Goregrinder wrote: »

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Goregrinder wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Goregrinder wrote: »

Those who spend time developing a skill should always be rewarded by being better at that skill than someone who does not take the same time to develop it. Lowering the skill ceiling basically tells us that they don't want people to spend time getting good...that a fresh CP 160 toon will have the same level of success as someone who has played since beta.

You can 'lower the ceiling' without lowering the skill ceiling. Reducing the results you get from Absolute BIS Gear & Skill, isn't the same as removing the skill that's needed to get those numbers. If your perfect rotation & build gets you twice the DPS needed to clear the highest content, rather than 4x the DPS needed, you still needed your perfect build, rotation, and skill to get there, and a bad player still won't match it.


(When the range of DPS between bad players & top players gets too wide, it causes problems with even being able to design & balance new content. That can be seen in games like Star Trek Online, where low-end players might make 10k DPS, and the best players in the "DPS League" are pushing 500k.)

You're saying you can lower the skill ceiling without lowering the skill ceiling? Or what other ceiling is there besides the skill ceiling?

DPS =/= Skill

If your Perfect Skill (build, gear, rotation, timing, positioning, etc) gets you 100k DPS.

And they change the numbers so that your Perfect Skill gets you 50k DPS.

The ceiling has been lowered (50K is smaller than 100K), but the skill required was still the same.


Of course, figuring out how to reduce the numbers gained from all those perfect buffs/synergies/combos/etc without reducing what happens from basic skill, is the challenge.

This makes absolutely no sense (or maybe I am just not understanding what you are saying). This game is a Skill game when it comes to DPS. Of the 5 things you mentioned, the first two arent skill based (perhaps they are knowledge based), and the last three are potentially skill based (not sure if there is much difference between timing and rotation). Rotation is certainly skill based and of the things you mentioned, it is the biggest piece of the pie (bigger than the other 4 put together).

If all you do is reduce damage by 50%, sure you could lower the elite DPS from 100k to 50k, but you would also shrink the those doing 10k down to 5k. From a percent standpoint, the gap hasnt changed. In that example, the gap is still 10x.

They only way to truly lower the gap between those at the bottom and those at the top is to make ROTATION less impactful. The other things are drops in the bucket. The issue of course, how do you make Rotation less impactful without gutting combat.

@Oreyn_Bearclaw Add more situational buffs, bonus synergies, if you will.

These would still require reaction time and would allow bonus damage in the right context. Plenty of other games have figured out how to make 'skill checks' that require the player to interact without the need for memorization of a perfect rotation.

Witcher, God of War, Atlas, heck even Dead by Daylight all have skill check windows that require player presence at the time of the check - not possible to memorize the timing, key press required, etc to accomplish the check result. (Think Combat Metronome, but the red portion isn't always in the same place at the same time.) Slottable perks and now CP could be invested that would lessen this effect directly (making the window bigger, or the moving portion slower) for players that do not have the physical ability to hit that perfect rotation mark. It would still allow high end to be higher because someone would have to opt to slot one of those perks, missing out on another that a high end player would be able to maintain because of their personal ability.

Our characters are supposed to have skill levels the players cannot. I can't walk into a crowd of 10 people, pick a fight, and hold them all off indefinitely with my IRL tanking skills. This is what the in game bonuses are intended to help counter. Perks to improve or at least soften the effect of rotation timing would go a long way in that regard.

I'd also like to see the skill overwrite of LA's go away. There is zero need for the ability queue in regard to LA's. This alone would allow people to more successfully LA between skills regardless of ping rate and other factors to achieve that higher DPS. It would take nothing away from the high end, because a perfectly timed rotation (higher LA ratio, ~ .9) would still outperform a less perfectly performed rotation (.7, .8), but the ratio wouldn't suddenly drop to 40-60% because the game is designed to overwrite the LA's because of the queue.

The LA could be part of the skill check window, rewarding higher DPS with a perfectly timed response, slightly less DPS with a less than perfectly timed response, if some kind of actual feedback (other than "your LA didn't go off for some arbitrary reason") was built into the game.

There are ways to do this that still reward the young, skilled, fast reaction times without cutting out everyone else with higher ping, lesser rigs, age, medical conditions, etc, because the character skills and perks could help compensate for this while still providing that gap between beginner-mid-high-l33t.

I'm sure those systems work great in single player games where all you have to balance is one player fighting multiple NPC's. ESO, however, is not a single player game. It's a Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing game, or MMORPG, sometimes referred to as simply an MMO.

You now have multiple players involved when fighting NPCs, and you even have players fighting against other players. On top of that ESO uses an action based combat system that incorporates elements of traditional MMORPG's that came before it, such as buffs, debuffs, spells, etc.

That's already like 4 or 5 extra layers you have to balance compared to a single player game. I don't know why people still use the argument "Well Zelda Ocarina of Time was a well balanced game, I don't know why the developers of Star Citizen don't balance it the same way....it worked for Zelda!...". That argument didn't make sense to me back in 1998, and it still does not make sense to me here in 2021.

@Goregrinder two of the four I mentioned are not single player games.

It's not much different than a synergy, but with a limited window. The only additional check would be the perks mentioned, which would most certainly be required to be slotted, so the server side check is either required or it's not, and it's no more processor intensive than any other 1 of 4 perk check.

It actually adds something dynamic to the fight, vs the combat equivalent of typing in a 15-20 letter word with perfect cadence.

nqvarihs wrote: »

Merforum wrote: »

2. I actually would love to have online tutorial or at least a company statement from ZOS stating clearly that LA EXPLOIT, which is doing LA weaving (a VALID light attack ever other second in front of each skill) in the SAME SECOND AS A SKILL effectively getting TWO actions in ONE second, is something that they think is positive to the game and also want people to learn, and give us training on it AT THAT POINT, until they state this explicitly it is an exploit that I WILL NOT DO ON PURPOSE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThZtwhYkKSs


LA/HA tests

Combat in ESO is one of the things that truly separates our game from others like it. It’s action oriented, fast-paced, and gives you a lot of freedom over its various mechanics/interactions. It is balanced not with ability cooldowns, but via ability costs and resource pools - you can’t keep casting abilities or block/roll dodge without the proper resources to fuel those actions. We’ve found that players love this freedom and there is always a “button to press” or action to take at any point in combat.

High APM play is still rewarded as the absolute highest DPS and requires a mix of both Light and Heavy attacks, interacting with Off-Balance as optimally as possible.

[snip]

[Edited for Baiting]

& where's the level up tooltip that explains to a new player why their light attacks don't go off?

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Alurria wrote: »

Hmm, reading your post a thought occured to me. If they got rid of the LA weaving they could introduce buffs specific to a dungeon only useable in that dungeon trial etc. Just throwing that out there. You would get a buff from a npc in the dungeon or trial and it would last as long as you are in there. I'm just speculating of course. But I digress I think horizontal progress is possible. You either have to lower the ceiling or raise the floor more. As far as weaving if it wasn't something they originally intended I wouldn't expect them to actually teach people how to do it. That wouldn't be logical. Leaving it in game is another matter that has created the situation as it is now a large gap. There maybe that 1%who will always be on top but there are a whole bunch in the middle who don't want to be left behind. So something has to give right? People play to have fun that is the main point fun is defined differently for different people. Truly I don't want homework to have to play a game. This is just my perspective on the issue.

Zos doesnt really teach anything in Eso. This is not limited to weaving. Zos doesnt even teach you that stam costing abilites scale with weapon damage/max stam only.

And again: Weaving hasnt created the situation with floor and ceiling as it is now. The gap is created by lack of knowledge on how to set up a character optimally. One example: 2 people parse. Player 1 runs a BiS build for PvE dps. While he misses 40% of LAs and recasts some dots late he still hits decent numbers. Player 2 runs ebon, lord warden and Salvation. He hits every light attack and executes a perfect rotation. He will still be several 1000s of dps behind Player 1.

Why does something have to give? The middle can easily achieve a level of performance to be able to clear nearly everything comfortably. They might not get the trifectas or the dps check on the last boss in Sunspire hardmode but vet trials can easily be done without being at the top. Also what do you define as the middle here? Everything between the floor and ceiling still has potential to have massive gaps between them.

And sure people play to have fun. No one forces anyone to do homework when playing the game. But when one enters certain group content it is not unreasonable for the rest of the group to expect that 1 guy to be able to perform at the required level. This mostly applies to vet content tho. But if people dont care about rising from the floor why should the ceiling be lowered to meet them? The floor doesnt care.

Those arguments are absurd and you're taking floor and ceiling a bit too literally.

Nothing in game will nor should compensate for the mix and match you speak of. No half serious DPS is trying to do so in Ebon & Warden. The gap, the real 'floor' in discussion is the mid tier. It's still the vast difference between people with the right gear, trying like hell to apply everything they know, everything they've reasonably learned in the game and still seeing a tremendous difference between the mid tier 'floor' and the high tier 'ceiling.'

If it was so blatantly obvious, if it was so easily attainable, there would not be the extremes between two people wearing otherwise identical gear.

It's like training to race a car. You put in hours every single day for years and you hit a certain limit. You're still far behind the top end drivers, only to find out the manufacturer never bothered to mention you had a whole extra gear. The tooltip stating "drive faster" simply doesn't cut it.

If there was decent in game feedback identifying where person A was falling short vs person B, it would then be strictly on the person to improve at that point.

That feedback is all but non-existent. There are no trainers. There are no advanced or role specific tutorials. There are all but useless level up tips and unintuitive gameplay. If not for a handful of add ons and some seriously dedicated people that have spent years reversing this game, we'd all still be guessing 90% of the time.

The difference this is truly about regards those low to mid-tier that are trying to improve, that are doing their homework, that are more than willing to put in the time. It takes far more than a written guide and a couple of videos or the gap there currently is simply would not be as high as it continues to be.

The actual 'floor' probably doesn't care. That is not the people that are being affected.

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Araneae6537 wrote: »

The only problem that I see (and I may well be mistaken), is how much animation canceling / light attack weaving adds to total damage. Surely most should be from a proper build and using the right abilities, making sure you have high uptime on important buffs, etc.? I have no problem with players able to get even more out of the system, but my understanding is that well-timed attack weaving accounts for more than half of a skilled DD’s damage and if that’s correct, that seems very disproportionate to anything else a player might do to improve their performance.

Light attacks sit at around 18% of a parse. The majority of damage comes from having a proper build and having a solid rotation.
Edit: If you want to check it yourself you can look at Eso logs and check Sunspire parses on Yolna since he is pretty much a target dummy boss fight.

Now I know what people have talked about where they can see other players' parses. Thanks for mentioning the name of the site.

So I went and looked at ESO Logs and found Sunspire (not sure what that is since I am new). It seemed that the top DPS in each group showed light attacks some heavy lifting. For the top DPS in each group, their LAs were often the second most significant source of damage. The more that dropped off the lower their total DPS output.

What this tells me, not being experienced in ESO but experienced in MMORPG raiding is that LAs are a top damage source which means that it is pretty much a requirement for having a solid rotation and without a doubt a requirement for doing top DPS.

This also goes back to the point I made earlier, that it would seem more logical to have the basic attack scale better with the activation time. With that, it would mean that someone who does meet the extremely narrow definition of a light attack will not be punished as much. It also does not take anything away from the players who have worked hard to refine and perfect delivering their rotation as they will still benefit greatly from that work, nothing taken away from them.

TLDR, one cannot dismiss the significance of light attacks.

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Those arguments are absurd and you're taking floor and ceiling a bit too literally.

Nothing in game will nor should compensate for the mix and match you speak of. No half serious DPS is trying to do so in Ebon & Warden. The gap, the real 'floor' in discussion is the mid tier. It's still the vast difference between people with the right gear, trying like hell to apply everything they know, everything they've reasonably learned in the game and still seeing a tremendous difference between the mid tier 'floor' and the high tier 'ceiling.'

If it was so blatantly obvious, if it was so easily attainable, there would not be the extremes between two people wearing otherwise identical gear.

It's like training to race a car. You put in hours every single day for years and you hit a certain limit. You're still far behind the top end drivers, only to find out the manufacturer never bothered to mention you had a whole extra gear. The tooltip stating "drive faster" simply doesn't cut it.

If there was decent in game feedback identifying where person A was falling short vs person B, it would then be strictly on the person to improve at that point.

That feedback is all but non-existent. There are no trainers. There are no advanced or role specific tutorials. There are all but useless level up tips and unintuitive gameplay. If not for a handful of add ons and some seriously dedicated people that have spent years reversing this game, we'd all still be guessing 90% of the time.

The difference this is truly about regards those low to mid-tier that are trying to improve, that are doing their homework, that are more than willing to put in the time. It takes far more than a written guide and a couple of videos or the gap there currently is simply would not be as high as it continues to be.

The actual 'floor' probably doesn't care. That is not the people that are being affected.

I´ve said it in this thread already, the game barely teaches you anything related to combat at all. But most of the ceiling also learned through written guides and videos so others can too. The gap between mid tiers and the ceiling at the iron atro is execution, nothing more, nothing less. The gap in content is group setup, buffs, debuffs and execution. With logs you even get to compare number of casts of certain abilities, uptimes etc.
But sure, actual, useful ingame tools could help and it would be amazing if Zos made some, hopefully would help with vet pugs where a dd is being outdamaged by a yolna/alkosh tank.

Flamebait wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Alurria wrote: »

Hmm, reading your post a thought occured to me. If they got rid of the LA weaving they could introduce buffs specific to a dungeon only useable in that dungeon trial etc. Just throwing that out there. You would get a buff from a npc in the dungeon or trial and it would last as long as you are in there. I'm just speculating of course. But I digress I think horizontal progress is possible. You either have to lower the ceiling or raise the floor more. As far as weaving if it wasn't something they originally intended I wouldn't expect them to actually teach people how to do it. That wouldn't be logical. Leaving it in game is another matter that has created the situation as it is now a large gap. There maybe that 1%who will always be on top but there are a whole bunch in the middle who don't want to be left behind. So something has to give right? People play to have fun that is the main point fun is defined differently for different people. Truly I don't want homework to have to play a game. This is just my perspective on the issue.

Zos doesnt really teach anything in Eso. This is not limited to weaving. Zos doesnt even teach you that stam costing abilites scale with weapon damage/max stam only.

And again: Weaving hasnt created the situation with floor and ceiling as it is now. The gap is created by lack of knowledge on how to set up a character optimally. One example: 2 people parse. Player 1 runs a BiS build for PvE dps. While he misses 40% of LAs and recasts some dots late he still hits decent numbers. Player 2 runs ebon, lord warden and Salvation. He hits every light attack and executes a perfect rotation. He will still be several 1000s of dps behind Player 1.

Why does something have to give? The middle can easily achieve a level of performance to be able to clear nearly everything comfortably. They might not get the trifectas or the dps check on the last boss in Sunspire hardmode but vet trials can easily be done without being at the top. Also what do you define as the middle here? Everything between the floor and ceiling still has potential to have massive gaps between them.

And sure people play to have fun. No one forces anyone to do homework when playing the game. But when one enters certain group content it is not unreasonable for the rest of the group to expect that 1 guy to be able to perform at the required level. This mostly applies to vet content tho. But if people dont care about rising from the floor why should the ceiling be lowered to meet them? The floor doesnt care.

Actually weaving has created a huge amount of the difference. If you took the exact same player, with the same gear, he could do 100k with weaving and 80k without using the exact same rotation, that is a very large difference. One way that would actually help bring the floor and ceiling together is to reduce the damage of light attacks and increase the damage of spammable abilities to an according amount. Your rotation would be still be important but the weaving part would be made far less important.

20k la
80k other


why reduce the lower part and not the higher?
considering worst dps mainly uses LA.

Buff LA. Nerf all other damage will shrink difference much more imo.


Example adjustment:
40k la
50k other

now la spam floor is at 40k assuming they can keep self buffs up (extend duration).
ceiling is at 90k.

Zos really should add sets and skills ( in guild lines so all classes have access) that will boost la spam to the floor target)

remosito wrote: »

Flamebait wrote: »

Sanguinor2 wrote: »

Alurria wrote: »

Hmm, reading your post a thought occured to me. If they got rid of the LA weaving they could introduce buffs specific to a dungeon only useable in that dungeon trial etc. Just throwing that out there. You would get a buff from a npc in the dungeon or trial and it would last as long as you are in there. I'm just speculating of course. But I digress I think horizontal progress is possible. You either have to lower the ceiling or raise the floor more. As far as weaving if it wasn't something they originally intended I wouldn't expect them to actually teach people how to do it. That wouldn't be logical. Leaving it in game is another matter that has created the situation as it is now a large gap. There maybe that 1%who will always be on top but there are a whole bunch in the middle who don't want to be left behind. So something has to give right? People play to have fun that is the main point fun is defined differently for different people. Truly I don't want homework to have to play a game. This is just my perspective on the issue.

Zos doesnt really teach anything in Eso. This is not limited to weaving. Zos doesnt even teach you that stam costing abilites scale with weapon damage/max stam only.

And again: Weaving hasnt created the situation with floor and ceiling as it is now. The gap is created by lack of knowledge on how to set up a character optimally. One example: 2 people parse. Player 1 runs a BiS build for PvE dps. While he misses 40% of LAs and recasts some dots late he still hits decent numbers. Player 2 runs ebon, lord warden and Salvation. He hits every light attack and executes a perfect rotation. He will still be several 1000s of dps behind Player 1.

Why does something have to give? The middle can easily achieve a level of performance to be able to clear nearly everything comfortably. They might not get the trifectas or the dps check on the last boss in Sunspire hardmode but vet trials can easily be done without being at the top. Also what do you define as the middle here? Everything between the floor and ceiling still has potential to have massive gaps between them.

And sure people play to have fun. No one forces anyone to do homework when playing the game. But when one enters certain group content it is not unreasonable for the rest of the group to expect that 1 guy to be able to perform at the required level. This mostly applies to vet content tho. But if people dont care about rising from the floor why should the ceiling be lowered to meet them? The floor doesnt care.

Actually weaving has created a huge amount of the difference. If you took the exact same player, with the same gear, he could do 100k with weaving and 80k without using the exact same rotation, that is a very large difference. One way that would actually help bring the floor and ceiling together is to reduce the damage of light attacks and increase the damage of spammable abilities to an according amount. Your rotation would be still be important but the weaving part would be made far less important.

20k la
80k other


why reduce the lower part and not the higher?
considering worst dps mainly uses LA.

Buff LA. Nerf all other damage will shrink difference much more imo.


Example adjustment:
40k la
50k other

now la spam floor is at 40k assuming they can keep self buffs up (extend duration).
ceiling is at 90k.

Zos really should add sets and skills ( in guild lines so all classes have access) that will boost la spam to the floor target)

Nooo, LA is so boring — who uses only that? I totally forgot about LA and HA after the tutorial and would use abilities only until my resources ran out, lol! No, if anything, nerf LA or just LA weaving so it only adds 10% damage. Or leave it as is. Using different abilities and combinations are part of what make combat fun!

robertthebard wrote: »

Animus-ESO wrote: »

Alurria wrote: »

Animus-ESO wrote: »

Harder pve content breeds better players. Until they make pve even remotely challenging instead of the weenie hut jr cake walk it is now, none of the player base is going to improve. Why would they learn to dodge or block mechanics if there is no risk of getting punished for ignoring it.

Increase the difficulty of over land and story missions and watch how quickly the average player will improve and adapt. Not only will the game community band together and actually help each other but the story will actually feel like it has meaning again since you can't 3 tap molog baal making the whole story line in the game feel like a joke.

Where's my rolled up newspaper j/k I don't see the relevance in punishing players by making it hard. I mean if people liked being punished for playing there would still be millions of us playing EQ. Or similar games that caused you to delevel if you died, or retrieve your body or how about having to study your magic book before you could use spells again. Yes MMOs have come a long way from the torture it use to be. I see no reason why any sane company would punish people in their game and expect to keep people playing it.

No one said anything about taking away levels or EXP, The punishment is dieing, losing durability on armor and having to start the fight over.

Repetition = Learning

Asking for help = Learning

Teaming with other players to help conquer challenges = learning

You know what isn't going to cause learning? Blasting threw every NPC like paper.

This is an MMO, ESO has done a really *** job at building any kind of community and the laughably easy PVE is to blame.

Is it? Reading through this thread, and any of it's countless counterparts, it would seem that you're only partially right, P are the problem. P that gets in the group, fusses about someone's build, rotation, DPS, or just leaves, or worse, initiates a vote kick where they can. P that rage quit a group, and then run to the forums to talk about how other players are ruining their experience, because they're not doing what they believe should be done, in a Normal dungeon.

You see, I've been around the block a few times. In that time, I've come to learn that the biggest block to group content in MMOs is players in group content. The dps that spends hours complaining about the healer's gear, only to die to a mechanic that is telegraphed so hard that my neighbors know it's about to happen, and they're not playing the game. Healers that cry about another player's HP, insisting that they don't have enough HP, only to be the first one to die in a quest, despite having their prerequisite HP, and heals. Players that insist on Vet level experience, for a Normal dungeon, because otherwise "they're wasting my time".

You don't have to peruse the forums much to find examples of most of these. This is the biggest barrier to group content in all MMOs, not just here.

I'm going to have to say the majority of people I have bumped into have been people I would not hesitate to add to my contact list after completing ESO content. Most of them type out "Hey there" when first entering a group, at the end thank everyone for the run, and if some snag occurred generally went out of their way to be polite in offering suggestions like, "things will be easier if we nuke the add as soon as it spawns, so let's try that." To read some of these posts, I'd get the impression that people run around with like 8 contacts, are only in one guild, and are incapable of composing themselves in any sort of social environment because the ESO community is just filled with jerks. I remember one time before there was a crafting bag I asked in my trade guild chat is someone could mail me 1 Muthsera's Remorse and within 5 minutes I had over 50 in my mailbox.

But more than that, I would with 1000% certainly state that had I continued to play alone and avoided seeking to play with others in a formal group, I would be a terrible player. I tend to think I'm a smart and independent person, but I would estimate that 90% of what I learned about being a better player has come from other people, and 95% of the time that advice was given in a polite, cordial way from someone who genuinely wanted me to be a better player. Even when I was invited to very competitive PvE guilds, the raid lead and officers were let's just say overly patient. This is going on 7 years ago and I still remember the names, Mr.T, Aenlir, Myth, Brick, etc.

Do I occasionally come across a jerk? Sure, but they don't define my ESO experience and because they are jerks, they don;t tend to have stable and friendly social circles so my interactions with them are very temporary. Also, because I find the most people generally adhere to the golden rule of treating others as they have done unto you, because I typically type, "Hey there," or "thanks for the tip, didn;t realize that," the opportunities for social tension to arise in the first place are lessened.

There is a vast pool of knowledge and expertise out there, much of it in people with reasonably developed social skills. That is going to serve people to improve way way way more than any tutorial ZOS implements into the game. Do people realize how much ESO changes from update to update, which would make any such tutorial potentially worse than useless, actually counterproductive?

Here, I'll demonstrate. Here was a tutorial I wrote in November 2015 to beat VMA. Actually that's not true. This was heavily edited patch after patch and no longer resembled what I originally wrote. It was so outdated that I had to create an entire new guide two years later here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/381682/joys-new-and-improved-guide-to-beating-maelstrom-arena . Look at that now, it refers to skills that don't even exist anymore, a CP system that doesn't exist anymore, DPS and suvial tactics that are no longer valid; in short, reading is is likely to hurt more than help newer player even though back in the day, I got dozens and dozens and dozens of compliments and thanks for people I didn;t know who say the guide helped them finish VMA.

Or look at my 2017 advice for midyear mayhem: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/360956/joy-s-advice-for-midyear-mayhem-event/p1. That was good advice for 2017, very little of it is relevant now.

This is why game designers don;t bother handing out instruction manuals or have anything more than rudimentary tutorials because it's a waste of time. Plus the world has changed. how many people out there seek written instructions rather than a high definition video from a quality content creator that knows their stuff? Back in 2014 when youtube videos had low resolutions and 10 minute cap, my guide served a purpose. Now, even I wouldn;t consult my own guide: I'd watch a video. There's a ton of qualified people out there that do it on their own and probably make it higher quality and more accurate than what ZOS could do even if they went down this route.

What it all boils down is that there are very accessible ways for the players at the "floor" to elevate themselves. If they have not done so, the likely reason is not because ZOS failed to hold their hand but because their goal in ESO is not about having strong builds or being a powerful player.

VLVDIMYR wrote: »

I've been around the block a few times myself, played many different MMOs and I can tell you ESO's overland & story content is the *least punishing/challenging*

Those of us who play to have a fun relaxing experience would like to keep it that way.

SilverBride wrote: »

VLVDIMYR wrote: »

I've been around the block a few times myself, played many different MMOs and I can tell you ESO's overland & story content is the *least punishing/challenging*

Those of us who play to have a fun relaxing experience would like to keep it that way.

Punishing doesn't have to mean hellish landscape
Punishing means having to do something other than stand in a single spot and hit your spammable or you might actually die

That's fine if you like that, but don't in the next breath complain about a skill-gap lmao
You literally cannot have majority easy content and no wide skill-gap
Players (in any game) don't adapt/learn that way

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

robertthebard wrote: »

Animus-ESO wrote: »

Alurria wrote: »

Animus-ESO wrote: »

Harder pve content breeds better players. Until they make pve even remotely challenging instead of the weenie hut jr cake walk it is now, none of the player base is going to improve. Why would they learn to dodge or block mechanics if there is no risk of getting punished for ignoring it.

Increase the difficulty of over land and story missions and watch how quickly the average player will improve and adapt. Not only will the game community band together and actually help each other but the story will actually feel like it has meaning again since you can't 3 tap molog baal making the whole story line in the game feel like a joke.

Where's my rolled up newspaper j/k I don't see the relevance in punishing players by making it hard. I mean if people liked being punished for playing there would still be millions of us playing EQ. Or similar games that caused you to delevel if you died, or retrieve your body or how about having to study your magic book before you could use spells again. Yes MMOs have come a long way from the torture it use to be. I see no reason why any sane company would punish people in their game and expect to keep people playing it.

No one said anything about taking away levels or EXP, The punishment is dieing, losing durability on armor and having to start the fight over.

Repetition = Learning

Asking for help = Learning

Teaming with other players to help conquer challenges = learning

You know what isn't going to cause learning? Blasting threw every NPC like paper.

This is an MMO, ESO has done a really *** job at building any kind of community and the laughably easy PVE is to blame.

Is it? Reading through this thread, and any of it's countless counterparts, it would seem that you're only partially right, P are the problem. P that gets in the group, fusses about someone's build, rotation, DPS, or just leaves, or worse, initiates a vote kick where they can. P that rage quit a group, and then run to the forums to talk about how other players are ruining their experience, because they're not doing what they believe should be done, in a Normal dungeon.

You see, I've been around the block a few times. In that time, I've come to learn that the biggest block to group content in MMOs is players in group content. The dps that spends hours complaining about the healer's gear, only to die to a mechanic that is telegraphed so hard that my neighbors know it's about to happen, and they're not playing the game. Healers that cry about another player's HP, insisting that they don't have enough HP, only to be the first one to die in a quest, despite having their prerequisite HP, and heals. Players that insist on Vet level experience, for a Normal dungeon, because otherwise "they're wasting my time".

You don't have to peruse the forums much to find examples of most of these. This is the biggest barrier to group content in all MMOs, not just here.

I'm going to have to say the majority of people I have bumped into have been people I would not hesitate to add to my contact list after completing ESO content. Most of them type out "Hey there" when first entering a group, at the end thank everyone for the run, and if some snag occurred generally went out of their way to be polite in offering suggestions like, "things will be easier if we nuke the add as soon as it spawns, so let's try that." To read some of these posts, I'd get the impression that people run around with like 8 contacts, are only in one guild, and are incapable of composing themselves in any sort of social environment because the ESO community is just filled with jerks. I remember one time before there was a crafting bag I asked in my trade guild chat is someone could mail me 1 Muthsera's Remorse and within 5 minutes I had over 50 in my mailbox.

But more than that, I would with 1000% certainly state that had I continued to play alone and avoided seeking to play with others in a formal group, I would be a terrible player. I tend to think I'm a smart and independent person, but I would estimate that 90% of what I learned about being a better player has come from other people, and 95% of the time that advice was given in a polite, cordial way from someone who genuinely wanted me to be a better player. Even when I was invited to very competitive PvE guilds, the raid lead and officers were let's just say overly patient. This is going on 7 years ago and I still remember the names, Mr.T, Aenlir, Myth, Brick, etc.

Do I occasionally come across a jerk? Sure, but they don't define my ESO experience and because they are jerks, they don;t tend to have stable and friendly social circles so my interactions with them are very temporary. Also, because I find the most people generally adhere to the golden rule of treating others as they have done unto you, because I typically type, "Hey there," or "thanks for the tip, didn;t realize that," the opportunities for social tension to arise in the first place are lessened.

There is a vast pool of knowledge and expertise out there, much of it in people with reasonably developed social skills. That is going to serve people to improve way way way more than any tutorial ZOS implements into the game. Do people realize how much ESO changes from update to update, which would make any such tutorial potentially worse than useless, actually counterproductive?

Here, I'll demonstrate. Here was a tutorial I wrote in November 2015 to beat VMA. Actually that's not true. This was heavily edited patch after patch and no longer resembled what I originally wrote. It was so outdated that I had to create an entire new guide two years later here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/381682/joys-new-and-improved-guide-to-beating-maelstrom-arena . Look at that now, it refers to skills that don't even exist anymore, a CP system that doesn't exist anymore, DPS and suvial tactics that are no longer valid; in short, reading is is likely to hurt more than help newer player even though back in the day, I got dozens and dozens and dozens of compliments and thanks for people I didn;t know who say the guide helped them finish VMA.

Or look at my 2017 advice for midyear mayhem: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/360956/joy-s-advice-for-midyear-mayhem-event/p1. That was good advice for 2017, very little of it is relevant now.

This is why game designers don;t bother handing out instruction manuals or have anything more than rudimentary tutorials because it's a waste of time. Plus the world has changed. how many people out there seek written instructions rather than a high definition video from a quality content creator that knows their stuff? Back in 2014 when youtube videos had low resolutions and 10 minute cap, my guide served a purpose. Now, even I wouldn;t consult my own guide: I'd watch a video. There's a ton of qualified people out there that do it on their own and probably make it higher quality and more accurate than what ZOS could do even if they went down this route.

What it all boils down is that there are very accessible ways for the players at the "floor" to elevate themselves. If they have not done so, the likely reason is not because ZOS failed to hold their hand but because their goal in ESO is not about having strong builds or being a powerful player.

Never thought of in-game tutorials from that perspective, but you are 100% spot on. Frankly, it makes sense for ZOS to outsource tutorials from their perspective, because there are plenty of people, yourself included, that are excellent at doing so and seem more than happy to do it.

The other argument, almost comes down to a "spoilers" argument. I cleared VMA many times before reading your first guide, but once i did, I realized there were a lot of things that were missing. I like figuring things out for myself, but then reading the proverbial cliff notes to see what I missed. If there was an ingame tutorial that was overly robust, it might actually lessen the experience.

All that said, I do think there are basic mechanics that really havent changed since launch, and ZOS could probably do a bit better job of explaining those in game, but lets be honest. It's an MMO. Every player by definition has internet access. There is so much good info out there. I would rather ZOS spend time on their game, not teaching people how to play their game.

I dont think ZOS should teach people how to play. I also dont think that some sort of way of giving feedback to the players should be out of the question as well.

I remember after I first started taking group content seriously I made a forum post. You were one of the people that answered and gave advice. Up until that point, there was no way to know where I stood in regards to my potential or the content. Guilds vary drastically in the content that they do in a lot of cases and while I know now what to take seriously and what not, it wasnt all very clear then. That was who I asked first.

I also read Joy's vMA guide. I would agree that it was far better than any tutorial ZOS could have given, unless you consider vMA a combat tutorial in and of itself. I wouldn't want to deprive the community of that, but I dont think a general direction would be bad either.

From the looks of it, they seem to have added, or upgraded rather, the tutorial in the next chapter.

So I am late to this thread but let me give my two cents on the topic only skimming some of the comments.

Firstly, sure light attacks, the right builds, rotations and group buffs are something that produces a gap. The problem is that if you change these you don't lower the skill gap between groups, you just shift the ceiling and the floor evenly. So you touch these values everyone gets hit.

Now into the meat of it, I do not think the devs know what makes the difference between great groups and good groups. Great groups to me are the score pushers, having the trifectas for everything and are clearly the best of the best; the good groups being about to complete the hard mode content and maybe are working hard to get those trifectas. This here is where you can see what makes the great groups great. To me this is entirely done from optimization of sets and buff/debuff uptimes. The obvious answer is some really good buffs are just hard to keep 100% uptime. When you have a DK tank keeping stagger at max stacks while running elemental catalyst, this is something that takes a lot of skill and lower end groups cannot accomplish. So what happens, you start shifting responsibilities to other members of the group. Things like elemental catalyst go on a magicka necro which will reduce dps. Things like stagger falling off, war horn not at 100% uptime, zens not always being at 5 stacks, mk not being proced on cooldown, and major vulnerability not being the greatest among other buffs. This is where the biggest gap is in the dps. If you can have near perfect uptime on all the best buffs the group dps will go through the rough. As others pointed out this is very skill related.

So what do the devs do? Well this is a hard question to answer. You could look at making the buffs easier to achieve optimal uptime, that would maybe make the gap a bit smaller. Another option would be to nerf these specific sets that only the top end groups use, but that will probably just push them to use some other sets that give a better advantage. I know too since the OP was on PS4 combat metrics would further push console to do better things but that is a conversation that can be discussed on many other posts.

Sanctum74 wrote: »

Removing animation canceling won’t change much and would probably just lower the floor even more since they would be stuck in an animation unable to react.

Nobody says "make unskippable animation". "Animation canceling" even sounds as design flaw and exploit(I guess, that's why players hid it under term "weaving"), which in other games would rather got fixed. It just needs to be done that if you interrupt you action midway(block, dodge, bash in the middle of skill animation), it does no effect. If you don't finish light attack animation, you don't deal damage out of nowhere. That's how it should be.

I usually read guides for games to not miss any non-obvious mechanics. But when I've read about animation canceling being the core gameplay feature, I immediately cringed and started to level restoration staff skill line. So I wouldn't need to cope with this atrocious "feature".

Tulshe wrote: »

Nobody says "make unskippable animation". "Animation canceling" even sounds as design flaw and exploit(I guess, that's why players hid it under term "weaving"), which in other games would rather got fixed. It just needs to be done that if you interrupt you action midway(block, dodge, bash in the middle of skill animation), it does no effect. If you don't finish light attack animation, you don't deal damage out of nowhere. That's how it should be.

I usually read guides for games to not miss any non-obvious mechanics. But when I've read about animation canceling being the core gameplay feature, I immediately cringed and started to level restoration staff skill line. So I wouldn't need to cope with this atrocious "feature".

Many other games use animation cancelling in one form or another. For example League of Legends, FF14, Nioh 2, Dark Souls etc. so animation cancelling being possible is hardly a design flaw or exploit.

Tulshe wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Light Attack Weaving isn't an exploit.

Oh, I know, people like to complain that the Devs didn't originally intend for it to be a major part of the combat system from the beginning, but by those lights we've got a ton of "exploits" running around that the Devs didn't intend. Like Champion Points.

So maybe it's time to comes to terms with the reason that Light Attack Weaving gives so much extra DPS is that the Devs fully intended to buff Light attack damage with Summerset, the patch after ZOS introduced the Level Up Advisor with its tip about light attack weaving. Or that Relequen set, which relies on light attack weaving to build stacks. This reliance on Light Attack Weaving was intended, or at least, easy for the Devs to predict based on their own design decisions.

Let's not go calling "exploit!" where there is none.

Just because devs decided to wrap their game around a glitch doesn't mean they intended it in the first place.
Example from other games: Team Fortress 2 has spy class who can disguise as a member of opposite team. The idea came from its predecessor Team Fortress Classic, where some players glitched and wore the colors of their enemies, confusing them. Was it intended? No. Was it incorporated well? Yeah, kinda... In another game with some limitations.
Morale: not all bugs are good.
Why ZOS left animation canceling? Probably, because it's deep in code and you can't just ask a walking by janitor to mash some buttons and fix it. Instead they pretended that it's a valid mechanics and drew some stats on sets to evaluate this glitch.

The problem with your comparison is that ZOS has said many times over the years that it was always an intended feature of the game.