Wood Elf/ Bosmer losing stealth passive, An open letter.

Left4Daud · May 2019

@KMarble

If it's "working as intended" it's fundamentally not broken, by definition. You could argue that it's unbalanced. But it's not actually broken.

For the record, I was the poster/tester that initially brought Khajiit super stealth stacking to light back during the Wrathstone PTS, which prompted the devs to make the following changes:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Khajiit

Feline Ambush: Decreased the reduction of your Stealth radius to 3m from 5m.

Developer Comment:

With the introduction of CP scaling with the flat stats of the races, we made sure to make some minor adjustments so Khajiit wouldn't fall behind the other races. The bonus to the stealth radius was also slightly over tuned and allowed you to sneak too effectively. Now, you shouldn't be able to sneak in the face of guards and wave unless you've heavily invested into sneaking with gear and other passives.

You shouldn't be able to sneak in the face of guards and wave unless you've heavily invested into sneaking with gear and other passives.

That is from the devs themselves.

It's working as intended.

Jaraal · May 2019

Left4Daud wrote: »

You shouldn't be able to sneak in the face of guards and wave unless you've heavily invested into sneaking with gear and other passives.

That is from the devs themselves.

It's working as intended.

This thread is really about loss of Bosmer lore and playstyle that characters were specifically created for being stripped, but that is indeed telling as to this amount of stealth being intentional.

My guess is that once Elsweyr sales drop off and people are no longer forced to embrace the Khajiit experience to be truly stealthy, they will detune it, like they did with the introduction of Swift with Summerset and the subsequent nerfing thereof.

Alucardmike · May 2019

If this was only made for the Elsweyr DLC, I hope for a Falinesti DLC. Perhaps then we could get our stealth back.

RogueShark · May 2019

Love people who say khajiit should lose their stealth bonus and it should be given exclusively to bosmer.

You realize this is just saying you don't care if another race loses something you think is lorebreaking gamebreaking and important as long as it doesn't affect your favored race?
Wot.

They should both just have the damn passive. ZoS is silly for cherry-picking in this instance.

Ratzkifal · May 2019

RogueShark wrote: »

Love people who say khajiit should lose their stealth bonus and it should be given exclusively to bosmer.

You realize this is just saying you don't care if another race loses something you think is lorebreaking gamebreaking and important as long as it doesn't affect your favored race?
Wot.

They should both just have the damn passive. ZoS is silly for cherry-picking in this instance.

Luckily I haven't seen anyone advocate for anything like that in here or other threads. Our mantra was always to "not taking from others to get what we want".
But ZOS is indeed silly because their patch essentially said "Khajiit are the only acceptable stealth race. If your Bosmer is sneaky, you are playing your Bosmer wrong".

Cundu_Ertur · May 2019

RogueShark wrote: »

Love people who say khajiit should lose their stealth bonus and it should be given exclusively to bosmer.

You realize this is just saying you don't care if another race loses something you think is lorebreaking gamebreaking and important as long as it doesn't affect your favored race?
Wot.

They should both just have the damn passive. ZoS is silly for cherry-picking in this instance.

Agree with your ending, and I've argued that Argonians should have something stealth related, too, even if a bit less than Khajiit and Bosmer.

However, I haven't seen anyone call for Khajiit to lose stealth so I disagree with the rest of what you write. The first time I saw what Avran_Sylt posted I thought that was calling for a nerf to Khajiit, and I was going to comment on that, but upon re-reading it I saw that the proposed change for Khajiit was to only increase their fences per day with no change to stealth.

Jaraal · May 2019

RogueShark wrote: »

Love people who say khajiit should lose their stealth bonus and it should be given exclusively to bosmer.

Well, thankfully no one has said that yet in 69 pages. I, for one would be totally against that, as I have five full time Khajiit thieves and I would be just as upset if their lore were rewritten as Bosmer's has been. Khajiit and Bosmer have always been considered stealthy races, and to a lesser extent, Dunmer and Argonian as well. Would not bother me at all to see more than two races with stealth bonuses.

RogueShark · May 2019

Ratzkifal wrote: »

RogueShark wrote: »

Love people who say khajiit should lose their stealth bonus and it should be given exclusively to bosmer.

You realize this is just saying you don't care if another race loses something you think is lorebreaking gamebreaking and important as long as it doesn't affect your favored race?
Wot.

They should both just have the damn passive. ZoS is silly for cherry-picking in this instance.

Luckily I haven't seen anyone advocate for anything like that in here or other threads. Our mantra was always to "not taking from others to get what we want".
But ZOS is indeed silly because their patch essentially said "Khajiit are the only acceptable stealth race. If your Bosmer is sneaky, you are playing your Bosmer wrong".

Ratzkifal wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

BOSMER - The agile hunter
Acrobat => Keen Eye

Bow Bonus

(Remove Falldamage Bonus)

3m increase to Stealth Detection

Hunter's Eye => Hunter's Guile

(Remove Stealth Detection)

3m reduction to Detection Radius while in Stealth

Rolldodge Stuff

KHAJIIT - The curio collector
Cutpurse

Medium Armor Bonus

Keep Pickpocket Chance

Add 5% increase to Fence sales

Yes, that sounds great. Bosmer were never as good at Acrobatics as Khajiit and even though taking reduced fall damage is testament to knowing their way around high places, not falling in the first place is more in line with them I feel, so I wouldn't be too bummed out over it.

Alternatively to the fence sales, Khajiit could also get more fence interactions per day because they are so charming the fence can't say no. I'd be really happy with either of those.

Now it's possible I misinterpreted, but it looks like to tske stealth and just give them fencing.
Whatever the case, zos dropped the ball with bosmer racials entirely. Even their rolldodge mechanic is silly. Who wastes stam rolldodging around for more pen?

Cundu_Ertur · May 2019

...And?
Avran_Sylt doesn't call for any change to Khajiit stealth. Feline ambush is the skill that has stealth in it, and that isn't even mentioned. The proposal is to add a fencing bonus (how much per sale , not more sales as I initially thought) to the basic free racial.

RogueShark · May 2019

If I was wrong about my interpretation, I think it can be forgiven considering just slapping fencing bonuses on khajiit cutpurse racial literally makes it the only racial of that tier to have multiple effects beyond a skil line gain and something else for fluff. Which makes it seem like it was a suggestion to replace stealth, because why else would you slap some other racial there?
It would be better to just swap bosmer detection for stealth. Even trade, no confusing touches to racials that are fine for anyone else.

Jaraal · May 2019

This was my idea for an armor set:

Jaraal wrote: »

Velsa's Armor of the Illustrious Launderer. (medium)

(2 items) Adds 1200 Maximum Stamina
(3 items) Adds 250 Stamina Recovery
(4 items) Adds 400 Weapon Critical
(4 items) Grants Minor Expedition at all times.
(5 items) Doubles the number of items you can sell to a fence per day (if worn for the last 24 hours)

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/5233723/#Comment_5233723

BlueRaven · May 2019

Yeah, I have not seen anyone argue that kahjit stealth should be taken away. I would say that along with kahjit and wood elves, dark elves and argonians have a case for a stealth bonus passive as well.

Avran_Sylt · May 2019

@Ratzkifal

So what kinda number of fence interactions?

Like +10 ? Or just +5.

Red_Feather · May 2019

I can't believe nothing has been done and this topic is still always a hot topic.

And I just can't forget the example showing how stealth detection makes a wood elf easier to spot by stealthed players. So it's a handicap and I never put points into it. 🤣

BlueRaven · May 2019

Red_Feather wrote: »

I can't believe nothing has been done and this topic is still always a hot topic.

And I just can't forget the example showing how stealth detection makes a wood elf easier to spot by stealthed players. So it's a handicap and I never put points into it. 🤣

Yeah I kept my two bosmers and neither of them have points in hunters eye.

My Bosmer stamblade may have lost her spot in our vet trial runs, but I can’t change her. I really hope she can get her stealth back soon so I can use her the way I used to.

Cundu_Ertur · May 2019

4 Bosmeri. 0 points in Hunter's Eye.

Cundu_Ertur · May 2019

RogueShark wrote: »

If I was wrong about my interpretation, I think it can be forgiven considering just slapping fencing bonuses on khajiit cutpurse racial literally makes it the only racial of that tier to have multiple effects beyond a skil line gain and something else for fluff. Which makes it seem like it was a suggestion to replace stealth, because why else would you slap some other racial there?
It would be better to just swap bosmer detection for stealth. Even trade, no confusing touches to racials that are fine for anyone else.

I think it was to make Khajiit feel better about no longer being the only possible choice for a stealthy character.

thegreatme · May 2019

Jaraal wrote: »

or to gimp Bosmer to force people to like Khajiits and thus be more inclined to purchase the Khajiit expansion, then all the more egregious. And then top it off with completely ignoring any concerned dialogue about it, and it's just a really bad deal all around.

From what all of my friends are saying, they'd be more inclined to care about Elswyer and khajiit if ESO made it possible to play as various different Khajiit races like Cathay-Raht than nerfing Bosmer will ever do for them so...

Kinda feels like ZoS has this idea that if they want us to try something new, they have to take away what we like in order to force us to like their newest thing better instead... and if that's the case, its bad practice. They'd do a lot better to build their new things up rather than take what we're comfortable with away.

Jaraal wrote: »

cameronmccrwb17_ESO wrote: »

I've started playing in Elsweyr and so far, on a non-Bosmer character, I haven't seen any content where stealth detection would be an advantage. Anyone else seen a situation where it would have helped?

Yes, when you spend 90% of your game time (like me) stealing for a living.

I've made tens of millions of gold from being stealthy, and all that money goes into purchasing blueprints and materials to create furnishings for all my homes. But ZoS is not concerned with players like me, they are only concerned with chasing a constantly moving target of mythical PvP balance, at the expense of the majority of PvE players. It hardly makes financial sense to make parts of the game unattractive to the most players, but what do I know. I assume they have marketing gurus..... but it seems strange to make your game most appealing to a smaller segment of your customers at the expense of everyone else. And yet, with that said, I don't think I've seen an increase in the number of "Wow ZOS you've really made PvP fair for everyone!" threads. Seems like more of the same "Nerf Sorcs", "NB gankers still out of control", "Wardens still overlooked" and so forth threads filling up the PvP and test server forums. So whatever balance they are chasing doesn't seem to have been achieved with the 'new and improved' racial passives.

So long as someone is losing, someone somewhere is throwing a tantrum, which means someone is always whining. There's a famous phrase, "You can't make everyone happy". Well you certainly don't fix that problem by making even more people unhappy.

I'm almost betting my game gold a lot of the people complaining about Stealth Gankers who are just happy for this change are the same people who say "L2P" and "Adapt" as soon as they get what they want. Why weren't you L2Ping and adapting when the odds were against you then?

Jaraal · May 2019

thegreatme wrote: »

I'm almost betting my game gold a lot of the people complaining about Stealth Gankers who are just happy for this change are the same people who say "L2P" and "Adapt" as soon as they get what they want. Why weren't you L2Ping and adapting when the odds were against you then?

Well, they did remove the 10% bonus damage from stealth that both Khajiit and Bosmer had before the revamp. But if they wanted to remove the whole surprise attack thing people have been complaining about since the beginning, they would have removed all stealth bonuses. Instead, they just forced people who enjoy that playstyle to abandon all the time and skill points they invested in Bosmer characters, and either start over from scratch with Khajiit or use the race change tokens to make your person something you never intended in the first place.

And, yeah. It doesn't matter what PvP strategy they nerf..... people will always come up with a new way to grief and dominate the enemy. Somebody will always be complaining about that which they have not yet learned to counter. But why would they trash decades of lore to make a change that doesn't get rid of the stealth ganker playstyle at all? And if the new set stacking bonus makes Khajiit completely invisible to guards, then how are the gank victims going to react to an enemy they will never be able to see in the first place? Maybe they will have to counter with a Bosmer sentry...... but wait.... stealth detection doesn't even work, and makes Bosmer easier to kill, so I guess that throws that idea out the window.

Ratzkifal · May 2019

Jaraal wrote: »

thegreatme wrote: »

I'm almost betting my game gold a lot of the people complaining about Stealth Gankers who are just happy for this change are the same people who say "L2P" and "Adapt" as soon as they get what they want. Why weren't you L2Ping and adapting when the odds were against you then?

Well, they did remove the 10% bonus damage from stealth that both Khajiit and Bosmer had before the revamp. But if they wanted to remove the whole surprise attack thing people have been complaining about since the beginning, they would have removed all stealth bonuses. Instead, they just forced people who enjoy that playstyle to abandon all the time and skill points they invested in Bosmer characters, and either start over from scratch with Khajiit or use the race change tokens to make your person something you never intended in the first place.

And, yeah. It doesn't matter what PvP strategy they nerf..... people will always come up with a new way to grief and dominate the enemy. Somebody will always be complaining about that which they have not yet learned to counter. But why would they trash decades of lore to make a change that doesn't get rid of the stealth ganker playstyle at all? And if the new set stacking bonus makes Khajiit completely invisible to guards, then how are the gank victims going to react to an enemy they will never be able to see in the first place? Maybe they will have to counter with a Bosmer sentry...... but wait.... stealth detection doesn't even work, and makes Bosmer easier to kill, so I guess that throws that idea out the window.

Well, ZOS probably thinks it's okay for a Khajiit to run around in pvp like that since they sacrificed all their damage for it and people can use detection potions after the first attack revealed them.
Bosmer sentries do work against that build because the passive does work but it's bad. 3 meters are nothing in ESO as we know from the radius it penetrates cloak on. But far more important in this is that Bosmer and Khajiit are on the same alliance

I might do some testing on that once I can get my hands on the Darloc Bruh set as I haven't bought Elsweyr and might never do that as long as Bosmer stealth hasn't been fixed.

Wildberryjack · May 2019

Really want an alternative to a thief build. Yeah I like kitties but would like a choice. Now there really isn't one. Short range stealth detect is worthless too outside of very limited PvP situations.

DreadDaedroth · May 2019

RogueShark wrote: »

They should both just have the damn passive. ZoS is silly for cherry-picking in this instance.

Indeed, I find this mentality of every race having every passive unique to them blind ,silly and lorebreaking. Sharing one similar passive doesn't make the races too similar or close to another.

Jaraal · May 2019

Wildberryjack wrote: »

Really want an alternative to a thief build. Yeah I like kitties but would like a choice. Now there really isn't one. Short range stealth detect is worthless too outside of very limited PvP situations.

If it works in PvP, you couldn't prove it by me. I was crouched 6 feet away from an enemy player in a delve, waiting for the boss to spawn, and I could not see them with maxed Hunter's Eye. I had to cast Evil Hunter before I could actually see them.

shimm · May 2019

I would just like hunter’s eye changed to... anything else. Worst passive of any racial passive.

Alucardmike · May 2019

shimm wrote: »

I would just like hunter’s eye changed to... anything else. Worst passive of any racial passive.

Yes. Something more useful, like +10% cuteness or -5% probabilty to sneeze...

wedgebert · May 2019

Alucardmike wrote: »

shimm wrote: »

I would just like hunter’s eye changed to... anything else. Worst passive of any racial passive.

Yes. Something more useful, like +10% cuteness or -5% probabilty to sneeze...

Careful now, -5% chance to sneeze would be pretty OP during allergy season

Ratzkifal · May 2019

Hmm, isn't that Khajiit build pretty strong in capture the relic? Unless people use caltrops constantly, you can get there completely unseen.

Tigerseye · May 2019

If I have to go back to stealing for a living, in this xpac, then I need my stealth back.

I made a lot of gold doing mind-numbing rounds of the inns, when I first returned to the game; as I had no other way of making gold, back then and needed it to buy houses, furnishings and plans.

I thought I had moved past that, when I started selling furnishings for a living.

They then nerfed the droprate of furnishing mats and/or didn't increase it, as the number of players doing furnishing increased.

So, I had to stop doing that, as I didn't even have enough mats to make my own furniture, anymore.

Fortunately, in Summerset, it was possible to switch to doing multiple dailies for motifs.

Currently, all (or most) of the dailies in Elsweyr seem to be bugged for me.

So, there is no guarantee I will be able to do the same in this chapter.

Look at Caan - months after Summerset launched and still bugged.

..and this isn't just one quest, it's (at least) two.

Not only that, but the dragons award peanuts, so unless you get a purple furnishing plan (which is, or will be, very rare), you will not make much from them, in the longer run.

I don't particularly want to go back to stealing, almost exclusively, but if I have to, I will need stealth and we shouldn't be forced to level another race just to get back what we already had.

If they wanted to get rid of all racials, entirely, then I would be OK with that, but getting rid of one that people picked their race for, while not actually making anything more balanced, is just another reason to not want to carry on.

Not only that, but as I mentioned in another thread, even if I do level a Khajiit to steal, I will have to spend all my gold on bag upgrades, for a long time, so what is the point?

A lot of people (especially furnishers) have already paid enough into this game, without feeling forced to level alts they don't want to level.

I don't particularly want to quit, but if I have to, I will.

I don't make empty promises.

Quit both WoW and GW2, with no problems at all and will happily quit this too, if I have to.

Jaraal · May 2019

Tigerseye wrote: »

I don't particularly want to quit, but if I have to, I will.

I don't make empty promises.

Quit both WoW and GW2, with no problems at all and will happily quit this too, if I have to.

See, this is what I don't understand. Many, many people have said this in this thread, some have actually quit and uninstalled, and virtually nobody is creating new Bosmer characters..... and a total of zero players have said stealth detection is beneficial the way it's currently set up. And we are but a fraction of the frustrated players that also fail to see the logic of this change. But they'd rather feel "right" about the decisions they made, than have happy (and paying) players.

Somebody help me understand it, because they sure aren't saying anything about it.

Tasear · May 2019

Just want to say without bumping. I support this movement.