ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the Light and Heavy attack changes currently on the PTS. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, please answer the following questions and let us know what you think.

While we prefer you utilize /feedback in-game and will be prioritizing those reports, you’re welcome to also post in this thread if you’d prefer. Please keep all other discussion surrounding these changes to this other thread; we want to focus this thread on the questions being asked. Thank you!

1. What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)
   • If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
2. Approximately how long did you test these changes?
3. During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?
4. Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?
5. When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?
6. How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?
7. When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

1. Trial Dummy. Attempting to get a group together for a raid comparison, but that is in the works.
2. MagDK (main DPS on live)
3. ~2 hours
4. Yes, LAs returned resources and HAs dealt more damage compared to on Live.
5. LA weaving made sustain a complete non-issue. The problem is that sustain was already a non-issue before. This just allows end-game players to build into more damage now since we're getting an additional ~250 to 300 magicka/stamina per second. Of course, that building into more damage is still a DPS loss due to the nerf to LA damage. HA weaving is still worse than LA weaving in terms of DPS, based on all the tests that I did. While I did not test anything that strayed too far from current sets used in end-game PvE content, I suspect that trying out other sets would not have changed the ultimate results: LA weaving still outstrips HA weaving for DPS.
6. No change when target was OB.
7. Never. I have no sustain issues on Live, and I had none on the PTS.
8. I would place myself as a high APM player, and I feel incredibly punished by these changes. My tests gave me about a 15 to 20 percent drop in total DPS, irregardless of whether I was using a LA rotation or HA rotation.

Overall, I don't think these changes are warranted, and I don't think these changes, if they make it to live as-is, will benefit the game's health. HA weaving feels slow and unengaging. LA weaving feels unrewarding now. There is no sustain issues on live right now in an organized group, so the changes to sustain make no sense. If anything, it only benefits high level players who have mastered LA weaving and punished players that do not.

The changes don't "raise the floor". Lower level players who have not mastered LA weaving, and thus typically have lower DPS, currently need to HA in order to sustain a rotation. Changing it so LAs give back resources does not help players who already have poor LA weaving ratios; it actually hurts their DPS more than helps it.

I'm all for nerfing LAs, as long as it is balanced with buffs to abilities and set bonuses. I'm fine with closing the gap between the top 1 percent of players and the bottom 50 percent of players. But this change is, quite frankly, idiotic and counter-intuitive to improving the game's overall health. You shouldn't be balancing the game around the inexperienced players.

What about builds who don't have access to off balance? And why nerf light attack dmg? I really dislike playing around heavy attacks, it's boring and doesn't fit your so called "fast paced" gameplay.

I did some testing on a dummy with a poor sustain magplar. I don't weave well so I tend to use skills and dots and heavy attack. I can get in the mid 30's on a 3 mill dumy with no buffs other than using ele drain.
sustain seemed worse for me as now I have to weave to restore resources and its difficult to do as it often causes none of my skills to work any more and I have to stop and reload UI to fix. So pretty much this isn't changing the need to light attack weave. It's just changing the reason why you need to. And so I don't think it's helping.

What type of content did you test these changes in?

Overland Content and Training Dummy

If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?

DPS

Approximately how long did you test these changes?

Approximately 30 mins

During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?

Yes. The changes were very obvious. I agree that these changes are more intuitive for newer players. In most games I've played in the past, charged attacks are high-risk-high-reward. I remember being new and struggling with the idea of heavy attacks lowering my DPS so significantly that they should be used only in times of desperation.

Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?

Because I've gotten so used to how the game currently works, it might take some time to get used to. But I do feel like it will be better once I get past the learning curve.

When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?

I tested with a magicka necromancer, which unfortunately, does not have a good source of [Off Balance].

How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?

I never ran out of resources.

When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

High. There's never a moment I'm not performing an action in either PvE or PvP.

While I've spent a good deal of time learning to weave properly and creating builds that are able to function efficiently on the live server, I wouldn't mind learning something new if it offers a chance for more play-style diversity.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

That's fair, and is a big reason why we're having this off-cycle test. We've never done this before, but it's in an effort to get early feedback on something we're thinking about that may or may not even make it into the game. When we're normally on PTS, things are already close to final, but for something like this we have time to make adjustments. That's why we're stressing the importance of feedback here. We've been having internal playtests and feedback as well, so we're trying to collect it from all sources.

I just want to say that, regardless of how any of this turns out, this pre pts testing and survey is a great idea and something you should implement more of in the future imo. The more discussion you have with the community on potentially sweeping changes like this, the better.

My immediate concern for these changes is for people like my wife, with fine motor control disabilities. She is able to participate in the game as it stands because heavy attacks do good enough damage on her pet sorcerer to pull 30K dps on a 3 Mil test dummy.

If she has to light attack for resources, that will drive her away from the game as it will no longer allow her to participate because of the design being even MORE hostile to her disability than it already is.

I'm updating my PTS client as I type this, and I'll be testing and giving answers to the targeted questions later, but please, PLEASE consider the disabled when thinking about moving forward with
these changes. I know that they are not the majority of your playerbase, but they are a good portion of it. Think - who has time to spend playing ESO all day? Those people who are housebound due to illness or disability.

The changes look good for the most part. But there's a problem with giving heavy attacks so much damage: Stamina builds will have yet another huge advantage in that they will be able to dodge heavy attacks more often than magicka builds.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Caelc wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We know reading about these potential changes and ideas is a little overwhelming, but the entire point of having it on the PTS right now is to have you test and give feedback. The point of this thread is for us to gather feedback after you've tried it out - not to have discussions about it. If you'd like to discuss what's on the PTS, please do so here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/517547

If discussions, non-constructive feedback or bashing continue in this thread, we're going to close it and only accept feedback in-game through /feedback on the PTS. This is your final warning. Thank you.

i think the problem is that you guys have a very long history of ignoring peoples feedback on pts so it causes people to be very frustrated and lash out like this.

If you listened and communicated better i don't think there would be this level of frustration. So, yes, people need to clean up their act but you guys need to do better to. It is a team effort.

That's fair, and is a big reason why we're having this off-cycle test. We've never done this before, but it's in an effort to get early feedback on something we're thinking about that may or may not even make it into the game. When we're normally on PTS, things are already close to final, but for something like this we have time to make adjustments. That's why we're stressing the importance of feedback here. We've been having internal playtests and feedback as well, so we're trying to collect it from all sources.

So you are saying that a lot of bad design decisions can be avoided if you would just listen to your playerbase and give the Patches more time on the PTS instead of rushing it like always? I think you may be on to something here...

I love it! Please do this!

I read the notes and I was really scared because the first part is talking about cooldowns and I thought cooldowns would be added. Very scary.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Caelc wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We know reading about these potential changes and ideas is a little overwhelming, but the entire point of having it on the PTS right now is to have you test and give feedback. The point of this thread is for us to gather feedback after you've tried it out - not to have discussions about it. If you'd like to discuss what's on the PTS, please do so here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/517547

If discussions, non-constructive feedback or bashing continue in this thread, we're going to close it and only accept feedback in-game through /feedback on the PTS. This is your final warning. Thank you.

i think the problem is that you guys have a very long history of ignoring peoples feedback on pts so it causes people to be very frustrated and lash out like this.

If you listened and communicated better i don't think there would be this level of frustration. So, yes, people need to clean up their act but you guys need to do better to. It is a team effort.

That's fair, and is a big reason why we're having this off-cycle test. We've never done this before, but it's in an effort to get early feedback on something we're thinking about that may or may not even make it into the game. When we're normally on PTS, things are already close to final, but for something like this we have time to make adjustments. That's why we're stressing the importance of feedback here. We've been having internal playtests and feedback as well, so we're trying to collect it from all sources.

This might be a foreign concept but I'm sure our Class Reps have had more than a few words as to how the community would react to a change this controversial. As everyone is very well aware they are nothing more than players with slightly more information. Maybe it's time to get a Class Rep system that can actually work with the devs because it's very highly apparent that there is a disconnect with expectations by the community with how the game is going to run. Just by making these recommended changes is worse than suggesting cast times on damage shields. Millions of people are going to have to change their game play that they have developed over 5 years to account for these changes.

As far as actual feedback goes for PvP

1.) Although intuitive, as far as a balancing aspect goes this change makes no sense. Allowing someone superior pressure while spamming abilities and having high regen is unrealistic. As the system stands right now there is a definite difference in the flow of combat to where you can have high amounts of pressure to when you are needing to get resources back. Changing this would result in even tankier targets since players would not be able to have the sustained pressure to kill another player. As well as promote "tether" heavy attack builds with which someone would be able to use a lightning heavy attack to guarantee large amounts of damage on a target with next to no risk

2.) As far as Stam/Mag balancing we would be back to a very unbalanced state considering you need to connect with a light attack in order to get the resource return. Meaning that stamina would be disadvantaged because of their lack of ranged options for their light attacks. Meaning that someone would be able to effectively kite them out of resources. Alternatively the other option is to build more sustain but that means they would not have enough damage to kill a lot of players because of the defensive options in the game being balanced around the current system

3.) Zenimax came out and said they are throttling the skill cap to artificially raise the skill floor. Players complain about this game and not having a linear progression. But that is one of the largest merits of the game. That a player with 100 hours can beat a player with a 1000 hours played based on skill. Having a skill based MMO is one of the reasons why Zenimax continued to have such a loyal PvP playerbase. And when a game is based purely on skill and not what gear you are wearing the game should have a very large skill gap. Certain games come into mind when I think of large skill gaps League of Legend, CSGO, Starcraft, etc. None of those games balance around players at the skill floor. Partially because they are unreliable in terms of testing. These players either don't have the motor function or the game knowledge to compete at a high level. Which should be fine, some players are going to have to accept that there are certain aspects of any game that they might not be able to complete. But that is your progression, you shouldn't be able to put in a cheat code to make the game easier. And you damn well shouldn't be able to influence the developers of an MMORPG in which millions of people have played to make a game easier. That is a strategy that works short term but definitely isn't sustainable for the future.

Everyone on this forum loves/loved this game at one point or another. Nobody wants to see the developers of this game rip apart their favorite game in which they have spent 1000s of hours to learn the idiosyncrasies of changed in a market ploy to gain favor with the newer or less experienced crowd. My recommendation would be revert light attacks and heavy attacks to their Summerset values and move on from there. As well as the removal of this block change which was anything but what was promised to us players when it was announced. This current patch has been a clown fiesta of problems most of which spawn from this block change that was made to slow players down, considering the same kind of desyncs still happen to most players. As well as putting in an actual group of high end players that will have their voices be heard instead of just developers treating this like their own personal sandbox.

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Why do you change something that works ? You know what they say : "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"....

but it is broken. I woke up today with a link to this from my buddy who was just considering coming back to eso.

I reinstalled the game recently and played for the first time since June to play with him and combat is so incredibly broken with the animation changes. I jumped in and sometimes my abilities just wouldnt even cast until my light attack animation was through. It's frustrating. I left the game because it was a buggy broken mess and i come back after they supposedly "fixed" a ton of crap only to find out it's even worse.

Then I wake up to this today. I wasn't a super top end player but I enjoyed pushing my character as hard as it could go. i put a ton of work into improving my LA weaving and dps rotations so I could inch closer to the top players parses, now there's a chance that all of that was for nothing.

They need to fix combat, but this change is definitely not it. I want to play ESO. It has in the past had a combination of good, fast fun combat and a world that I enjoy being in because of the elder scrolls universe, but if I'm going to return to the game, it is imperative that they stop making things worse.

Sustain was never an issue for me before. I didn't even use false gods on my magicka characters. If new players are having trouble understanding heavy attacks restore resource, there are better ways to inform them than overhauling how combat flows.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Caelc wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We know reading about these potential changes and ideas is a little overwhelming, but the entire point of having it on the PTS right now is to have you test and give feedback. The point of this thread is for us to gather feedback after you've tried it out - not to have discussions about it. If you'd like to discuss what's on the PTS, please do so here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/517547

If discussions, non-constructive feedback or bashing continue in this thread, we're going to close it and only accept feedback in-game through /feedback on the PTS. This is your final warning. Thank you.

i think the problem is that you guys have a very long history of ignoring peoples feedback on pts so it causes people to be very frustrated and lash out like this.

If you listened and communicated better i don't think there would be this level of frustration. So, yes, people need to clean up their act but you guys need to do better to. It is a team effort.

That's fair, and is a big reason why we're having this off-cycle test. We've never done this before, but it's in an effort to get early feedback on something we're thinking about that may or may not even make it into the game. When we're normally on PTS, things are already close to final, but for something like this we have time to make adjustments. That's why we're stressing the importance of feedback here. We've been having internal playtests and feedback as well, so we're trying to collect it from all sources.

@ZOS_GinaBruno This. You have two problems: 1) The communication around combat changes is ABYSMAL. 2) The combat team doesn't listen to the feedbacks.

1) The combat team has a "vision" for the game. Yet, we have literally no idea of what that vision is as players and we're kept in the dark. The combat team needs to sit down to write and EXPLAIN their "vision".

2) They don't listen to most of the feedback. Stop with the pendulum swing / sledge hammer approach and take small incremental steps to fix the combat balance instead of reversing combat from one patch to the other (aka DOTs meta).

The combat team has an ungreatful job (nobody will ever be happy because of X) and so does the forum mods that are stuck to deal with the backlash. Overall, the combat team needs to be more active with the community, explain their vision, explain the pros/cons of certain changes they wish to make in the future, etc. They also need to listen to the community that play the game actively. They are devs, not end game players.

Without being disrespecful, the combat team needs to learn how to communicate and engage with the community. Otherwise, after over a year of questionable changes, it might be time for some changes in the office ...

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

This is the official feedback thread for the Light and Heavy attack changes currently on the PTS. After you have a chance to try out different combat scenarios, please answer the following questions and let us know what you think.

While we prefer you utilize /feedback in-game and will be prioritizing those reports, you’re welcome to also post in this thread if you’d prefer. Please keep all other discussion surrounding these changes to this other thread; we want to focus this thread on the questions being asked. Thank you!

1. What type of content did you test these changes in? (Dungeons, Trials, Dueling, PvP, Battlegrounds, Target Dummy, etc)
   • If PvE, what role did you test with, and what role do you mainly use on Live?
2. Approximately how long did you test these changes?
3. During your playtesting, did you notice that Light Attacks restore resources and that Heavy Attacks deal increased damage? If so, what was your experience with both or either of these attacks?
4. Does the new paradigm of Light Attacking to restore resources while dealing low damage, and Heavy Attacking to deal high damage after a buildup, feel better or worse than what’s currently on the Live megaserver?
5. When targets became Off Balance, what sort of attacks did you utilize against them, if any? Were you able to identify any potent effects that Off Balance enabled for you?
6. How often did you run out of resources during your play session? Did recuperating them feel better or worse to what you are accustomed to on the Live servers?
7. When playing our game, do you play at a Low (Under 100), Medium (100-200), or High (200+) Actions Per Minute? (Note this includes movement and other non-combat actions, not just ability presses). Do you ever feel penalized for playing as one of these with the new paradigm? Do you enjoy playing at your experienced APM?

1. Trial dummy, on a stamina necromancer. On live, I mainly tank and dps, cp1300+. I mostly run pve content (raids, HM dungeons, arenas).
2. Above an hour now
3. Yes, LAs returning ressouces is very noticeable if you weave LAs in between abilities. My stamina never fell under 75% (with a 30k stam pool before starting the rotation). HA, although they did more damage, didn't felt great in a rotation and felt very clunky to use.
4. Worse. While I never had to worry about my ressources, I believe this would push for a "meta" where a group builds mostly around damage and barely, if any, thoughts into ressources. In the current patch, sustain is not an issue and if players have trouble sustaining, they can still run sustain food (i.e. Dubious Camoran Throne, Clockwork Citrus Filet, etc.) They may have less ressources than players using bi-stat food, but they will still have plenty of dps to run most, if not all, content in the game pve wise. As mentioned in the previous point, HAs still felt clunky and not worth using over LAs. And no, I did not feel better dropping HAs compared to live either.
5. I did not change my rotation when the target was OB.
6. None. As mentioned in 3., sustain was, way more than what I need for a LA weaving based rotation without bash weaving. On live, I've yet to run into a sustain issue this patch. On the Dragonhold patch, the few sustain issues I encountred were easily fix by either 1) switching one or two skills around (ex: using barbed trap instead of channeled acceleration). If anything, the only time I run out of ressources on the live servers is if I "lag" and I end up accidentally casting skills multiple times in a row by accident.
7. I would consider myself a high APM player. I feel penalized because it would slow down the pace of combat, which is mainly the reason why I enjoy playing as a damage dealer in eso. Yes, I do enjoy playing as a high APM players.


I would also like to bring my feedback, from the point of view of a pve damage dealer/tank, into some of the points that were brought up into the patch notes for this mini-cycle.

First, it tends to reward players for pushing buttons as quickly and efficiently as possible. Players with high Actions Per Minute (APM) significantly outperform those with low APM, as they have better up-time of abilities, higher mitigation, much higher DPS, and can simply move around the battlefield better in both PVE and PVP.

While it is true that higher APM players perform better, spamming your mouse click for LAs or your keyboard for your skills will not give you the higher dps possible. T3hasiangod showed a really good example of this in a video called "Build Basics: Best Tips for Light Weaving": if you mash your keyboard to try to perfectly LA weave, you may miss the window in which you can drop an LA and and a skill. In that sense, yes, high APM players will output more damage, but it is not because they "spam", but rather because they have practiced that timing.

While we believe it’s good to have a skill gap that promotes mastery, we also believe the gap as it currently exists is too wide, and that many players aren’t finding satisfaction in the climb

Most of the community will agree that the gap is too wide. However, the solution shouldn't be to lower the celling, but rather to increase the floor. And while some players may not enjoy the "climb", I believe it's still important that a skill gab exists. If there's no gap present, this would mean that a player with a very low playtime could perform as well as someone with 1000+ hours of playtime in pve environments. If this was the case, then why shouuld I keep playing and putting more hours into the game? And if newer players are not sastified that they don't have all the rewards that long-time players have accumulated, then it's up to them to learn the ropes and practice in order to get where those long-time players are nowadays.

In the end, most long-time/endgame players will agree that you're trying to fix something that is not broken. And in doing so, we ended up with something that is even worse than any wildest nightmare I'd have imagined for this game. If the objective was to lower the dps ceilling, consider increasing the floor instead if you want to please newer players. Like T3hasiangod said, the game should not be balanced around inexperienced players.