Enough. We need PvP - PvE skill effect separation

JohnOfMarkarth · July 2020

As we have seen for years...

The devs constantly, perhaps not by intention, ruin one over the other. In one patch they ruin pvp for pve, in other pve for pvp (and lets be honest the trend is like this: if they ruin pve for pvp its in this way: make skills less fun because in pvp they overperform, and if they ruin pvp over pve its entirely different issue of: its now tremendously imbalanced)

So... I do think I speak for many o' us. Not all but many.

However hard it would be. However long it would take. Separate effects of skills into pvp and pve categories.

Example:

A beloved skill called uppercut.
"sends enemies flying and onto the ground (this does not occur in pvp)"

Set our skills free. Set our fun factor free. Set our minds free.
Separate PvP and PvE effects in skills.

SeaUnicorn · July 2020

Honestly the amount of time invested into trying balancing for both by now is much higher than it would take to do separation.

karekiz · July 2020

No that would be confusing for players going from PvE to PvP.

Lets redesign the entire class system, ability timers, and core combat instead. That won't confuse people.

JohnOfMarkarth · July 2020

karekiz wrote: »

No that would be confusing for players going from PvE to PvP.

Lets redesign the entire class system, ability timers, and core combat instead. That won't confuse people.

i admire sarcasm greatly.

Atherakhia · July 2020

There's a reason not one MMO does this. It's because players don't want skills they have to behave one way in one game mechanic and a different way in another mechanic. I'm also not sure the problems with this game are at all PvP related. They're largely mechanical and a result of poor design.

With your example, what would you want the skill to do? Nothing but damage in PvP but knockback targets in PvE? Why? Your example isn't even relevant to the larger complaints people have with PvP.

TwinLamps · July 2020

They showed with some skills it is doable.
I wish they separate PvP and PvE skills as well.

Veinblood1965 · July 2020

I personally like the constant changes, I spend months learning a new rotation and building a set to start over again, and again, and again, and again, and again. It's incredibly rewarding lol.

JohnOfMarkarth · July 2020

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

I personally like the constant changes, I spend months learning a new rotation and building a set to start over again, and again, and again, and again, and again. It's incredibly rewarding lol.

I think i succeeded in making a sarcasm-thread.

i appreciate it

Tommy_The_Gun · July 2020

Well... ZOS (accidentally) will make something like this in the next patch, despite saying that skills should work the same in PvP & PvE...

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/537057/pts-patch-notes-v6-1-0#latest

Grim Focus:
This ability and its morphs now grant 2% Critical Damage and Healing per stack, rather than reducing your damage taken by 2% per stack, in order to help this ability feel more aggressive and assassination oriented.
Stacks removed from these abilities after ending combat will now only be removed in PvP zones, rather than all the time, fixing numerous issues where you could lose all stacks generated where you appeared to still be in combat.

Funny how they removed stun & snare from Teleport Strike. Remember ? This skill used to stun mobs, but if you attacked oter player in PvP - they got snared instead. But, ZOS was like "we need to be consistent" and they changed stuns to snares (and then removed it entirely one patch later).

And yet here we go back again to skill working slightly differently in PvP & PvE...

Ranger209 · July 2020

Oddly enough that is exactly what they are doing for these tests, applying them to pvp only in cyrodiil. Maybe this will be the crack in the door that gets them seriously thinking of doing just that, balancing pvp separately from pve.

KingShocker · July 2020

disagree 100%. you're asking them to balance two different games, essentially.

although I'd be totally down for an elder scrolls PVP only game, like a MOBA or something.

Tangent: If anything PVE and PVP need to be brought closer in line, especially where healing is concerned. I never got why they thought heals needed to be so insane in PvE. most class heals will crit you for more than most people even have health, why? but honestly, I could heal most content at half power and content that's too strong would just 1 shot most players anyway. Also, weaker heals would force most DPS to learn to play defensively when they need to instead of just face rolling rotations.

pieratsos · July 2020

KingShocker wrote: »

disagree 100%. you're asking them to balance two different games, essentially.

although I'd be totally down for an elder scrolls PVP only game, like a MOBA or something.

Tangent: If anything PVE and PVP need to be brought closer in line, especially where healing is concerned. I never got why they thought heals needed to be so insane in PvE. most class heals will crit you for more than most people even have health, why? but honestly, I could heal most content at half power and content that's too strong would just 1 shot most players anyway. Also, weaker heals would force most DPS to learn to play defensively when they need to instead of just face rolling rotations.

Balancing two different games once and then making small adjustments whenever needed would actually be easier and less time consuming than trying balance one game every 3 months

jecks33 · July 2020

KingShocker wrote: »

disagree 100%. you're asking them to balance two different games, essentially.

pvp and pve ARE 2 different games

Sesshik_CZ · July 2020

I simply cannot agree. This could much more complicate the whole game, which is right now in bad condition...

Lets keep it as simply as possible and pray, they will not screw it so much

Koubo · July 2020

Sesshik_CZ wrote: »

I simply cannot agree. This could much more complicate the whole game, which is right now in bad condition...

Lets keep it as simply as possible and pray, they will not screw it so much

too late

kingsforged · July 2020

Sesshik_CZ wrote: »

I simply cannot agree. This could much more complicate the whole game, which is right now in bad condition...

Lets keep it as simply as possible and pray, they will not screw it so much

lol, apparently you haven't bothered to actually read any of the changes...

kingsforged · July 2020

Separating PVE and PVP should just be a given at this point in MMORPG history... either create a game where the PVE plays like PVP, or accept that you can't have a PVE game that allows you to decimate hordes of enemies AND balance that into PVP, and adjust skills accordingly

Mettaricana · July 2020

Honestly they should add a tab at the skills menu titled pve and pvp click pvp and have it show all the stuff the pvp version of the skills do, and revert this weird one morph is a pvp skill other is a pve skill kinda set up this would effectively give pve 2 morphs to screw around with and pvp players would get the same skill with some battle spirit buffs/nerds on heals and damage
example
(Blighted blast bones does major defile useless in pve but only stam morph we go... make the pve version just deal disease damage maybe more dmg to afflicted targets of disease or poison. But have the pvp version do minor defile or do major defile but reduced damage of the blast when affected by battle spirit.) If pvps blighted huts to hard tweak only that leave pve version alone.

Next bring back softcaps from back in the early days of eso especially in pvp put dimishing return on immortal godmode tanks and infinite magicka aoe spammers cap the max resources rather than 80k health tanks that spam health based heals and shields have the soft cap kick in at like 35-40k and health gained after is cut in half 1000 hp enchant becomes 500 hp... At that point it'd be foolish to hard stack that stat anymore forcing players to get out of the heal for days block for days aoe spam for days mentality. As far as the new test goes slap on the debuff making aoes cost more for spamming it, but leave off the cast time penalty keeps the fluid speed of combat. Basically rather than outright break skills and gear for both pvp and pve just put a limit to how broken you can make it. Good example we screwed over bone goliath damage for pve and the sword and board passives because instead of capping health in pvp for goliath at like say 60k we let it become 120k hp 1 shot bash godmode zerg buster that resulted in its nerf for both pvp and pve.

saf227_ESO · July 2020

This is long overdue, really. And you can do it by adding additional morph trees. THIS tree for this skill will work in PvP, THIS tree will work in PvE. You can either keep re-morphing to swap back & forth - or use different toons. It would probably be 2 extra trees for each skill. One mag, one stam. But that would make it pretty straightforward. Now, how to balance sets between PvP & PvE .... that's another can of worms. Or guts. Or Crawlers.

Aznarb · July 2020

JohnOfMarkarth wrote: »

As we have seen for years...

The devs constantly, perhaps not by intention, ruin one over the other. In one patch they ruin pvp for pve, in other pve for pvp (and lets be honest the trend is like this: if they ruin pve for pvp its in this way: make skills less fun because in pvp they overperform, and if they ruin pvp over pve its entirely different issue of: its now tremendously imbalanced)

So... I do think I speak for many o' us. Not all but many.

However hard it would be. However long it would take. Separate effects of skills into pvp and pve categories.

Example:

A beloved skill called uppercut.
"sends enemies flying and onto the ground (this does not occur in pvp)"

Set our skills free. Set our fun factor free. Set our minds free.
Separate PvP and PvE effects in skills.

Can't agree enough with this.
They always mess-up one of the two when they change thing.
Just made skill have a different effect in PvP and remove armor from PvP.

When a guy go to PvP it will have a list of set (the one that are already in Cyro for exemple) that it can choose from everytime his one base or at the start of a BG.

Once this base is on game working well, it gonna be so easier to tweak skill and set without messing both mod.
It's would also allow all PvP player to just jump in the game at lv50 w/o have to grind PvE mod they don't enjoy.
Win win for everyone.

Zodiarkslayer · July 2020

I think all good PvP Game (esp. first person shooters) out there teach ONE very valuable lesson to developers:
Streamline ALL possible assets and actions into one compact and recognisable package!
This has three major effects:

Identity - Meaing it stands alone and is percieved as such.
Simplicity - Easy to engage, steep learning curve
Immediacy - no intervening factors or powers

That being said, the PvP in Crodiil is none of it.
It lacks Identity, because it tries to be every major PvP game concept at the same time: Deathmatch, CooP, Capture the Flag, Campaign, etc.
It is huge in size, scope and ambition. And it takes a good 100 hours to get reasonably mediocre by comparison. One needs help of veterans to speed that up. Ideally from a whole guild of veterans.
It completly lacks anything resembling direct coupling between player action and gameplay result. There are just soooooooooooooooooooooooo many things happening at once that modify, proc, change, scale, etc. what you do into what you see.

These are fundamental issues of Cyrodiil's PvP.

A mere separation of skills between PVP and PVE will not suffice.

Changes that far reaching would essantially create a new product. And that in turn is not developer decision. It becomes an executives decision. And they cannot budge until it is financially viable. Even if they wanted to.

Until then it will always be just a cycle of patches, which leans itself one way or another.

MashmalloMan · July 2020

Atherakhia wrote: »

There's a reason not one MMO does this. It's because players don't want skills they have to behave one way in one game mechanic and a different way in another mechanic. I'm also not sure the problems with this game are at all PvP related. They're largely mechanical and a result of poor design.

With your example, what would you want the skill to do? Nothing but damage in PvP but knockback targets in PvE? Why? Your example isn't even relevant to the larger complaints people have with PvP.

I've played quite a lot of MMOs before I started and mostly stayed with ESO, in my experience. Well above 50%, maybe even 75% of those MMO's had entirely different damage scaling, cooldowns, CC's and/or costs depending on the content. It wasn't confusing at all. Treating your playerbase like mentally challenged 12 year olds on a game that has a MATURE 17+ rating should explain that you can trust the average adult to understand the difference quite quickly.

Most of the MMO's with different effects depending on content, made the difference clear in the tooltip with Italic/Coloured text. ESO literally already does something to this effect, minus the font changes by adding any rules and/or differences at the bottom of the tooltip.

There is also major benefits to this. Skills that are primarly CC focussed can trade that CC for more useful pve benefits like damage or sustain. This already happens with DK's Unrelenting Grip as an example, giving back magicka if the target is CC immune.

1 game I played (Dragon Nest) that had heavy action combat, would just update tooltips depending on if you were in a pve or pvp zone. It allowed pve to go absolutely crazy with cool effects, knockdowns, cooldown reductions, damage amplitudes, etc. Pvp on the other hand was heavily balanced seperately. "Awakening" effects that gave crazy cooldowns resulting in a 45s skill having back to back 1s cds if comboed properly was reduced to only being limited to 1 reduction of -25s, with CC knockdown swapped for a slight juggle knockup (if you knocked someone down, there was no CC immunity until your enemy stopped juggling you off the floor, CC immunity was only provided by standing up and activating a skill or jumping mid juggle to which you only had 1 chance every 30s or so).

That game had the funnest pvp combat I've ever played in an mmo, every class had their own unique pve and pvp benefits and downsides and they were able to adjust seperately. Pve flourished with cool, OP effects and pvp was toned down in the CC, CD and damage department to enable more thoughful play instead of spamming buttons.

This is a failure on ESO's part, full stop. There is no reasonable argument against it, confusing players isn't an argument when ZOS redesigns the game every 3 months completely destroying skills, sets and builds that regular players don't know about until a week into a patch since they don't check the forums constantly.

Shantu · July 2020

This is one of those no-brainer things you would think any developer with more than a couple brain cells would agree with. My guess is that the combat software system is built in such a way that it makes it impossible to implement without the investment of a complete redesign. As a result we get an endless array of band-aids thrown at the problem that satisfies and pleases no one.

MashmalloMan · July 2020

saf227_ESO wrote: »

This is long overdue, really. And you can do it by adding additional morph trees. THIS tree for this skill will work in PvP, THIS tree will work in PvE. You can either keep re-morphing to swap back & forth - or use different toons. It would probably be 2 extra trees for each skill. One mag, one stam. But that would make it pretty straightforward. Now, how to balance sets between PvP & PvE .... that's another can of worms. Or guts. Or Crawlers.

I'd love for a 3rd morph allowing skills to actually feel like more of a choice. Warden and Necro are the best examples of ZOS actually treating stamina as it's own class identity from the ground up instead of thinking about it after the fact with the original 4 classes. However, Warden and Necro are possibly the most boring to me as well..

ZOS just duplicated almost every single damage skill with a stamina cost instead and minor differences (at least early on). The only difference was cost, only recently did Stam Warden's get some added effects, but they're still very minor and the base skills function practically the same.

This is where these classes failed and some of the original 4 classes succeeded, for whatever reason, because morphs were added in over time, they were added to different trees and different base skills entirely. In my opinion, it made for a better and more obvious distinction between the roles.

Look at a warden, both use birds, shalks, betty, flies and bear. Only difference is Winters Revenge and Northern Storm (they were hoping, but no one uses this in pve). This is a failed concept in an effort to provide stamina morphs. It's also a major failure by making the trees only focus on dps, tanking and healing. While thats a good baseline to have, the original classes mix and matched abilities with a more fair balance of 70% (primary role focus) and 30% (secondary focus). Secondary focus being a damage skill in the healing line, allowing you to get ult gen or sustain from those passives, etc. Thats what makes classes feel more cohesive, they learned their lesson a little with Necro in that you get your utility skills from healing/tanking like your heal summon or ulti gen. If Warden was designed in a similar way, maybe Betty could of been apart of the healing line instead of taking up a dps skill line slot as a quick example.

Sorc for example, completely different skills on both roles. Although I'd love a stam frags, I can appreciate that all the skills are different in design. Hurricane is completely different from Boundless Storm, Bound Armaments is completely different from Crystal Frags (yet they probably fit the same role (delayed/mini game burst skill)).

If we had 3 morphs, this would allow classes like Warden and Necro to convert some of these boring options between simple stamina vs magicka choices to something entirely different, maybe tanking related, pvp related, etc. Same goes for the original classes.

But.. thats just a pipe dream. Not gonna happen in my lifetime. They can't profit off of a 3rd morph option that would require them to create 108 (18 skills a class * 6 classes) skills.

They will continue creating 1 off skill lines like the Psijic Order or Vampire Rework that only requires 6 unique skills with 12 unique morphs. Easy to market, easy to design freeing up time to meet the status quo for their chapter (zone, trial, and quests).

This reason is also why I'm starting to think spellcrafting and new weapons (especially a hybrid/magicka melee weapon like 1h + rune) is simply not feasibly possible. ZOS surprises me sometimes though, the NPC pathing for housing came out of nowhere and is an excellent addition to the game.

Vevvev · July 2020

I remember back in ESO when some skills had effects that didn't effect players. Granted back then I was terrible at PVE and PVP in this game so my greatest contribution was spamming Ambush all day ((And the stun that came with it didn't work on players)) in PVE, and in PVP I manned a siege weapon. I played a stam-ish nightblade hybrid... thing. This was back in 2015-2016.

Don't think it'd take too much effort to make separate rules for PVE and PVP because the server is already making checks like "Is the target undead, daedra, werewolf, normal, etc..." and I'm sure one of them is whether the target is a player or NPC.

MashmalloMan · July 2020

Vevvev wrote: »

I remember back in ESO when some skills had effects that didn't effect players. Granted back then I was terrible at PVE and PVP in this game so my greatest contribution was spamming Ambush all day ((And the stun that came with it didn't work on players)) in PVE, and in PVP I manned a siege weapon. I played a stam-ish nightblade hybrid... thing. This was back in 2015-2016.

Don't think it'd take too much effort to make separate rules for PVE and PVP because the server is already making checks like "Is the target undead, daedra, werewolf, normal, etc..." and I'm sure one of them is whether the target is a player or NPC.

Yep.. funny enough, they've actually gone away from this formula instead, which is odd since most players liked the difference. I think Templars Spear Shards was the same thing for awhile, use to stun, then they made it not affect pvp before completely removing it for other effects around Morrowind if I'm remembering it correctly.

Lame. That model worked fine.

ayu_fever · July 2020

just remove pvp.
problem solved.

Atherakhia · July 2020

ayu_fever wrote: »

just remove pvp.
problem solved.

LOL! You do realize this was originally marketed as a PvP game right? If anything, PvE should be an afterthought.

Dusk_Coven · July 2020

Atherakhia wrote: »

ayu_fever wrote: »

just remove pvp.
problem solved.

LOL! You do realize this was originally marketed as a PvP game right? If anything, PvE should be an afterthought.

Even if we suppose this is true, marketing something doesn't mean they actually did it properly to be worth anything.
They were just trying to grab all the demographics and they have been stringing PvP'ers along successfully for years.
It's clear that the real competency is in Housing where they can coax people to buy 16000 crown houses that have flawed interiors.

Considering that the focus of their releases have been 100% PvE, whatever mistakes they made is the past with their advertising is just that -- a mistake.
And trying to do PvP at all ranks as one of their biggest mistakes.

MashmalloMan · August 2020

Atherakhia wrote: »

ayu_fever wrote: »

just remove pvp.
problem solved.

LOL! You do realize this was originally marketed as a PvP game right? If anything, PvE should be an afterthought.

Why is this still an argument? I love pvp in this game and it's obviously going nowhere.. but we're a minority. The majority of players love this game and the Elder Scrolls series because of pve and it shows, out of the 27 major updates, only 2 had additional paid pvp content as a major selling factor, both of which are free now, increasing population size which was suffering.

Any pvp adjustments are smaller, financially feasable tweaks and adjustments designed to keep it going for a more all around MMO experience. It is NOT what makes them money and it is NOT what is advertised for the game today, it hasn't been for at least 4-5 years.

Vevvev · August 2020

Atherakhia wrote: »

ayu_fever wrote: »

just remove pvp.
problem solved.

LOL! You do realize this was originally marketed as a PvP game right? If anything, PvE should be an afterthought.

Neither should be an afterthought. As much as I love PVP and hate PVE due to its repetitiveness we should never leave one behind. I will admit the Planetside 2 style PVP is what originally drew me into ESO alongside the Elder Scrolls brand, but to make PVE an afterthought is silly considering the IP's history and fan base.