My main saltsource is still the massive cost increase it forces upon ye.
I understand that they do not want vampire to be a free passive source for people who are not willing to actually make use of the active abilities.

But could they not at least make it so that the cost penalty only applies when you have no vampire ability slotted? At least give us the choice to work around it. Most vampire abilities are useless or niche on many specs. So that would be sacrifice enough.

1. Get rid of the Blood Scion and keep the Devouring Swarm Ultimate, maybe return the Original Clouding Swarm as well, it is completely and utterly pointless and the honestly feels like an [snip] just to give the player something like the Vampire Lord form, well guess what let the LDB be the only Protagonist to be a Vampire Lord just like the Champion of Cyrodiil is the only protagonist to become a Daedric Prince, stop giving other Protagonists powers to this mary-sue known as the Vestige, it is bad enough with that Mask of Alkosh Dragon Aspect ripoff, they can stay a lesser Vampire, make the damn form a polymorph instead if people want it, I for one do not want the Blood Scion form but we are now forced during the Vampire quest to assume it, if I turn any other character into a Vampire its going to be by the Vampire bite on the crown store which completely skips the quest and if I never take the ultimate perk then I will not be one.

2. Turn Eviscerate into a Long-Ranged Claw which displays the Vampires super-speed, they lunge in claw them and appear back to where they cast the ability all within a second.

3. Animation for Blood Frenzy needs to be more violent, instead of looking like casting a spell it needs to do something like what Magma Armor/Bone Armor does with the player character yelling.

4. On another note where is our Disease/Poison resistance? isn't the whole reason we cannot be infected with Lycanthropy due to being immune to disease? why do we gain no Disease damage resistance at the very least? hell a vampire who is effected by disease would probably be dead within a month.

[Edit to remove profanity]

TX12001rwb17_ESO wrote: »

4. On another note where is our Disease/Poison resistance? isn't the whole reason we cannot be infected with Lycanthropy due to being immune to disease? why do we gain no Disease damage resistance at the very least? hell a vampire who is effected by disease would probably be dead within a month.

This is a very good point and aren't vampires immune to paralysis as well? Drain stamina poisons ((the current form of paralysis in ESO)) shouldn't even work on them.

Noxavian wrote: »

Skill #4: Mesmerize Probably THE BEST skill in the entire rework in terms of creativity. Hypnosis looks very cool, way better than even the ultimate. It has a unique way of operating (targets have to be looking at you) and you can use this skill to talk to NPCs. Non-sarcastic creative points here, I actually really like this skill. Wish the rest of the rework shared this same creativity.... And just like that I'm taking away creative points because all this skill does is CC, nothing else, which is wack because every other CC in the game has some sort of other effect. Would be nice if this applied a health drain or blood curse or something.... Also taking away points because once you realize they just removed the stun from Vampiric drain and threw it into a whole new skill to fill out the skill tree, you become less impressed.

Mass Hysteria would like to have a word with you.

Thanks. I will comment on each and every post that states vampire form is a dissapoitment. It is. No matter how many roleplayers like it, it's just a 3 ability reskin with a damn toggle and lamest, out of place spammable to ever exist in eso.
I am full on dissapointed. The werewolf rework looks like a great success on the other hand tho, but i wanted to be proper vampire in eso for almost 5 years now. And good point that this skill line is the only thing were getting during this whole year.

Psijic was allright, I wonder how people felt about the DB "skill line"?

Noxavian wrote: »

Creativity and effort put into skills being reworked isn't subjective though.

Effort and work put into something is a fact. Look at all of the abilities I listed, you would have to be kidding yourself if you think any of these changes to abilities are creative. When as explained factually, they are not. You can like them, but that doesn't mean they're creative and display effort by the devs.

I agree with you on the ultimate.

But claiming that there went no effort into the 5 abilities and the revamped passives is a flat out wrong statement, and you know it.

You may not like the core idea of the abilities, nor the visuals - but they're a clear improvement on the standard formulae, and look objectively superior, both by animation and coloration.

Whenever one prefers the ones we got, or the ones that the NPC's received, is purely a subjective opinion.

I genuinely believe that our new toolset is vastly superior to that of the NPCs, and that is my subjective opinion. Just as it is your subjective opinion, that the NPCs new variants are superior.

I still firmly believe that ZoS settled for the only solution that they really could, where as they cater to every aspect of a vampire fantasy in one little way or another. Where as you, (From what I've deciphered from our talks) want them to purely focus on the fantasy of the vampire magi, as opposed to the more roguish or warrioresque archetypes.

When you reuse animations from npc's and previous classes that have been around for years, you know there is some serious budget cuts behind the scenes. This clearly started about 2 years ago when ZOS decided to focus on doing year long stories, which are much easier on the workflow for a developement studio. You can reuse and repurpose newer assets, art direction is clear, story is concise. Not that I'm complaining, I like that approach, but the cracks are starting to show through the pavement. It feels like it's being used for budget cuts and a smaller staff, rather than condensing ideas and work flow to provide more value and newer content.

This also coincides with the announcements that ZOS is designing another game. Many studio's pull half their teams to work on a new game while the "skeleton crew" upkeeps their previous game. Saves money, while also investing in to their future.

Where was the arena and new weapons that normally comes with the q4 dlc zone in 2019? Southern Elsweyr/Dragonhold felt like 1 of the lowest valued, reskinned dlc content releases to date and I thought Murkmire was bad. If you're going to spend 2/4 DLC per year on a large portion of the value behind Story quests and overland, maybe make it so players who have played longer than 3 months can actually opt in for some type of challenge, the overworld has been a huge issue since One Tamriel. Who is designing this content and why do they not see how starved their end game community is. DLC dungeons get farmed out within the first week, no Arena in 2019, so whats left? 1 trial? Is this what we should expect for 2020?

Look at all the increased monetization schemes ZOS has released in the past 2 years. We all wanted a way to carry our progress over from 1 caharacter to another for the grindy skill lines, so ZOS turned that into an excellent way to milk the whales by adding purchasable skill lines and skyshards. I'm not complaining because I won't buy it, but someone will and it just reinforces these monetization practices for the future. It's bad enough that they made Jewelry Crafting, Psijic Order and now Scrying/Excavation extremely grindy to promote longevity of play time and reinforcing the idea of buying short cuts on second tries through the crown store, but you also have to gamble your crowns to get the cooler vanity items via crown crates. People are more comfortable to pay for exactly what they want, rather than gamble double for things they DON'T want.

To top it off, what does this chapter really bring that is different to others? What happened to all their promises? The skill audit, class identity upgrades, performance improvements and CP Revamp. It's just more of the same with a mobile game like approach to exploration in the overland content we've already explored a billion times over due to the Mages Guild and Psijic Order which also force you to explore overland. ZOS makes a lot of empty promises, failing to complete anything they promised us in 2019, in fact, the performance of the game has been horrendous during U25 to the point where all I hear in my guilds when I log in once a week is complaining.

I have sympathy for the developers and the new combat team, it's not their fault they're tasked with fixing the spaggetti code in this game or that they're severely understaffed for one of the biggest mmos out right now. The direction they've displayed is solid, the execution is lacking. I believe in creating clear standards for everything in the game to help balances sets and abilities, but the standards need work. All I have to say is look at the process of what happened to dots from Elsweyr, to Scalebreaker to Dragonhold. Still in an awful place because they nerfed them so hard the opposite direction.

They're hanging on by a thread by Zenimax who is unwilling to properly invest into the property. Alcast has been quoted as saying he thinks there is only about 60 people on staff for this game and I believe that statement, he works closely with them. So much so, that he appears to be friends with some of them on Stream, cracking jokes at their expense. 60... That is REALLY low, Warframe has over 200+ and it shows. That game is absolutely beautiful and it's expansions are extremely well developed, polished and "Expansive". The game runs flawlessly.

Your playbase is starving for real new gameplay mechanics, Scrying/Excavation ARE nice, but they're very grindy and they feel shallow as a chapter seller. I would say this is 1 half of the gameplay mechanics that should of been released with the chapter the same way the Psijic Order and Jewelry Crafting were handled..

6 years and we're still using the same weapons with weaker, less unique skills. Do I have to ask why ZOS designed Mag DK and Mag Templar as melee ranged magicka users, but never created Melee Magicka weapons yet they have NPC's that use 1h + magic and promotional art dating back to Summerset showcasing the main NPC using this same fighting style, a style that has been a staple of the Elder Scrolls games since Oblivion (handed magic). In both Oblivion and Skyrim I didn't once bother using Staves, opting to sell them at any chance I got. In skyrim most people played their first playthrough using 1h + magic until they realized how poorly thought out the magic damage scaling in that game was, but at first, it was fun and exciting and from visual and idea perspective, it was awesome. Spell Swords were a class specific option in Oblivion!

But now we have a re-vamped vampire skill line advertised as promotional material to sell Greymoor for the people who don't quite understand that it's a part of the base game and should of been completed years ago. Then we have new exploration skill lines that I can assume very few people ever requested, but must of been seen as great options for this chapter simply because they were easier to develop for during what can be seen as a filler year to ZOS. What I mean by that is, everyone wants new melee magicka weapons, maybe new spears for stamina, new abilities, new morphs, better stamina class identity, more unique sets that don't pidgeon hole every pve setup into Relequen + Lokke, spell crafting which is still on the table and was mentioned 4+ years ago.. But ZOS is Smart, they knew they had to completely revamp skill standards, CP and performance for the longevity of the game, so they chose to skip those highly requested options for 2020. Thus, we're now in a filler year.

I guarantee you next year will NOT include a new class(good, we have enough now) like the previous pattern suggests (every 2 years = new class), instead, we will get something regarding combat that I listed above. Spell Crafting within a Cyrodil chapter is very much a possibility since that seems to be the next Chapter from digging other people have done, BUT this is only possible if they can manage to complete their skill/class/performance and CP updates within the next year which is starting to look more and more unlikely. If you asked me a year ago, what I thought Greymoor would include as a new gameplay mechanic, I'd say Spell Crafting and the Collage of Winterhold because the skill cost/damage standards are required for a system like that to work, but with hinesight I can safely say they were no where close to prepared for something like that when all of that progress came to a hault for U24/U25. I think they even began to realize this too by starting to focus on performance improvements and abandoning all class/skill updates since it's driving people away from the game.

TLDR: If you read through that, props to you, please don't quote the whole thing for other peoples sanity. Just dissapointed, wanted much more from this great game this year and instead, I feel like skipping it all together. In reality, I have boughten the chapter, I am addicted and I do love this game and the IP, but its lost a lot of my interest in the past 1-2 years and I had so much hope for it to grow over time, yet it feels like the game is in a state of Limbo. U24 gave me some hope by finally touching on Sorc/DK class identity, even though I've been waiting for 4 years and thought something would of came much sooner when we started seeing the class rep program and notes.. but U25 completely destroyed performance and ruined block cancelling while avoiding class identity and U26 is doing the same. What is there really to look forward to anymore besides updating some builds with Mythic Items?

ShadowHvo wrote: »

Noxavian wrote: »

Creativity and effort put into skills being reworked isn't subjective though.

Effort and work put into something is a fact. Look at all of the abilities I listed, you would have to be kidding yourself if you think any of these changes to abilities are creative. When as explained factually, they are not. You can like them, but that doesn't mean they're creative and display effort by the devs.

You may not like the core idea of the abilities, nor the visuals - but they're a clear improvement on the standard formulae, and look objectively superior, both by animation and coloration.

More bright and colorful does not mean objectively superior. I like visuals of vampire skills on Live servers more, i think, they better match overall palette of ESO's environment and and looks more vampiric.

Noxavian wrote: »

imagine liking the idea of sucking pee-colored liquid instead of blood from an enemy and not thinking that is objectively bad when compared to the NPC's 'vampiric' blood red drain.

Pretty much everything about the current PTS Vampiric Drain needs to be changed, damage/healing/visuals. A channel ability only doing 2~3k tool tip damage per second, and only healing for 23% of your missing health. And then a morph that restores 5% of your missing stamina on a skill that scales off magicka stats. It is the oddest 180 ive seen in the entire rework.

In my opinion, it is necessary to compare what happened and what will happen. Vampires used to be nothing about. This innovation will allow to get unique experience of the game, practically a new class is introduced.