Despite the changes and the direction being good - they're not going to last due to pressure

Nerhesi · April 2020

Afternoon all,

I'm going to try to qualify my experience here and why I decided to end my subscription a few months ago. I can say I had a lot of fun, but I find I'm trying to force myself to like the game and failing. The conclusion there is no easy fix for this due to the mechanics of ESO.

The bigger problem is the influence from streamers, community contributors and generally loud "Do not change things" vocal minority. Historically, these voices were ignored before big social media, and this was for the good. The reality is many streamers/players get comfortable in existing meta and get very vocal about it changing. They're used to it, they're good at it, and they dont want any upheaval.

We saw this with the DoT changes in elsweyr which would have been the beginning of nice alternate meta. The ability to have something compete with the silly, homogenious, Weave-DD meta (or Cancel-Block/Bash or Weave-LA/DD and stun/ult in pvp).

Now we see some proposed changes to address the weaving problem (again it is a start, bash weaving and block weaving will also have to be addressed next). Some people like to fool themselves into thinking it is a skill gap - perhaps it is, if you consider being able to flip patties faster than the other guy a skill. It is a muscle memory skill that doesn't leave much for actual reaction/strategy in pvp. This is why you can objectively see the largest complaint from people who no longer play this game is the "combat" - and why there is such a hot topic discussion around this Mistake-become-meta known as weaving.

So while it is good to see that ZOS is thinking about this, it is unfortunate that I dont think it will last. They will cave to pressure from the streamers and the players that unknowingly are curtailing this games appeal and competitive pvp/pve environment by having such a disliked and thoughtless mechanic. I had made a similar post nearly a year ago: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/483305/new-player-5-months-later-and#latest

I'll be keeping an eye on things but I dont expect things to change positively. This game finds itself in the dangerous position that DaoC was in (no other serious competitor other than the significantly different WoW, and the story/background, Elder Scrolls, providing most of the appeal). This means the second an semi-worthy alternate option shows up that doesn't have the lackluster combat (pvp and pve). It is a shame because with weaving/cancelling addressed and alternate competitive builds being introduced (pure DoT, attrition, etc etc), then you may start to have some appeal besides "It's elder scrolls!".

Best of luck!

MashmalloMan · April 2020

ZOS follows their own path for the most part, I can't remember any streamers asking for this, nor did anyone ask for cast times on ultimates, nor did anyone ask for nerfs to dots to be how weak they are now (most people just wanted Elsweyr values again).

You're decision to leave because you think ZOS listens to influencers is ridiculous. ZOS barely listens to pts feedback or their own Class Reps.

The changes proposed fail to complete ZOS's goal, so just because people aren't happy with the changes, doesn't mean people are wrong. The "direction" is mostly agreed upon, with end game players agreeing that light attacking does too much damage. The approach is what is wrong.

So bye if this is a quitting thread?

Edit: I can understand that some people quit because they don't enjoy some aspects of the combat, however I'd disagree in that it's the games strongest feature in the past 6 years. The real reason most people quit this game is due to performance which has hit an all time low with update 25. I'd add that a majority of people who've played the game longer, also quit because they've continued to lose class identity as the game becomes more homogenized.

price101610 · April 2020

Good

John_Falstaff · April 2020

Well, we've found a player that can't weave for #@$. ^^ Tell you what, in games, you do things by clicking buttons. If you click them fast enough (weaving) and smart enough (doing proper rotation) and in meaningful ways (doing mechanics), you succeed. We don't need any of those elements taken out to dumb down the game to the state of so many other MMOs. If you like WoW, play WoW.

And to all people yelling about skill gap - also tell you another thing; two people recently posted a video of vUG HM done in pair, a tank and a DD. It's the newest vet DLC hard mode, and surprise, done by two people. So to do that in four, you only have to do half that damage, and I'm pretty sure that LAs don't make for 50% of mDK parse. You can drop weaving completely and you still will be doing enough damage (if you're skilled enough, which is only right) to complete vUG HM in proper group composition. If you keep yelling "only people who weave like machines can complete harder vet content", then watch that video, and then cry a little while realizing that it's not LA weaving (or lack thereof) stops you from getting same clear in four, as intended. It's all you. You're lazy and don't want to get better.

LiquidPony · April 2020

The "DoT meta" wasn't Elsweyr. Scalebreaker was the patch that implemented the ridiculous over-buffs to DoTs. And then the ridiculous over-nerf followed in Dragonhold.

It's also inaccurate to blame "streamers" or a "vocal minority" for either of these things.

Most people were pretty happy with the state of combat in Elsweyr. No one asked for the wild DoT buffs they implemented in Scalebreaker. I mean seriously, let's look at some of them:

Scalding Rune: 115% buff
Destructive Clench: 167% buff
Soul Trap: 161% buff
Poison Injection: 78% buff
Entropy: 220% buff

I mean, come on. This was obviously ridiculous. They nerfed a bunch of class DoTs and AoE DoTs and buffed the hell out of a bunch of generic single-target DoTs. No one asked for this.

And then after this lunacy was actually implemented, what people actually asked for was for ZOS to just revert the changes back to how they were in Elsweyr. Instead, ZOS nerfed basically every DoT in the game (except for Mystic Orb lol) into the ground.

Since it seems you have a twisted memory of how all this went down, I'm not sure your opinion on it has a lot of merit.

On the topic of the new changes on PTS, they're just dumb. There's really not a lot of debate that needs to be had there. Clearly you're another member of the "BuT WeAVInG Is aN ExPlOiT" crowd and you think that what ZOS put on PTS in some way capitulates to your little pet-peeve, but you are sorely mistaken. If anything, ZOS has made the weaving meta more important and completely failed to solve any problems along the way.

ZOS_FalcoYamaoka · April 2020

Greetings,
We had to close this thread as it violates our rules around quitting threads/posts which usually tend to derail quickly and do not offer much ground for constructive discussion. If you have any questions about the actions being taken, please take a moment to review our community rules here.