I think it would be fun, at least from a PvP standpoint, to have 1 class attack, 1 attack from each weapon line, keep the ultimates with some balance, and the rest of the abilities are defensives. Then the name of the game is defending while taking advantage of openings for your attacks.

tunepunk wrote: »

Dymence wrote: »

This thread is where it goes too far people.

I can just about barely put up with all the "nerf x content because it's too hard" threads, but a thread about catering to the absolute skyrim light attack potatoes by reducing the already low amount of skills that we are able to use?

For the love of god, just leave it alone. If you want to play a hack and slash / skyrim game, go play another genre that fits to those needs.

If you like mindless button mashing in a sequential order to win, why don't you play guitar hero instead?

Mindless button mashing? You must be very good at this game.

qsnoopyjr wrote: »

Dymence wrote: »

This thread is where it goes too far people.

I can just about barely put up with all the "nerf x content because it's too hard" threads, but a thread about catering to the absolute skyrim light attack potatoes by reducing the already low amount of skills that we are able to use?

For the love of god, just leave it alone. If you want to play a hack and slash / skyrim game, go play another genre that fits to those needs.

Hack n slash Skyrim game?
Skyrim IS Elder Scrolls
Morrowind IS Elder Scrolls

More popularity than what ESO is currently.
Skyrim wooo hooo, love that game, spent 200 hours plus playing it.
ESO?? It's an MMORPG right? Not as fun as Skyrim. All the fun is sucked out when playing ESO.

In Skyrim... You fight the bears.
In ESO.... You kite the bears.

No one wants to watch you run in circles kiting things.
They want to see the bear maul at you while you fight it back.
Not you running away constantly or you doing circles constantly aiming at the ground, making sure your DoTs are tickling the monster to death.

Sometimes you gotta think, would it be fun to watch. Thats why twich ratings are low, because this game is boring to watch.
Thats why games like GTA twich followers are high, game is fun to watch.

Attacks are simple, the watchers understand what you are doing in GTA, you have a big gun... What else you gonna do??? Some DoTs and magic??? NOPE. You gonna fire a rocket out of it and its gonna blow stuff up.
ESO... attacks are different for watchers, all they see is you aiming at ground, spaming all sorts of skills not sure whats yours whats theirs, they cannot get hyped to whats gonna come next because its just a spam of silly attacks that arent really predictable.

Oh, he's got a sword and shield, he's gonna deliver a crushing blow right??? Whats that??? He did some puffy dark cloud attack? What does that have to do with having a sword and shield? When is he gonna use his sword? Why does he keep spamming all those wierd attacks?
This game makes no sense, silly game. I go back to watching GTA V, game makes more sense. Get in car, run over people, bring out machine gun, machine gun fires. None of this puffy dark cloud spamming with a sword and shield.

ESO falls within the Elder Scrolls universe. That's where it stops. The single player games are completely different from the MMO and they will always be, as it is simply an entirely different genre from the bottom up.

And since when are games about being entertaining to watch? They should be entertaining to play.

Some people prefer to play a game like the classic Elder Scrolls games, others prefer to play a game like ESO. Just because you prefer the former doesn't mean the latter should be changed. I enjoy both games in their own right, but they should stay true to themselves.

Dymence wrote: »

This thread is where it goes too far people.

I can just about barely put up with all the "nerf x content because it's too hard" threads, but a thread about catering to the absolute skyrim light attack potatoes by reducing the already low amount of skills that we are able to use?

For the love of god, just leave it alone. If you want to play a hack and slash / skyrim game, go play another genre that fits to those needs.

This.
I dont even understand the appeal of Skyrim combat system, it was dumbed down into oblivion and isnt any good without mods.
I also dont understand whats wrong with people who think that managing a few skills in "oh so diffcult". I cant imagine a grown-up man (or woman, or any other human being) not being able to press a few buttons... I mean, even toddlers can.

ookami007 wrote: »

Let's face it... ESO is not a true Elder Scrolls game. It's a cheap MMO with Elder Scrolls style graphics and lore. It's NOT an RPG. Period. End of Story. It is an MMORPG, which is a completely different animal. Granted, they do better IMO than many other MMORPGs, but it's still a FAR, FAR cry from a true RPG.

And honestly, that's to be expected. An RPG focuses the story around YOU, the player, because it's a single player game. An MMORPG does some of this - again, ESO does it better than most I feel - but in the end, no one is special because everyone does the same thing. Yes, it's you... huzzah! Yes, it's you who saved King Ashmere ! Yes you're the hero of Daggerfall! But so is everyone else. And when you go into the dark dungeon that everyone fears to kill the evil necromancer, only to find 20 other people there as well, it's not the same.

The main focus of this game is combat, and thus combat needs to be more involved, otherwise we'd all get bored with it. I would love to see more options for combat, but not more button mashing. More options that involved stealth, attacking by surprise, using environment to overcome the boss, etc. You know... RPG stuff.

But in a world built around he participation trophy philosophy, no one stands out. No one is unique. No one is a hero.

I would disagree. TES games arent too roleplay-heavy (in a way that you cant really change the story based on your choices), they tell us a story of a world, and dont provide much options to change it. Most of your choices look like "1)Join Dark Brotherhood 2)Dont join Dark Brotherhood". Compare this to other RPG games, even the older ones, like Vampire: The Masquerade - bloodlines, or their pen-and-paper ancestors... Not much rp freedom, eh? You cant side with Dagoth Ur against the Tribunal, you cant save Lucien Lachance, etc.
Hell, in Oblivion you arent even the main hero - after all, Martin Septim saves the day and youre just helping him.
And that doesnt make the games any worse This is just how TES storytelling works, and of course, mmo genre also puts some limitations.

P.S. If youre interested in roleplaying, TESO actually provides you more opportunities than the rest of TES games, simply because you can play with actual people and not just some bots.

I voted no, and I don't think there's too many skills. I actually wish i had access to all my skills at any given time. This would improve my PvP by miles. For PvE it's much less dependent on needing everything in the tool box. Both styles have a rotation, but in PvP if it's not on your bar, your done. In PvE, your really not getting surprised with all kinds of different builds. Most of the time your going in knowing at least a little of what to expect from a mob or boss.

I think there's a compromise between what OP is asking for and what the staunch defenders are trying to, well...defend.

The bottom line is that this game's combat feels very micro-manage-y, to the point where I often find myself more focused on refreshing dots / aoe than actually fighting the enemy. The simplest rotation in this game is akin to the hardest rotation in other MMOs.

Why is this, exactly? Sustain, animation cancelling, and DoT duration / number. These are the 3 issues that over-complicate combat in this game, from demanding to annoying. It's not a matter of "dumbing it down to Skyrim", it's a matter of making the gameplay reasonable and in-line with other MMOs so that the ceiling isn't doing 800% of the dps of the floor.

First off, sustain. With the morrowind changes, there is now no way to get around having to work in heavy attacks in order to have resources throughout a fight. This "jams up" the already over-crowded rotations and makes it even harder for a player to reach the top dps potential. To be clear, heavy attacking to sustain is only a problem because the other aspects of combat already have such tight timing, and working everything in only leads to mistakes and dps losses.

Next, animation cancelling. I don't care what your stance on it is, bring the concept up to anyone OUTSIDE of this game and they will laugh and call it a garbage fire of an idea. Because it is. In no other game is cancelling attack animations a viable dps strategy, because cancelling the animation actually cancels the attack and makes it not a dps gain. Crazy concept, right? Only in ESO is that not a crazy concept. Animation cancelling furthers the gap between the floor and ceiling because it's not intuitive and exists as a dps gain in literally 0 other western games. It also further contributes to the "busy-ness" of combat, because now your frame-perfect rotation has heavy attacks AND cancelled light attacks.

Finally, DoT durations / numbers. What other game has 8 second dots? Like, seriously? For any particular build in any other MMO, you might have 1 DoT with that short of a duration, but most don't even have that. Most DoTs are minimum 15 seconds in other MMOs, so that you don't have to spend large portions of your combat time just watching timers and refreshing things. I'm using DoTs and ground AoE interchangeably here because they often have the same function in this game, which is another issue but not as huge. In short, having 1 or 2 dots to manage is okay and even standard in an MMO, but when you're trying to watch 3 or 4 with an average duration of 10 seconds, on top of everything else, it makes combat un-fun.


All 3 of these factors come together to over-complicate combat and make the gap between floor and ceiling so stupidly huge. In Rift, a "good" player will generally do 1.5-2x the dps of a bad one. In WoW it might be 2x. In ESO, a "good" player can EASILY do 8x the dps of a bad one at endgame. This is absurd.

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

I think there's a compromise between what OP is asking for and what the staunch defenders are trying to, well...defend.

The bottom line is that this game's combat feels very micro-manage-y, to the point where I often find myself more focused on refreshing dots / aoe than actually fighting the enemy. The simplest rotation in this game is akin to the hardest rotation in other MMOs.

Why is this, exactly? Sustain, animation cancelling, and DoT duration / number. These are the 3 issues that over-complicate combat in this game, from demanding to annoying. It's not a matter of "dumbing it down to Skyrim", it's a matter of making the gameplay reasonable and in-line with other MMOs so that the ceiling isn't doing 800% of the dps of the floor.

First off, sustain. With the morrowind changes, there is now no way to get around having to work in heavy attacks in order to have resources throughout a fight. This "jams up" the already over-crowded rotations and makes it even harder for a player to reach the top dps potential. To be clear, heavy attacking to sustain is only a problem because the other aspects of combat already have such tight timing, and working everything in only leads to mistakes and dps losses.

Next, animation cancelling. I don't care what your stance on it is, bring the concept up to anyone OUTSIDE of this game and they will laugh and call it a garbage fire of an idea. Because it is. In no other game is cancelling attack animations a viable dps strategy, because cancelling the animation actually cancels the attack and makes it not a dps gain. Crazy concept, right? Only in ESO is that not a crazy concept. Animation cancelling furthers the gap between the floor and ceiling because it's not intuitive and exists as a dps gain in literally 0 other western games. It also further contributes to the "busy-ness" of combat, because now your frame-perfect rotation has heavy attacks AND cancelled light attacks.

Finally, DoT durations / numbers. What other game has 8 second dots? Like, seriously? For any particular build in any other MMO, you might have 1 DoT with that short of a duration, but most don't even have that. Most DoTs are minimum 15 seconds in other MMOs, so that you don't have to spend large portions of your combat time just watching timers and refreshing things. I'm using DoTs and ground AoE interchangeably here because they often have the same function in this game, which is another issue but not as huge. In short, having 1 or 2 dots to manage is okay and even standard in an MMO, but when you're trying to watch 3 or 4 with an average duration of 10 seconds, on top of everything else, it makes combat un-fun.


All 3 of these factors come together to over-complicate combat and make the gap between floor and ceiling so stupidly huge. In Rift, a "good" player will generally do 1.5-2x the dps of a bad one. In WoW it might be 2x. In ESO, a "good" player can EASILY do 8x the dps of a bad one at endgame. This is absurd. The game needs built-in safeguards to prevent this, which means either doing something to cap high-end dps or taking steps to better reward more simplistic combat styles

This game needs a learning curve. Many people use light attacks and random mismatched skills because they dont know any better, and since it works for questing, they assume that would work in dungeons, too. The game doesnt teach you anything, and yes, this is a huge problem. I do realize that some players have disabilities or other issues that dont allow them to play their characters 100% effectively, but its a relatively small fraction of playerbase and there are easy and forgiving builds, so its possible to find some workarounds.
The duration of dots is balanced with the the fact that you can only slot 5 abilities+ulti on each bar, and the fact that some of them are only slotted for passive bonus (magelight, etc). You can do decent dps with only 2-3 dots and spamming heavy attacks, thats really not difficult. My main is a healer, and I play dd from time to time (sometimes I dont play it for months) and still manage to do okayish damage.
Speaking of animation cancelling, youre probably misinformed. It has been a thing for ages, in one form or another. I learned about it when I started playing Devil May Cry 3, thats an old PS2 game, and I'm pretty sure its not the first one to introduce this kind of "undocumented feature". If you want mmo-related examples, animation cancelling exists in many games, for example, Blade and Soul, Revelation etc. Ive heard it also works in Leagus of Legends, but dont quote me on that.
That being said, I agree with you about sustain changes. The game shouldnt be balanced around perfect teams, and even pre-Morrowind infinite sustain was only possible for them, not for pugs and casuals.

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

LadyNalcarya wrote: »

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

I think there's a compromise between what OP is asking for and what the staunch defenders are trying to, well...defend.

The bottom line is that this game's combat feels very micro-manage-y, to the point where I often find myself more focused on refreshing dots / aoe than actually fighting the enemy. The simplest rotation in this game is akin to the hardest rotation in other MMOs.

Why is this, exactly? Sustain, animation cancelling, and DoT duration / number. These are the 3 issues that over-complicate combat in this game, from demanding to annoying. It's not a matter of "dumbing it down to Skyrim", it's a matter of making the gameplay reasonable and in-line with other MMOs so that the ceiling isn't doing 800% of the dps of the floor.

First off, sustain. With the morrowind changes, there is now no way to get around having to work in heavy attacks in order to have resources throughout a fight. This "jams up" the already over-crowded rotations and makes it even harder for a player to reach the top dps potential. To be clear, heavy attacking to sustain is only a problem because the other aspects of combat already have such tight timing, and working everything in only leads to mistakes and dps losses.

Next, animation cancelling. I don't care what your stance on it is, bring the concept up to anyone OUTSIDE of this game and they will laugh and call it a garbage fire of an idea. Because it is. In no other game is cancelling attack animations a viable dps strategy, because cancelling the animation actually cancels the attack and makes it not a dps gain. Crazy concept, right? Only in ESO is that not a crazy concept. Animation cancelling furthers the gap between the floor and ceiling because it's not intuitive and exists as a dps gain in literally 0 other western games. It also further contributes to the "busy-ness" of combat, because now your frame-perfect rotation has heavy attacks AND cancelled light attacks.

Finally, DoT durations / numbers. What other game has 8 second dots? Like, seriously? For any particular build in any other MMO, you might have 1 DoT with that short of a duration, but most don't even have that. Most DoTs are minimum 15 seconds in other MMOs, so that you don't have to spend large portions of your combat time just watching timers and refreshing things. I'm using DoTs and ground AoE interchangeably here because they often have the same function in this game, which is another issue but not as huge. In short, having 1 or 2 dots to manage is okay and even standard in an MMO, but when you're trying to watch 3 or 4 with an average duration of 10 seconds, on top of everything else, it makes combat un-fun.


All 3 of these factors come together to over-complicate combat and make the gap between floor and ceiling so stupidly huge. In Rift, a "good" player will generally do 1.5-2x the dps of a bad one. In WoW it might be 2x. In ESO, a "good" player can EASILY do 8x the dps of a bad one at endgame. This is absurd. The game needs built-in safeguards to prevent this, which means either doing something to cap high-end dps or taking steps to better reward more simplistic combat styles

This game needs a learning curve. Many people use light attacks and random mismatched skills because they dont know any better, and since it works for questing, they assume that would work in dungeons, too. The game doesnt teach you anything, and yes, this is a huge problem. I do realize that some players have disabilities or other issues that dont allow them to play their characters 100% effectively, but its a relatively small fraction of playerbase and there are easy and forgiving builds, so its possible to find some workarounds.
The duration of dots is balanced with the the fact that you can only slot 5 abilities+ulti on each bar, and the fact that some of them are only slotted for passive bonus (magelight, etc). You can do decent dps with only 2-3 dots and spamming heavy attacks, thats really not difficult. My main is a healer, and I play dd from time to time (sometimes I dont play it for months) and still manage to do okayish damage.
Speaking of animation cancelling, youre probably misinformed. It has been a thing for ages, in one form or another. I learned about it when I started playing Devil May Cry 3, thats an old PS2 game, and I'm pretty sure its not the first one to introduce this kind of "undocumented feature". If you want mmo-related examples, animation cancelling exists in many games, for example, Blade and Soul, Revelation etc. Ive heard it also works in Leagus of Legends, but dont quote me on that.
That being said, I agree with you about sustain changes. The game shouldnt be balanced around perfect teams, and even pre-Morrowind infinite sustain was only possible for them, not for pugs and casuals.

With 2-3 DoTs and spamming heavy attacks, I can do about 10, maybe 12k dps. Top Tier players can triple that. That's still entirely too much of a gap to call it viable, and there are even vet dungeon groups that would kick you for doing dps that low. Thankfully they're rare, but they exist.

With my current setup of 3-4 dots, (minimal) weaving, and templar jabs / heavy attacks where necessary, I can barely manage 15-16k in a good fight. I'm also CP 380-something and I'm kinda-sorta optimized for Horns (Julianos, precise weapon), but most struggling players are going to have around that much CP or less.

My point is that "okayish damage" isn't really what players should aspire for, and they might even get kicked for it if they want to do harder content. I'm putting in a pretty good deal of effort to manage my current setup, and even after horns I'll do maybe half of the DPS that the "pros" can. That's not all just CP points.

As for animation cancelling, don't misunderstand what I wrote above. Animation cancelling is a great tool for games that have animations that are far slower than player reflexes. It is a good thing. However, it can easily become a bad thing when your cancelled attacks still land for some God-unknown coding reason. That's what is happening in this game. Did Devil May Cry 3 work that way too, where you actually had to cancel attacks midway to do optimal damage? I honestly don't know, I never played the DMC series but traditionally animation cancelling is used for quick maneuvering and defense, not a staple in a dps rotation. That is just pure tedium.

Huh. Im not by all means a top tier dd (like I said, Im a healer), but when I use ele wall+some class dot+spammable, its well above 12k. For example, ele wall+reflective light+sweeps spam on templar, or ele wall+liquid+heavy attacks on sorcs. Stam players have access to stuff like Volley, Caltrops, class dots (like that poison claw thingy on dk), which are very strong on their own. Also, there one really important thing... Its much better to keep up 2 dots than struggling to apply 5. You need to have all your dots ticking at the same time, and if youre applying them too late or too early, youre losing dps.


As for my okayish damage, its okayish in a sense that its good enough to do any content in game without being carried. I'm still like 10k dps or more behind the good dds, but I'm usually sitting at 30-40k, depending on boss. I have decent gear (however, I gave away my only sharp Moondancer staff so its not perfect), but with average gear and low cps it should be possible to reach ~20k or so.
My rotation is very far from perfect, and I'm often struggling to keep it up in fights that involve a lot of movement, like twin bosses in MoL. I also have higher ping than most of my teammates, it often jumps to ~300 and more in trials, so animation cancelling is kinda wonky for me.
And I'm pretty sure that if I can do that with all these issues, anyone can. Its like riding a bicycle, really. If someone teaches you how to dps, its easy. The problem is, the game doesnt expain it, and new players are overwhelmed. They're getting rekt in their first dungeon after facerolling quests, and of course, this is really unfair from their perspective.
But the truth is, this game is pretty easy for the most part. It just lacks learning curve and ingame tutorials.

And yeah, DMC on higher difficulties is a cakewalk once you've mastered jump cancel. You can literally jump the last boss to death (it requires much more precision than weaving attacks in eso, though). The funny thing is, they reintroduced this mechanic in the next game, as a regular character skill.
But my point is, this is not the only game that utilizes this kind of mechanic and of course players are using it to their advantage.

Dymence wrote: »

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

The simplest rotation in this game is akin to the hardest rotation in other MMOs.

Sorry, I couldn't read further than this. Are you being serious right now? Have you even played other MMOs?

When you account for animation cancelling / weaving, bar swapping, and keeping track of 4 or 5 very short duration DoTs, totally serious.

And sure, on paper they're very straightforward, but the timing is extremely precise and unforgiving for everything, along with this game not having a "real" GCD or ability to macro.

I've mostly played Western MMOs, but nothing else I've played is this brutal on the timing and execution. I'd much rather have 10-15 buttons and a 1.5s GCD / 15-30s DoTs than the current system, but I feel like we're drawing away from my point, which is that the current system in place creates the gigantic DPS gap everyone is always complaining about. You want a lower ceiling and higher floor? Get rid of animation cancelling, extend DoT timers, and maybe ease up on the sustain nerf.

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

Dymence wrote: »

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

The simplest rotation in this game is akin to the hardest rotation in other MMOs.

Sorry, I couldn't read further than this. Are you being serious right now? Have you even played other MMOs?

When you account for animation cancelling / weaving, bar swapping, and keeping track of 4 or 5 very short duration DoTs, totally serious.

And sure, on paper they're very straightforward, but the timing is extremely precise and unforgiving for everything, along with this game not having a "real" GCD or ability to macro.

I've mostly played Western MMOs, but nothing else I've played is this brutal on the timing and execution. I'd much rather have 10-15 buttons and a 1.5s GCD / 15-30s DoTs than the current system, but I feel like we're drawing away from my point, which is that the current system in place creates the gigantic DPS gap everyone is always complaining about. You want a lower ceiling and higher floor? Get rid of animation cancelling, extend DoT timers, and maybe ease up on the sustain nerf.

Its not brutal in any way, like I said, I play with sub-optimal ping and still can clear all content. Theres many single-player games that require more precise timing.
Also, if that animation cancelling youre talking about is light attack weaving, then youre not losing much by not using it. My sorc is getting around 2-3k dps with light attack weaves, and without it I'd still be above 30k dps. As for animation cancel in a more general sense, you cant just remove it from the game. ESO combat is more or less fast-paced, and you often need to stop doing whatever you were doing and roll/block/heal. And when you do that, youre actually using animation cancelling. Or when you cast something from off-bar and then immediately swap. Theres simply too many situations where youre using this feature without even thinking about it.
The giant dps gap is related to light attack spam and other stuff like this. And I really cant think of an mmo where its not the case... You cant dps with auto attacks and will be miles behind any decent dd if you try to do so.

I wish we could use 2 more skills.

I hope the OP never play WoW or any MMORPG besides ESO and Guild Wars otherwise he will cry

Kay1 wrote: »

I wish we could use 2 more skills.

I hope the OP never play WoW or any MMORPG besides ESO and Guild Wars otherwise he will cry

I used to play WoW a long time ago, and I recently used to play Rift, which is basically just a nicer-looking version of WoW that, once a upon a time was better, and is now P2W garbage.

Anywho, I find WoW / Rift's combat systems to be much easier than ESO. In WoW / Rift, there are robust DoT / Buff tracking programs that mingle well with the UI (I dislike both foundry and Srendarr's setup, but I use Srendarr for now). There are also DoTs that last reasonable lengths of time, like 15-30 seconds. This alleviates the problem of having to watch your DoTs / AoE like a hawk and constantly refresh them, like you have to do in ESO.

Having a 1.5s GCD slows down the gameplay enough to allow you to actually think about your next move, as you execute the current one. 1s GCD is also fine for most builds / classes / etc once you get used to it. Either way, there's no "weaving" shenanigans to deal with, the GCD is absolute(ish) and the game(s) are built around it. It just makes more sense and adds desperately needed structure.

Also, you can macro things. If there are, say, 7 important instant / channeled abilities, 3 dots, and 2 buffs to maintain, you can usually pear those 7 abilities down to 2 or 3 macros because several have CDs, and the dots are generally long enough not to be difficult to keep track of. So, you've essentially got 8 buttons. Other western MMO / rpg bars have plenty of room for that.

Ultimately, to say that the "standard" western MMO format is better than ESO's way of doing things is completely subjective. However, the "WoW system" is far less hectic and punishing to players who don't want to play with their heads on a swivel / watch timers constantly. It comes down to what you think is fun, and I think all of the rage over 5k dpsers in dungeons shows that the average ESO player doesn't find "timer watching online" to be engaging gameplay.

Crafts_Many_Boxes wrote: »

It comes down to what you think is fun, and I think all of the rage over 5k dpsers in dungeons shows that the average ESO player doesn't find "timer watching online" to be engaging gameplay.

This is a very wild assumption. Why are you so sure they want to light attack? Maybe this is their first mmo and they dont know how rotations and dots work. Maybe theyre convinced that eso dps is extremely difficult (like you, for example). Maybe theyre just not interested in googling builds and the game didnt properly explain them how to dps.