f047ys3v3n wrote: »

From the perspective of a player, without access to subscription statistics, player log data, and other server side data, it is sometimes hard to tell the impact of changes on the player populous. I read the forums, talked with folks in my raid guild, and the opinion was certainly unanimous that people didn't like the sustain changes but to some extent that could be just echo's in an echo chamber or the universal carping about not liking nerfs that you always expect. I was interested therefore to see the actual effect of the changes on scores and runs. I was surprised.

vMA weekly data as a proxy for player performance and engagement
I expected that there would be some drop in vMA weekly scores. Some would be expected even with no major resource nerfs because new content can distract players from their normal activities. Of course, the lure of an open leaderboard after reset and a new trophy at least partially offsets this. Also, vMA runs do not require a group, take relatively little time to do, and few players have all the gear that they need making the 2for1 of weekly runs a regular incentive responded to by many of the same players every week. vMA weekly data therefore seems to me to be the best peice of data about player responses too, and performance under, the new mess of a resource management system. The data completely floored me. It was a bloodbath. 3 of the 4 original classes did not even fill the weekly board on the NA server. NB had only 80, Templar 57, and DK 54 completes. Sorc had all 100 slots filled but dropped about 72k in the cut off score. For reference, I think the last time that the weekly board did not fill was somewhere around a year and a half ago. There have been many events and new content updates since than that did not have any such effects on players doing vMA.

Greater divergence in player performance
While I was genuinely surprised with the magnitude of the effect the changes had on endgame players ability and willingness to do content I was not at all surprised at the magnitude of the divergence in player performance created by the specific nature of the changes. I expected they would have little effect on the top dogs and crush many lesser players and this was certainly the case. In the example of NB's, which I play the most in vMA, the top player lost only 3k from his vMA score whereas, at the bottom of the leaderboard, players who had been at 522k last week apparently rage quit there runs altogether this week. I went from 540k to 480k despite switching some morphs to ones better for vMA (refreshing path and swallow soul) and mainlining expensive pots to the tune of 10k or so. Not only do I think that such massive, systemic resource changes will take much longer for a so-so endgame player to acclimate to but also I think that these changes also complicated the timings of combat making for a magnification of small differences in player performance. In other words, the floor dropped and the ceiling didn't move much. This is counter to the stated goals of ZOS developers but was what I, and others, expected, and explained, in length, on the PTS forum.

Specific problems and thoughts from vMA and other trials
In vMA, most pulls, my strategy was to leave one add clean each pull and full heavy him down. This was much more effective than trying to heavy with several things up. The reason for this is that a full heavy takes a long time and vMA was not designed to have you sit there holding your *** half the time. There are lots of enemy stuns, things that must be blocked, and things you roll dodge. Because only a full heavy returns resources, if any of these things happen, you have to bail, get no resources, and have to try again. This is not really workable. Instead, you just have to contrive these little one add situations where you are unlikely to have your *** holding interrupted. Similarly, it is advisable, on boss fights, to use phases where the boss is incapacitated or little is happening, to hold your ***. Sure, this will feel counter intuitive as you are used to pushing the boss hard when your rotation is unimpeded but believe me, it is best to let the fight take longer, DOT up the boss, and hold left key a while. If you don't believe me try putting it to the boss of arena 7 during that first scream and see how well you do in the time between screams when you run out of juice. As for that final boss fight, good luck with that one, there aren't very nice places to stand there slowly channeling heavies so good luck. You will also likely have some trouble managing stam as odd as that sounds. Also, get ready to drop serious dough on pots. You just can't do anything without them.

In trials that are not vMA there are often stack phases where there is both a lot more support to resources and less stuff to interrupt you *** holding. The biggest problem in these is that when players are rezed after death they are just useless for a while as it will take a long time to get back up to a state of resource management. Well, that is the biggest problem if you are not a healer or tank. Those deaths I had were because a very good tank lost agro do to not having the resources to taunt because those axes in vAA were draining her. Suffice it to say, there seem to be a lot of times when healers can't heal and tanks can't tank.

As for situations with drain resource mechanics like RoM and CoS. Well, I can't play these because I unsubbed but I get a cold shudder when I think about them.

Changes that could minimize the pain while keeping the slower combat less troll builds in PVP idea.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that the two driving factors in the changes were to make troll builds in PVP more difficult to make and to slow the average casts per second in combat in order to alleviate server lag. I know ZOS will never admit to wanting to make combat slower paced and less responsive but I do think this was an actual goal and that it was probably part of the longstanding attempt to make Cyridiil playable. This is me crediting the leadership at ZOS with not being completely brain-dead, God I hope that is true. Along the lines that ZOS has chosen to go on there are some changes that could return PVE to being both fun and playable but still get to slower combat and less PVP trolling through resource restriction of average casts per second.

1) Partially charged heavies received a big damage nerf, 30% relative to light attacks (full charged heavies actually got a buff but that is another thread) but do not return any resources despite this being given as the reason for that damage nerf. They need to return a substantial fraction of the full charged resource return. This would both allow those full heavies you had to bail on to be worth something and also give the player the option of going with a medium weave to maintain sustain at the cost of dps. The (lower) average casts per second sought should not change but combat will be a lot less miserable.

2) Rezed players in PVE have to come back with far more resources. Seriously, this sucks donkey balls. It's like, thanks for taking time out from you busy boss killing to pick me up guys, don't mind me while I stand here for a while being useless.

3) Tanks need a better resource management. I don't know an easy way to do this, keep PVE and PVP the same, and also maintain you anti troll PVP goal. Simply, tanks have to block a lot of stuff in PVE and your changes made it so they basically can't keep resources on fights like vAA where there are many things hitting them. Maybe make the attacks from those things count as mini-attacks as far as block cost goes.

Anyhow, combat is like pulling your own teeth out with pliers while holding your *** to make yourself feel better. You should probably fix that. I'm certainly not spending any more money until you do. What data I can now see seems pretty clear to me that I am not alone in my sentiment.

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

From the perspective of a player, without access to subscription statistics, player log data, and other server side data, it is sometimes hard to tell the impact of changes on the player populous. I read the forums, talked with folks in my raid guild, and the opinion was certainly unanimous that people didn't like the sustain changes but to some extent that could be just echo's in an echo chamber or the universal carping about not liking nerfs that you always expect. I was interested therefore to see the actual effect of the changes on scores and runs. I was surprised.

vMA weekly data as a proxy for player performance and engagement
I expected that there would be some drop in vMA weekly scores. Some would be expected even with no major resource nerfs because new content can distract players from their normal activities. Of course, the lure of an open leaderboard after reset and a new trophy at least partially offsets this. Also, vMA runs do not require a group, take relatively little time to do, and few players have all the gear that they need making the 2for1 of weekly runs a regular incentive responded to by many of the same players every week. vMA weekly data therefore seems to me to be the best peice of data about player responses too, and performance under, the new mess of a resource management system. The data completely floored me. It was a bloodbath. 3 of the 4 original classes did not even fill the weekly board on the NA server. NB had only 80, Templar 57, and DK 54 completes. Sorc had all 100 slots filled but dropped about 72k in the cut off score. For reference, I think the last time that the weekly board did not fill was somewhere around a year and a half ago. There have been many events and new content updates since than that did not have any such effects on players doing vMA.

Greater divergence in player performance
While I was genuinely surprised with the magnitude of the effect the changes had on endgame players ability and willingness to do content I was not at all surprised at the magnitude of the divergence in player performance created by the specific nature of the changes. I expected they would have little effect on the top dogs and crush many lesser players and this was certainly the case. In the example of NB's, which I play the most in vMA, the top player lost only 3k from his vMA score whereas, at the bottom of the leaderboard, players who had been at 522k last week apparently rage quit there runs altogether this week. I went from 540k to 480k despite switching some morphs to ones better for vMA (refreshing path and swallow soul) and mainlining expensive pots to the tune of 10k or so. Not only do I think that such massive, systemic resource changes will take much longer for a so-so endgame player to acclimate to but also I think that these changes also complicated the timings of combat making for a magnification of small differences in player performance. In other words, the floor dropped and the ceiling didn't move much. This is counter to the stated goals of ZOS developers but was what I, and others, expected, and explained, in length, on the PTS forum.

Specific problems and thoughts from vMA and other trials
In vMA, most pulls, my strategy was to leave one add clean each pull and full heavy him down. This was much more effective than trying to heavy with several things up. The reason for this is that a full heavy takes a long time and vMA was not designed to have you sit there holding your *** half the time. There are lots of enemy stuns, things that must be blocked, and things you roll dodge. Because only a full heavy returns resources, if any of these things happen, you have to bail, get no resources, and have to try again. This is not really workable. Instead, you just have to contrive these little one add situations where you are unlikely to have your *** holding interrupted. Similarly, it is advisable, on boss fights, to use phases where the boss is incapacitated or little is happening, to hold your ***. Sure, this will feel counter intuitive as you are used to pushing the boss hard when your rotation is unimpeded but believe me, it is best to let the fight take longer, DOT up the boss, and hold left key a while. If you don't believe me try putting it to the boss of arena 7 during that first scream and see how well you do in the time between screams when you run out of juice. As for that final boss fight, good luck with that one, there aren't very nice places to stand there slowly channeling heavies so good luck. You will also likely have some trouble managing stam as odd as that sounds. Also, get ready to drop serious dough on pots. You just can't do anything without them.

In trials that are not vMA there are often stack phases where there is both a lot more support to resources and less stuff to interrupt you *** holding. The biggest problem in these is that when players are rezed after death they are just useless for a while as it will take a long time to get back up to a state of resource management. Well, that is the biggest problem if you are not a healer or tank. Those deaths I had were because a very good tank lost agro do to not having the resources to taunt because those axes in vAA were draining her. Suffice it to say, there seem to be a lot of times when healers can't heal and tanks can't tank.

As for situations with drain resource mechanics like RoM and CoS. Well, I can't play these because I unsubbed but I get a cold shudder when I think about them.

Changes that could minimize the pain while keeping the slower combat less troll builds in PVP idea.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that the two driving factors in the changes were to make troll builds in PVP more difficult to make and to slow the average casts per second in combat in order to alleviate server lag. I know ZOS will never admit to wanting to make combat slower paced and less responsive but I do think this was an actual goal and that it was probably part of the longstanding attempt to make Cyridiil playable. This is me crediting the leadership at ZOS with not being completely brain-dead, God I hope that is true. Along the lines that ZOS has chosen to go on there are some changes that could return PVE to being both fun and playable but still get to slower combat and less PVP trolling through resource restriction of average casts per second.

1) Partially charged heavies received a big damage nerf, 30% relative to light attacks (full charged heavies actually got a buff but that is another thread) but do not return any resources despite this being given as the reason for that damage nerf. They need to return a substantial fraction of the full charged resource return. This would both allow those full heavies you had to bail on to be worth something and also give the player the option of going with a medium weave to maintain sustain at the cost of dps. The (lower) average casts per second sought should not change but combat will be a lot less miserable.

2) Rezed players in PVE have to come back with far more resources. Seriously, this sucks donkey balls. It's like, thanks for taking time out from you busy boss killing to pick me up guys, don't mind me while I stand here for a while being useless.

3) Tanks need a better resource management. I don't know an easy way to do this, keep PVE and PVP the same, and also maintain you anti troll PVP goal. Simply, tanks have to block a lot of stuff in PVE and your changes made it so they basically can't keep resources on fights like vAA where there are many things hitting them. Maybe make the attacks from those things count as mini-attacks as far as block cost goes.

Anyhow, combat is like pulling your own teeth out with pliers while holding your *** to make yourself feel better. You should probably fix that. I'm certainly not spending any more money until you do. What data I can now see seems pretty clear to me that I am not alone in my sentiment.

Vaoh wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

In vMA, most pulls, my strategy was to leave one add clean each pull and full heavy him down. This was much more effective than trying to heavy with several things up. The reason for this is that a full heavy takes a long time and vMA was not designed to have you sit there holding your *** half the time. There are lots of enemy stuns, things that must be blocked, and things you roll dodge. Because only a full heavy returns resources, if any of these things happen, you have to bail, get no resources, and have to try again. This is not really workable. Instead, you just have to contrive these little one add situations where you are unlikely to have your *** holding interrupted. Similarly, it is advisable, on boss fights, to use phases where the boss is incapacitated or little is happening, to hold your ***. Sure, this will feel counter intuitive as you are used to pushing the boss hard when your rotation is unimpeded but believe me, it is best to let the fight take longer, DOT up the boss, and hold left key a while. If you don't believe me try putting it to the boss of arena 7 during that first scream and see how well you do in the time between screams when you run out of juice. As for that final boss fight, good luck with that one, there aren't very nice places to stand there slowly channeling heavies so good luck. You will also likely have some trouble managing stam as odd as that sounds. Also, get ready to drop serious dough on pots. You just can't do anything without them.

In trials that are not vMA there are often stack phases where there is both a lot more support to resources and less stuff to interrupt you *** holding. The biggest problem in these is that when players are rezed after death they are just useless for a while as it will take a long time to get back up to a state of resource management. Well, that is the biggest problem if you are not a healer or tank. Those deaths I had were because a very good tank lost agro do to not having the resources to taunt because those axes in vAA were draining her. Suffice it to say, there seem to be a lot of times when healers can't heal and tanks can't tank.

As for situations with drain resource mechanics like RoM and CoS. Well, I can't play these because I unsubbed but I get a cold shudder when I think about them.

Changes that could minimize the pain while keeping the slower combat less troll builds in PVP idea.
I am going to go out on a limb and say that the two driving factors in the changes were to make troll builds in PVP more difficult to make and to slow the average casts per second in combat in order to alleviate server lag. I know ZOS will never admit to wanting to make combat slower paced and less responsive but I do think this was an actual goal and that it was probably part of the longstanding attempt to make Cyridiil playable. This is me crediting the leadership at ZOS with not being completely brain-dead, God I hope that is true. Along the lines that ZOS has chosen to go on there are some changes that could return PVE to being both fun and playable but still get to slower combat and less PVP trolling through resource restriction of average casts per second.

1) Partially charged heavies received a big damage nerf, 30% relative to light attacks (full charged heavies actually got a buff but that is another thread) but do not return any resources despite this being given as the reason for that damage nerf. They need to return a substantial fraction of the full charged resource return. This would both allow those full heavies you had to bail on to be worth something and also give the player the option of going with a medium weave to maintain sustain at the cost of dps. The (lower) average casts per second sought should not change but combat will be a lot less miserable.

2) Rezed players in PVE have to come back with far more resources. Seriously, this sucks donkey balls. It's like, thanks for taking time out from you busy boss killing to pick me up guys, don't mind me while I stand here for a while being useless.

3) Tanks need a better resource management. I don't know an easy way to do this, keep PVE and PVP the same, and also maintain you anti troll PVP goal. Simply, tanks have to block a lot of stuff in PVE and your changes made it so they basically can't keep resources on fights like vAA where there are many things hitting them. Maybe make the attacks from those things count as mini-attacks as far as block cost goes.

Anyhow, combat is like pulling your own teeth out with pliers while holding your *** to make yourself feel better. You should probably fix that. I'm certainly not spending any more money until you do. What data I can now see seems pretty clear to me that I am not alone in my sentiment.

I find the whole "combat burn" and "regen phase" or however ZoS's devs termed the two aspects of combat to be tedious and just means half of combat is boring.

We have really high burst damage and really crappy regen, which favors skilled & experienced players - exactly the opposite of what ZoS intended.

LOL.

Not only this, but the new trial vHoF has a ton of resource-draining mechanics.

THE WHOLE TRIAL IS A REGEN PHASE.

No groups besides the absolute, very best will complete this trial in Morrowind (a few groups per platform). The second boss alone will remain unbeaten except for a handful of players.