ZOS These changes...

Jodynn · October 2019

Are bad;
You are "re-balancing" things, AKA buffing, nerfing, slightly buffing to an incorrect proportion.

You need someone to test combat changes and you need to listen to them, because whatever mechanism you are using right now is failing .
Listen to your community of people who want constructive, fairness and happiness.

There are so many useless sets
There are so many useless morphs and abilities
These could give us class identity and a place, and you keep trying, I get it, but maybe listen to people who play your game instead of ASSUMING

Listen to someone like me, because I am willing to parse hours for you, I'm willing to give data from actual gameplay in trials and PvP of my class IN FAIRNESS, not "make me a god", but what is this skill? Why is it there? It's useless except for some RPer, does this skill feel good, is this skill is underpowered compared to x, well here is the Mathematical equation as to why and this is what it feels like and what we desire.

I'm not saying you are incapable, I'm just saying I have the time to play, you have the job, let me help you and feed you data, all that I ask is you listen.

Example of said data

Eruption is weak, Eruption looks weak.
As a "attrition" class it should deal more damage over time than other AoE DoTs, but let's add some diversity, give it something unique, have it launch fireballs from a pool of molten lava like in bloodroot forge, that would be much better than what it is now.

Another Example

Scalding rune casting it sometimes fails, the animation is hindering, it doesn't have minor force, and the damage over time is laughable, make it single target DoT and give minor force, make it 18 seconds, and I don't even care if it's ranged.

Everyone who reads this; Please, if you want to give examples feel free, but please don't argue over trivial matters, Please don't list things that would ascend you to godhood, list things that make sense, that are fair, and that would make the game better overall.

jypcy · October 2019

In addition to better data, I think an overall vision for the game and its various facets is necessary. I feel like we as the community have had to piece together soundbites from different sources to try to understand how things are supposed to be. A full write-up that entirely or largely skips the RP part of various skill lines and mechanics and instead explains the actual gameplay vision for these facets would be so so helpful for players to understand what the goal is so that all of the data and tests we do have an endpoint. As it stands, it feels like more often than not we’re tossing numbers into a meaningless churn of “balance.”

For example, we know the dk description about wielding “fearsome magic that pounds, shatters and physically alters the world around them,” but all we know regarding how they’re meant to be played is that they have a “more attrition-based combat style” and that their dots are supposed to be superior. What does this mean? How is this quantified? What are we meant to be testing to ensure that DKs successfully play how they’re meant to? Imo we need more organized, more comprehensive game design descriptions, otherwise everything shifts on a whim surrounded by misunderstanding and miscommunication in a matter of months.

akray21 · October 2019

Combat will never be fixed with the current patch process. You have to interate many more times than the current patch cycle allows. Weekly to bi-weekly patches pushed to live, with a handful of ability changes, would allow the team to try many more things without negative consequences lasting months. With more at-bats the team could reach the end goal much more quickly.

Shantu · October 2019

If the "end goal" is to make combat a frustrating annoyance sustainable for 10 seconds that sends players to other games, they've already succeeded. Who knows? Maybe player attrition is part of their performance improvement strategy.

Katahdin · October 2019

The problem with "listen to players" is they get 20 different opinions for every topic. Who should they listen to? No matter what they choose, there will always be someone screaming they did the wrong thing.

Donny_Vito · October 2019

Katahdin wrote: »

The problem with "listen to players" is they get 20 different opinions for every topic. Who should they listen to? No matter what they choose, there will always be someone screaming they did the wrong thing.

Good point. Some people will be able to provide better insight, but they tried something similar with the Class representatives. Their job was to collect data from the community and organize it in a way that was useful for ZoS (again, please don't bash me if I'm not accurate in what their actual responsibility was), but I believe in the end it sorta fell apart because ZoS didn't really use that information.

Daedric_NB_187 · October 2019

Personally, I've stopped caring about it. Zos is going to do what it wants no matter how we feel. I just continue to play with what I have until it isn't fun anymore and then I'll leave. Unfortunately, it's becoming less and less fun with each patch. Not sure how much longer I will hold out.

Jodynn · October 2019

Katahdin wrote: »

The problem with "listen to players" is they get 20 different opinions for every topic. Who should they listen to? No matter what they choose, there will always be someone screaming they did the wrong thing.

People they enlist with factual, quantitative data to measure against what they say their vision is.

Example
If eruption should be significant and define my class, then
A.] It should be a significant about of dps more than a generic skill in a parse.
B.] It should be visually effective as I cast the skill and visual throughout the duration, no lost once I use blockade.

These would be parameters they set, this would be information and data they would collect.

Who to pick? People who can provide meaningful data, maybe posted then voted on.

Daedric_NB_187 wrote: »

Personally, I've stopped caring about it. Zos is going to do what it wants no matter how we feel. I just continue to play with what I have until it isn't fun anymore and then I'll leave. Unfortunately, it's becoming less and less fun with each patch. Not sure how much longer I will hold out.

I felt similar but I don't want to give up and want to help them achieve something amazing.

Nordic__Knights · October 2019

The whole listen to me part then only talking about skills YOU'D like lol ok bro they'll jump right on that for YOU but no you want them to do this write up an full skill list that works for all classes and play styles then they might SEE something they could say looks good and not an personal request list to make 1 self better when talking about doing something for the whole community

EtTuBrutus · October 2019

The problem with homogenization of skills is they're simply looking at numbers and not the total picture.

I have absolutely zero faith in this team/ game/ company. They're lucky there's no real competition.

Sahidom · October 2019

To an extent the changes are needed to baseline several combat mechanics. It's just hitting a lot of skills and causing panic and confusion on what's next. Ideally, the baseline would be modified by a class overlay in sub-typing polymorphism manner. Naturally, the later would mean the developers would need a project plan to sub-type and rework the class skill to the future power fantasy and pattern play "class identity" phase of their updates.

At most, they responded to players regarding DOT damage; but this may or may not have been the right decision depending on the long term direction to develop a more durable, balance combat system between both PVE/PVP content play.

Plus Camelot Unchained looks like its coming in 2020, if ESO completely fails.

Jodynn · October 2019

Yes I would like them to give us a spec of what they are doing, they keep saying our vision, our numbers, our baseline, our whatever, if they give us a baseline then we can test it, then we can relay this is functioning as desired or, this isn't functioning as desired because you forget this or that, or this feels underwhelming in practice even if on paper it looks correct and here is why with numbers and proof.

Ozby · October 2019

Honestly it must be hard for them to be honest, I just looked through the forum and there is so many asking for nerfs on things that actually do not even need to be touched. IMO we shouldn't ask for nerfs but for other things to be buffed to the same level hence the word "balance"

Zevrro · October 2019

Ozby wrote: »

Honestly it must be hard for them to be honest, I just looked through the forum and there is so many asking for nerfs on things that actually do not even need to be touched. IMO we shouldn't ask for nerfs but for other things to be buffed to the same level hence the word "balance"

All it takes is a team who properly understand their own game. They're horrendously out of touch at this point and its getting worse.

juhislihis19 · October 2019

Katahdin wrote: »

The problem with "listen to players" is they get 20 different opinions for every topic. Who should they listen to? No matter what they choose, there will always be someone screaming they did the wrong thing.

While this is true, ZOS is notoriously known for doing the opposite of what all of those 20 opinions shout- even if all 20 would've agreed on something.

And ZOS doesn't know how to act with discretion. ALL their actions are DRASTIC measures. They nerf class A to oblivion, buff class B to heavens and this leads to friction among players here at the forums. Year from now on, classes A and B have switched places. And when they nerf something, they nerf if way too much and spend the next months fixing origina the original, erratic nerf.

DOTs for example, needed to lower the damage, sure. What did ZOS do? Nerfed them over 50%. How did they respond to uproar? Spent the next few PTS weeks increasing the damage again little by little. TIME WELL SPENT.

Do they do this on purpose or are they just extremely unprofessional?

In my line of work, we sometimes increase prices. We don't increase the price at once by 100-200% because it's fn stupid. If we must increase prices, we increase them by little and see how it pans out and work from there.

juhislihis19 · October 2019

Ozby wrote: »

Honestly it must be hard for them to be honest, I just looked through the forum and there is so many asking for nerfs on things that actually do not even need to be touched. IMO we shouldn't ask for nerfs but for other things to be buffed to the same level hence the word "balance"

See, in a perfect world this is how it should be done. But ZOS doesn't work that way, and that's a reality we must face.

We: Buff other classes, plase.
ZOS: No, can't do that, sorry. Instead we will nerf the top class. But we won't nerf it to level with others. We'll nerf it so hard no one uses it for the next 12 months. New furniture on sale at the Crown Store.

Jodynn · October 2019

It's the simple misunderstanding and lack of perspective of their own game looking in a window at a refracted lense distorting what's real thinking spreadsheet logic works.