pklemming wrote: »

Why on earth did, for example, the Oakensoul ring get nerfed heavily when you 'doubled down' on what the ring did only several weeks ago. Were your tests wrong then, or are they wrong now? The game did not change that much. This was a key item to help those people struggling, or with disabilities, enter content they may never have seen. Great, they had few weeks (even if they managed to farm it - go go murkmire box). Why would they even consider getting it now, knowing it will change this much.

Teach people how to weave. Add a tutorial You were the ones that adopted the bug back in 2014 as a 'feature' and 8 years on it is now not wanted?

It is better not to give people something, than give them something and take it away. it leaves an extremely bitter taste in the mouth we don't forget.

I agree with these two points, and I'm really disappointed that the wording as well as the general attitude of the combat preview article seems really divisive, and is not helping the state of animosity in the playerbase. Of course they knew that Oakensoul was OP; there was so much feedback on the PTS about it, and the only reason they tuned some of it down pre-release was to appease a few of the concerns. Nothing changed since then, the only difference is that they sold copies of the chapter, and now the very real concerns that people had are being finally addressed. It's not the PvPers that are the 'bad guy' asking for the nerfs--ZOS knew about the ring all along, but they are using mythics as marketing, since they are major selling points for chapters. So when people lash out at the PvPers being to blame for the nerf, remember that ZOS had all the feedback at their disposal, not to mention that it's has been their long-standing decision not to separate the two modes.

As for weaving: it always existed in the game (imo, it's what makes combat interesting compared to other MMOS, but I'm digressing), in fact ZOS has a loading screen tip that talks about it, and the reason why it has it only behind a screen is a) because the game is bad at teaching about how combat works, and b) for accountability. Because if someone says 'why didn't anyone tell me that weaving can increase my damage?', ZOS can reply 'there's a tip in the game'. But ZOS instead heavily promotes their 'play-as-you-like' philosophy' because it's what attracts players since ESO is mainly casual, and then when weaving comes into question they are trying to paint it off as a thing born out of end-gamers (like in that combat preview article), hence a) completely absolving themselves from the fact that it was always in the game, b) forgetting that certain content (like boss encounters with DPS checks, and a lot of the newer trials) can only be achieved though high damage, c) villainizing end-gamers, and creating a 'normal players versus elitists' environment, as it's obvious from the many threads in the forums since the article.

So when you write your thoughts about the changes, keep in mind not to blame other players, and not direct upir complains at them, but at ZOS, so that hopefully the devs do better, and create a combat system (as well as content) that everyone can be more or less OK with, and not create a divide in the community.

The devs have a long, long history of doing what ever they want or are told to from the corporates above.

It is historically clear that end game players and pvp are not a major concern in the corporate model, 7 years to finally acknowledge and propose yet another fix to performance? How many times have we heard that before?

It is historically clear that there has been periodically almost purge like cleansing/ridding the game of end game players. Patches where great numbers of experienced skilled players leave the game have been scheduled/appeared almost like clockwork.

The vast majority of eso players are neither skilled or wish to be. The corporate model provides card games, antiquities etc etc, housing and crowns are where the real end game is for zos.

I realised long ago that zos has no intention of providing balance or performance, certainly not both. If you look at their communication (lack of) and delivery of stated fixes in the past (almost zero) they provide all the evidence needed to support this claim.

All this has happened before and will happen again.........

pklemming wrote: »

Top end are most certainly affected. Seeing large drops in numbers which will directly translate in to times and scores. I am not in group 1, but fall in to 2 and 3. This will significantly impact me

I do agree, this helps no one, though. Low end dps will be lower. They only reason the gap closes is because higher end dps lose more, but there is no winner

What I mean is that it normalizes within the top end. Yes, scores will be lower and it will be harder to get Godslayer etc. but within that competitive range all players are still competing on relatively stable footing. You might not ever be able to beat an older score but you can still compete weekly and monthly because everyone is getting nerfed.

Players at the lower end of the top tier... those who are clearing vet trials but not score pushing are on much shakier ground, imo because their parses can potentially go from making the cut to being completely left out. If someone at 90-100k drops to 75k they're still putting out very good dps in a trial but someone who is putting out 75k getting dropped 55-60k is facing getting left out and those at 45-60 right now (pre-patch) are looking at an even steeper climb just to get in the door.

So yes, it absolutely hurts everyone. It's just that it's an existential threat to a lot of players that fall outside the very top end. And these are the very players climbing the ranks and hopefully finding their way into a more permanent spot in the endgame community. When trials are messier and the question of clearing is in doubt is where these changes hurt most. A lot of groups I've run with this won't phase at all but a lot of others that I've run with will be lucky if they can absorb such a huge hit. We need those groups to survive. I've seen enough guilds come and go to know that.

From my time on the ESO subreddit and other forums for Bethesda fans, I'm starting to think the main paying audience for this game has shifted years ago from MMO players to TES players.

On the forums, absolutely.

Not one of my friends come here anymore.

Every one of them, most very reasonable people, have had……challenges here, and I’ll leave it at that

And think I’m mad for bothering with it

Again.... the developers of any given game don't make the game for the players - they make the game THEY want to see. So nothing any player says about whatever is going to change their minds about the ultimate nerfs or buffs.

Unless of course someone within the developer circle has an agenda.

[quote="pklemming;c-7650951"
Actually not even sure what you are talking about. We already 'team up' to kill things. That is what trials, dungeons and 4 man arenas are for.[/quote]

Many fokls don't group up. In fact there seems to be a sizable contingent who refuse to in any way. I don't get it myself but if that's their play method of choice, who is it bothering?

I see a lot of folks terrified of death in game. People this is Valhalla. We just get up and jump back in. The terrified tanks in cyro are just hilarious. Why so afraid bruh?

My issue is there really seems yto be no overarching plan, no matter how many times they say their is. Nothing they have done so far has been discernable as movement towards some goal. They just rock back and forth between the same nerfs and buff, alternating each quarter. The devs complain about creep but ignore literally all feedback given. I actuall laughed when they said on stream today they go over everything. I don'y know which is worse them ignoring it or saying these these changes come from looking at the feedback because I would love to see the AU info they are getting because it is like the polar opposite of the feedback I've seen.

The populace says yo tech people about mechanics instead of whinging about it and nerfing stuff, and we get that no answer bs like they had in the stream from wheeler. It's plain by the lack of consistency and measurable progress there's not a direction and they really need to pick one and go with it.

My question is, who does Zos even listen to when they put these on PTS? Seems most of the people who use PTS give their feedback to deaf ears and Zos just takes feedback from a small “committee” of people. People who are completely out of touch to what it’s like being an average player.
Also, it was pretty deceiving to dangle a ring that promised to help the less coordinated/disabled/noobs to increase sales and then nerf it (twice) within a month. It’s actually pretty disappointing. It’s almost like a scam to get sales. I mean, it was a nightmare for the first 2 weeks getting the leads. So much hate on the game chat, people fighting, calling each other names. Zos was aware this was happening but waited 2 weeks to fix it. Then 4 weeks later, nerf it basically wasting everyone’s time and energy.
Just as frustrated as the next person here. As a player you want your voice to be heard but apparently it’s not. You just have to hope this small committee gIves feedback that helps the average player and not just the top 2%

This reminds me a lot of Dragonhold PTS. A lot of DoT nerfs (longer durations with weak ticks), massive DPS losses for all classes, and a lot of player outrage. Here are the patch notes for anyone interested in the similarities:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/493609/pts-patch-notes-v5-2-0

IIRC they did end up walking back a few of the worst changes of that patch before it hit live. It wasn't enough though, both of my trial groups at the time disbanded as about half the players quit. Hopefully that won't happen this time.

I've said it before, I'll say it again... ZOS does not appreciate long-term players, period. They only appreciate players who bring $$ to the game and need to buy all the store items that long-term players typically already have. I'm sure they see long-term players as leeches, even with subscriptions, because we don't contribute as much to the cash shop... and many of us have already learned from our experiences with loot crates so we don't buy them anymore. New players, not so much.

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Paralyse wrote: »

Until and unless this supposed ongoing mass exodus of players is supported by hard data, there's no sense in posting about it.

From Steam

June 2021 21,282.8
June 2022 16,266.6

And that's actually a really significant time period because it's during expansion releases. Now Steam is a minority of the playerbase but I doubt they are behaving much different than other platforms, especially PC. I'm sure some of it is pandemic loss too, but still. High Isle Launch was the test to see who came back and a lot of people simply didn't.

They have a significant content usability issue, where average players are locked out of challenging content by ability. And Overland is locked out to many high end players due to being overly easy.

They need to fix it and stop worrying about appeasing the people who want to keep a design where large swaths of the playerbase are tired of being crammed into very specific activities and find themselves unable to enjoy large parts of the game.

So Steam is experiencing 24% fewer players year over year, but as you note, Steam is a minority of ESO players, and we have no idea why those players left. Dark Souls is a thing, New World was briefly a thing, there was a content drought prior to High Isle, an ongoing pandemic, etc. Apart from Tales of Tribute High Isle did not really bring much excitement that would have got some of those players who had previously left to come back. Doubtless some of those who left did so due to dissatisfaction with the endgame content, class balance, pvp, or all sorts of other reasons.

ESO has 20m+ active accounts per ZOS
We do not know how many active players there are on a monthly basis (apart from your Steam number)
I have seen estimates ranging from 3-4 million (high end) to 500k (low end) but that's just other people's guesses.

I wish ZOS would publish the numbers but they will not do so. Why? Because our natural tendency is to take whatever we don't like about the current state of the game and then go "well, all these other players are leaving, it must be because they agree with me" when in reality there is not nearly enough data to link correlation and causation.

The concept that every player should be able to participate in all of the most challenging content is rubbish.
There should always be something in this game that you aren't good enough to do yet -- if not, what motivation do you have to improve and learn? There are things that I can't do -- I will never be a score pusher/world record, I can't do some of the hardmodes and certainly not some of the trifectas yet, but I still try to practice and get to a point where someday I might be able to do some of those things. It gives me a reason to keep playing, to keep signing up for DB/TTT/GS progs, to work on farming and improving sets, to work on getting mythics, etc.

If I could log on and complete all of the hardest content in game without an investment of effort and time, I would get bored pretty quickly.

How many ppl here checked PTS? Like i dropped from 99k to 87k DPS. 12k Not a big deal for me. It will go up with some changes. But thats on the class that didnt get nerfed hard and with BUFFED dummy. In reality i dropped by around 18-19k. I wont see it on dummy but i will see it while playing the game. But i will survive. If i will still play thats it. Using the same skill 20x in a row is rather boring u see.

Anyway, im not a big deal but... ppl who parse 30k on trial dummy, very low damage right? On PTS they dropped under 20k. On a buffed dummy. Players who were doing 80k dropped to 60k. Somebody was doing 50k? Cute, now u are doing 40k.

For Top end game will become more boring because of changes to DoTs. For Mid and lower game will become harder. For changes that are supposed to help weaker players is kinda funny it hits those players the most. Yes its just week 1 but ZOS spend "80 hours parsing" to test those changes. And They didnt see it bad for weaker players to get hit this much.

Overall dps dropped from 10% to in some cases even 50% (on a BUFFED dummy).
HA builds got blowed up too.
DoTs become veeeery weak in many cases.

Outrage is because this patch is bad, not because top end players lose some damage. Top end always gets nerfed to force ppl to get new OP gear.
Also its hard to talk how They help weaker players when they nerfed Oakensoul.

pklemming wrote: »

DagenHawk wrote: »

pklemming wrote: »

Experienced players are going, they won't come back. What exactly are you looking for in terms of a player base?

.

Hmmmm Maybe a player base that actually supports the business model and doesn't complain about everything constantly?

Just a thought...

We tried that, many times. Now we are here and I am just tired of the constant changes.

If this is so seriously considered and tested, for balance, before hitting Live, why keep changing things?

It is feeling very much like Live is the Test server and they keep throwing things at it and seeing what sticks.

None of it feels like considered changes. If they are, then I back to being lost for words.

So much this, throw stuff on the wall, don't bother to see that sticks but repeat.

Add an second problem, people has to make new builds all the time. How many do and how many has something who works for them? No Deltia's builds are not very good for puging vet pledges.
How many changed their builds during High Isle except using Okensoul and hopefully replaced the missing ring with an shoulder

Paralyse wrote: »

W0lf_z13 wrote: »

as someone who has been in this game since 2015 .... and spent MONTHS at the trial dummy 4-5 hours every day working up from 75k dps up to 130k dps .... and now from testing it on the pts (109k) I fear that this will cause quite a bit of trouble for people struggling to get to even 50k dps .... SO many nerfs all at once gutted dps as a whole

PTS has been live for, what, 1 day?

Every vet trial in this game (including vDSR) can be completed with no one in the group parsing over 100k
Especially vDSR where mechanics are far more important than raw output

IMO the most extreme damage checks in the game (excluding record/score push strats) are HM Xalvakka, HM Nahvi portals and 3 pad vMOL HM burn

Literally everything else -- including Dawnbringer, Godslayer, Tick-Tock Tormentor, Gryphon Heart, Dro-m"Athra Destroyer, and Immortal Redeemer -- can be and has been completed without needing 130K parses, or 100k parses.

If we're being honest, the reason lower DPS bothers us so much is because it means we have to pay more attention to mechanics and can't just parse past encounters such as portal/mini skips or hard burns like score pushers do (e.g. Vrol HM burn before boat)

The testing that I want to personally see is not how much DPS top end players lose.
It's how much damage players who don't usually even parse will gain, and how much damage the middle of the pack (sub 50k) will gain.

never said they had to be.... all I was doing was stating my experience from the amount of time I've been able to be on the pts over the last day. And express my worry about people that are on the lower end of the dps numbers