How about cap on DPS instead of nerfs?

Chevaliemew · July 2022

Tuning down DPS after years of power creeping it up is classic give then take case, no one likes. Is reaching 140k while others struggle to hit 100k okay? Sure, there is many factors preventing people to have equal performance. Not everyone has perfect internet connection allowing for minimal ping, not everyone has top notch equipment allowing for performance without a hickup. We need to take into account motorical skills, that aren't as fast in case of everyone either.

Why incoming nerfs are poorly designed? Let's look at example of DK for whom parse of 110k+ is knows as decent this patch. That involves usage of spammable and 8/9 DOTs. What if we capped single target DPS cap to 100k or 90k? We could drop certain, less damage providing DOTs, leading to easier rotation. What in turn requires less attention, allowing to focus more on surroundings in trial scenario. META gear would have less value, as other setups could allow for similar results. Obviously OP gear would allow to reach higher numbers easier, but there at least would be room for other solutions. That builds creativity, something pretty much non existent in endgame PVE. Less experienced players would be able to reach similar results and adapt faster with available means. Having few viable setups in competetive content, wouldn't that be a thing?

Nerfs are affecting eveyone, not just players squeezing last juices out of keyboard. Elite players dropping from 140k to 100k, will be less impactful in grand scheme of things than players dropping from 100k to let's assume 80k. At the end of the day we will be still defined by APM.

Truth be said, getting trial triefecta requires lots of hours per week for months (depending on the group). People tend to look at videos of people pushing DPS to the limit then call the content easy. Blashemy, numbers of groups able of godlike scores or at least ones made of people determined on the goal are very scarce. Content isn't easy, neither it's viable for everyone. Recent 2 trials are inadequate for our current standards, where decent players struggle to get HM clears, not mentioning trifectas. Are we expecting significant nerfs to recent content as well? Otheriwse incoming changes will only narrow audience even further. Elite groups will get the job done anyway, meanwhile average ones will struggle even more.

Standardizing damage values for weapons won't affect just PVE. There always were Heavy Attack builds, which while cheesy were actually demanding high skill cap, were super satisfying in execution. Niche, yet for years existing playstyle will pretty much get deleted after changes hit live server.

FluffyReachWitch · July 2022

I could live with a hard cap, if that gave the devs something to balance endgame difficulty around. Ideally the scaling would be moderately below that cap for normal, and then closer to the cap for veteran.

It would give PvE progression a clear goal, which would in turn make more people want to get their toes wet in normal endgame, and then make it easier to train and equip veteran teams.

I know people wouldn’t like feeling like their hands were artificially tied. I wouldn’t either if I were hitting six digits. But something like that might still be better for the health of the game.

JustAGoodPlayer · July 2022

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/611879/guide-for-zos-how-to-nerf-others-better

You can not hard nerf players - you just make worse - but you can do it another more honest way.

As example like this.

It is not correct to make player who just stand and try his best the same - but to make difference betwin 2 players who do there best less in amount where it is not emportant enough to make them pass content and where the more exp will do a little more damage.

Kiralyn2000 · July 2022

Capping DPS would be worse.

If you nerf stuff so all damage is 50% less, then the "I want to perfect my skills and become The Best Of The Best" types can still do that, it's just that "top 0.1%" is at a smaller DPS number.

If you cap DPS at some level, then any "perfecting your skills" that goes beyond that is rendered meaningless.

Pevey · July 2022

The really top players, those 4 or so score-pushing teams that still remain, would have even less reason to keep playing if there is a hard score cap. And their knowledge and experience filters down to others who want to do that content.

ZOS just needs to stop freaking out about what they can do. Be proud instead that some people are willing to spend so many hours playing your product that they actually become "obscenely" good at it. Celebrate it. Showcase it. More than just a tweet acknowledging the first trifecta.

ZOS needs to stop balancing vet and to some extent even HM around such a tiny percentage. Move the bar just a little. When they get the title, there is little reason to keep playing right now, especially with awa. The score-pushers that exist are doing it despite no reward for doing so. Have better leaderboards, promote them, titles to go with them, something to make it worthwhile. It's open ended. It's self-limiting (not everyone can be top).

No damage caps, please.

AcadianPaladin · July 2022

If the goal is to lower the ceiling and raise the floor, then a damage cap is a simple, elegant way to do exactly that with no nerfs required.

Chevaliemew · July 2022

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

Capping DPS would be worse.

If you nerf stuff so all damage is 50% less, then the "I want to perfect my skills and become The Best Of The Best" types can still do that, it's just that "top 0.1%" is at a smaller DPS number.

If you cap DPS at some level, then any "perfecting your skills" that goes beyond that is rendered meaningless.

Perfect scenario would be to leave it as it is, but the question is what the Zenimax actually wants to achieve? If it's all about closing the gap between elite and veteran players, then cap is the best solution since in certain boss scenario they have similar DPS potential, but it doesn't mean that they will do significantly better. 100k cap is not something that can be held by average player everywhere, he will still get lower, while elites will keep it going. There is positioning for cleave, speed of doing mechanics. Difference still will be there. How many players are actually getting hurt with cap? +/- 200 players from both PC platforms?

Kisakee · July 2022

You can not tell the game to "cap" damage at a certain treshold, that's impossible. How would you even try to acquire this? "Hey game, make every damage above 100k DPS to 0 instead." is not an option.

mocap · July 2022

Chevaliemew wrote: »

Tuning down DPS after years of power creeping it

treat it as "combat relaunch". They need to down DPS just to be able to rise it in over next few years. Then down it again and so on.

Chevaliemew · July 2022

Kisakee wrote: »

You can not tell the game to "cap" damage at a certain treshold, that's impossible. How would you even try to acquire this? "Hey game, make every damage above 100k DPS to 0 instead." is not an option.

Allow certain NPC to absorb up to 100k damage per second.

if DPS > 100k
then = 100k

Dragonredux · July 2022

At this point, what you would be suggesting is a stat squish like WoW and FF14 did. Wouldn't be a bad idea but would involve them adjusting the entire game. Probably be way less of a gap at the very least.

rivance · July 2022

You can't cap dps in a game like this. It would lead to there being a natural point where a decent portion of players would stop playing. "Oh, there's literally nothing I can work on to improve my character now? Not sure why I'd keep playing at that point."

I'm new to the game, and pretty casual. If they implemented a dps cap I wouldn't be impacted for years, probably. That said, I can respect players who gain joy in trying to eek out ever bigger numbers. If you can't see that as being a primary gameplay loop for a large portion of players, I'm not sure what to tell ya.

Amottica · July 2022

Might as well make it so everyone does the same DPS regardless of build.

That is not a serious suggestion, but that is what it leads to, and it also has negative consequences. Currently, we have to make choices in our builds between betting offensive or defensive. Hard capping DPS means a good player can add some survivability to their build without sacrificing damage. That would give them a huge advantage over the average and lower-end players than they already have. Think PvP.

DairyCat · July 2022

Capping DPS would basically create a "quit" point for score pushers.

etchedpixels · July 2022

Chevaliemew wrote: »

Tuning down DPS after years of power creeping it up is classic give then take case, no one likes. Is reaching 140k while others struggle to hit 100k okay? Sure, there is many factors preventing people to have equal performance. Not everyone has perfect internet connection allowing for minimal ping, not everyone has top notch equipment allowing for performance without a hickup. We need to take into account motorical skills, that aren't as fast in case of everyone either.

We can't all be Jimi Hendrix or run marathons either. Welcome to life.

More traditional game design does something between the two, A cap is useless because you hit it, you get bored, you usub ESO+ and you leave. Linear scaling produces huge differences between good and best players. Instead it's a curve in most games so that progression up the tree gets harder rather than stopping. That compresses the top ranks but still allows progression without making content design too tricky.

Accessibility is not about being equal either, it's about providing trying to people equal opportunity. That is not the same thing at all.

kingsirdrmr · July 2022

A hard cap just means everything at end game becomes the same. "X class has X maximum potential no matter how good/creative/troll you are or want to be". In a game with so many set combinations and so much freedom on what's usable, a hard cap on DPS would feel worse than the small cap we're getting now already does.

Chevaliemew · July 2022

The cap I am proposing 100k or even 90k of just single target damage (cleave still possible) isn't something every player will do in trial scenario. Let's say Farlgravn fight, hitting that 100k of single target due to nature of fight doesn't seem to achievable for even better average player. This is not trial dummy, we are talking about actual combat scenario. Feel like you people have barely any idea of actual progressions.

Anyway, most players in such scenario won't even hit the cap. Those who can tho? How many of the is +/- 200 people? And most of them won't get bored anyway. They always adapt

PeacefulAnarchy · July 2022

Chevaliemew wrote: »

Kisakee wrote: »

You can not tell the game to "cap" damage at a certain treshold, that's impossible. How would you even try to acquire this? "Hey game, make every damage above 100k DPS to 0 instead." is not an option.

Allow certain NPC to absorb up to 100k damage per second.

if DPS > 100k
then = 100k

Just FYI, this is a completely different suggestion. Limiting how much damage enemies can take per second is different from capping how much damage a player can do.

The problem with capping "dps," even beyond gameplay and balance implications, is that "dps" is not a single thing. Dps is an average of your damage over a given time. Despite the 1 second global cooldown on casting skills, skills and attacks do not tick in a consistent way. Everything is done in its own timeline. To take a simple example, let's say I cast one DoT that does 5k every second, and then 1.1 seconds later I cast another that does 6k every second. I'm never actually doing 11k damage at once, even though I'm doing 11k dps. How do you group these different sources of damage? If you were adjusting retroactively you can do smoothing to balance things, but in the moment the game can't predict what's going to happen. You could say "if cap has been reached in the past second, this ability does no damage," but this makes which ability hits at the cap arbitrary. It also would make the servers have to do a bunch more calculations every time something hits, which I don't think ZOS would want, and these calculations would have to be done for everyone.

If they want to cap dps they can lower everyone's dps as they have. If they want to only lower the top end they can do that too by changing how buffs and debuffs stack and what tools are available to players. There are a lot of other ways it could be done, too. A hard cap, beyond being a bad gameplay choice, is also a tremendous technical hurdle that goes against everything they've been doing for 2+years to reduce server calculations.

ccfeeling · July 2022

Wrong direction and too complicate to caluculate each person dps from vary conditions , should set the mobs cannot be burn more than x percent hp.

Like 90 percent hp lock, 80,70,60,blah

In fact, I don't agree above, we should respect all efforts end game raiders paid for.

Freelancer_ESO · July 2022

Personally, I'd be a fan of soft caps.

You'd gradually play test every boss fight in the game figure out what range of damage produced the best out comes for each part of each fight then you'd give the boss buffs/debuffs if the damage taken over and interval fell significantly outside of the ideal range.

It'd take far more resources to implement and it would add to server load but, in the long term it could be used to make the Overland/Quest Boss Experience better in addition to dungeons/raids.

barney2525 · July 2022

I'm not a fan of caps.

Maybe a nice Fedora.

Urvoth · July 2022

The solution is to nerf the power creep group util sets. Casual/mid tier players don't use them and they're the cause of the massive dps discrepancy, not LA weaving.

Kisakee · July 2022

Urvoth wrote: »

The solution is to nerf the power creep group util sets. Casual/mid tier players don't use them and they're the cause of the massive dps discrepancy, not LA weaving.

You haven't seen the new sets for U35, didn't you..