But at the end of the day, are the races fairly balanced? (PVE)

Kalle_Demos · February 2019

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Here's the stated goal from the lead developer, which has been up for months. Please note the "When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role". The key word is any here which also implies every role and is thus universal. Even if they didn't say they wanted all races to do all roles the very fact that a race has passives which benefit in some way to all major roles (tank/dps/heal) and another only has passives which benefit a select number of them indicates that the races are, in fact, not balanced.

You are misinterpreting that statement. It is not about "I've selected a race and should be able to play it as any role". It is "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role". And in this regard the update is a success.

If your given gameplay role is tank, Imperial, Nord and Argonian are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is magicka DD, Altmer, Breton, Dunmer and Kajiit are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is stamina DD, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Kajiit, Dunmer and even Imperial are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is healer Breton, Altmer or Argonian are effective choices.

This is the goal that was being solved and it was solved. Which only reinforces my interpretation, since yours was indeed a complete miss. It was not what ZOS was solving. People who were hoping that somehow all races would make competitive tanks or mag DDs were building their own dreamcastles while ignoring the reality that was happing outside.

ZOS failed to accomplish most if not all of the goals they claimed to aim for. If that was really what they wanted. Your statement: "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role" that is how it is now on live. I don't see your point or what you are trying to argue.

If you interpret ZOS as trying to make options better then that was failed as well. As it is on live now Altmer and Dunmer compete for the top DPS with trade-offs for each. Now Breton is the clear winner, with Healing as well. Before there were two options for Stealth game play but with Bosmer losing their stealth bonus, a change contrary to lore and integral to Bosmer racial identity (more failed goals), Khajiit remains the only option.

Orc now also outshines it's competition. Diversity has been made even worse on multiple levels with Lore and racial identity being trashed in the process with passives that have limited applicability. All of this is the inverse of what ZOS said they wanted.

Seraphayel · February 2019

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Here's the stated goal from the lead developer, which has been up for months. Please note the "When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role". The key word is any here which also implies every role and is thus universal. Even if they didn't say they wanted all races to do all roles the very fact that a race has passives which benefit in some way to all major roles (tank/dps/heal) and another only has passives which benefit a select number of them indicates that the races are, in fact, not balanced.

You are misinterpreting that statement. It is not about "I've selected a race and should be able to play it as any role". It is "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role". And in this regard the update is a success.

If your given gameplay role is tank, Imperial, Nord and Argonian are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is magicka DD, Altmer, Breton, Dunmer and Kajiit are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is stamina DD, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Kajiit, Dunmer and even Imperial are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is healer Breton, Altmer or Argonian are effective choices.

This is the goal that was being solved and it was solved. Which only reinforces my interpretation, since yours was indeed a complete miss. It was not what ZOS was solving. People who were hoping that somehow all races would make competitive tanks or mag DDs were building their own dreamcastles while ignoring the reality that was happing outside.

Agreed. Shifted meta to make money. The house always wins.

Care to elaborate which meta shifted?

Royaji · February 2019

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Here's the stated goal from the lead developer, which has been up for months. Please note the "When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role". The key word is any here which also implies every role and is thus universal. Even if they didn't say they wanted all races to do all roles the very fact that a race has passives which benefit in some way to all major roles (tank/dps/heal) and another only has passives which benefit a select number of them indicates that the races are, in fact, not balanced.

You are misinterpreting that statement. It is not about "I've selected a race and should be able to play it as any role". It is "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role". And in this regard the update is a success.

If your given gameplay role is tank, Imperial, Nord and Argonian are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is magicka DD, Altmer, Breton, Dunmer and Kajiit are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is stamina DD, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Kajiit, Dunmer and even Imperial are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is healer Breton, Altmer or Argonian are effective choices.

This is the goal that was being solved and it was solved. Which only reinforces my interpretation, since yours was indeed a complete miss. It was not what ZOS was solving. People who were hoping that somehow all races would make competitive tanks or mag DDs were building their own dreamcastles while ignoring the reality that was happing outside.

Agreed. Shifted meta to make money. The house always wins.

Yeah, making all races that were at least somewhat leaning towards an aspect be competitive in this aspect and giving out three free race changes is exactly how you make tons of money...

Seraphayel · February 2019

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Diversity has been made even worse on multiple levels with Lore and racial identity being trashed in the process with passives that have limited applicability. All of this is the inverse of what ZOS said they wanted.

The only difference might be variety in Stealth races as Bosmer has been ripped of that aspect. Everything else is exactly the same except the two new "hybrid" races that give one more option for Stamina (Dunmer) and Magicka (Khajiit). Besides that nothing changed.

Your post is 99% exaggeration and 1% reality.

Royaji · February 2019

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Here's the stated goal from the lead developer, which has been up for months. Please note the "When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role". The key word is any here which also implies every role and is thus universal. Even if they didn't say they wanted all races to do all roles the very fact that a race has passives which benefit in some way to all major roles (tank/dps/heal) and another only has passives which benefit a select number of them indicates that the races are, in fact, not balanced.

You are misinterpreting that statement. It is not about "I've selected a race and should be able to play it as any role". It is "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role". And in this regard the update is a success.

If your given gameplay role is tank, Imperial, Nord and Argonian are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is magicka DD, Altmer, Breton, Dunmer and Kajiit are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is stamina DD, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Kajiit, Dunmer and even Imperial are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is healer Breton, Altmer or Argonian are effective choices.

This is the goal that was being solved and it was solved. Which only reinforces my interpretation, since yours was indeed a complete miss. It was not what ZOS was solving. People who were hoping that somehow all races would make competitive tanks or mag DDs were building their own dreamcastles while ignoring the reality that was happing outside.

ZOS failed to accomplish most if not all of the goals they claimed to aim for. If that was really what they wanted. Your statement: "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role" that is how it is now on live. I don't see your point or what you are trying to argue.

If you interpret ZOS as trying to make options better then that was failed as well. As it is on live now Altmer and Dunmer compete for the top DPS with trade-offs for each. Now Breton is the clear winner, with Healing as well. Before there were two options for Stealth game play but with Bosmer losing their stealth bonus, a change contrary to lore and integral to Bosmer racial identity (more failed goals), Khajiit remains the only option.

Orc now also outshines it's competition. Diversity has been made even worse on multiple levels with Lore and racial identity being trashed in the process with passives that have limited applicability. All of this is the inverse of what ZOS said they wanted.

On live Nords and Imperials are not competitive with Argoiangs for tanking. Bosmer and Kajiit are not competitive with Altmer and Dunmer for mag DD. Redguard is the only competitive stamina DD. Yeah. The fact that all races parse within human error margin of each other on PTS and mostly have some specific flavor going for them (like Imperials with stamina/stam regen food or Redguards with weapon spammables) is completely irrelevant and ZOS has done nothing at all with this patch.

Breton is not clear winner. Altmer with regen food will have more DPS. Orc parses 800 DPS higher than Kajiit in full raid setup. With horns and all the buffs. This is within human error margin.

I'm not going to discuss lore implications of Bosmer changes since it is not my area of expertise by any means. All I'll say is that I've done all my sneaking things on Imperial StamDK and never have I felt like "oh man, extra 3m reduction of detection radius is really what I need to be viable and competitive for this!" I'm not saying that Bosmer passives are perfect and this is one area ZOS did not do a great job. Especially trying to push 1500 conditional penetration as a bonus beneficial to PvE. But this does not mean that the whole update is a complete failure.

Tommy_The_Gun · February 2019

I suggest to go back and read the original racial rebalance goals... in most cases almost none of them have been fulfilled.
I guess it is too much to ask ZOS to simply don't make any changes unless all races will have a ok "✓" sign at every racial rebalance goal.

With those changes, what will happen is simply we will have "meta shift". What is even worse is that we will have even less vailable choices when it comes to races.

We have 10 races in eso. 3 or 4 of them will be vailable to do content. Nuff said...

BaylorCorvette · February 2019

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

We have 10 races in eso. 3 or 4 of them will be vailable to do content. Nuff said...

The racials are all pretty close and will hardly be noticed by the average player. There will always be a min/max or BiS build/race. saying that only 3 or 4 races will be viable to do content next patch is hilarious. I could run a magicka Bosmer and complete most vet content in game. Would that be BiS? No. Is it possible to do? Sure is! People are making such a huge deal about races. In terms of DPS we're talking a few hundred DPS, maybe 1k. Literally like 1% difference if that. A players skill will factor WAY more into the success of content in ESO and if you're playing at the TOP Tier level where 1% difference means something, then you're always going to be chasing BiS races/gear/builds, etc.

MLGProPlayer · February 2019

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

I suggest to go back and read the original racial rebalance goals... in most cases almost none of them have been fulfilled.
I guess it is too much to ask ZOS to simply don't make any changes unless all races will have a ok "✓" sign at every racial rebalance goal.

With those changes, what will happen is simply we will have "meta shift". What is even worse is that we will have even less vailable choices when it comes to races.

We have 10 races in eso. 3 or 4 of them will be vailable to do content. Nuff said...

I thought they would take this opportunity to essentially make racial choice irrelevant (as is the case in the single player TES games and most MMOs). It's the only way to fix this mess.

There have been a few other creative solutions, like allocating 3 races to each role and giving them all the same passives, which also works, but still pigeon holes certain races into certain roles. But as long as every race has unique buffs, there will be imbalance.

Of course, there was room for a TON of tweaking still with the current changes, but ZOS didn't really bother with that and just made sweeping changes from patch to patch, rather than just slightly adjusting (i.e. rather than reducing Khajiit crit chance by 1-2%, they just gave them a whole new passive instead).

Jaimeh · February 2019

Orcs are ahead for stamDD PvE, they should be slightly adjusted to be brought on par with the other races.

Seraphayel · February 2019

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

We have 10 races in eso. 3 or 4 of them will be vailable to do content. Nuff said...

And this is nonsense.

10/10 races are viable to do content in all of the roles this game has to offer. Racials are so marginal that it really doesn't matter for any content except leaderboard scores. This makes your choice of race irrelevant.

BlueRaven · February 2019

Jaimeh wrote: »

Orcs are ahead for stamDD PvE, they should be slightly adjusted to be brought on par with the other races.

Personally, I would like the other races brought up to orcs. No reason to nerf a race that is actually functioning correctly.

Silver_Strider · February 2019

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Here's the stated goal from the lead developer, which has been up for months. Please note the "When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role". The key word is any here which also implies every role and is thus universal. Even if they didn't say they wanted all races to do all roles the very fact that a race has passives which benefit in some way to all major roles (tank/dps/heal) and another only has passives which benefit a select number of them indicates that the races are, in fact, not balanced.

You are misinterpreting that statement. It is not about "I've selected a race and should be able to play it as any role". It is "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role". And in this regard the update is a success.

If your given gameplay role is tank, Imperial, Nord and Argonian are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is magicka DD, Altmer, Breton, Dunmer and Kajiit are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is stamina DD, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Kajiit, Dunmer and even Imperial are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is healer Breton, Altmer or Argonian are effective choices.

This is the goal that was being solved and it was solved. Which only reinforces my interpretation, since yours was indeed a complete miss. It was not what ZOS was solving. People who were hoping that somehow all races would make competitive tanks or mag DDs were building their own dreamcastles while ignoring the reality that was happing outside.

In my eyes, they failed.

In terms of Tank, the role is heavily emphasized by being a support role, offering up as many ways to increase group effectiveness as possible. No race really offered this in any regards, creating an open field for any race to effectively go in and do the job; Argonian offered sustain to make the job easier to perform but nothing specific to help the group that made it outright required for competitive levels of play. This is no longer the case as Nord and Imperial offer more frequent Warhorn which is far more group utility than any other race can offer the role so they become the go to over all other races.

In terms of Healer, Breton is far and away superior to its previous counterparts. Argonian has less sustain and damage, Altmer has no sustain and comparable damage. It's just a no brainer at this point who's at the top in terms of Healer.

Stamina DPS, Orc is overtuned AF. With the most damage of all Stamina races, more health than all other stamina races (Barring Imperial and Nord), a small self heal passive, and the Sprint cost/increased movement speed, Orc just really has everything over the other races in terms of Stamina DPS. Sustain in terms of PvP is literally a Battlefield Acrobat away if it ever truly comes down to that, which I highly doubt.

Magic DPS is the only real area that saw something change, with Breton finally getting to be in the limelight alongside Altmer and Dunmer. Khajiit had a small rise into the role but with the subsequent altering of its Crit Change into Crit Damage, it's just an inverted Argonian, trading away sustain for more damage and still coming up short in the competitive end of the magic spectrum.

The races don't feel any more open than before the patch. I'd actually say that they're even more limited than before in most cases as some races lost some of their racial identity (Bosmer's Stealth, Altmer's magic sustain, etc.) as well as more races being further shoehorned into certain roles (Nords are still only Tanks, etc.). It started off promising but just got progressively worse.

phantasmalD · February 2019

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Here's the stated goal from the lead developer, which has been up for months. Please note the "When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role". The key word is any here which also implies every role and is thus universal. Even if they didn't say they wanted all races to do all roles the very fact that a race has passives which benefit in some way to all major roles (tank/dps/heal) and another only has passives which benefit a select number of them indicates that the races are, in fact, not balanced.

You are misinterpreting that statement. It is not about "I've selected a race and should be able to play it as any role". It is "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role". And in this regard the update is a success.

If your given gameplay role is tank, Imperial, Nord and Argonian are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is magicka DD, Altmer, Breton, Dunmer and Kajiit are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is stamina DD, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Kajiit, Dunmer and even Imperial are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is healer Breton, Altmer or Argonian are effective choices.

This is the goal that was being solved and it was solved. Which only reinforces my interpretation, since yours was indeed a complete miss. It was not what ZOS was solving. People who were hoping that somehow all races would make competitive tanks or mag DDs were building their own dreamcastles while ignoring the reality that was happing outside.

Consider this tho:

1. Fundamentally there isn't a difference between healers and DDs. The two roles care about the same things, just with slightly different priorities (more emphasis on sustain instead of damage). If CP wasn't a thing then the only difference between the two roles would be armor sets and skills. Therefore any race that can be DD can also be a healer. If stamina healer wasn't just a meme then stamina DDs could all be stamina healers.
2. There is no straight up dead stat for tanks, everything is useful; damage makes self-heals stronger and increases Elemental Blockade damage (higher group damage -> faster fights), higher resource pools allow casting more skills and help with sustain, regen obviously help with sustain, resistance increase helps with survival, etc. Tanks can even make use of Spell Recharge and speed buff. Therefore every race can be a viable and effective tank, making up for the difference between racial stats with gear and experience.
3. While DD does requires a certain degree of skill (to master a rotation and push the damage output above 50k), it's primarily a stat driven role. While you can make magplar Bosmer, you aren't going to pull the same number as you'd on a magplar Altmer with the same amount of effort.
Same can't be said about tanks and healers, the stat requirements are much-much less rigid (instead tanks suffer from lack of armor set choices).

So applying these three points to the race-role chart we get this:
Tank - every race
Healer (mag): Altmer, Breton, Dunmer, Khajiit, Argonian, (Nord?)
Healer (stam): Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Dunmer, Khajiit, Imperial, Nord [hypothetical!]
Magicka DD: Altmer, Breton, Dunmer, Khajiit
Stamina DD: Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Dunmer, Khajiit, (Imperial?)

Simplified:

Tank - every race
Healer - every race (if stamina healing was possible)
DD: Altmer, Breton, Dunmer, Khajiit, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer

So imo there is no race-role balance here, just 3-2 races essentially being locked out of being competitive DDs. Tho of course this logic kinda hinges on stamina healing being a thing (which it isn't atm).

LiquidPony · February 2019

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

I suggest to go back and read the original racial rebalance goals... in most cases almost none of them have been fulfilled.
I guess it is too much to ask ZOS to simply don't make any changes unless all races will have a ok "✓" sign at every racial rebalance goal.

With those changes, what will happen is simply we will have "meta shift". What is even worse is that we will have even less vailable choices when it comes to races.

We have 10 races in eso. 3 or 4 of them will be vailable to do content. Nuff said...

I thought they would take this opportunity to essentially make racial choice irrelevant (as is the case in the single player TES games and most MMOs). It's the only way to fix this mess.

There have been a few other creative solutions, like allocating 3 races to each role and giving them all the same passives, which also works, but still pigeon holes certain races into certain roles. But as long as every race has unique buffs, there will be imbalance.

Of course, there was room for a TON of tweaking still with the current changes, but ZOS didn't really bother with that and just made sweeping changes from patch to patch, rather than just slightly adjusting (i.e. rather than reducing Khajiit crit chance by 1-2%, they just gave them a whole new passive instead).

Simply reducing Khajiit crit chance by 1-2% across the board is (obviously) a nerf across the board.

Changing 8% crit chance to 10% crit damage is not a nerf across the board.

You may not agree with what they did but the your proposed change does not have the same net effect as the change they actually implemented.

Ozby · February 2019

no such thing as balance in a game where pve and pvp are not separated.

Bladerunner1 · February 2019

My wood elf Nightblade has always been around 1500 DPS behind Redguard, now it will be 1500 behind an Orc. And just as sneaky.

Kalle_Demos · February 2019

Seraphayel wrote: »

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Diversity has been made even worse on multiple levels with Lore and racial identity being trashed in the process with passives that have limited applicability. All of this is the inverse of what ZOS said they wanted.

The only difference might be variety in Stealth races as Bosmer has been ripped of that aspect. Everything else is exactly the same except the two new "hybrid" races that give one more option for Stamina (Dunmer) and Magicka (Khajiit). Besides that nothing changed.

Your post is 99% exaggeration and 1% reality.

Many things have in fact changed.

Royaji wrote: »

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Here's the stated goal from the lead developer, which has been up for months. Please note the "When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role". The key word is any here which also implies every role and is thus universal. Even if they didn't say they wanted all races to do all roles the very fact that a race has passives which benefit in some way to all major roles (tank/dps/heal) and another only has passives which benefit a select number of them indicates that the races are, in fact, not balanced.

You are misinterpreting that statement. It is not about "I've selected a race and should be able to play it as any role". It is "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role". And in this regard the update is a success.

If your given gameplay role is tank, Imperial, Nord and Argonian are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is magicka DD, Altmer, Breton, Dunmer and Kajiit are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is stamina DD, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Kajiit, Dunmer and even Imperial are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is healer Breton, Altmer or Argonian are effective choices.

This is the goal that was being solved and it was solved. Which only reinforces my interpretation, since yours was indeed a complete miss. It was not what ZOS was solving. People who were hoping that somehow all races would make competitive tanks or mag DDs were building their own dreamcastles while ignoring the reality that was happing outside.

ZOS failed to accomplish most if not all of the goals they claimed to aim for. If that was really what they wanted. Your statement: "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role" that is how it is now on live. I don't see your point or what you are trying to argue.

If you interpret ZOS as trying to make options better then that was failed as well. As it is on live now Altmer and Dunmer compete for the top DPS with trade-offs for each. Now Breton is the clear winner, with Healing as well. Before there were two options for Stealth game play but with Bosmer losing their stealth bonus, a change contrary to lore and integral to Bosmer racial identity (more failed goals), Khajiit remains the only option.

Orc now also outshines it's competition. Diversity has been made even worse on multiple levels with Lore and racial identity being trashed in the process with passives that have limited applicability. All of this is the inverse of what ZOS said they wanted.

On live Nords and Imperials are not competitive with Argoiangs for tanking. Bosmer and Kajiit are not competitive with Altmer and Dunmer for mag DD. Redguard is the only competitive stamina DD. Yeah. The fact that all races parse within human error margin of each other on PTS and mostly have some specific flavor going for them (like Imperials with stamina/stam regen food or Redguards with weapon spammables) is completely irrelevant and ZOS has done nothing at all with this patch.

Breton is not clear winner. Altmer with regen food will have more DPS. Orc parses 800 DPS higher than Kajiit in full raid setup. With horns and all the buffs. This is within human error margin.

I'm not going to discuss lore implications of Bosmer changes since it is not my area of expertise by any means. All I'll say is that I've done all my sneaking things on Imperial StamDK and never have I felt like "oh man, extra 3m reduction of detection radius is really what I need to be viable and competitive for this!" I'm not saying that Bosmer passives are perfect and this is one area ZOS did not do a great job. Especially trying to push 1500 conditional penetration as a bonus beneficial to PvE. But this does not mean that the whole update is a complete failure.

1. Allow more effective options when picking a race for each role in tanking, healing, or damage dealing.

The meta has shifted and there are less options with Breton edging out MAG DPS and Healing and Orc being the best at stam. Nords only really exceed at Tanking and even niche stealth build diversity has been lost with the Bosmer stealth passive. Diversity is worse.

2. Equalize the overall power that each race provides by using our set bonus efficiency system, which compares the total amount of power that a bonus provides under equal terms.

Some of these 'bonuses' are not universally applicable like ZOS said they wanted and so some races have clear disadvantages depending on the content compared to others.

3. Retain and enhance the unique feeling and gameplay patterns that each race allows.

Bosmer stealth, Altmer Mag regen and Dunmer elemental damage have all been gutted going against the goals of preserving Lore and Racial Identity.

4. Improve the sense of progression that the racial passives provide when leveling up.

Players will have to start new characters and level in order to judge this goal. So far I've seen no comments on this but re-ordering the order by which passives unlock is inconsequential to the bigger subject.

5. Achieve the above goals while still obeying our rich and structured lore and storytelling.

LOL!

Not to mention ZOS' own personal goals and statements regarding Player Feedback, communication and sweeping changes/NERFS. They had to be shamed into giving out more free Race Change Tokens because it's obvious to everyone that the sweeping NERFS they said they wouldn't do would adversely affect many players.

And after saying they would listen to player feedback they ignored all constructive conversation and seem intent on going forward with the indefensible Bosmer and Altmer changes that players have been vocally opposed to for weeks. And in all this time, on this and many other issues surrounding the game, communication has been nil. This entire endeavor has been a failure.

ccmedaddy · February 2019

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Here's the stated goal from the lead developer, which has been up for months. Please note the "When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role". The key word is any here which also implies every role and is thus universal. Even if they didn't say they wanted all races to do all roles the very fact that a race has passives which benefit in some way to all major roles (tank/dps/heal) and another only has passives which benefit a select number of them indicates that the races are, in fact, not balanced.

You are misinterpreting that statement. It is not about "I've selected a race and should be able to play it as any role". It is "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role". And in this regard the update is a success.

If your given gameplay role is tank, Imperial, Nord and Argonian are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is magicka DD, Altmer, Breton, Dunmer and Kajiit are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is stamina DD, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Kajiit, Dunmer and even Imperial are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is healer Breton, Altmer or Argonian are effective choices.

This is the goal that was being solved and it was solved. Which only reinforces my interpretation, since yours was indeed a complete miss. It was not what ZOS was solving. People who were hoping that somehow all races would make competitive tanks or mag DDs were building their own dreamcastles while ignoring the reality that was happing outside.

I love this post so much.

DoobZ69 · February 2019

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

DoobZ69 wrote: »

Here's the stated goal from the lead developer, which has been up for months. Please note the "When selecting a race, players should have multiple effective options for any given gameplay role". The key word is any here which also implies every role and is thus universal. Even if they didn't say they wanted all races to do all roles the very fact that a race has passives which benefit in some way to all major roles (tank/dps/heal) and another only has passives which benefit a select number of them indicates that the races are, in fact, not balanced.

You are misinterpreting that statement. It is not about "I've selected a race and should be able to play it as any role". It is "I've selected a role and there should be several races I can select that work well for the given role". And in this regard the update is a success.

If your given gameplay role is tank, Imperial, Nord and Argonian are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is magicka DD, Altmer, Breton, Dunmer and Kajiit are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is stamina DD, Redguard, Orc, Bosmer, Kajiit, Dunmer and even Imperial are effective choices.
If your given gameplay role is healer Breton, Altmer or Argonian are effective choices.

This is the goal that was being solved and it was solved. Which only reinforces my interpretation, since yours was indeed a complete miss. It was not what ZOS was solving. People who were hoping that somehow all races would make competitive tanks or mag DDs were building their own dreamcastles while ignoring the reality that was happing outside.

Agreed. Shifted meta to make money. The house always wins.

Yeah, making all races that were at least somewhat leaning towards an aspect be competitive in this aspect and giving out three free race changes is exactly how you make tons of money...

Yes those 3 "throw a dog a bone" tokens will be useful for making money off of those people who will need to change more than 3 characters after this "balance" meta shifting. But you're not affected, are you? So who gives a damn. Not a care in the world so tell them to shut up.
The Meta will shift. As long as racial passives exist which include weird stuff like "dodge to get spell penetration for your stamina character" they will always gravitate to the most useful combination of passives for a specific role. Then later in time they will change sets and skills and classes and that will force the race Meta to shift again - will you still taunt those 3 tokens in front of the people years from now?

Oh that's right, you don't mind because "it's only 30$". That's not the point. The point is that they charge to change the race. It makes them money! So they regularly change which race is better/meta to give a gentle nudge to people to change their race. It is now clear that this was not in the name of balance, it is in the name of making money and you, as a customer, are defending spending money on unnecessary products. Its the same as iPhone making their phones slower over time to sell more new iPhones. And you're supporting similar behaviour.

I don't know what the new Meta will be but I predict the new meta tank is Nord, the new Meta healer/magDD is Breton and the new StaminaDD is Orc. And all bowtards will obviously be Bosmer.

My tank will stay Dunmer for passives reason, not for aesthetic or "I want to play a Dunmer" reason. And if I decide to give up PVE altogether I will most likely want to switch to Orc, once again for "passives" reason only. This is the tragedy of this game.

As an example of where this is not an issue - SWTOR has no racial passives. I had "lore" light side races on the Sith faction and dark side races on the Republic faction because that is how I wanted to play. Interestingly enough no guild leader ever messaged me in a whisper and told me to re-roll race in that game. But it has happened countless times in ESO. As far as I am aware nobody ever quit SWTOR when they saw my characters.

I'm done hoping and making proposals for a proper design for this game. It could satisfy a huge non-fanatical player base and still make more money off the new content and the Crown Store. I support that kind of philosophy and would happily sub again. That type of marketing uses a carrot money making scheme where the product quality and availability meets demand. But they are running beneath it all a stick marketing philosophy where the changes over time force players to continue investing in things they shouldn't have to. This, out of principal and self-respect I cannot support and will remain un-subbed.

I've suggested and still believe that all races passives can be designed to perform every role in the game, for PVE and PVP, and still remain role friendly. This will make racial choice not role dependant but personal flavour preference. They want Orcs to be Stamina and High Elves to be Magicka. Fine - they will only make money off of me when they release content I want to consume, not as a permanent sub. The same goes to the people who ask me about a recommendation for the game. At least 3 other people won't bother subbing unless I sub as well because we play together and we LOVE the DLC content. To me, the freedom of racial diversity is more important than "current marginal error parses" and I know that I can only vote with my wallet. You're happy, good for you, so show me the finger and tell me to *** off, nobody cares. Churr

Strider__Roshin · February 2019

No. I can equip 1 chuden and 1 Pirate Skeleton on an Orc and have more damage and survivability than a Nord wearing 1 Kena and 1 Veli.

Nords are useless this patch. And that extra 0.5 ult regen doesn't even come close to making up for it.

Strider__Roshin · February 2019

In my opinion the races were the most balanced in the original patch then they just botched the whole thing.

CurvedSwords123 · February 2019

I wanted to avoid asking for nerfs, but it's been weeks now and I'd say most ppl aren't supporting their fellow player in regards to their request for parity buffs.

So.

Orcs OP!

BlueRaven · February 2019

CurvedSwords123 wrote: »

I wanted to avoid asking for nerfs, but it's been weeks now and I'd say most ppl aren't supporting their fellow player in regards to their request for parity buffs.

So.

Orcs OP!

I don't think Orcs should be nerfed, to me that is a racial set up that is done correctly. Everything clicks together and gels well. (In fairness I DO have an orc, but I hardly use that character. Bosmer is my main.)

The problem is they did not do that with all the other races. If they did, we would not be having this issue.

Seraphayel · February 2019

Kalle_Demos wrote: »

Many things have in fact changed.

Yeah, except the meta.

Tasear · February 2019

Except lore

John_Falstaff · February 2019

@LiquidPony , thanks for clarifying; I couldn't know if 0.8k were done with warhorn or without. It does make things more palatable.

Still I don't think it removes the issue; the window of differences between races have narrowed, and tolerances have narrowed too. When all races are within 4% of one another, 1.6% difference in parses for a supposedly damage-oriented race is quite a bit, that's one-third of a way from having no racial passives at all. And it hardly makes an excuse that khajiits are hybrid race, because they're behind another hybrid race, dunmers.

I'd rather much have crit chance back because it allowed for more leeway in choice of sets, but if ZOS is dead set on keeping crit damage, then 12-14% could make it better.

zaria · February 2019

LiquidPony wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

I suggest to go back and read the original racial rebalance goals... in most cases almost none of them have been fulfilled.
I guess it is too much to ask ZOS to simply don't make any changes unless all races will have a ok "✓" sign at every racial rebalance goal.

With those changes, what will happen is simply we will have "meta shift". What is even worse is that we will have even less vailable choices when it comes to races.

We have 10 races in eso. 3 or 4 of them will be vailable to do content. Nuff said...

I thought they would take this opportunity to essentially make racial choice irrelevant (as is the case in the single player TES games and most MMOs). It's the only way to fix this mess.

There have been a few other creative solutions, like allocating 3 races to each role and giving them all the same passives, which also works, but still pigeon holes certain races into certain roles. But as long as every race has unique buffs, there will be imbalance.

Of course, there was room for a TON of tweaking still with the current changes, but ZOS didn't really bother with that and just made sweeping changes from patch to patch, rather than just slightly adjusting (i.e. rather than reducing Khajiit crit chance by 1-2%, they just gave them a whole new passive instead).

Simply reducing Khajiit crit chance by 1-2% across the board is (obviously) a nerf across the board.

Changing 8% crit chance to 10% crit damage is not a nerf across the board.

You may not agree with what they did but the your proposed change does not have the same net effect as the change they actually implemented.

Issue with Khajiit was their passive combined with shadow. Especially on templar now that ZoS has made shadow the new meta.
So as an result Khajiit will end up using other mundus and end up with less crit damage than others.
Still its easy to resolve with an small buff.

Issue with Altmer and Bosmer is mostly stupid passives, well they can just change them around totally to something more useful. Altmer something who help in survival, sneak speed for Bosmer? Yes its strong but you can also get it as vampire.

Axmouth · February 2019

Orc is not too good because they have the most dps,but because it also comes with the health bonus. Which seems pretty damn good in current pve stam setups.. I find the lack of sustain a non issue there myself. I could add a health glyph on other races to compensate and lose stam, if I want a higher health number, especially with sustain food. With Orc I don't have to, and lose nothing. There's no tradeoff. Just more stats that are also of use.

Looking at racial passives, I see zero reason to not pick only Orc for stamina. Unless I wanna handicap myself or to look different. It's literally lose stats to look better(for that specific character's vision, I like my orc but don't want 5 of them) for me. It's not balanced.

And with breton, 7% magicka cost reduction is too good for anything but stamina builds. It's just too much compared to any other bonuses, especially with regen on top. They too get too much in my opinion. At least there's an argument that IF you can sustain on Altmer/Dunmer, you'll do more damage. The one about Altmer being better for short fights is just silly. Next up, best in slot for farming Fungal Grotto I normal will be an argument. It's hard to sustain a real fight, so you'll often do less damage due to having to compensate for that, the end. But still find Bretons having too good a share of bonuses, tons of sustain and tankiness, and decent damage bonus. And about spell rsist being situational. Just look at the special CP setups for multiple trials requiring lots of extra spell resist. What race gets that on top of what they need to dps heal? Totally not a big advantage here. Even if situational, it's way too god, cause there's no situation where the others shine nearly as much.

Next is probably that Dunmer, Altmer, Redguard etc had their light of day and it's time for Orcs/Bretons(Bretons already popular for healers, let's make them take over another role cause why not). So already that being a moot point for Breton, it also shows whoever makes this argument does not care about balance, so it's automatically out of the window.

And since I see this mentioned too. I have characters of EVERY SINGLE RACE, so obviously I'm the least biased person on Tamriel in regards to racial passives, and my word should be gospel.

DarkPicture · February 2019

Not all of them. Altmer is a bit weak, dunmer is a copy of altmer without any unique passiv, orc is too much op, khajiit should get back crit chance and nord need some change when he keep ulti for something and he waste regen ulti passiv.

MLGProPlayer · February 2019

LiquidPony wrote: »

MLGProPlayer wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

I suggest to go back and read the original racial rebalance goals... in most cases almost none of them have been fulfilled.
I guess it is too much to ask ZOS to simply don't make any changes unless all races will have a ok "✓" sign at every racial rebalance goal.

With those changes, what will happen is simply we will have "meta shift". What is even worse is that we will have even less vailable choices when it comes to races.

We have 10 races in eso. 3 or 4 of them will be vailable to do content. Nuff said...

I thought they would take this opportunity to essentially make racial choice irrelevant (as is the case in the single player TES games and most MMOs). It's the only way to fix this mess.

There have been a few other creative solutions, like allocating 3 races to each role and giving them all the same passives, which also works, but still pigeon holes certain races into certain roles. But as long as every race has unique buffs, there will be imbalance.

Of course, there was room for a TON of tweaking still with the current changes, but ZOS didn't really bother with that and just made sweeping changes from patch to patch, rather than just slightly adjusting (i.e. rather than reducing Khajiit crit chance by 1-2%, they just gave them a whole new passive instead).

Simply reducing Khajiit crit chance by 1-2% across the board is (obviously) a nerf across the board.

Changing 8% crit chance to 10% crit damage is not a nerf across the board.

You may not agree with what they did but the your proposed change does not have the same net effect as the change they actually implemented.

Khajiit DPS was reduced substantially. It was a nerf.

A tweak to an existing passive would have let them fine-tune the change.

Fine tuning is always objectively better than completely changing something and hoping it works out (in this case, it doesn't, as it was too big of a nerf, something fine tuning would have avoided).