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U35's greatest failure is lowering the floor, despite reducing the gap to the ceiling
Cuddlypuff
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ESO is fundamentally a MMO, which is supposed to deliver meaningful player progression towards a power fantasy experience. This is true in both PVE and PVP. It is not a competitive game where bad players feel unfairly punished by better players due to knowledge/game balance/mechanics etc. In fact the co-operation of good and bad players is probably the only thing keeping endgame ticking along.
For PVE, outside of the tiny competitive scorepushing community, the only reason veterans continue to do trials after earning trifectas is to help newer players. This symbiosis requires the players "carrying" the run to eke out significantly above average DPS to make up for the lower DPS of those being carried. No low DPS player is going to complain about better players doing better DPS as the outcome benefits everyone. They will be happy to clear the content, and be happy that they made a meaningful albeit smaller contribution. However, by lowering the floor DPS and ceiling DPS alike, there's less buffer for carrying bad players and they will most likely not make the cut, or have much higher expectations placed upon them. This leads to a more stressful (and potentially even toxic) experience for everybody involved in the raid.
For PVP, there is a natural progression for better players to leave the safety of zergs or ball groups and play solo/duo/small scale. As a result, everybody in open world PVP can live out their power fantasy, whether its overwhelming opponents with strength in numbers or challenging themselves to heavily outnumbered fights. Take for example a 1 shot ganker playstyle - a skilled one will terrorize and pick off members of a large group all by themselves whilst managing mindgames, movement, vamp toggle and shade etc. A bad one will sit in their 30 man zerg and unload their combo on solos. Both will still feel that they are making an impact and will enjoy the gameplay. Lowering the floor will make the bad players retreat into their triple defensive set shells with their confidence shattered to the point they won't even play unless faction stacked 40+ players deep, or just quit PVP altogether. The solo players that were previously challenging themselves with 1vX are also bored and unable to deal with tanky zergs and low activity, instead forming small scale groups to absolutely dumpster the aforementioned bad player faction stacks. Nobody has fun and the map dies.
For PVE, outside of the tiny competitive scorepushing community, the only reason veterans continue to do trials after earning trifectas is to help newer players. This symbiosis requires the players "carrying" the run to eke out significantly above average DPS to make up for the lower DPS of those being carried. No low DPS player is going to complain about better players doing better DPS as the outcome benefits everyone. They will be happy to clear the content, and be happy that they made a meaningful albeit smaller contribution. However, by lowering the floor DPS and ceiling DPS alike, there's less buffer for carrying bad players and they will most likely not make the cut, or have much higher expectations placed upon them. This leads to a more stressful (and potentially even toxic) experience for everybody involved in the raid.
For PVP, there is a natural progression for better players to leave the safety of zergs or ball groups and play solo/duo/small scale. As a result, everybody in open world PVP can live out their power fantasy, whether its overwhelming opponents with strength in numbers or challenging themselves to heavily outnumbered fights. Take for example a 1 shot ganker playstyle - a skilled one will terrorize and pick off members of a large group all by themselves whilst managing mindgames, movement, vamp toggle and shade etc. A bad one will sit in their 30 man zerg and unload their combo on solos. Both will still feel that they are making an impact and will enjoy the gameplay. Lowering the floor will make the bad players retreat into their triple defensive set shells with their confidence shattered to the point they won't even play unless faction stacked 40+ players deep, or just quit PVP altogether. The solo players that were previously challenging themselves with 1vX are also bored and unable to deal with tanky zergs and low activity, instead forming small scale groups to absolutely dumpster the aforementioned bad player faction stacks. Nobody has fun and the map dies.
8
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Kusto✭✭✭✭✭Next patch, dps will be more important than ever. These nerfs will create more toxicity and gatekeeping. No one can afford to carry others anymore. You think it's bad now, low dps being kicked from dungeons, tanks bailing etc, wait until next patch. Did you just break 60k and got into trials? yay! , hold on...., um back to 50k. Sorry mate, you're out.21 -
LadyAzura✭✭✭100% this. I have heard that the ESO community is one of the more helpful/non toxic communities when it comes to MMOs. There's lots of friendly end gamers who want to help newer players get into vet content and help them learn how to be better.
There will always be people pulling higher DPS in groups and the only people who complain that people are better than them are the "toxic casuals" who seem to gatekeep and try to scare off new players from trying vet content and interacting with end game players. They like to paint a picture of insane toxicity and abuse, when that is hardly the case currently. You will always have bad apples but the end game community is overall very friendly, welcoming, and willing to share information and how to improve.
However, I believe with these changes we will start to see a change in the community. Groups will be less willing to "carry" lower tier players through content, and vet dungeon pugs will be hell. ZOS is creating more of a rift between the casual and veteran players now, when their goal was to close that gap. Good job, you've gone and killed the good community you built.@LadyAzura | PCNA | youtube.com/@Azuraaaaaaaaa9 -
wolfie1.0.✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭Next patch, dps will be more important than ever. These nerfs will create more toxicity and gatekeeping. No one can afford to carry others anymore. You think it's bad now, low dps being kicked from dungeons, tanks bailing etc, wait until next patch. Did you just break 60k and got into trials? yay! , hold on...., um back to 50k. Sorry mate, you're out.
Based on my testing as one of those people. You will be lucky to hit 50k. It takes that much more effort.6 -
wolfie1.0.✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭100% this. I have heard that the ESO community is one of the more helpful/non toxic communities when it comes to MMOs. There's lots of friendly end gamers who want to help newer players get into vet content and help them learn how to be better.
There will always be people pulling higher DPS in groups and the only people who complain that people are better than them are the "toxic casuals" who seem to gatekeep and try to scare off new players from trying vet content and interacting with end game players. They like to paint a picture of insane toxicity and abuse, when that is hardly the case currently. You will always have bad apples but the end game community is overall very friendly, welcoming, and willing to share information and how to improve.
However, I believe with these changes we will start to see a change in the community. Groups will be less willing to "carry" lower tier players through content, and vet dungeon pugs will be hell. ZOS is creating more of a rift between the casual and veteran players now, when their goal was to close that gap. Good job, you've gone and killed the good community you built.
The problem is going to be this. You can TELL someone what they are doing wrong and HOW to fix it. But you can't fix it for them.1 -
DairyCat✭✭✭I don't really get how "closing the gap" is important in a PvE context. How does a high end player doing 120K DPS in vet trials impact the game experience of a player still working on perfecting their rotation in normal dungeons?7
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BretonMage✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭I had been practising my rotation and weaving to get my DPS up to an acceptable level for grouping up in harder content. I guess I just won't bother now because I can't see that happening anymore.
I know that sounds defeatist, but with half my skills (pets and wall of elements at least) nerfed by at least 30%, I'm in utter despair right now.10 -
kargen27✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭I don't really get how "closing the gap" is important in a PvE context. How does a high end player doing 120K DPS in vet trials impact the game experience of a player still working on perfecting their rotation in normal dungeons?
It doesn't. It allows the good groups to skip mechanics and just blast their way through.
If you can do vet content now you will for the vast majority of players be able to do vet content after the changes. If the group knows the mechanics 20-30k DPS is more than sufficient to finish vet content. Vet hard mode there might be a need for more.and then the parrot said, "must be the water mines green too."3 -
PeacefulAnarchy✭✭✭✭✭
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Correctly closing the gap would be important because it makes the progression smoother from newbie to mid to high. It makes content easier to design, and you can more easily design variable approaches to content. If the dps gap was 10-40k instead of 5-125k, then you could target overland at 10, normal at 10-20, vet at 20-30, HM at 30-35 and special achievements at 35+. A group on the low end of a band could use creative approaches to content to make up for their lower dps. With the current gap, a group of 10k dps players can't approach 50k dps content no matter how creative they are, because the mechs are too harsh, much less 80k+ content with quasi dps checks. On the flip side overland content is a joke for most players, and even most normal dungeons are easy for middling players. A narrower gap would make content below someone's power level easier, but still engaging. It's better for players and easier for designers to work within a band that is wide enough to give progression but still narrow enough for the low end to be able to see and understand the high end.I don't really get how "closing the gap" is important in a PvE context. How does a high end player doing 120K DPS in vet trials impact the game experience of a player still working on perfecting their rotation in normal dungeons?
This isn't what ZOS is doing at all, but in theory, that's the conceptual idea behind closing the gap. Also people like to use the term "skill gap" but most of the problem is a power gap. Some of that power gap from skill, but a lot of it comes from knowledge.
Edited by PeacefulAnarchy on July 12, 2022 7:00AM7 -
merpins✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭I don't really get how "closing the gap" is important in a PvE context. How does a high end player doing 120K DPS in vet trials impact the game experience of a player still working on perfecting their rotation in normal dungeons?
PVE hurts no one regardless of your experience in it. You could be a lowbie level 40 that is just learning the game, running Selene's Web for the first time, or an end game vet player that is CP 2200 that is running vet cloudrest for the tenth time. Your DPS hurts no one, though there is a limit. Devs want the ceiling to be somewhere. They also want the floor to be somewhere. The devs should let the players go at their pace, but they should also teach the mechanics of the game better (LA weaving for example has no tutorial). Toxicity hurts PVE, but that's not usually a problem. Lowering the floor, as they are doing this patch (despite claiming they're raising it, which they are not) will increase toxicity in the game.1 -
Pepegrillos✭✭✭✭✭I don't really get how "closing the gap" is important in a PvE context. How does a high end player doing 120K DPS in vet trials impact the game experience of a player still working on perfecting their rotation in normal dungeons?
Some of the reasons have to do with design resources. How can designers justify employing disproportionate resources to develop content that at most (and I'm probably exaggerating) one or two thousand players will experience? It's not all about player experience, they are also trying to create a wider target for the pve content they develop.1 -
Troodon80✭✭✭✭✭
✭Something I said before the patch and I was completely wrong about: the damage aspect and duration of DoTs does not mean more time to do spammables meaning higher damage. Overall damage will go down by anywhere between 20% to 50% depending on your current level of skill. Groups who were only just able to clear Xalvakka even on regular veteran will disband overnight. Those groups who were aiming for Planesbreaker, having somewhat decent vitality but cutting the time extremely close will disband overnight. Big changes like this need to be done alongside balance changes to the content. You cannot just invalidate months of people's time and expect them to be happy.
While I do know that this is only the first week and things very likely will change, first impressions are not good.
The Good
The good news is that these changes put players on a much more level playing field. I would argue that the playing field wasn't that lopsided to begin with. Now they just need to find a way to make players care or want to do better. I cannot imagine that being as easy as tweaking a few numbers here or there. These changes are actually needed and for once in the history of the game will actually curtail DPS powercreep. This will be the first patch since One Tamriel where DPS has actually significantly gone down.
The Bad
The bad news is that, without simultaneous balance to the content, the community will hemorrhaege players from almost all parts of the game. End game was already a very small and selective scene; it's about to become a lot smaller. Low and mid tier will be hit the most, but even solo questers will wonder why their damage has gone down. ZOS said they wanted to give some love to heavy attack builds in the same patch where they made heavy attack builds useless. There isn't a single person in the game who will be untouched by these changes. Do people on the combat team, whoever is responsible for the numbers, and people on the encounters team actually communicate? I've seen stuff like this in companies before that love to compartmentalise stuff and then you have people who should know stuff not knowing it.
In addition to the DPS changes, changes to overall HPS have been needed for a long time in order to make healers feel genuinely needed. Recent content has seemingly tried to make healers feel needed by including health scaling DoTs. Making them feel more like mere babysitters than effective members of the group. Even outside of the health scaling aspect, many of the DoTs tick every 0.2, 0.3, and 0.5s, including in the most recent content, including the dungeons currently on the PTS. Making all HoTs tick every 2 seconds means healing through most of them is a struggle. This will broaden the skill gap for support players.
The Ugly
The fundamental changes should have been done years ago and balance should have been much higher on the list of priorities, not 8 years into the life of the game. The balance and scope is far reaching. Despite thinking that these changes would initially and ultimately be good, I was wrong on the former and potentially the latter (yet to be seen) and that the worst part is: we were asked for blind trust by Rich Lambert. History has shown time and again that any trust given will be betrayed. These changes should have been accompanied by a complete overhaul to the current content, e.g. Rockgrove, Dreadsail Reef. Much of the discrepancy comes between Craglorn, Maw of Lorkhaj, and Halls of Fabrication versus the newer content, Dreadsail, Rockgrove, and various DLC dungeons. The goal here was to help them get a handle on balancing content — I understand that — but one cannot happen without the other and neither can happen in a vacuum. Your teams should have been working alongside each other to ensure this sort of farce didn't happen. You cannot just make far-reaching large scale changes like this one week and then reactively tweak a few health bars and tell the community they should have had faith.
You wonder why people won't just blindly trust you.
(Edited for typos)
Edited by Troodon80 on July 12, 2022 8:38AM@Troodon80 PC | EU
Guild: N&S
Hand of Alkosh | Dawnbringer | Immortal Redeemer | Tick Tock Tormentor | Gryphon Heart
Deep Dive into Dreadsail Reef Mechanics6 -
starkerealm✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Next patch, dps will be more important than ever. These nerfs will create more toxicity and gatekeeping. No one can afford to carry others anymore. You think it's bad now, low dps being kicked from dungeons, tanks bailing etc, wait until next patch. Did you just break 60k and got into trials? yay! , hold on...., um back to 50k. Sorry mate, you're out.
Try "welcome back to 35k." Being able to walk through these changes while only losing 10k is extremely optimistic. And it hits pretty much agnostic of your level.5 -
merpins✭✭✭✭✭
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Deleted the text because there was a lot, but I agree with every word. Changes, especially sweeping bit ones like this, should have been done years ago if they really wanted something like this in the game. The game is nearing 10 years old now; most mmos have gotten into a rhythm at this point. Of course other MMO's usually have an ever-increasing level cap, and the need to get better gear every major update. But still, I believe the main problem is trying to balance PVE and PVP together at the same time. These issues would be much less, and need less sweeping changes, if they just balanced the game modes separately.
Personally. I hate this coming update. I'd wager the vast majority of the playerbase that has seen the PTS patch notes also hates the changes coming this coming update. It's going to hurt the game far more than it's going to help it, and though maybe one or two changes look nice imo, 95% of the changes look bad. Nerfs aren't fun, changes to one of the most popular skills in the game due to its look and the feeling when using it are terrible (I point out jabs specifically due to its popularity), and lowering the floor only hurts the people that ZoS is trying to market to the most.1 -
merpins✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭starkerealm wrote: »Next patch, dps will be more important than ever. These nerfs will create more toxicity and gatekeeping. No one can afford to carry others anymore. You think it's bad now, low dps being kicked from dungeons, tanks bailing etc, wait until next patch. Did you just break 60k and got into trials? yay! , hold on...., um back to 50k. Sorry mate, you're out.
Try "welcome back to 35k." Being able to walk through these changes while only losing 10k is extremely optimistic. And it hits pretty much agnostic of your level.
Depends on your class. I saw a 15k decrease in DPS during my testing on my templar. I also saw a 25k DPS loss on my Stam Sorc and a 30k dps loss on my Warden. After tweaking, it was 10k on my templar, 15k on my stam sorc, and 20k on my warden. Not that I'm happy. Templar feels like garbage to play now with the changes to its main two attack skills, especially jabs, so I probably won't even touch it again if ZoS decides to go through with the jabs change. Even with a 20k dps loss, my warden still does 105k dps, which is more than my other builds.Edited by merpins on July 12, 2022 7:23AM1 -
virtus753✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »Next patch, dps will be more important than ever. These nerfs will create more toxicity and gatekeeping. No one can afford to carry others anymore. You think it's bad now, low dps being kicked from dungeons, tanks bailing etc, wait until next patch. Did you just break 60k and got into trials? yay! , hold on...., um back to 50k. Sorry mate, you're out.
Try "welcome back to 35k." Being able to walk through these changes while only losing 10k is extremely optimistic. And it hits pretty much agnostic of your level.
Depends on your class. I saw a 15k decrease in DPS during my testing on my templar. I also saw a 25k DPS loss on my Stam Sorc and a 30k dps loss on my Warden. After tweaking, it was 10k on my templar, 15k on my stam sorc, and 20k on my warden. Not that I'm happy. Templar feels like garbage to play now with the changes to its main two attack skills, especially jabs, so I probably won't even touch it again if ZoS decides to go through with the jabs change. Even with a 20k dps loss, my warden still does 105k dps, which is more than my other builds.
Remember that a 10k loss on the trial dummy is a lot bigger than a 10k effective loss, because the trial dummy got updated resistance debuffs (2358 more effective penetration) and Major Slayer (10% damage done). It makes it look like the loss is less.4 -
EmEm_Oh✭✭✭✭✭Next patch, dps will be more important than ever. These nerfs will create more toxicity and gatekeeping. No one can afford to carry others anymore. You think it's bad now, low dps being kicked from dungeons, tanks bailing etc, wait until next patch. Did you just break 60k and got into trials? yay! , hold on...., um back to 50k. Sorry mate, you're out.
Which is why I ask can we FINALLY make dungeons with an option for solo?2 -
starkerealm✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »starkerealm wrote: »Next patch, dps will be more important than ever. These nerfs will create more toxicity and gatekeeping. No one can afford to carry others anymore. You think it's bad now, low dps being kicked from dungeons, tanks bailing etc, wait until next patch. Did you just break 60k and got into trials? yay! , hold on...., um back to 50k. Sorry mate, you're out.
Try "welcome back to 35k." Being able to walk through these changes while only losing 10k is extremely optimistic. And it hits pretty much agnostic of your level.
Depends on your class. I saw a 15k decrease in DPS during my testing on my templar. I also saw a 25k DPS loss on my Stam Sorc and a 30k dps loss on my Warden. After tweaking, it was 10k on my templar, 15k on my stam sorc, and 20k on my warden. Not that I'm happy. Templar feels like garbage to play now with the changes to its main two attack skills, especially jabs, so I probably won't even touch it again if ZoS decides to go through with the jabs change. Even with a 20k dps loss, my warden still does 105k dps, which is more than my other builds.
Yeah, I watched a DK lose, literally, half it's DPS today. Depending on class and build, there are players who are going to get bumped from being able to clear vet content back into overland.
The irony is, if you're already comfortably in the DPS range that ZOS is trying to punish, none of this matters. Being able to still pull north of 50k, you can still do whatever you want. However, for the players who were progging or farming gear? They're dead, and getting pushed into a ditch by a bulldozer.
I'm honestly struggling to articulate how stupid, punitive, and poorly targeted these changes are.13 -
H3rBie✭✭✭For most of the people it's pretty clear that you need to invest a lot of time into the game to clear the hardest content in the game,
1.) all this includes farming gear,
2.) hours over hours slapping the dummy for a perfect rotation,
3.) and spending many many hours a week sometimes over weeks to practice the same content to get the wanted achievement done....
point 1.) will remain the same..
point 2.) will probably require much less time in the future
point 3.) will need much more time than now,
imho the current changes will not work out as from zos intended, it will be harder for everyone to reach a goal and for many more groups impossible, that will result in even more fustration,
There is no need to reduce the gap between a causal player and an endgame player, a causal player will never invest as much time in training (on dummy and trail) as an endgame player does. and with this changes the required time, at least for trails, will go significantly up.
result --> less player will do vet trails, not even talking about hm's, and as a causal player you won't have the chance anymore to clear a trail on vet since you need better optimsed groups..
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Lazerus✭✭one thing that should be considered is the content itself.
Content in the past was already balanced around the DPS of Players. If new content does the same, then there wont be any meaningful difference in difficulty for the top, but a reduced gap for the lower ones.
Now if the same happens with existing encounters, simply by reducing the HP of bosses for example, then the problem is easily solved.
Doing it like this is actually far easier than trying to find a way to buff the lower players without overbuffing the higher players again.0 -
spartaxoxo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭I don't really get how "closing the gap" is important in a PvE context. How does a high end player doing 120K DPS in vet trials impact the game experience of a player still working on perfecting their rotation in normal dungeons?
People get stuck in normal content and quit because the gap is not surmountable for a wide swath of players. It's actually so high now that some guilds struggle to fill rosters and the endgame population is unsustainably low. Part of that is the dps gap being too wide, part of it is that they keep upping the requirements to complete hard content, which results in prog groups having to up their requirements too.
This problem is exacerbated by the patch though rather than helped by it.Edited by spartaxoxo on July 12, 2022 3:07PM3 -
Holycannoli✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »
Correctly closing the gap would be important because it makes the progression smoother from newbie to mid to high. It makes content easier to design, and you can more easily design variable approaches to content. If the dps gap was 10-40k instead of 5-125k, then you could target overland at 10, normal at 10-20, vet at 20-30, HM at 30-35 and special achievements at 35+. A group on the low end of a band could use creative approaches to content to make up for their lower dps. With the current gap, a group of 10k dps players can't approach 50k dps content no matter how creative they are, because the mechs are too harsh, much less 80k+ content with quasi dps checks. On the flip side overland content is a joke for most players, and even most normal dungeons are easy for middling players. A narrower gap would make content below someone's power level easier, but still engaging. It's better for players and easier for designers to work within a band that is wide enough to give progression but still narrow enough for the low end to be able to see and understand the high end.I don't really get how "closing the gap" is important in a PvE context. How does a high end player doing 120K DPS in vet trials impact the game experience of a player still working on perfecting their rotation in normal dungeons?
This isn't what ZOS is doing at all, but in theory, that's the conceptual idea behind closing the gap. Also people like to use the term "skill gap" but most of the problem is a power gap. Some of that power gap from skill, but a lot of it comes from knowledge.
I only wish they were closing the gap.
They may think they are but they're actually increasing it a point the casuals will be shut out of vet content. This whole PTS patch is a straight up damage nerf but it's going to hit casuals the hardest.
Such a dumb and unnecessary patch.1 -
JustAGoodPlayer✭✭✭✭It is against math and logick. There words was possible to make true. Even not a lot of changes have to be done.
But what i see in PTS is some SPARTA !!!
Oh sorry, wrong word - this is MADNESS !!!0 -
spartaxoxo✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭JustAGoodPlayer wrote: »But what i see in PTS is some SPARTA !!!
Oh sorry, wrong word - this is MADNESS !!!
Hey! Leave me out of this!😜 🤣Edited by spartaxoxo on July 12, 2022 3:13PM0 -
Lazerus✭✭
ONLY if the content stays at it is. I doubt that with so much "feedback", they wont downscale the content back to an equal levelHolycannoli wrote: »They may think they are but they're actually increasing it a point the casuals will be shut out of vet content.
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Holycannoli✭✭✭✭✭
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ONLY if the content stays at it is. I doubt that with so much "feedback", they wont downscale the content back to an equal levelHolycannoli wrote: »They may think they are but they're actually increasing it a point the casuals will be shut out of vet content.
No way that happens. Greater chance you win the lottery than they scale back the content to compensate for this patch.3 -
Cuddlypuff✭✭✭✭spartaxoxo wrote: »I don't really get how "closing the gap" is important in a PvE context. How does a high end player doing 120K DPS in vet trials impact the game experience of a player still working on perfecting their rotation in normal dungeons?
People get stuck in normal content and quit because the gap is not surmountable for a wide swath of players. It's actually so high now that some guilds struggle to fill rosters and the endgame population is unsustainably low. Part of that is the dps gap being too wide, part of it is that they keep upping the requirements to complete hard content, which results in prog groups having to up their requirements too.
This problem is exacerbated by the patch though rather than helped by it.
It's silly. I do want to spam vet trials and go for trifectas BUT I'm not going to fiddle with discords, roster prog, core tryouts and waking up at 4am just because the raiding community is tiny and continues to die out. Don't even worry about the new players. It's the better ones that will be the first to leave because they know they are too good to put up with dead content.0