Taking the joy and creativity out of content isn't the right path to take to cater to midtier players. It's been long obvious that there needs to be a medium difficulty (gladly the nerfed vet content, while a full-HM is implemented for whole dungeons/trials as is seen in new content).
It's just sad. There's a difference between nerfing something that hits too hard, and just robbing something of all flavor. Oh it does less damage now, doesn't stun? So basically the people to appease are the ones who want to stand still and not move out of things? These aren't complicated mechanics they're taking away. They're taking away basic game mechanics that make up the bigger details of a greater scheme.
I get that not everybody goes the full mile in their playstyle, but the items are there. The stats are there. Anybody who chooses to pursue the games resources to the fullest, hits a certain power level. It's totally fair to have things accessible to players that haven't hit endgame yet, but there also has to be some endgame content left to hit that's appropriately matched to the players that will come to it. ESO is already insanely casual friendly and has a lot of content for midtier gameplay. You wanna add more to that it's fine, but stop taking it from others. As I said in another thread, it's starting to feel like a race. Like I need to clear all the content left as soon as possible before it gets flattened into a "just stand there and parse mindlessly" mess, or all I'll get is to hear about how much fun people had fighting for their clear back when they did it while wondering why I never got to have that. And I feel bad for the people who put so much work into trying to come up with interesting content and mechanics just for it all to get nerfed into being a bland reskin of a fight.
I know we all have issues with the CP system anyway, and hopefully one day it will change for the better... but as it stands right now, I just don't think it's fair to punish people for hitting CP Cap. It's counter-intuitive to expect endgame players to take out some of their CP to get a challenge. I understand that this is similar to what's done in other video games with 3-heart runs, low% runs, etc, but I hope people can understand that it feels very wrong in ESO. As an MMO, it has the inherent potential to allow competitive running of content, which means that using available resources as effectively as possible is part of the game. The players doing this are the same people looking for a challenge, so the two shouldn't be so incompatible with each other.

Nifty2g wrote: »

do you know how hard it is to finish my god damn weekly coffers on all my characters from doing LFG in craglorn pugs with nhof. they barely ever finish. taken me at least 7 months to get a full set of war machine and i'm still missing a dagger

LONG OVERDUE NERFS

Some of the nerfs are specifically tied to vHoF -- and the title of the thread also says vHoF. Personally I find that this makes a difference. Normal trials are not my domain and I honestly hold back from discussing content I don't partake in because I don't know what it's like for those players, and if that's where the nerfs go and people are happy with it that's fine. An easy version of any dungeon/trial/arena is a great idea and should exist. But you've got to be consistent in your decisions. Make an easy one and a challenging one. Don't start turning the only challenges left into more easy content because someone wishes the hard version was actually easy. That's not the damn point. You either want an easy time or you don't. For midtier players who want a challenge appropriately fitted to them, that's where my aforementioned points are relevant. Trying to make the same content a challenge for midtier and endgame players is honestly a disaster and there's always gonna be someone losing. It just feels like another punch to the face in a series of many. Obviously if the game developers decide that they don't want an endgame community, we have to deal with that and understand that the game just isn't made for us. But it's still gonna hurt. We got here because we love the game and I guess my personal expectation is that when I've put in some effort and experience and feel like I've gotten good at the game, that should mean that there's a level of enjoyment I can get from it.

ZOS needs to commit to having an easy version of things and a hard version. If you're not going to go back and insert full dungeon-HM (which would mess with achievements I'm sure), you need to stick to the two tier system and be honest to yourself about what the expectation and purpose of each version is.

TL;DR: I'm sad, talk about the more general implications of changes like these, and hope that ESO has a future where ZOS gets their crap together on this. Just glad I've already started TTT progression and will hopefully get it before this patch hits live.