CC)
• Radiant Destruction – This one is definitely in the “lower the ceiling” category. It was strong in both PVE and PVP and needed adjustment.
• Haunting Curse – This one falls into the “simplify” category. The goal was to free up globals for more abilities to be cast with this change. (i.e. – every 10.5 seconds you get to use 3 more abilities) @Alpheu5 has a pretty great image that illustrates this change in this thread.

I didn't touch on every change or class, but I hope that sheds some light into how and why we've made some of the changes we've made. We have a lot more balance changes planned, but due to how our build cycle works, most of them won't make the next PTS build - they should hopefully make PTS3 though.

It should also be noted that what is on PTS now is our first pass at these changes. We’re evaluating all of them and will make adjustments based on both feedback and data collected, so please continue to test them on PTS and give feedback.

-rich

Explain why Destro Ult got a 3% damage buff with Lightning Staff?

AOE damage is reduced while hitting multiple targets,

Actually the AoE caps got a nerf, so destro ulti will be doing more damage to more targets next patch (plus the additional 3% overall buff with lightning staff)

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

1. Lowering the ceiling on the top damage

Sorry @ZOS_RichLambert but in term of destro ultimate the logic doesn't check out!

Agree with others suggestion of changing Daedric Prey to Haunting Curse. And keep the pet damage. This would make it a viable morph for PvE players (small damage improvement - 3 animations gained), and boost pet sorc damage in PvP at the same time.

I still would pick Velocious, but at least it would make Deadric Prey a viable alternative.

@ZOS_RichLambert if you are serious about closing the gap between the floor and ceiling regarding damage/healing output, you need to take a hard look at the Champion system. You can change all CP increments to .1% which would cause the maximum benefit from any CP pool to be 10% instead of 25%.

Some PvE difficulty may need tweaked after making that change but the game would be healthier overall.

WaTeR-aBuSeR wrote: »

Random question: Where's Wrobel? Doesn't he do ability balance?

He's not treated with much respect here so I reckon he's letting Rich do the public appearances.

Nifty2g wrote: »

silky_soft wrote: »

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

[*] Lowering the ceiling on the top damage
[*] Raising the floor on the bottom damage
[*] Simplifying some of the more intense rotations to make them a bit easier for players of all skill levels
[/list]


-rich

You what mate? You want to take skill away so that bad people can artificially improve their dps? You do know handing out participation awards is more damaging then doing nothing? Some of us spend hours perfecting rotations for pve and pvp. Buffing and nerfing skills is part of the mmo, but if your actual goal is to reduce skill required to pull off complex combos. You guys are heading the wrong direction.

You still can, they're just wanting to give options to the average player that don't put hours into testing. It's not as if a top 1% player will suddenly be on the same level as some fresh CP player. The patch reduced a very little amount of complex combos, mainly the curse 3.5second combo and what not.

That said though, from this they are asking for help from players, and want to buff/nerf some stuff or make changes, maybe we should get them videos instead of just typing not many people are streaming this pts

They are probably not streaming because the vast majority of times any suggestions have been ignored.

And from what was posted they want new players to = veteran players. This is exactly what was posted.

I use to defend alot of things but it is becoming impossible. Why make changes that nobody wants? Who wanted ultimate cut in half? This will not help new players be equal to veteran but this is what they said they wanted to happen.

Nobody wants pet builds with how pets work in this game.

hassubhai wrote: »

As someone who plays exclusively plays pvp games i can tell you one things which must remain to keep the pvp successful there is one factor. That factor is skill, skill difference is what makes pvp. The entire reason players even pit themselves against eachother is as a test of skill. Ofcourse this isnt the case for some on and off pvp players but anyone who has any serious interest in pvp values skill difference over anything else.


So why are we catering towards new players, for what reason? I seriously am missing the logic and would be extremely grateful if zos could explain why they want to lower the skill ceiling and floor. Nothing good ever comes from oversimplifying. Make things require skill and effort, i seriously just dont understand why anyone would think that a new non experienced player should win a fight vs a much better player just because of their armour or how forgiving the game mechanics are.

If i read it right, the idea is that if floor and ceiling are too far apart, quick boom dead kills by top 10% bottom v 50% has major impact on whether sufficient numbers keep coming in and staying since very lopsided fights over quick not fun. Strangles flow of players into game pvp side. Also, if top tier content to challenge top 10% obliterates bottom 50% same thing.

Contrast to if ceiling to floor is too close, so top 10% vs bottom 50% is very competitive, apparantly some top tier will get upset too.

So they want to find sweet spot where top 10 v bottom 50 still give enough wins to protect top 10 egos and fights last l9ng enough for bottom 50 to see point in continuing. Same for high end pve, if it seems like you were in the fight but not quite enough, more lure to improve and come back than a squish dead see ya bye.

Winning squashes in seconds against anyone weaker may be fun for some but not all.

Winning tough close more competitive battles against those same may be more fun for more folks.

Why not "simplify" another, useless morph, of Daedric Curse? The one with pets damage or whatever? Don't change velocious curse, please!

ZOS_RichLambert wrote: »

Betheny wrote: »

Gamers who need things "simplified" shouldn't be playing games!

So because i'm an older gamer and slower... I shouldn't be playing games? That's a pretty narrow view don't you think?

Hi @ZOS_RichLambert

Most of the EU players know me by Steffi_K. I mained a DC Khajit StamBlade and played about 8 Chars in my whole playtime.
With her I played through the whole story and pve content and had really good times.
I skipped most of the boring pve stuff after I got my first blood in pvp. ^^
I finished gold and by that time I learned how to cancel my animations with bash and how to pvp not day in 3 seconds in pvp.

*cough* impenetrable *cough* . I really enjoyed IC and I think the change to losing 50% of your TelVar stones really filled the IC with players again. Thanks for that. And the other changes too so far. But!

And here is where I don't want to mean any offense about you age or skill level. I train with people from my "social guild" everyday and try to teach them more about the game and what I know. Just to help them get better and enjoy pvp a bit more. @obiz and @onkeluwe :P

But I and many other very good pvp and pve players in my guilds see the changes that you make to the combat and skill system with worries. I personally think you should fix those long time bugs (lag, stuck animations, the long list of bugs in the countless threads in the forum, lag in non cyrodil areas when more then 10 people are fighting, and so on...) in the game first and then patch more content in. Not because we can't adapt. But our skill that we trained so hard for is replaced by combos like one skill and 3 OP sets. No skill required at all.

If you want to know what I mean by I can either invite you into my dueling guild or do a fair duel with you. Heck I even run a dungeon with you if you want. *chough* "pvewallweakend" next patch. kinda *chough*

So I don't enjoy cyrodil that much at the moment because I get killed by really new players using the most op and broken sets together with the most fotm class. And yes I know its a l2p thing. I dueled and played pvp for about 3 straight weeks now and I am still learning new stuff every day from trying things out or talking to people all kind of different people.
And it is so sad sometimes when I have to explain to some older age player, the oldest member if 70+ (my best wishes for him), that the player that killed him not won because he was more skilled or had more experience. No I had to explain that he killed us with the veli viper widow you name it. Or was using a tank setup with blessed, evasion and fasalla build and was tanking like 2 and a half decent players.

Damn this post is becoming too long. I have so much more to write (no cc for templars anymore?, buff a already strong magdk and pet sorc? I really have so many more questions and I am really hoping that you read this and maybe even give me a reply.

And I hope that you maybe try and listen to us players more because many care about that game more that you may think.
Or even go so far and try to incorporate (or is it include) the most of the time really awesome community of the game into direction where the game is going. Some voting system for upcoming changes maybe? I don't really know but I have many ideas about the balance problems and the bugs in the game.

Alright I need to go to sleep and have written far more than I wanted.


Much appreciated if have read though that "thingofthoughts?" "open letter from a fan?" <- I kinda like that one ^^

Steffi_K


tldr: Read my text wall or come and play with us, bring the developers and the management together and we show you what we have to deal with everyday in pvp and pve.

edit: formating
edit2: or we could to a bit live ama with known players?

I think the point of the VC change is to prevent noobs from getting burst to zero in 3.5 seconds in pvp, which makes more sense than the other round about reasons i've been reading here, but less sense than not properly addressing proc sets which will still burst down players in 2.


¯\_(ツ)_/¯

timidobserver wrote: »

He said they nerfed proc sets to "reduce overall burst potential". Burst doesn't matter in PvE, which means that the proc set nerf is 100% a PvP issue.

That is true, I will give you that. The explanation for the proc set change just didn't make any sense at all. To sum up... proc sets were nerfed in PVP and PVE to "lower the ceiling" (proc sets actually raise the floor by allowing for one button free burst damage so this doesn't make any sense, if anything it is lowering the floor) and Impen lowers crit damage not crit chance (again how that is relevant to lowering the ceiling or whatever is beyond me, really just further pointing out what a poor change it was if you ask me). I was speaking more to the other changes mentioned.