Bosmer/Wood Elf, another open letter about stealth, combat abilities and flavor

thegreatme · July 2019

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

It's a pity the Bosmer have a useless stealth detect bonus instead of a far more useful wallet detection bonus. I can't seem to find any means to buy anything during the upcoming sale. Guess I'll just do without.

My turn to LOL X3

thegreatme wrote: »

Would you stack Sentry and Way of Air to get your detection back because of how OP it supposedly is? Yes or no? I'm guessing no.

No "Yes" answers to this so far I see.

thegreatme · August 2019

Was going through the Dominion quests in Grahtwood again on a new toon and ran across the Brackenleaf quest near Haven.

As I was entering Brackenleaf, a bosmer literally popped up right in front of me as a shadow out of nowhere, and then from a shadow to a Bosmer.

I recall there are several other quests making a point of this. The bosmer tribe in Coldharbour is the strongest example off the top of my head that openly boasts their sneakiness.

I don't know how much more in-your-face the game lore has to make it that Bosmer are sneaky before someone admits a mistake was made with these "Lore-friendly racial changes".

Taloros · August 2019

You probably played a Bosmer! Else, you wouldn't have found that stealthed quest NPC at all.

No, sadly, I know, no use of stealth detection in PvE.

Anyone played WoW, back when Warlock had a spell to detect invisible opponents - without any invisible opponents present in the game?

BlueRaven · August 2019

Taloros wrote: »

You probably played a Bosmer! Else, you wouldn't have found that stealthed quest NPC at all.

No, sadly, I know, no use of stealth detection in PvE.

Anyone played WoW, back when Warlock had a spell to detect invisible opponents - without any invisible opponents present in the game?

The thing though was that there were invisible things to detect in wow.

I remember spending time just inside the courtyard to old (original) undercity casting detect invisibility to random people who were entering. Because if a person had detect invisibility active they will see the non-aggressive ghosts floating all around them.

It was fun to see the reactions of people who did not know those existed.

Also I want to say there were invisible hostile targets in one of the dungeons or raids (Sholomance maybe, or maybe the one in eastern plaugelands?). Anyway the hostile mobs would be invisible until they were in combat so it was best to buff the tank with detect so they were aware of where they were.

(Oh I remember now, in the passage way to the four horsemen were some invisible mobs, tough ones too.)

Anyway, improved detect stealth is a dead passive for pve. It used to be unusual to have dead abilities for pve in ESO but it’s slowly becoming the norm. It feels like about half of the NB abilities now have little use in pve (silences, etc). Now most of my bar is filled with non nb abilities as it stands and it will only become worse with the new patch.

I don’t know, it’s weird how quickly this game has turned into one that feels like it is running on fumes. These changes they are implementing are not that well thought out (for pve anyway).

Jaraal · August 2019

thegreatme wrote: »

Was going through the Dominion quests in Grahtwood again on a new toon and ran across the Brackenleaf quest near Haven.

As I was entering Brackenleaf, a bosmer literally popped up right in front of me as a shadow out of nowhere, and then from a shadow to a Bosmer.

I recall there are several other quests making a point of this. The bosmer tribe in Coldharbour is the strongest example off the top of my head that openly boasts their sneakiness.

I don't know how much more in-your-face the game lore has to make it that Bosmer are sneaky before someone admits a mistake was made with these "Lore-friendly racial changes".

How about this guy? He must have morphed in from an alternate reality where Bosmer are actually stealthy, rather than being cops like they are now in ESO:

Taloros · August 2019

@ Blue Raven
Yes, there were a few invisible opponents - wasn't Scholomance iirc, but in Dire Maul. Thing is: Those were introduced either after Warlocks got the spell, or at least it took a long time to level to that content on Alliance side. Didn't play Horde.

Oh, the "good" ol' times.

@ topic:
Got some free days. Logged in today. Looked at my Bosmer, that got nerfed without any apparent reason. Looked at my other toons, which will be nerfed with the next patch, again with no apparent reason. Didn't feel the desire to go beyond checking my mail. Didn't get anything interesting. Returned to single player games.

Active development is a good thing. But I don't want to switch specc, equipment or even race every other patch just to adjust to the current flavor of the month. Some consistency would be welcome by now.

I just had learned to play and like my little Bosmer, when her schtick was taken away. Stealth without cloaking - that's what I built her for.

Cundu_Ertur · August 2019

I'm hardly playing now. It's hard to remain interested in a game where the devs don't give a rat's butt about the lore, but instead just want to rip off other game mechanics and turn this into a WoW or EQ clone. If I wanted one of those other games, I'd already have it. I wanted an Elder Scrolls game, but this is turning into something completely different.

max_only · August 2019

Well you all know how I feel about it.

Two races have max stamina, two races have max magicka, but two races can’t have hiding bonus? Zos just doesn’t want to admit when they’re wrong. It’s like when Templars went from sharing repentance corpses, to fighting over them, and back to sharing them again. Admitting mistakes is not their strength.

Cundu_Ertur · August 2019

max_only wrote: »

Well you all know how I feel about it.

Two races have max stamina, two races have max magicka, but two races can’t have hiding bonus? Zos just doesn’t want to admit when they’re wrong. It’s like when Templars went from sharing repentance corpses, to fighting over them, and back to sharing them again. Admitting mistakes is not their strength.

While I agree with you in principle, the fact is that four races have +2k stamina: Bosmer, Orc, Imperial, and Redguard.

So much for racial bonuses needing to be completely and utterly unique in every possible way.

MartiniDaniels · August 2019

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

Well you all know how I feel about it.

Two races have max stamina, two races have max magicka, but two races can’t have hiding bonus? Zos just doesn’t want to admit when they’re wrong. It’s like when Templars went from sharing repentance corpses, to fighting over them, and back to sharing them again. Admitting mistakes is not their strength.

While I agree with you in principle, the fact is that four races have +2k stamina: Bosmer, Orc, Imperial, and Redguard.

So much for racial bonuses needing to be completely and utterly unique in every possible way.

5 races, you forgot dunmers ^^

Araneae6537 · August 2019

I agree with the OP; I would prefer Bosmer to have the racial bonus to stealth that they used to have (or any other bonus to stealth that makes sense, such as costing less stamina, etc.) because it fits with the lore and Bosmer and Khajiit have always been good at stealth to varying degrees, as pointed out. The current bonus makes no sense lorewise and is completely useless in PvE.

JobooAGS · August 2019

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

Well you all know how I feel about it.

Two races have max stamina, two races have max magicka, but two races can’t have hiding bonus? Zos just doesn’t want to admit when they’re wrong. It’s like when Templars went from sharing repentance corpses, to fighting over them, and back to sharing them again. Admitting mistakes is not their strength.

While I agree with you in principle, the fact is that four races have +2k stamina: Bosmer, Orc, Imperial, and Redguard.

So much for racial bonuses needing to be completely and utterly unique in every possible way.

5 races, you forgot dunmers ^^

dunmer is 1875

thegreatme · August 2019

ErinM31 wrote: »

I agree with the OP; I would prefer Bosmer to have the racial bonus to stealth that they used to have (or any other bonus to stealth that makes sense, such as costing less stamina, etc.) because it fits with the lore and Bosmer and Khajiit have always been good at stealth to varying degrees, as pointed out. The current bonus makes no sense lorewise and is completely useless in PvE.

If they were going with already-existing set bonuses, I'd have chosen Night's Silence over Way of Air. No sneak speed penalty? I'd give up my 3 meter radius for that, but the detection increase is total garbage. According to their lore, "Bosmer are hunters so we wanted their passives to reflect that" -- what's more hunter...y? than being able to sneak-pounce your target quickly?

There are so many other set bonuses that would have done much better.

Taloros wrote: »

Got some free days. Logged in today. Looked at my Bosmer, that got nerfed without any apparent reason. Looked at my other toons, which will be nerfed with the next patch, again with no apparent reason. Didn't feel the desire to go beyond checking my mail. Didn't get anything interesting. Returned to single player games.

I was going to respond to this with text first, but I thought of something better.

Its funny you should mention that though. I find I've been gravitating back to playing more oldrim Skyrim. Why shouldn't I? When I can be a super sneaky, stealthy OP archer that can one-shot a draugr in the head from all the way across Wolf Skull Cave on the first try? A lot more fun and satisfying than ESO archery, even though Bosmer are supposed to be really good archers.

Sneakiness?? I can level that without arbitrary, set racial passives getting in the way. With mods? I can craft a single ring that muffles me into near-invisibility from Level 1, and an amulet that gives me night-eye in all dark caves so now I'm both a sneak and detect bad arz from hundreds of feet away. Bam. What use do I have for an ESO sneak bosmer now?

Not to mention I can build my own homesteads wherever I want and take my mobile horse-drawn caravan house all over the map and never worry about inventory issues XD

Honestly the only thing ESO does better than one-player Skyrim at this point for me is that I can chat with other people in-game and the player housing decoration aspect is better. And as for the single-player aspect, Skyrim is getting a multiplayer mod... so we'll see how long that lasts.

Oh, and I can actually have CLOAKS in Skyrim without it murdering the whole server for everyone.

kylermacdb16_ESO · August 2019

Stealth detection reminds me of those morphs that let the skill interrupt a spellcaster in the sense that someone on the team keeps trying to make those 'a thing' when nobody uses them or wants them. They are 'trap' choices to players that don't know any better. Just stop.

Taloros · August 2019

@ thegreatme

Awesome. ;-)

It appears we switched form Skyrim to ESO for similar reasons. ESO has the community benefit, and I liked the balancing better than in Skyrim, which, frankly, is a complete mess mechanics-wise. But that's changing, as ESO gets completely mixed up. The lore and the mechanics are completely out of sync. Bosmer now have (non-functioning) radar vision. Necromancers got introduced - as a petless class that's better without magic. Next patch, I guess the racist Altmer will get a racial group buff that only works on non-Altmer, so as to show us their appreciation of other races.

I've also reinstalled Skyrim, but there're some non-Bethesda games out there currently that feel a bit more fresh. Once Requiem will get (officially) ported to Skyrim Special Edition, I'll jump right in.

Cundu_Ertur · October 2019

thegreatme wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

It's a pity the Bosmer have a useless stealth detect bonus instead of a far more useful wallet detection bonus. I can't seem to find any means to buy anything during the upcoming sale. Guess I'll just do without.

My turn to LOL X3

thegreatme wrote: »

Would you stack Sentry and Way of Air to get your detection back because of how OP it supposedly is? Yes or no? I'm guessing no.

No "Yes" answers to this so far I see.

Wow, months for people to reply and not one "yeah, I use Way of Air, it ROCKS." Heck, the way of air jewelry hit the Golden's sales table and people whined it was a garbage set.

Maybe we'll have real Bosmer as a playable race at some point. If we're lucky it won't be 5 years from now.

max_only · October 2019

They’re killing it.

Jaraal · October 2019

I have a hard time even caring any more, they find a way to take the fun out of everything. Started playing my werewolves more after my Bosmer thief was rendered useless, and they managed to wreck that too.... with even more damage coming with the next update. There's literally no advantage to playing a werewolf now, every class can out damage and outheal them. And add to that the crazy yo-yo nerf/buff/nerf cycle they've started every three months, and I find myself usually just logging in for 5 minutes to check mail and claim my daily rewards. My five guild chats are virtually silent now, so many people have left. I don't know what the future holds for ESO, but none of it looks positive at this point in time.

MartiniDaniels · October 2019

With such huge nerfs to main bow abilities (poison injection and draining shot) hunter's eye should be re-evaluated. Really I don't wanna use bow in PVP anymore... but without bow, hunter's eye is rather pointless.

thegreatme · October 2019

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Wow, months for people to reply and not one "yeah, I use Way of Air, it ROCKS." Heck, the way of air jewelry hit the Golden's sales table and people whined it was a garbage set.

You know I was just thinking about this the other day

Seriously. Where's all my Way of Air defenders ready to jump on just HOW AWESOME detection is they'd sacrifice their racial passive perks and their other obviously-inferior-but-practical gear sets to get this massively OP skillset?! Oh wait. They probably don't exist. They didn't exist before the bosmer update.

Jaraal wrote: »

And add to that the crazy yo-yo nerf/buff/nerf cycle they've started every three months, and I find myself usually just logging in for 5 minutes to check mail and claim my daily rewards.

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

With such huge nerfs to main bow abilities (poison injection and draining shot) hunter's eye should be re-evaluated. Really I don't wanna use bow in PVP anymore... but without bow, hunter's eye is rather pointless.

Yeah, always fun getting stuck on that PvP team who wants to rage about how bad you suck when you're a nerfed archer up against a fleet of OP buffed Templars and Sorcs this patch. Good thing they're getting nerfed again in a couple weeks so they can all whinge at someone else for the next 3 month cycle for broken game mechanics none of us wanted anyway

Taloros · October 2019

My Bosmer has started to learn jewelry crafting. Her combat and stealth abilities gutted, she needs to look out for another job. Sad to see her forced into becoming a pure crafter. This should be a game with stealthy wood elves, brutish orcs and haughty Imperials. But... no sneaky wood elves no more, my friends, no more.

Tommy_The_Gun · October 2019

I wish wood elves and argonians would get a buff at some point. They seem to be the only 2 useless races in eso when it comes to their racial passives & their use case.

Jaraal · October 2019

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

I wish wood elves and argonians would get a buff at some point. They seem to be the only 2 useless races in eso when it comes to their racial passives & their use case.

Ahhh, but Bosmer are now very useful..... to enemy players. That passive "stealth detection" helps to alert hidden players to the presence of a group with a Bosmer closing in well before a group without one of us. Let's not forget this game is all about PvP only!

anadandy · October 2019

Remember this, the quasi answer we got to tons of PTS feedback about the loss of Bosmer stealth, that totally missed the point?

Class rep meeting notes:

Reps specifically asked about the community’s concern that bosmers are trading stealth for different buffs. We were told that ZOS saw these concerns and would work on creating more options/systems for stealth gameplay outside of race. With these additions, stealth gameplay will open up to more players, and also allow bosmers to have the nice combat buff will still having avenues to be as stealthy as before.

Still waiting. Unless Vesture of Darloc Brae was it...

Meanwhile, they're still adding stealth based quests to main storylines (Eslweyr has two in a row that ask you to sneak into a location and not kill any thing..)

Cundu_Ertur · October 2019

There was even a thread asking for more information about "creating more options/systems for stealth gameplay outside of race" which went exactly no-where.

This is my shocked face.

Of course that still doesn't address the problem that Bosmer aren't supposed to be AVERAGE at stealth.

Jaraal · October 2019

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Of course that still doesn't address the problem that Bosmer aren't supposed to be AVERAGE at stealth.

But thanks to the new combat team they are technically the worst at stealth, considering the unwanted side effect of passive stealth detection, not to mention that they have to come OUT of stealth to activate their racial passive by roll dodging.

thegreatme · October 2019

Jaraal wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Of course that still doesn't address the problem that Bosmer aren't supposed to be AVERAGE at stealth.

But thanks to the new combat team they are technically the worst at stealth, considering the unwanted side effect of passive stealth detection, not to mention that they have to come OUT of stealth to activate their class passive by roll dodging.

Lots of nerfs to bow abilities I've noticed too. Poison injection nerfed to do less damage. Knockback stun taken off of draining shot, which was my go-to spammable for both PvE and PvP.

Sure bow its not exclusive to bosmer but what else are we supposed to, allegedly, be BiS in? I'd assume Bow since our racial passives all revolve around it. So RIP being stealthy and RIP being useful with a bow. People already mock bow builds as nothing better than RP fluff. If it wasn't true before, its becoming true now.

Cundu_Ertur · October 2019

thegreatme wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Of course that still doesn't address the problem that Bosmer aren't supposed to be AVERAGE at stealth.

But thanks to the new combat team they are technically the worst at stealth, considering the unwanted side effect of passive stealth detection, not to mention that they have to come OUT of stealth to activate their class passive by roll dodging.

Lots of nerfs to bow abilities I've noticed too. Poison injection nerfed to do less damage. Knockback stun taken off of draining shot, which was my go-to spammable for both PvE and PvP.

Sure bow its not exclusive to bosmer but what else are we supposed to, allegedly, be BiS in? I'd assume Bow since our racial passives all revolve around it. So RIP being stealthy and RIP being useful with a bow. People already mock bow builds as nothing better than RP fluff. If it wasn't true before, its becoming true now.

There are several in-game lore sources that explicitly state that Bosmer are unsurpassed at archery. The racial description in every game from Daggerfall onward states that there are no finer archers in Tamriel. IIRC it still shows up in the racial description in the character creation screen.

The fact is that the devs had not the slightest clue about who or what Bosmer have been and are supposed to be. Their refusal to accept this while patting themselves on the back for getting the lore so very correct is grossly offensive.

Jaraal · October 2019

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

thegreatme wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Cundu_Ertur wrote: »

Of course that still doesn't address the problem that Bosmer aren't supposed to be AVERAGE at stealth.

But thanks to the new combat team they are technically the worst at stealth, considering the unwanted side effect of passive stealth detection, not to mention that they have to come OUT of stealth to activate their class passive by roll dodging.

Lots of nerfs to bow abilities I've noticed too. Poison injection nerfed to do less damage. Knockback stun taken off of draining shot, which was my go-to spammable for both PvE and PvP.

Sure bow its not exclusive to bosmer but what else are we supposed to, allegedly, be BiS in? I'd assume Bow since our racial passives all revolve around it. So RIP being stealthy and RIP being useful with a bow. People already mock bow builds as nothing better than RP fluff. If it wasn't true before, its becoming true now.

There are several in-game lore sources that explicitly state that Bosmer are unsurpassed at archery. The racial description in every game from Daggerfall onward states that there are no finer archers in Tamriel. IIRC it still shows up in the racial description in the character creation screen.

The fact is that the devs had not the slightest clue about who or what Bosmer have been and are supposed to be. Their refusal to accept this while patting themselves on the back for getting the lore so very correct is grossly offensive.

And they still haven't updated the quest and NPC dialogues that specifically mentions Bosmer stealth, Argonian poison resistance, etc. It's like nobody even cares how abrupt changes have a domino effect on other parts of the game.

SmukkeHeks · October 2019

Sorry if I’ve confused some things, but as far as my knowledge goes, there is a team for combat, another for storytelling, third for graphics etc?

Do we know if the combat team are aware of the lore?

It seems as if not. It seems as if the combat team tries to create a pew-pew-pew game out of something that isn’t so simple.

If progress isn’t bothered with the lore, it would make sense why they butcher a hunter race? They simply aren’t aware of the identity?

Not that it’s a good excuse. But it’s there?

Edit: spelling