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Which type of player are they aiming to please ?
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The_Lex✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Bobby_V_Rockit wrote: »Bobby_V_Rockit wrote: »Didnt they say in one of those live things a few months back that it was the hardcore end game folk they were designing stuff for? Not us casual kill a dragon and have fun types?
Yes. In the latest eso live (about five weeks ago) they basically said exactly that.
No they didnt. Plus context of what they said really matters. They for example said in last eso live that they want to standarize abilities so common crowd will find it more fun to theorycraft and dont care about tooltips and end game players will just choose what deals the most damage anyway.Fang_of_Lorkhaj wrote: »The casual player takes priority over any other player due to their numbers. There is definitely more casuals than pvp-ers and pve-ers. You see this in dungeon like frost vault. Too many casuals complaining that to obtain certain achievements is near impossible for them so the swift action is to make the item obtainable through a regular completion, not to mention casuals while also being the majority of the player base also dump loads of money into the crown store. So when you look at it from a business perspective, casuals will be catered to because that's what keeps the lights on at ZOS.
They said during eso live that the casual player who logs in “just to kill some dragons” is NOT their target audience. They said so specifically.
They actually said something completly opposite. They were saying that average players that log in to kill dragon dont care about numbers and hardcore players are and this is why they want to balance numbers to get them closer together so everyone will be happy and casuals wont be forced to slot BiS abilities. Here is the clip. It starts at 1:01:57
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb9H1kwF25w&t=3717s
No.https://youtu.be/Yb9H1kwF25w
GilliamtheRogue 1:01:50 min: "..what kind of players experience the game in different ways, and what is our target audience with some these changes. So like in some of these cases it's a numbers game which not everyone really cares about. The average player who's going to come on and just kill some dragons or stuff like that, they don't care if they're spammable is doing a billion damage..." (Emphasis mine.)
Wheeler: "Well I would."
They tried to walk it back, but it was pretty clear.
They go on to to say they are focused on the end game group. And that the endgame players "...thats's where a lot of the number balancing, in terms of why things get buffed or nerfed is, like, its focused on that group in terms of making sure that we have a healthy game that everyone can experience..." (Again emphasis mine.)
They are focused on the 1% the other 99% are not their "focus". That is why the game is suffering.
The combat team consists of a guy who does not do PvE content, and another one who thinks people who log onto kill dragons don't care about their dps so won't consider them in the combat decisions.
^^ This, they explicitly said they only care about hardcore end gamers and noone else matters when it comes to balance. There’s your answer folks.
Amazing how two people can read the same thing and come to completely different conclusions.7 -
Kadoin✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭
If ZOS is failing at all on the class balance front, I'd say their biggest failure is in listening to the community at all. I have no confidence in us, as a community, having the ability to suggest class/skill/cp changes with any sense of objectivity. Don't get me wrong - there are almost certainly a handful of genuinely dedicated, genuinely objective players that have some real genius ideas for the game. However, I suspect they are mostly drowned out by the army of foaming-at-the-mouth players that are trampling each other in their desperation to get their angry forum posts at the top of the thread list every morning.
You can see this exact thing if you go to the PTS section. Some of the threads are gems. The last cycle, I especially loved the one where BRP DW and Resto were defended. That one made me laugh, but also made me realize my input didn't really matter and I simply said "ah well...whatever happens, happens, the players like making suggestions and keeping things hushed then let them deal with it on live" and stayed away from the PTS and went go beat the flu.
Anyone that was testing on PTS knew mag sorc would become strong in PvP, knew that templar light was broken OP, knew that some of these proc sets would become too OP, knew that ground DoT cost increase was too steep, knew that BRP weapons were and are OP in the current patch, knew that HoTs are OP esp. layered ones, knew that crit healing is OP, knew that vengence is working better than intended, the list goes on and on, but it simply was shouted down or otherwise ignored by ZOS. It happens every PTS cycle...
I'm not surprised a majority of the playerbase may not be happy with the changes, but most of the playerbase that is complaining should have also participated in the PTS and ZOS should have gathered more direct data (like polls, surverys, etc.) to avoid having to skim through noise threads or simply ran analytics on the PTS. The result may have been better than only a few select players giving feedback with obvious bias.
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Reistr_the_Unbroken✭✭✭✭✭
✭Isn’t the leader of the combat team or something the same guy who made dark souls or some hard game?0 -
Goregrinder✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Thannazzar wrote: »They thought the dps was too high with the upper echelon endgame players so they nerfed dps.
Problem is upper echelon players can still do what they do. But the rest of us mere mortals got their dps wrecked.
The worst part is the combat team is perfectly fine with it. In fact they don't care about the common player, this nerf patches "targeted" audience is the upper echelon players.
Your so right. And the sadder thing is there was a plethora of feedback on the Pts that told them exactly that and had broadly been ignored.
I guess the solution is to somehow become an upper echelon gamer....I wonder how, those guys were probably just already an upper echelon ESO gamer, yeah?0 -
Elsonso✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Reistr_the_Unbroken wrote: »Isn’t the leader of the combat team or something the same guy who made dark souls or some hard game?
No. I believe that Wheeler worked on DAoC, which might be why he is at ZOS, and Warhammer.I'm not surprised a majority of the playerbase may not be happy with the changes, but most of the playerbase that is complaining should have also participated in the PTS and ZOS should have gathered more direct data (like polls, surverys, etc.) to avoid having to skim through noise threads or simply ran analytics on the PTS. The result may have been better than only a few select players giving feedback with obvious bias.
There are two groups of "majority of the player base" to consider. My thought is you are talking about the forum. The individuals on the forum, who are always the "majority of the player base", no matter how many people agree with them, are upset, yes. In this case, the "majority" is probably between 25 and 50% of the stated population. Of those, probably half are only upset because other people are upset. By the time you cross out all the people who are part of the majority, but really don't have deep knowledge of the subject, we might find that the "majority" is probably around 25 people.
The other group, the actual majority of active players that are spread out across all 6 megaservers, is probably more ambivalent than anything else. Of those, probably half of them cannot even tell the difference in combat numbers. Those that know how to get the combat numbers, that is. Also, they are probably mis-remembering their numbers.
Edited by Elsonso on October 23, 2019 7:02PMXBox EU/NA:@ElsonsoJannus
PC NA/EU: @Elsonso
PSN NA/EU: @ElsonsoJannus
Total in-game hours: 11321
X/Twitter: ElsonsoJannus0 -
Wayshuba✭✭✭✭✭
If ZOS is failing at all on the class balance front, I'd say their biggest failure is in listening to the community at all. I have no confidence in us, as a community, having the ability to suggest class/skill/cp changes with any sense of objectivity. Don't get me wrong - there are almost certainly a handful of genuinely dedicated, genuinely objective players that have some real genius ideas for the game. However, I suspect they are mostly drowned out by the army of foaming-at-the-mouth players that are trampling each other in their desperation to get their angry forum posts at the top of the thread list every morning.
You can see this exact thing if you go to the PTS section. Some of the threads are gems. The last cycle, I especially loved the one where BRP DW and Resto were defended. That one made me laugh, but also made me realize my input didn't really matter and I simply said "ah well...whatever happens, happens, the players like making suggestions and keeping things hushed then let them deal with it on live" and stayed away from the PTS and went go beat the flu.
Anyone that was testing on PTS knew mag sorc would become strong in PvP, knew that templar light was broken OP, knew that some of these proc sets would become too OP, knew that ground DoT cost increase was too steep, knew that BRP weapons were and are OP in the current patch, knew that HoTs are OP esp. layered ones, knew that crit healing is OP, knew that vengence is working better than intended, the list goes on and on, but it simply was shouted down or otherwise ignored by ZOS. It happens every PTS cycle...
I'm not surprised a majority of the playerbase may not be happy with the changes, but most of the playerbase that is complaining should have also participated in the PTS and ZOS should have gathered more direct data (like polls, surverys, etc.) to avoid having to skim through noise threads or simply ran analytics on the PTS. The result may have been better than only a few select players giving feedback with obvious bias.
They got consolidated feedback from the class reps - both for this patch and the previous one. They chose to completely ignore that feedback, as they did this cycle.
And, the game is continuing to bleed players as a result. ZoS has been losing players for six straight months now (https://steamcharts.com/app/306130). Since launch, they have NEVER lost players for six months in a row. Even more telling, they have 54% less players logging in today than they did six months ago.
But ZoS will continue to ignore that this combat team is doing a lot of damage to the game and keep right on letting them do it until there are too few players left for it to matter any more.2 -
Recent✭✭✭✭✭
✭Everyone is complaining now but when i posted about the impact these chages would have i got shot down by 90% of these forums people.
The huge issue for me is the frequency of these changes. It does not allow for players to adapt and accept and continue on....it frustrates and makes players suspicious of our dev team and just causes them to lose faith in eso .
Why even have forums if zos devs are just going to get advice from freak players, not your average good player but the freaks of nature that can pull numbers with weird builds/rotations no typical player can pull off. Makes no sense to me.Edited by Recent on October 23, 2019 8:28PM4 -
Hanokihs✭✭✭✭✭Everyone is complaining now but when i posted about the impact these chages would have i got shot down by 90% of these forums people.
The huge issue for me is the frequency of these changes. It does not allow for players to adapt and accept and continue on....it frustrates and makes players suspicious of our dev team and just causes them to lose faith in eso .
Why even have forums if zos devs are just going to get advice from freak players, not your average good player but the freaks of nature that can pull numbers with weird builds/rotations no typical player can pull off. Makes no sense to me.
I don't think they actually listen to or take advice from anyone. I mean, we've got class reps and everything, but I don't think anyone on the dev team has honestly asked their opinion on anything in months. If ever."I haven't really played much yet, but lemme tell you all about how the game should include X and be a lot more like Y!" - Half the posters on this forum."I've been here for years, and lemme tell you all about how they should never change or evolve Z, because then the game would be ruined forever." - The other half of posters on this forum.2 -
Tigerseye✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Everyone is complaining now but when i posted about the impact these chages would have i got shot down by 90% of these forums people.
The huge issue for me is the frequency of these changes. It does not allow for players to adapt and accept and continue on....it frustrates and makes players suspicious of our dev team and just causes them to lose faith in eso .
Why even have forums if zos devs are just going to get advice from freak players, not your average good player but the freaks of nature that can pull numbers with weird builds/rotations no typical player can pull off. Makes no sense to me.
Because you have to balance around the top players, as they know what they are doing.
Whereas, new/casual players probably don't, yet (or don't care).
Not that there is anything wrong with not knowing, or caring, but you can't balance around people who don't know/care, can you?
If you don't balance around the top end, you end up with only one, or two, classes and/or builds doing all the high end stuff, which is obviously ridiculous.
Balancing around the top end should, logically, make the rest of the players more balanced, too.
If balancing around the top end throws the rest totally out of balance, somehow (and I don't know if this is true, or not, quite frankly?), there is clearly something fundamentally wrong with the way the game is designed.0 -
Sir_Xalvador✭✭✭the brand new player that has no skill, wines and cries, and only does light and heavy attacks and nothing else. and expects to do what players that have worked hard to get their skills up can do.
2 -
martinhpb16_ESO✭✭✭✭✭
✭Dusk_Coven wrote: »They basically talked about it here -- https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/57025
Thank you for linking.
I have just looked through this wall of text and it came across as meaningless waffle, to me anyway.
All I know is my stamblade used to feel agile and sneaky and now i feel like I am just getting pushed further and further down the tanky route to make him viable.
I really don't think they get Nb anymore tbh.At least the spelling is difficult for you.
Hew's Bane*1 -
Hanokihs✭✭✭✭✭Everyone is complaining now but when i posted about the impact these chages would have i got shot down by 90% of these forums people.
The huge issue for me is the frequency of these changes. It does not allow for players to adapt and accept and continue on....it frustrates and makes players suspicious of our dev team and just causes them to lose faith in eso .
Why even have forums if zos devs are just going to get advice from freak players, not your average good player but the freaks of nature that can pull numbers with weird builds/rotations no typical player can pull off. Makes no sense to me.
Because you have to balance around the top players, as they know what they are doing.
Whereas, new/casual players probably don't, yet (or don't care).
Not that there is anything wrong with not knowing, or caring, but you can't balance around people who don't know/care, can you?
If you don't balance around the top end, you end up with only one, or two, classes and/or builds doing all the high end stuff, which is obviously ridiculous.
Balancing around the top end should, logically, make the rest of the players more balanced, too.
If balancing around the top end throws the rest totally out of balance, somehow (and I don't know if this is true, or not, quite frankly?), there is clearly something fundamentally wrong with the way the game is designed.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way the game is designed. Animation cancelling.
It's literally the only thing standing between players who do all the damage and players who do none. And before everyone figured out this nifty little timers trick, there was no need to go crazy with nerfs. Now that players can button mash their way to 80-100k DPS, they have to bring the hammer down on all the abilities, because short of one-shot mechanics and excessive-beyond-excessive damage output, there's no actual way to increase enemy/boss difficulty in a way that doesn't break the game for most people. Especially because everything is scaled - there's no classic "grind until you're over level and come back" or "stand where you won't get hit and cheese it" mechanic available here.
The only way to legit make most people equal is to kill cancelling. Otherwise, every time they nerf skills, they're not only bringing down the ceiling, they're also burying the basement."I haven't really played much yet, but lemme tell you all about how the game should include X and be a lot more like Y!" - Half the posters on this forum."I've been here for years, and lemme tell you all about how they should never change or evolve Z, because then the game would be ruined forever." - The other half of posters on this forum.6 -
Ragnarock41✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭Rave the Histborn wrote: »Their goal is not to satisfy players, its to satisfy their bank account.
Other game companies (ESP indy) make games to be fun, and earn their money that way.
ZO$ makes games to make money, and fun takes a back seat.
Sadly...they don't get it.
Lol why do you even come here. Indy games come to make more money then ZOS. Look at the mobile games market and the Epic games store, it's all indie games making games designed to make you spend money. It's not really the same. Go play WoW.
Its a great time to be an indie dev for sure. Competition is good for us, the players. Though unfortunately there won't be a massive mmorpg done by ''indie devs'', excluding all those kickstarter projects.0 -
StabbityDoom✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Zos is not one all embodying thing with one opinion. I think management is thinking money, where devs and lower on the totem pole may actually care about fun. But when the person driving the car is thinking on money, things don't end up where consumers are benefiting.1 -
Juhasow✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Bobby_V_Rockit wrote: »Didnt they say in one of those live things a few months back that it was the hardcore end game folk they were designing stuff for? Not us casual kill a dragon and have fun types?
Yes. In the latest eso live (about five weeks ago) they basically said exactly that.
No they didnt. Plus context of what they said really matters. They for example said in last eso live that they want to standarize abilities so common crowd will find it more fun to theorycraft and dont care about tooltips and end game players will just choose what deals the most damage anyway.Fang_of_Lorkhaj wrote: »The casual player takes priority over any other player due to their numbers. There is definitely more casuals than pvp-ers and pve-ers. You see this in dungeon like frost vault. Too many casuals complaining that to obtain certain achievements is near impossible for them so the swift action is to make the item obtainable through a regular completion, not to mention casuals while also being the majority of the player base also dump loads of money into the crown store. So when you look at it from a business perspective, casuals will be catered to because that's what keeps the lights on at ZOS.
They said during eso live that the casual player who logs in “just to kill some dragons” is NOT their target audience. They said so specifically.
They actually said something completly opposite. They were saying that average players that log in to kill dragon dont care about numbers and hardcore players are and this is why they want to balance numbers to get them closer together so everyone will be happy and casuals wont be forced to slot BiS abilities. Here is the clip. It starts at 1:01:57https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb9H1kwF25w&t=3717s
No.https://youtu.be/Yb9H1kwF25w
GilliamtheRogue 1:01:50 min: "..what kind of players experience the game in different ways, and what is our target audience with some these changes. So like in some of these cases it's a numbers game which not everyone really cares about. The average player who's going to come on and just kill some dragons or stuff like that, they don't care if they're spammable is doing a billion damage..." (Emphasis mine.)
Wheeler: "Well I would."
They tried to walk it back, but it was pretty clear.
They go on to to say they are focused on the end game group. And that the endgame players "...thats's where a lot of the number balancing, in terms of why things get buffed or nerfed is, like, its focused on that group in terms of making sure that we have a healthy game that everyone can experience..." (Again emphasis mine.)
They are focused on the 1% the other 99% are not their "focus". That is why the game is suffering.
The combat team consists of a guy who does not do PvE content, and another one who thinks people who log onto kill dragons don't care about their dps so won't consider them in the combat decisions.
Oh boy that is by far the most delusional and out of context and full of assumptions piece of work I've seen on this forum and there was lot of them. Lets try this one more time. Listen the fragment starting at 1:02:46. If You'll still be thinking that they're focusing on hardcore game end players then sorry but Your mind is beyond saving.Edited by Juhasow on October 24, 2019 12:03AM3 -
Juhasow✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Everyone is complaining now but when i posted about the impact these chages would have i got shot down by 90% of these forums people.
The huge issue for me is the frequency of these changes. It does not allow for players to adapt and accept and continue on....it frustrates and makes players suspicious of our dev team and just causes them to lose faith in eso .
Why even have forums if zos devs are just going to get advice from freak players, not your average good player but the freaks of nature that can pull numbers with weird builds/rotations no typical player can pull off. Makes no sense to me.
Because you have to balance around the top players, as they know what they are doing.
Whereas, new/casual players probably don't, yet (or don't care).
Not that there is anything wrong with not knowing, or caring, but you can't balance around people who don't know/care, can you?
If you don't balance around the top end, you end up with only one, or two, classes and/or builds doing all the high end stuff, which is obviously ridiculous.
Balancing around the top end should, logically, make the rest of the players more balanced, too.
If balancing around the top end throws the rest totally out of balance, somehow (and I don't know if this is true, or not, quite frankly?), there is clearly something fundamentally wrong with the way the game is designed.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way the game is designed. Animation cancelling.
It's literally the only thing standing between players who do all the damage and players who do none. And before everyone figured out this nifty little timers trick, there was no need to go crazy with nerfs. Now that players can button mash their way to 80-100k DPS, they have to bring the hammer down on all the abilities, because short of one-shot mechanics and excessive-beyond-excessive damage output, there's no actual way to increase enemy/boss difficulty in a way that doesn't break the game for most people. Especially because everything is scaled - there's no classic "grind until you're over level and come back" or "stand where you won't get hit and cheese it" mechanic available here.
The only way to legit make most people equal is to kill cancelling. Otherwise, every time they nerf skills, they're not only bringing down the ceiling, they're also burying the basement.
Animation cancelling was in the game since day 1. It was even more commonly used by hardcore players in early days due to medium attack weaving then it is right now with light attack weaving. Your theory is more of a conspiracy then a fact.
Players DPS on skeleton went up to 80-100k because of drastic damage buffs to things like DoT but most importantly because of introducing Iron Atronach which is overloaded with buffs and debuffs so it's obvious DPS on that dummy will be extremly high , higher then in real scenarios. On old dummies like 6M one DPS of course also went up but good luck getting 80-100k there.
The only thing "standing between players who do all the damage and players who do none" is their mindset plus beliving in conspiracy theories like Yours and beliving they suck because of animation cancelling and not because of the fact they havn't really practiced at all.Edited by Juhasow on October 23, 2019 11:53PM2 -
Hanokihs✭✭✭✭✭Everyone is complaining now but when i posted about the impact these chages would have i got shot down by 90% of these forums people.
The huge issue for me is the frequency of these changes. It does not allow for players to adapt and accept and continue on....it frustrates and makes players suspicious of our dev team and just causes them to lose faith in eso .
Why even have forums if zos devs are just going to get advice from freak players, not your average good player but the freaks of nature that can pull numbers with weird builds/rotations no typical player can pull off. Makes no sense to me.
Because you have to balance around the top players, as they know what they are doing.
Whereas, new/casual players probably don't, yet (or don't care).
Not that there is anything wrong with not knowing, or caring, but you can't balance around people who don't know/care, can you?
If you don't balance around the top end, you end up with only one, or two, classes and/or builds doing all the high end stuff, which is obviously ridiculous.
Balancing around the top end should, logically, make the rest of the players more balanced, too.
If balancing around the top end throws the rest totally out of balance, somehow (and I don't know if this is true, or not, quite frankly?), there is clearly something fundamentally wrong with the way the game is designed.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way the game is designed. Animation cancelling.
It's literally the only thing standing between players who do all the damage and players who do none. And before everyone figured out this nifty little timers trick, there was no need to go crazy with nerfs. Now that players can button mash their way to 80-100k DPS, they have to bring the hammer down on all the abilities, because short of one-shot mechanics and excessive-beyond-excessive damage output, there's no actual way to increase enemy/boss difficulty in a way that doesn't break the game for most people. Especially because everything is scaled - there's no classic "grind until you're over level and come back" or "stand where you won't get hit and cheese it" mechanic available here.
The only way to legit make most people equal is to kill cancelling. Otherwise, every time they nerf skills, they're not only bringing down the ceiling, they're also burying the basement.
Animation cancelling was in the game since day 1. It was even more commonly used by hardcore players in early days due to medium attack weaving then it is right now with light attack weaving. Your theory is more of a conspiracy then a fact.
Players DPS on skeleton went up to 80-100k because of drastic damage buffs to things like DoT but most importantly because of introducing Iron Atronach which is overloaded with buffs and debuffs so it's obvious DPS on that dummy will be extremly high , higher then in real scenarios. On old dummies like 6M one DPS of course also went up but good luck getting 80-100k there.
The only thing "standing between players who do all the damage and players who do none" is their mindset plus beliving in conspiracy theories like Yours and beliving they suck because of animation cancelling and not because of the fact they havn't really practiced at all.
We remember two different ways this game started out then. At beta/launch, nobody cared about animation cancelling, rotations, weaving, blah blah. Because everyone sort of anticipated it'd be a slow-combat system like every other game on the planet, and played accordingly. In fact, they started out nerfing the content instead of the players, because nobody could figure out how to kill monsters like Doshia before the healy-balls mechanic would extend the fight beyond frustration. World bosses actually took several good players to defeat. Group dungeons were actually difficult to finish if your team wasn't ready. Then a few people figured it out, and it spread like wildfire after; basic weaving became more like "but if you put them in this order and bar-swap/block at the right moment, you can chop off the entire animation of X ability and move even faster to raise your DPS." Which is all animation cancelling is - squeezing in as many abilities as you can, while juggling sustain and self-buffs like potions, in addition to wrestling with server lag/ping, to do maximum possible damage. Yes, it takes practice. But that doesn't detract from the fact that it's literally the only thing separating the get-gud players from the ones who already got-gud.
You're also relying too much on semantics and not actually paying attention to what I've said. Of course the new target dummy helps you get high DPS, but they're still looking at said DPS numbers and destroying abilities in response to it. It's not a conspiracy theory; they've said as much. Why do you think they nerfed sustain? Perhaps to slow down the fights so people can't use as many abilities without wasting time on a heavy attack or two now and then? Good golly gosh, it's almost as if their intentions are very obvious. But still misguided. Because no matter how much players get punished for playing well, players who play poorly are hit even harder by the changes. They're destroying the tools - not the playing ability. Which is my ultimate point.
If they slow down animation cancelling, they'll nerf the over-performing players they're actually trying to target while keeping the underperforming players at the same exact place they're already sitting. They won't have to try and explain away their choices by calling them class identity tweaks or whatever they want to justify it as. They won't have to make players who're good at the game feel like they're fighting with wet tissue paper (and thereby take away the only sense of progression they have), and they don't have to make players at the bottom of the totem pole feel even more hopeless about bridging the gap than they already do. With their recent changes, they've effectively annoyed every possible player demographic they can, all because they can't figure out that their combat system, while more interesting than the standard fare of other games, is nigh-impossible to balance in any traditional sort of way."I haven't really played much yet, but lemme tell you all about how the game should include X and be a lot more like Y!" - Half the posters on this forum."I've been here for years, and lemme tell you all about how they should never change or evolve Z, because then the game would be ruined forever." - The other half of posters on this forum.5 -
Stratti✭✭✭✭✭I think ZOS are suffering from arrogance. They believe that they are too big to fail so treat their customers with disdain - Blizzard did this at 12M subs - now they are less than 1M3 -
Juhasow✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Everyone is complaining now but when i posted about the impact these chages would have i got shot down by 90% of these forums people.
The huge issue for me is the frequency of these changes. It does not allow for players to adapt and accept and continue on....it frustrates and makes players suspicious of our dev team and just causes them to lose faith in eso .
Why even have forums if zos devs are just going to get advice from freak players, not your average good player but the freaks of nature that can pull numbers with weird builds/rotations no typical player can pull off. Makes no sense to me.
Because you have to balance around the top players, as they know what they are doing.
Whereas, new/casual players probably don't, yet (or don't care).
Not that there is anything wrong with not knowing, or caring, but you can't balance around people who don't know/care, can you?
If you don't balance around the top end, you end up with only one, or two, classes and/or builds doing all the high end stuff, which is obviously ridiculous.
Balancing around the top end should, logically, make the rest of the players more balanced, too.
If balancing around the top end throws the rest totally out of balance, somehow (and I don't know if this is true, or not, quite frankly?), there is clearly something fundamentally wrong with the way the game is designed.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way the game is designed. Animation cancelling.
It's literally the only thing standing between players who do all the damage and players who do none. And before everyone figured out this nifty little timers trick, there was no need to go crazy with nerfs. Now that players can button mash their way to 80-100k DPS, they have to bring the hammer down on all the abilities, because short of one-shot mechanics and excessive-beyond-excessive damage output, there's no actual way to increase enemy/boss difficulty in a way that doesn't break the game for most people. Especially because everything is scaled - there's no classic "grind until you're over level and come back" or "stand where you won't get hit and cheese it" mechanic available here.
The only way to legit make most people equal is to kill cancelling. Otherwise, every time they nerf skills, they're not only bringing down the ceiling, they're also burying the basement.
Animation cancelling was in the game since day 1. It was even more commonly used by hardcore players in early days due to medium attack weaving then it is right now with light attack weaving. Your theory is more of a conspiracy then a fact.
Players DPS on skeleton went up to 80-100k because of drastic damage buffs to things like DoT but most importantly because of introducing Iron Atronach which is overloaded with buffs and debuffs so it's obvious DPS on that dummy will be extremly high , higher then in real scenarios. On old dummies like 6M one DPS of course also went up but good luck getting 80-100k there.
The only thing "standing between players who do all the damage and players who do none" is their mindset plus beliving in conspiracy theories like Yours and beliving they suck because of animation cancelling and not because of the fact they havn't really practiced at all.
We remember two different ways this game started out then. At beta/launch, nobody cared about animation cancelling, rotations, weaving, blah blah. Because everyone sort of anticipated it'd be a slow-combat system like every other game on the planet, and played accordingly. In fact, they started out nerfing the content instead of the players, because nobody could figure out how to kill monsters like Doshia before the healy-balls mechanic would extend the fight beyond frustration. World bosses actually took several good players to defeat. Group dungeons were actually difficult to finish if your team wasn't ready. Then a few people figured it out, and it spread like wildfire after; basic weaving became more like "but if you put them in this order and bar-swap/block at the right moment, you can chop off the entire animation of X ability and move even faster to raise your DPS." Which is all animation cancelling is - squeezing in as many abilities as you can, while juggling sustain and self-buffs like potions, in addition to wrestling with server lag/ping, to do maximum possible damage. Yes, it takes practice. But that doesn't detract from the fact that it's literally the only thing separating the get-gud players from the ones who already got-gud.
You're also relying too much on semantics and not actually paying attention to what I've said. Of course the new target dummy helps you get high DPS, but they're still looking at said DPS numbers and destroying abilities in response to it. It's not a conspiracy theory; they've said as much. Why do you think they nerfed sustain? Perhaps to slow down the fights so people can't use as many abilities without wasting time on a heavy attack or two now and then? Good golly gosh, it's almost as if their intentions are very obvious. But still misguided. Because no matter how much players get punished for playing well, players who play poorly are hit even harder by the changes. They're destroying the tools - not the playing ability. Which is my ultimate point.
If they slow down animation cancelling, they'll nerf the over-performing players they're actually trying to target while keeping the underperforming players at the same exact place they're already sitting. They won't have to try and explain away their choices by calling them class identity tweaks or whatever they want to justify it as. They won't have to make players who're good at the game feel like they're fighting with wet tissue paper (and thereby take away the only sense of progression they have), and they don't have to make players at the bottom of the totem pole feel even more hopeless about bridging the gap than they already do. With their recent changes, they've effectively annoyed every possible player demographic they can, all because they can't figure out that their combat system, while more interesting than the standard fare of other games, is nigh-impossible to balance in any traditional sort of way.
It's not about caring about animation cancelling but about knowing it exists. At beta/launch barely anyone knew it exists but those who knew , were using it pretty frequently and that information started to spread. That were still the days when many people played ESO like it would be skyrim with optional online mode so yeah many people were not using animation cancelling because they were just not in ESO for its combat but they were also not participating in much of end game. When people started to participate in end game most of them were introduced to the weaving anyway. It's obvious they were nerfing the content because ESO at the beggining was kinda hard without CPs , with soft caps and with heavily limited set choices. There was not much to nerf on players side PvE wise even if ZoS would want to so it's obvious they nerfed PvE content a bit. And at the beggining it was medium attack weaving not light attack weaving which was kinda harder to perform. There was also lot of misinformation about how animation cancelling works so many people got really bad idea about it. Judging on certain parts of Your comment You may be one of those people.
Also I really like that part of the comment which says basically that what separates good and bad players from one another is basically that good players are spending time practicing animation cancelling. Guess what that is what separates every person good at something from people not really good at that thing. Practice. You want to slow down whole combat in the game which for many people is the main thing that keeps then here since it's pretty unique thing , simply becauuse casual players dont want to practice and are too proud to say that out loud and too proud also to get altenrative not meta casual friendly setups ? Because whole veteran content in the game can be cleared without animation cancelling. And belive me if they'll slow animation cancelling then so called "over-performing players" will still overperform in eyes of the casual players. If You really think the only thing that separates good players from the bad in ESO is light attack weaving You're simply delusional. Good players could complete even hard modes without weaving just with spamming heavy attacks and few abilities here and there. Actually there was a time when fully charged heavy attacks became a meta for a moment around morrowind and gameplay really slowed down yet game havn't noticed rising amount of casual players completing game end content. Interesting isn't it ? You know why casuals still couldn't compte with hardcore game end players ? Because dead DD is doing 0 DPS wheter he knows or not how to light attack weave. If only animation cancelling would be the reason why top players are so above over casual players then why there isnt lot of casuals completing harder content on tanks for example ? After all that role doesnt require advanced animation cancelling and extreme levels of weaving. Any ideas here ?
Assuming that Zos havnt realised that numbers on dummy increased because the new dummy itself is kinds silly.That is if You assume that. They are lowering down DPS currently because they hugely overbuffed it in scalebreaker and made also anything that wasnt a DoT irrelevant. People were dropping down spammables from their bars just to slot more DoTs. Why do I think they've nerfed sustain ? Because throughout the years they overbuffed it by a lot. Do You remember sustain in early days of the game ? Do You think current sustain is raid is worse right now then back then ? Also currently sustain is still better then it was for example 2 years ago so I wouldnt call current changes sustain nerfs especially that they've added or redesigned lot of sustain sets for the group but also for solo purposes. Actually in current update players that are playing well noticed way bigger DPS losses then those who play poorly. Still players that are playing good will be able to continue completing hardest content because (suprise) they're good players. And to be fair during last 2 or 3 years people that are playing poorly were rewarded way more then people that play well. When top tier game end DPS doubled , easy to acces casual level of DPS with braindead rotation tripled or even quadrupled (You can get ~60k on 21M dummy with 3 abilities+heavy attacks spam).
If they'll slow down combat literally nothing will change. People that suck will still suck because low DPS is just part of the issue ond fact that people who are getting high DPS will start to do lower numbers wont magically change situation of low end players.The thing that will happen for sure though will be lot of people leaving the game due to boring and slow combat. It's also quite possible that less experienced players will start to be excluded from veteran content because better players wont be able to compensate for DPS of the weaker ones. Also it's funny that You're accusing me of using semantics when most of Your comments are semantics.Edited by Juhasow on October 24, 2019 5:21AM2 -
Nemesis7884✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭i can only speak for myself, but my interest to do anything outside of story content has dropped considerably for now...after dragon hold i will most linely take a break and focus on single player games for a while and look back in again around the next chapter release...3 -
Jhalin✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭LadyNalcarya wrote: »LadyNalcarya wrote: »Basically ZOS is aiming for high churn, so, no one. They wanna pull in new people, and if they leave after spending some money then they don’t really care.
I wonder if this is actually the case. I mean think about it. People are only going to blow so much on crowns/loot crates before they feel sick inside (you have all had that feeling of buyers remorse after spending 150 bucks on a house or 100 bucks on 30 loot crates only to get potions and tattoos and some lipstick).
I wonder if they intend to somehow purge those who don't spend money anymore...I mean this sounds wacky to me, but at the same time it makes sense.
Companies are always looking for fresh blood, both customers and my favorite "We hire directly out of college for fresh perspectives and enthusiasm" LOL no, you hire out of college to low ball grads and pay them pennies vs industry standards.
Idk, it would make sense to please players if they want to earn more. Just buying a basic version of the game to try it is much cheaper than crown crates, houses and other stuff (not to mention crafting bag!). And long-time players are more inclined to spend money.
Adding the best gear to the new chapter already "filters out" non-paying players.
It’s the balance of costs vs income. It costs very little to install predatory gambling mechanics and sell slight recolors of existing assets. It takes a lot more time and resources to fine tune game balance and bug fix.
The big colorful world and numerous quests give a new player a lot of fluff to keep them distracted from the shallowness of gameplay, all while doing nothing that might end up being difficult in case it drives them off.
Yeah, but then why push such unpopular changes? Trying to re-balance everything every patch takes some time and effort, no matter how misguided it could be.
If they just want to get as much money as possible with as little effort as possible, then why would they spend their resources on something that is essentially a waste of time (because it's gonna be changed completely in another patch)?
Because those new players have not reached a point they need to have a build to succeed. Overland hardly even requires armor for any of the quests, even normal dungeons don’t really require a coherent build. Example:Me and another friend on our first lvl 20s in all heavy armor, no full sets, even stat allocations, duo’d EH on accident, and I basically solo’d a boss because he died on it. And this was BEFORE 1T, meaning it would be even easier now.
WBs can be overcome by numbers alone. New players don’t need to seek outside resources to succeed. And it’s those outside resources that would lead them to even seeing patch notes, because there’s no way to read them from the launcher. If overland questing (the biggest of a new player) poses no challenge, then the nerfs literally have no impact on their ability to complete it.
People venturing into the harder stuff, dungeons, vet dungeons, trials. Heck, even the people who wanna do all world bosses will start looking at builds at some point when they encounter some of the more difficult ones.
ZOS wants to milk the players in that first stage, where it’s questing and enthralling scenery, before they even try improving their skill for group play. Unfortunately for people who are interested in gameplay, overland questing is the majority of this game which means ZOS has quite a long time to milk the new players.
Edit: as for pushing changes, it’s to keep their metrics up. The hamster wheel turning, and to sell those bits of “convenience” in the crown store when something else, some other skill line, takes top spot to be competitive. I’m just glad that most endgame players that have stuck around this long are the type more willing to grind for their skills than shell out money. (At least in my experience)Edited by Jhalin on October 24, 2019 5:18AM0 -
SirAxen✭✭✭✭✭They aim to please all the questers and people who go round picking flowers who don’t give a crap how crap the game feels to play now while those of us who actually do all the content have our builds and classes nerfed every damn patch.
Yea, god forbid people enjoy the lore and story of the universe in which they are running around in.3 -
SirAxen✭✭✭✭✭Nemesis7884 wrote: »i can only speak for myself, but my interest to do anything outside of story content has dropped considerably for now...after dragon hold i will most linely take a break and focus on single player games for a while and look back in again around the next chapter release...
Healthy breaks from MMORPG's are good after awhile. If I need a break, I usually let 3-4 updates go by before jumping back in fulltime again.0 -
Sahidom✭✭✭✭These discussions intrigue me. When the 1% provide policy and direction for the developers; then, it's amusing. When they unveil class identity. It will be interesting how many of the 99% close their wallets. It's sort of parallel to American politics, everyone believes popular vote elects presidents, when in fact, it's the electorate college. You could have 100% subscribers participating in forum discussions; but the 1% will silence their feedback and move their agenda forward.
By the end of June 2020, this game has a high risk to be be on its remaining legs. This will occur, not because the game itself doesn't hold potential; but by the developers, team leads, and focus group's handling of the game's long-term objectives. The gaming community is one of the most unforgiving communities when their fav. game gets ruined.
It's be interesting to watch everything unfold and who says what, as it occurs. I'll hope for the best; and I offered feedback whether its popular or not.
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Raideen✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Thannazzar wrote: »They thought the dps was too high with the upper echelon endgame players so they nerfed dps.
Problem is upper echelon players can still do what they do. But the rest of us mere mortals got their dps wrecked.
The worst part is the combat team is perfectly fine with it. In fact they don't care about the common player, this nerf patches "targeted" audience is the upper echelon players.
Your so right. And the sadder thing is there was a plethora of feedback on the Pts that told them exactly that and had broadly been ignored.
From my experience this seems to be the case with them. WoW is the same way. Its rare to see changes based on player feedback, even when that feedback is 100% merited.
I am thinking PTS is more about them collecting data, testing server stress then it is actually caring about game design/balance.2 -
Shantu✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭StabbityDoom wrote: »Zos is not one all embodying thing with one opinion. I think management is thinking money, where devs and lower on the totem pole may actually care about fun. But when the person driving the car is thinking on money, things don't end up where consumers are benefiting.
While I agree that management is thinking about money (as they should be), I would argue there is no evidence the current combat team has a clue about the concept of what players find fun. It may be fun adding up numbers in their intellectual bubble, but that doesn't translate to any idea of fun for much of the player base.1 -
Vanos444✭✭✭✭✭Seeing all the negative posts on this forum I'm not sure who they are aiming this game at, I mean which type of player are they trying to satisfy ?
Whales!
If you don't know what whales are, then here is video for you and for those that don't know about it.
https://youtu.be/9Ywdh1on_HU 4
