Joy_Division wrote: »

While I agree the devs went too far in nerfing crit in the last "surprise" update for Horns of the Reach, what are the devs supposed to do when in the last cycle of the PTS, it becomes obvious to even the noobest of noobs that something is too strong (i.e Mother Sorrow.)?

There have been patches with last week changes before launching live when we said, "good."

So I don't have a problem with last week changes.

@ZOS_GinaBruno , what I would like to see in the future is more aggressive changes earlier in the process. Too often its clear as day things need to be adjusted the day PTS notes hit (remember the initial Dragon Blood fix?) and yet it's not until week 4 that the updated proposed fix gets put in place. Also, lately ZoS has tended to not release the class specific balance changes, which I'd argue are the most important, until week 3 of the process. The combination of these two gives us little time for the testing and quality feedback you want.

I also think when it's clear as day that a mistake has been made in the last week "surprise" update, this gets fixed in the next maintenance cycle. There is no way the generic "spell damage" mundas stone should have higher critical strike damage than the specific mundas dedicated to critical strike damage, and it is VERY frustrating that gets left in the game for months and months.

My point was less about whether last-minute changes are warranted or not during any given patch. My point was that I believe PTS cycles are done mainly for bug reporting and very rarely for balancing. And I think the major balance upheaval when HoTR launched really displays that.

Like you said, too often the major balance revisions happens when the patch actually goes Live and so players don't get a chance to test it at all. That just wouldn't happen if the Developers were actually relying on player feedback for balancing. Small changes, sure. But major changes like Dragonsblood or the across-the-board nerf to Critical Chance? Those should have been given to players ahead of time.

Furthermore, we're 3 years into the game and ZOS still hasn't managed to get the kinks worked out of PTS templates. We almost never have full access to new sets or current BiS gear on the PTS. So how are we supposed to actually test stuff? If balance feedback was of genuine concern, we would have proper templates with every new set in every trait during each PTS cycle.

Immovablestone wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Totally understand the desire to see changes early and provide feedback, but isn't that basically what the PTS is for? To try the changes before they hit the Live server and provide feedback? Not trying to troll - serious question! If we're only providing a broad overview of what's coming to the PTS without all the details or Dev Comments, then everyone will lack the details that matter and the context, and the feedback may not be accurate. Now, if what you're looking for is the gameplay patch notes early, then that may not be possible as I'm nowhere near finished yet ;D

Posts like this and their tone are an awesome example of why your PR is legendarily bad and more often than not your customers are pissed off at you... You're lucky this company created the video game equivalent of crack to RPG fans, none of you in the relations department will ever work long anywhere else, lol.

Prime example of an ass-hat of which I was referring to. Non-constructive. Generally I'd just look at a comment like this and gloss over it. C'mon, are you pissed at them? Why? what is your issue with the current state of affairs? How could they improve upon this? It's easy as hell to destroy something, but much harder to build something up. Don't just be a lazy jacknob.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Totally understand the desire to see changes early and provide feedback, but isn't that basically what the PTS is for? To try the changes before they hit the Live server and provide feedback? Not trying to troll - serious question! If we're only providing a broad overview of what's coming to the PTS without all the details or Dev Comments, then everyone will lack the details that matter and the context, and the feedback may not be accurate. Now, if what you're looking for is the gameplay patch notes early, then that may not be possible as I'm nowhere near finished yet ;D

The PTS being a testing ground to provide feedback on changed before things go live would seem to be the goal.

In practice though, I am not sure I have seen much response to that feedback. For example all take only problem changes that were large enough in disruptive effect to cost you all at least $100k:

1) The forums reaction to, and predictions of, champion points, were unanimous and dead on. Masses of players did quit because of the grind, you wasted lots of resources trying to track down grind spots that were effective or AFK, players were impeded from returning because they felt behind and useless, serious players did become way OP relative to casuals, and balance was generally messed up. You have now spent many patches and years effectively trying to remove CP through turbo leveling people, capping it, and nerfing it. You still had enough of an issue to turn it off in your new battlegrounds. Champ points cost millions and the warning from the players on the PTS was unanimous that it would do this but no changes were made.

2) Ditto champ points balance problems for softcap removal though the "solution" to this seems to be to go ability by ability and just effectively turn off scaling so that the abilities have a flat magnitude for a level 50 toon.

3) The weapon trait re-balancing in imperial city was seen totally ineffective on the forums and the numbers were provided for this. This was not addressed again for something like a year and a half. Ironic since not much time would elapse after that before re-traiting with this update will make the whole subject mute. (Ok, this one probably didn't cost you $100k but it was hella-pathetic)

4) The forums saw PVP cancer proc sets with the one tamriel update bigtime. Instead of squaring that away then ZOS waited until I think morrowind to substantially address it (There was an earlier comically mishandled no-crit change that still screws up other things). At that point, more than a half year later, you are really too late. Everyone has invested in the gear and build that is going that way and everyone who hated it has quit.

5) The forums warned you about the problems that would be caused heavy mechanics combat and with peoples general PVE playing experience when you implemented that mass resource nerf. The response was actually to make a bigger mess further screwing up heavy/light attack scaling such that heavy infernos now take 1.7 seconds but animate to 2.2, and yield resources but actually didn't get the intended compensatory 15% damage nerf but rather got a damage buff by retaining the full 2.2 seconds worth of scaled damage at 1.7 seconds. Partially charged heavies meanwhile got the damage nerf but yield no resources making them totally without value. All of this heavily depopulated your endgame guilds and leaderboards because many, like me, think that it makes combat very clunky and also exponentially harder to do well. This has all been left in place for several PTS servers despite the carnage. I expect, addressing it is somewhere in the ZOS 1 year que.

I should not say that I don't see response to the PTS. This is not strictly accurate. I do see response on a 1-1.5 year time scale with comical regularity. The time scale for that sort of response should be 1-1.5 weeks. You should be able to significantly tweak things during your 1-2 month pts time for new content. It is imperative that you do that. When you change things 1 year later to address a poor choice you often do more harm than good as far as player happiness goes as people long ago adjusted or quit. I often wonder what good the PTS actually does as it doesn't appear that changes can actually be made in a less that 1 year time frame regardless of how poor the decision is and how dramatic it's consequences.

Here is to hoping but not expecting we get some heavy/light attack scaling fixes with the EU update. The new content is pretty, atmospheric, and the quests are nice and even pretty funny. It is a nice update as far as the solo play stuff goes.

@Feanor

... Maybe its the transmutation system? Kinda how they didn't have all the sources of acquisition in place?