Server Performance. ESO has struggled with performance since it's first beta, and only recently with the upgrades that were made to servers the performance and stability has been actually very decent. But I struggle to believe the reasoning for the changes to both LAs and more importantly skills' duration. Improving accessibility is always an important aspect in any game simply because, within reason of the games' core mechanics, everyone deserves to have fun playing the game. But ESO is both famously and notoriously extremely accessible as it is. A play-how-you-want mantra, classes with the ability to do any role, all alongside overland content where the average enemy takes 1-2 abilities before it dies makes ESO the most accessible and sometimes easiest MMO on the market.

So it is very disheartening to read changes with the reasoning that accessibility and "bridging the gap" is the focus when it is almost comically obvious that performance is the key factor for doubling the duration and halving the tick frequency of skills. Less numbers going out, means less immediate computing power.

It is also very disheartening to see the patch notes vilifying these "endgame players" as another forum post has made clear. Claiming the "manipulation" of a core mechanic, LA weaving. Or talking about the "obscene" damage production of certain players and groups. Bringing a connotation that it is the fault of these players that the gap is so large, when the gap is attributed to the time they have put into the game, their skill level, and min-maxing compositions to best fit their intention whether it is simple trifecta progression or score and world record pushing. Skill gaps in cases like this are completely natural. And in a game as accessible and power-to-the-player driven as ESO, lowering the reward and minimizing the amount of more complex mechanics in the game is a poor way to treat players who utilize those things, in a game where those aspects are already few and far between. All, secretly, for the sake of performance.