Characters now overpowered from the start?

StarOfElyon · February 2021

I want to share a video that I thought highlighted some potential problems that ZOS should avoid. With the base stat increase, new characters are going to be too powerful at the start.

ESO PTS New player/character is to OP in the 6.3.0 patch.

Now, I know ZOS will see this. I like that ZOS added in the ability for us to choose starting zones (wish that was a thing when I first started the game) based on our feedback. So let's propose some solutions in case ZOS hasn't thought of any yet. I have mixed feelings on the stat increase. The stat increase will be very beneficial to hybrid characters (spell swords) but it feels like inflation that could get out of control. Health stacking (especially on stamina classes) is already a VERY big problem in PVP. The stat increase will just make the problem worse. So many the base stats should not be increased.

If they are going to be increased, to keep the overland challenging, maybe the difficulty should be increased. The mainland zones should become as difficult as starter dungeons. The starter zones could keep the lower (current) difficulty level.

Or maybe the base stats should not become available until the character reaches level 50.

Thoughts?

thedoodle_90 · February 2021

Uh the new character buff gets weaker as you level not stronger. Its to make up for not having bonus stats yet. I believe skills hit for around the same on live. 6k Lava whips seem right to me.

Sahidom · February 2021

The Battle Spirit buff for characters under 50 has me wondering whether you could stack this buff with CP 2.0 to overpower a 50/CP160 item equipped guy. Will this create a twink era?

ExistingRug61 · February 2021

The points highlighted in the video are primarily due to the goals ZOS has set out to achieve in relative power at different levels in the game.

In these changes ZOS had the aim that they wished to keep endgame power level approximately the same but at the same time shift some of the power from CP to base levels. The only logical result of this is that level 50 0CP is now more powerful than compared to live.

Then we have battle levelling. The aim of battle levelling is to even the playing field between say an equivalently geared level 1 0CP character with a level 50 0CP character, so to maintain this with the previous change, this must mean that the level 10 0CP character is also now more powerful than live.

[As an aside: this is why the food example given in the video gives so much health - this is battle levelling scaling effect, one component of which is a multiplier that starts at ~1.4 and decreases with level and applies to all stats, spell and weapon damage, and regen, regardless of source (with the exception of race regen and drink/food regen for some reason, like the willows path bug)]

As long as these are the stated goals, there is no way around this.
The cost of this system is the feeling of power progression from levelling. Instead levelling gives more of a progression of options, as more skills become available. The only sense of power progression comes from gear and CP (until the vertical progression limit is reached).

If instead the system was change to add a sense of power progression to lvl1-50, by modifying battle levelling, this would come at the cost of the (tenuous) balance in lowbie PvP (I say tenuous because there is a separate vertical progression in lowbie PvP due to gear availability).

If anything, the changes to base stats have actually compromised battle levelling the other way, and theoretically mean a lvl 50 0CP character is now more powerful and an equivalently geared lvl 1 0CP character.
Why? If we assume that battle levelling was successfully balancing between levels before, and then consider that this patch has added base weapon and spell damage that increases with level, surely this shifts the balance in favour of higher level characters.

ExistingRug61 · February 2021

Sahidom wrote: »

The Battle Spirit buff for characters under 50 has me wondering whether you could stack this buff with CP 2.0 to overpower a 50/CP160 item equipped guy. Will this create a twink era?

Possibly, but I think it unlikely because it was already the case on live that battle spirit stacked with CP .
So, consider a lvl10 CP810 char vs a lvl50 CP810 char on live. The current live environment suggests the lvl10 CP810 character is weaker as we don't see them running around dominating PvP (to my knowledge).

Then, we take away CP1.0 and add CP2.0. This will affect both options relatively equally.

Then we add the new base stats. This would give a slight advantage to the lvl10 CP810 character as the battle spirit stat multiplier means they get slightly more out of the base stats. ie: the lvl50 player gets 4k extra stam and mag and 8k extra health, whereas the lvl 10 gets this as well but its affected by the battle spirit stat multiplier of ~1.35 @ lvl 10, so they actually get 5.4k stam and mag and 10.8k health.

Then we add the new base spell and weapon damage. The lvl10 CP 810 player gets 200, which then gets multiplied by battle spirit multiplier of 1.35 @ lvl 10 to be 270, whereas the lvl 50 CP810 player gets the full 1000.

Overall, the low level player gets some extra stats, but the lvl 50 player gets comparatively more damage.
So if the lvl50 is currently more powerful under the existing system, they should remain so with these changes.

MerguezMan · February 2021

You're forgetting this is the first step in updates.

The new CP tree will be updated.

The gear level cap may be updated at some point (which is not something I whish for, but that is very likely considering the new max CP is set at 3600 and the current max gear is "only" at CP160).

Nairinhe · February 2021

MerguezMan wrote: »

You're forgetting this is the first step in updates.

The new CP tree will be updated.

The gear level cap may be updated at some point (which is not something I whish for, but that is very likely considering the new max CP is set at 3600 and the current max gear is "only" at CP160).

IIRC, Kai asked devs about raising the gear cap in post-reveal interview and Finn made a face like he was offered a dead raccoon for breakfast. I think that meant it's not happening in the foreseeable future.