Community opinion on nerfs

Amunari · April 2020

Hapexamendios wrote: »

Stop trying to balance PvP and PVE at the same time. You've proven it doesn't work.

Actually balancing things is very easy. The problem is not that we cannot do it, the problem is that after we do it you break the game in another way. So we have this near endless cycle fix > break > Repeat.

The solution to this, for the zos team, is to nerf all forms of power to no more then 12% variance from start to finish.

This is why i said in previous threads

"Power into a game, is balance out of it". For this reason, if the power is so small you can barely notice it, you will never really invalidate a thing or need to massively change it. This is why you see patch notes in wow like "2% more damage added to fireball" instead of "fireball damage increased by 48%" which you find in older patches.

This is for the ZoS Team to learn, or if they want to take some wisdom from the rest of us, will implement it as stated above.

There is a small problem with this that ZoS designers will instantly recognize, and that is that this will shift the game from its almost pure VP based system to HP. this has a huge effect on the game play and so they will have to make a design choice to take the game into a direction almost undoubtedly something similar to retail wow's balance (imo a good thing), however that does not mean the end-result or "feel" is the same.

One key differential here is that wow has cool downs on abilities. ZoS is deadset on setting balance up to be controlled by resource management (all though if that was really the case we would not have huge amounts of regen like we do now).

Since this is the key design aspect of combat in ESO, we will definitely get a different result, and so a different feel to eso then what is in wow, but that will ultimately convert to "people dying in targeted time frames" ,meaning in combat you wont insta-gimp anymore, and likely skill will likely make up less impact.

zvavi · April 2020

@Amunari so. First you tell us to knock off asking for zos not to butcher things. When they remove strength of sets by at least 50%. Then you say that developers need to tweak it by 12% at most. I mean.

1. Make up your mind.
2. You say zos developers know best. But thing is, many of the balance changes are money directed. DoT meta when mage/fighter's guild went into the crown store. The horrible planned changes (non though out) of light/heavy attacks that came to "higher the floor" (lol money from the new ha sets) that highered the ceiling for tanks+heals, lowered the floor for them, and crushed all midroom for dps as well. And we knew it even before testing, testing just proved us, the players, right.
3. Yes. Sometimes we don't know where the change is coming from, that's true, you have just named one more problem, of communication with the community. See previous example of la/ha change, when they do communicate, it is usually in pretty words that don't even correspond to reality, just marketing tactics.
[snip]

[edited for baiting comment]

technohic · April 2020

Another

Do whatever. It doesn't really matter when nothing works in highest level end game content.

Amunari · April 2020

zvavi wrote: »

@Amunari so. First you tell us to knock off asking for zos not to butcher things. When they remove strength of sets by at least 50%. Then you say that developers need to tweak it by 12% at most. I mean.

1. Make up your mind.
2. You say zos developers know best. But thing is, many of the balance changes are money directed. DoT meta when mage/fighter's guild went into the crown store. The horrible planned changes (non though out) of light/heavy attacks that came to "higher the floor" (lol money from the new ha sets) that highered the ceiling for tanks+heals, lowered the floor for them, and crushed all mid-room for dps as well. And we knew it even before testing, testing just proved us, the players, right.
3. Yes. Sometimes we don't know where the change is coming from, that's true, you have just named one more problem, of communication with the community. See previous example of la/ha change, when they do communicate, it is usually in pretty words that don't even correspond to reality, just marketing tactics.
4. You can be angry. We don't give a fudge. Actually, most of your posts have already made most of forum goers to disrespect you if anything...you have tendency to be quite offensive, and to lack knowledge on the subjects you are discussing.

No, I said they need to learn not to exceed 12% and then there will not be a balance issue with nerfs, and then i stated this is a design choice however. that being said the principle is sound, power in is instability out.

I never said they know best, I said its ignorant of players to tell us "never to nerf something and leave it alone" or "buff other stuff to its level".

a lot of the balance choices are made by metrics being spit out on the back end. for example we may see "highest damage with this ability recorded by server: 1,000,00" when the average is "10,000". Then we start to say "how did he get 1m damage with that ability?" and see look at buffs at that time and the nerf something. Then you come along and say "why you nerfing that?!"

[snip]

[edited for baiting]

Thevampirenight · April 2020

Tweak numbers on both stronger and weaker skills to ensure they are on the same level

The Problem is simple, its basically there is two differant playstyles pve and pvp.
Sets are open for use for any content. There is so many sets out there there is bound to be one that people don't use much and if one set is nerfed that set becomes flavor of the month but that set is so important to one side and because of abuse on the other side it gets nerfed and the other side suffers and no one is happy.
They need to make it so that doesn't happen
How they can do that is this,
1. Remove completely useless and never used sets.
2. Designate Sets based on what they are most needed for PVE, or PVP, while some sets being Multipurpose meaning they work in both.
3. Make it so those sets only work in the content designated, Pve Sets only work in Pve Overland, Dungeons and Trials. Pvp Sets only working in Pvp settings and situations.

Examples,
Blood Spawn Pve
Earthgore Pvp
Vampire Lord, Multipurpose. Vampire and Werewolf sets should be this.
They can also make copies of certain sets and their effects and have them go under a different name for one or the other side. The reason to do this is because if they have to balance one side they don't have to effect the other side.
So some of these sets should be like this that way they can keep things balanced without having to yank out everyone's builds on the other side because one side had to be balanced out or given the nerf hammer.

This game needs to separate the two as much as they can, I know they can't do that with abilties or skill passives but they can sure do this for item sets/monster sets. I really think they should because at this point its gotten out of hand and I can see why people are upset with it because of some players in pvp their sets get nerfed in pve, or because of abuse in pve the sets used for pvp and is vital for it gets nerfed and it hurts pvpers. If one side is effected the other side is effected that is a problem and by doing this they can address it.

RedReign · April 2020

Tweak numbers on both stronger and weaker skills to ensure they are on the same level

Hapexamendios wrote: »

Stop trying to balance PvP and PVE at the same time. You've proven it doesn't work.

At least not in ESO...

Just do what other MMOs in a similar position have done in the past, balance for PvE and then let PvP do what it will. Lord knows we're going to find an OP meta to exploit in PvP regardless of what PvE does.

SebDeTyra · April 2020

If something is over performing lower the tool tip a bit, and then see if it still does

Some things like Stamcro need an outright nerf.

Amunari · April 2020

Actually it was believed int he past that pvp and pve needed separate gear but this is actually not the case if the damage is equalized across all sources of damage (pve and pvp) to push targeting livability rates (industry standards have it between 15-30 seconds).

So it is possible to do balance for all gears across all sections of the game but that being said it would be a massive rework of all of the games database, which means all skills, all bosses, abilities etc would need to be reworked right after that gear.
its an immense amount of work. I cannot express how much it work it would be, it can be done but its like /ug.. uh ok..

zvavi · April 2020

Amunari wrote: »

No, I said they need to learn not to exceed 12% and then there will not be a balance issue with nerfs, and then i stated this is a design choice however. that being said the principle is sound, power in is instability out.

So you agree with most of the pole choices, why even make an angry post.

I never said they know best, I said its ignorant of players to tell us "never to nerf something and leave it alone" or "buff other stuff to its level".

Maybe it was me reading between the lines of what you said.

But mostly what got me is this:

1. The knowledge to know what the problem is
2. The knowledge to know what the solution is

My problem, was specifically that they butcher things into oblivion. Like. Get rid of them being used. The solution was to try and pass that to the developers. Power to change anything I don't have though.

not to mention consumed ungodly amounts of our time just to satisfy your whimsical desires.

I don't get how making a 10-20% nerf when something is overperforming is more time consuming than 40-50% nerf. PS, it is usually not my nor ours whimsical desires, but theirs.

I cannot begin to express how angry i am at people who post stupid threads like this, or make statements like "leave it alone, dont touch anything" or "buff stuff instead of nerfing it" The sheer about of ignorance and arrogance that comes from these sorts of statements are themselves outright insanity.

well, I tried to make the poll the least biased as I could. To gather the best sample. It means putting in options that are obviously silly, and not correspond to my views. Heck, I don't even answer my own polls to try and make it less biased. Btw, there is actually an option in it that corresponded yours, of keeping needs to tweaks instead of sledge hammers.

Do you know why we "bat" nerf things? because we have this methodology that enables us to get things balance very quickly

"Balance" nope, not really, this lazy way of doing things never leaves things balanced anyway. Just gives the illusion that they are trying to balance.

Enemy-of-Coldharbour · April 2020

Another

Separate PVE and PVP.

ZOS_RogerJ · April 2020

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Kesstryl · April 2020

Another

Separate PVE and PVP! This patch my PVE tanks are being nerfed because of the PVP tank meta! This will make any progression PVE tanking horrible!

Darkstorne · April 2020

Tweak numbers on both stronger and weaker skills to ensure they are on the same level

^
Though I also believe this is pretty much exactly what they do right now, for the most part. What I don't like is when they completely change skills or sets to work in entirely different ways. That's frustrating. The latest example being their suggestion to completely change Molag Kena to being a resource focused set, rather than damage focused set.