How to balance the PvP in ESO better? Its really just common sense. I've been holding onto this post for a while but with Wheeler taking over the combat team, I'm hoping that these insights might get some love from the Devs and the community. Here goes -
Problem: PvP and PvE need to be balanced separately. ESO overwhelmingly fails to do this.
Explanation: The core aspects of really fun PvE and really fun PvP are essentially opposite. In PvE, you want to feel like the hero - and you should feel ridiculously powerful (in PvE!)when you gear properly and fire off your moves right. Wading though hordes of enemies pulling off amazing damage explosions (single and multi-target) and feeling nearly immortal when gearing defensively are all parts of PvE. These same mechanics are essentially imbalanced and make for terrible PvP when given the same randomness, up-times, or chain-ability. In PvP the player wearing the perfect gear combined with the perfect skill mechanics to repeatedly massacre groups of others and/or survive indefinitely, or (commonly) both unless someone has slotted the obscure and niche' set of gear and abilities to counter that player (and pretty much only that player) is only fun for the one, while they many decide that PvP is not fun.
Suggested Solution: Implement changes so that many more skills, effects, CP, racial bonuses, and set bonuses react differently in PvP zones than they do in PvE zones. Why ZoS hasn't done more of this from the start blows my mind. It's such a basic and critical concept to having good competition in MMO games.
Problem:This game is a balancing nightmare because the Devs are essentially trying to balance 3 different games at the same time. PvE, No-Cp PvP Battlegrounds, CP-PvP Cyrodiil. Let's just pretend that they aren't even trying to create any balance for Non-Cp PvP Cyrodiil, Sub-50 Pvp, and CP-PvP dueling.
Explanation: Trying to balance all of these would require such a large team and so much time that it would be a waste of resources better applied with lower opportunity cost.
Suggested Solution: Pick one PvP system and stick to it! If possible, balance Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds separately, balance PvE separately (as stated above). Don't bother with trying to balance any of the other pvp modes unless your team (and most of the community) is happy with the way the game plays in Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds. Tweak both of these modes around a core compromise of CP/sets/skill design.
Problem: AE abilities should not be more effective than Single Target abilities. AE abilities are prevalent in the current game's meta. Many AE abilities are spammed for single target damage, because they are both more effective and easier to land than their single target counterparts.
Explanation: Why are the moves that require you to be in the right range while facing the right direction and actually keeping your cursor on your intended target so often so much less effective than spammable AE? There is a great place for AE abilities in competitive MMO games when they are implemented well. One of the core concepts to making AE damage abilities viable competitively is to make them better situationally - in particular, better for killing groups of people than single targets and when used hazards or traps for area control. For competitive healing (in PvP not PvE!), one healer should not be able to passively heal an entire team while spamming self heals. They should be forced to chose who's going to live or die, even if it occasionally means self sacrifice.
Suggested Solution: For most AE Damage abilities the abilities should increasingly scale in strength based off of the number of players hit. For Healing, the opposite should be true. This denies zergs and forces players to observer positioning. Keep in mind that there should be caps and floors, and mechanics (like forcing the caster to stay alive long enough to achieve the effect) to prevent Kamikaze tactics (unless intended) Nobody wants to see the game turn into one big massive mess of Vicious Death bombers. There are many possible ways of implementing this with actual imagination -like bouncing projectiles, arcing projectiles, abilities that gain strength as a they pass through opponents in a straight line, rebounding projectiles, rearming effects, etc.
Problem: How do you figure out what actually is OP, broken, or needs improvement when balancing PvP? What is actually a problem, what is a problem but most people haven't figured it out yet, and what seems like a problem but really isn't because players haven't all caught on to the counter play yet.
Explanation: The community is full of biased players (we ALL love our favorite classes and think THOSE guys are OP, but MY guys need buffs). Players also knee-jerk with complaints, and eventually it becomes such a mess that its hard to really figure out what really needs change and how.
Suggested Solution: Host official ZoS tournaments with superficial but exclusive rewards for the winners. If you really want to get reliable data on what is broken, and have something to point to when people complain about changes, host tournaments which give players a reason to pull out all the stops and do everything capable within the current game system to win.
As the "Combat Balance" Producer, plan 2 days to have a team based BG night, and Guild v Guild night where teams in BG's compete for winner and every guild who wants to fight in Cyroidiil gets a keep, team with the most wins in BG wins, Guild with the most keeps controlled in Cyrodiil after a certain amount of time wins. Make it a Twitch event. Make some money!
If your are a Dev reading this (which means that the magical unicorn didn't lie to me when it granted me that one wish) then I thank you for your time and consideration.
Edited by jediodyn_ESO on January 21, 2019 3:28AM