If class balance is supposed to be a rolling sea they are doing great!

Overall yes, we're in a better (more balanced) place than we've been in some past builds.

However some of the changes made to get there have taken away from or altered ESO in a way not always popular.

Yes and No, there are good changes, but they are overshadowed by stuff that shouldnt exist at a game with relatively fast combat (cast times I'm looking at you)

I wouldn't dichotomize it into yes or no. I feel like they make coarse adjustments where fine adjustments would be more advantageous at times.

Balance is a mythical creature that we wont see, and if we did it would scenery on the side of the road we glanced at as we sped past it on our way to our next point of imbalance. The ultimate responsibility, and ability, to move us closer to or further away from balance lies with ZOS, but I dont expect them to ever hit the mark.

Their goal of getting their players to create alts is working perfectly. Keep them spending money

As everyone else already stated, my main issues are:

1. They don't play the game
2. They take a scorched earth approach to balancing, even when it isn't needed

They are overcorrecting with most changes.

Take nightblades for example, most had begun using Refreshing Path over Twisting Path again after Summerset. Not because Refreshing was so much better, but because new mechanics (particularly in Cloudrest) necessitated the self and group healing. I understand the action of widening the damage difference between Twisting and Refreshing to make it a harder decision which morph to choose, and 10-20% change in damage would have been a good starting point. Instead Refreshing Path received a 100% removal of damage. There’s no tough choice now, really no options at all. If you are a DD you must take Twisting, if you are a NB healer you must take Refreshing.

They did nearly the same thing for Funnel Health, by cutting its damage by 50%. They could have achieved a much better result by reducing it by 10-20%, which would have made DD’s choose between more damage or more utility (much like Crushing Shock vs Force Pulse). But nope, it had to be fixed with a sledgehammer, in such a way that no DD will ever slot Funnel Health.

Look at the latest shield nerfs. It is debatable whether or not shields were overperforming, but assuming they were the values could have been adjusted slightly. Instead what did we get:
- Crittable shields
- Delayed shields
- Shields consume 2 GCDs
- Shields can be interrupted (later partially walked back in PvP only)
- Shields force user to drop block, making them bulnerable to stuns and other mechanics (good luck shielding while blocking that incoming meteor)

And the only counterbalance to all this was that shields get added resistance, which is low for a light armor user, generally less than an opponents penetration in PvP.

Remove cast time.

Turelus wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

As everyone else already stated, my main issues are:

1. They don't play the game
2. They take a scorched earth approach to balancing, even when it isn't needed

I really don't want to start a massive debate in the thread but this one always bugs me because it's demonstrably false.
Rich plays the game and as the creative director has a lot of say over these changes. Other ZOS staff have confirmed in the past they play, with a number sharing their experiences of play on social media.
I could concede on that maybe they don't mainly play X with Y class, but can we please stop spreading the misinformation that they don't play the game.

Well honestly... They don't. Not to the same degree needed to make the changes they try to make.

Rich does vMA and stuff like but I'm fairly sure that most the devs are very casual players which is part of why ZOS is always making changes that cater to casuals.

They are largely ignorant of anything other than casual play. And that's what the class reps are for!

NyassaV wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

As everyone else already stated, my main issues are:

1. They don't play the game
2. They take a scorched earth approach to balancing, even when it isn't needed

I really don't want to start a massive debate in the thread but this one always bugs me because it's demonstrably false.
Rich plays the game and as the creative director has a lot of say over these changes. Other ZOS staff have confirmed in the past they play, with a number sharing their experiences of play on social media.
I could concede on that maybe they don't mainly play X with Y class, but can we please stop spreading the misinformation that they don't play the game.

Well honestly... They don't. Not to the same degree needed to make the changes they try to make.

Rich does vMA and stuff like but I'm fairly sure that most the devs are very casual players which is part of why ZOS is always making changes that cater to casuals.

They are largely ignorant of anything other than casual play. And that's what the class reps are for!

They're probably never going to clock up the hours that we do as players, but the myth they don't know what they're doing because they don't play is false. If you consider completing veteran trials and DLC dungeons as casual then I think we see very different views of casual play.
They've even spoken/shared PvP experience before, I've seen them sharing battlegrounds scores on Twitter in the past so they do play and PvP.
Also what about Gilliam, isn't he now part of the combat team and would you say he's been a casual player?

The point I am trying to make is that "ZOS doesn't play the game" is an easy slander you can say but does nothing but spread misinformation and fuel fires. If people have issues with changes they need to focus on that rather than statements which only spread more misinformation.

There also comes a point where listening to players (and class reps) isn't good for the games health or the game they want. If we had ZOS balance around everything the class reps wanted for example it would be very specific to one groups views of how the game should be played. People may not like catering to casual or non-endgame players but they are part of the community and need to have their views also seen and addressed.

I won't argue that ZOS doesn't do stupid changes from time to time or go full on smashing apart things to try and fix them, just that when we do engage in conversations like this one we stop and try to focus on issues rather than spreading misinformation and slandering them.

I voted yes! Overall they have been doing great. Sure some classes or abilities take an a** whoopin' every now and then but it's whatever.

PLAY ON!

Turelus wrote: »

Overall yes, we're in a better (more balanced) place than we've been in some past builds.

However some of the changes made to get there have taken away from or altered ESO in a way not always popular.

No we aren't.

The reason I say no is that, yet again, they are making sweeping changes that no one can possibly foresee and resolve all the consequences of before this goes live. This may be very cynical, but how did the 1s cast time, now reverted, make it into the original patch? Are they really so clueless as to not see that, aside from actual problems caused, that simply sucks the joy out of the gameplay? Was it planned from the beginning to revoke this, so everyone would complain about that and their other whims fly under the radar? It's fine to see the class rep system in action. It's not fine to see the numerous mentions of things left undiscussed for lack of time.

Balancing the game is not even their objective, whether ZOS realise it themselves or not. Balancing might mean that you work around the edges until you have all existing mechanics smoothed out, and adjusted all the existing armor sets, without adding anything new. That's not their business model. This is not a subscription-required game. They need to sell new stuff. Thus every patch we get new armor sets that up the ante, such as Soldier of Anguish and Spell Strategist, while many old sets have become irrelevant. It is not in ZOS' interest to balance the game such that your current character and playstyle remains competitive. Whether it's conscious, I don't know, but their business model includes people chasing the new meta and letting the players find the new OP stuff every patch. I wouldn't say this, if they, for example, had nerfed Sloads a week after Summerset going live. But they don't do that. They never do. They only balance old imbalances with the next major patch that includes the next "unforeseen" imbalances.

Turelus wrote: »

NyassaV wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

As everyone else already stated, my main issues are:

1. They don't play the game
2. They take a scorched earth approach to balancing, even when it isn't needed

I really don't want to start a massive debate in the thread but this one always bugs me because it's demonstrably false.
Rich plays the game and as the creative director has a lot of say over these changes. Other ZOS staff have confirmed in the past they play, with a number sharing their experiences of play on social media.
I could concede on that maybe they don't mainly play X with Y class, but can we please stop spreading the misinformation that they don't play the game.

Well honestly... They don't. Not to the same degree needed to make the changes they try to make.

Rich does vMA and stuff like but I'm fairly sure that most the devs are very casual players which is part of why ZOS is always making changes that cater to casuals.

They are largely ignorant of anything other than casual play. And that's what the class reps are for!

They're probably never going to clock up the hours that we do as players, but the myth they don't know what they're doing because they don't play is false. If you consider completing veteran trials and DLC dungeons as casual then I think we see very different views of casual play.
They've even spoken/shared PvP experience before, I've seen them sharing battlegrounds scores on Twitter in the past so they do play and PvP.
Also what about Gilliam, isn't he now part of the combat team and would you say he's been a casual player?

The point I am trying to make is that "ZOS doesn't play the game" is an easy slander you can say but does nothing but spread misinformation and fuel fires. If people have issues with changes they need to focus on that rather than statements which only spread more misinformation.

There also comes a point where listening to players (and class reps) isn't good for the games health or the game they want. If we had ZOS balance around everything the class reps wanted for example it would be very specific to one groups views of how the game should be played. People may not like catering to casual or non-endgame players but they are part of the community and need to have their views also seen and addressed.

I won't argue that ZOS doesn't do stupid changes from time to time or go full on smashing apart things to try and fix them, just that when we do engage in conversations like this one we stop and try to focus on issues rather than spreading misinformation and slandering them.

I just get the feeling that, with Gilliam there, instead of fine tuning, they have used the additional manpower to produce one of the biggest sledgehammer patches in a while. I don't play magsorc, and I don't like going up against certain sorcs in PvP, but even I can see they've been smashed to bits. It's like they generated all these ideas and, instead of carefully weighing the options, they implemented them all. I consider shields on the other magicka classes quite balanced (can only speak for PvP and vMA). Every time I see shields being tampered with, I see endless discussions about sorcs and shield stacking, yet ZOS continue to hit all magicka classes with shield changes.