Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
FlamingBeard wrote: »Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
Power of sets makes older content irrelevant.
If old content had useful set items still then vet players would run those just as much as fresh content.
ZOS creates the problem themselves by making more and more OP sets (which are far stronger than any older sets) to sell DLC, instead of making enticing content that players enjoy on its own merits.
Then suddenly when the next DLC is on the horizon, those recent-debut OP sets get nerfhammered to make way for the next DLC-selling set.
Supporting these changes as a customer is to endorse the abusive business practices that ESO devs are enabling by continuing the cycle instead of making their product enjoyable.
FlamingBeard wrote: »Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
Power of sets makes older content irrelevant.
If old content had useful set items still then vet players would run those just as much as fresh content.
ZOS creates the problem themselves by making more and more OP sets (which are far stronger than any older sets) to sell DLC, instead of making enticing content that players enjoy on its own merits.
Then suddenly when the next DLC is on the horizon, those recent-debut OP sets get nerfhammered to make way for the next DLC-selling set.
Supporting these changes as a customer is to endorse the abusive business practices that ESO devs are enabling by continuing the cycle instead of making their product enjoyable.
The cycle of power creeping/nerfing is the a basic tactic for live service game to create an incentive for players to engage in new contents. If you think it's an "abusive business practice", then bad news for you mate, it has been proven to be a very effective tactic for MMOs.
Just take a look at FFXIV, WOW, Lost Ark, same story. They make new and powerful gears, they sledgehammer nerf the players when power creep kicks in, and the cycle continues. Now take a look at truly horizontal progression game like GW2, where endgame content is a 1 and done deal, while fashion war is the true endgame.
Not sure about you, but I'd rather "support" the necessary evil that is the buff/nerf cycle of MMOs (in which ESO is one of the least critically affected by), rather than having 0 progression in power and being told that looking pretty is the true endgame.
FlamingBeard wrote: »Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
Power of sets makes older content irrelevant.
If old content had useful set items still then vet players would run those just as much as fresh content.
ZOS creates the problem themselves by making more and more OP sets (which are far stronger than any older sets) to sell DLC, instead of making enticing content that players enjoy on its own merits.
Then suddenly when the next DLC is on the horizon, those recent-debut OP sets get nerfhammered to make way for the next DLC-selling set.
Supporting these changes as a customer is to endorse the abusive business practices that ESO devs are enabling by continuing the cycle instead of making their product enjoyable.
The cycle of power creeping/nerfing is the a basic tactic for live service game to create an incentive for players to engage in new contents. If you think it's an "abusive business practice", then bad news for you mate, it has been proven to be a very effective tactic for MMOs.
Just take a look at FFXIV, WOW, Lost Ark, same story. They make new and powerful gears, they sledgehammer nerf the players when power creep kicks in, and the cycle continues. Now take a look at truly horizontal progression game like GW2, where endgame content is a 1 and done deal, while fashion war is the true endgame.
Not sure about you, but I'd rather "support" the necessary evil that is the buff/nerf cycle of MMOs (in which ESO is one of the least critically affected by), rather than having 0 progression in power and being told that looking pretty is the true endgame.
I don't think there's anything wrong with buff/cycle nerfs per se, but Zos dos a lot of pendulum changes, the game isn't progressing in any direction just giant balance swings back and forth for no reason. I wish they would expand the Combat, add to the trees, add new morphs or passives. This rehashing the same song is tiring.
starkerealm wrote: »The real problem with U35 remains unaddressed with this patch. The biggest issue with the DPS nerf isn't on the upper end of the spectrum, it's how it craters out the floor. This still punishes new players over the power creep from endgame sets. Again, that light and heavy attack nerf is going to turn-off new players in their first few minutes with the game. Not because they're making an informed decision, but because it turns every basic encounter in overland into a slog, where you have to light attack over a dozen times to kill them. Yes, it would be more optimal to use a spammable, but when we're talking about the players who were like, "Skyrim was fun, I'm going to try ESO..." it's not going to happen.
So. 8.1.2 is still going to kneecap population growth from new players, because overland content still feels terrible. That hasn't changed.
Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
I disagree.
I don't do vet city of ash 2 just because it's too easy. I don't do it because I've done it 14,000 times and have no need to do it anymore.
If it now takes longer to do, I'm even less inclined to do it.
Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
I disagree.
I don't do vet city of ash 2 just because it's too easy. I don't do it because I've done it 14,000 times and have no need to do it anymore.
If it now takes longer to do, I'm even less inclined to do it.
I mean, if you have no need to do it anymore, then even if you can complete it in 2 minutes, you wouldn't.
But if people have actual desire to do it for whatever goal they have, at least it should resembling a challenging content (as it should), rather than a 15 minutes slog through unengaging encounters with minimal braincell required.
Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
I disagree.
I don't do vet city of ash 2 just because it's too easy. I don't do it because I've done it 14,000 times and have no need to do it anymore.
If it now takes longer to do, I'm even less inclined to do it.
I mean, if you have no need to do it anymore, then even if you can complete it in 2 minutes, you wouldn't.
But if people have actual desire to do it for whatever goal they have, at least it should resembling a challenging content (as it should), rather than a 15 minutes slog through unengaging encounters with minimal braincell required.
But you made it sound like this would make old content relevant again for vet players.
These changes don't affect how relevent that content is at all. They either need to do it or not.
Lowering DPS doesn't change that.
Plus it makes the content harder for newer players.
So how does any player, and city of ash 2 benefit from the changes?
Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
PrincessOfThieves wrote: »Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
As someone who cleared vHoF in Morrowind patch...
First of all, 50k now and 50k are 2 different things. Back then, you'd have to be very skilled to pull 40k or so in a trial, and most people couldn't do it. Those who can do 50k now would be around 15k in Morrowind patch.
Secondly, even if they struggle on triplets, they can still get through. Instead of bashing their heads against a brick wall. Back then, many groups were stuck on that boss (and weaker groups were stuck on hunter killers, they're nerfed now, but their poison was op then).
So it wasn't more accessible... At least now you can invite people from a social guild and clear vMoL, vHoF, vSS, maybe other trials. Power creep can be a good thing.
P.S. "Arbitrary number" was a thing since the first dps addons were released. It was just more difficult to test dps, you'd have to find a tank, a healer and kill the Bloodspawn with them.
Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
I disagree.
I don't do vet city of ash 2 just because it's too easy. I don't do it because I've done it 14,000 times and have no need to do it anymore.
If it now takes longer to do, I'm even less inclined to do it.
I mean, if you have no need to do it anymore, then even if you can complete it in 2 minutes, you wouldn't.
But if people have actual desire to do it for whatever goal they have, at least it should resembling a challenging content (as it should), rather than a 15 minutes slog through unengaging encounters with minimal braincell required.
But you made it sound like this would make old content relevant again for vet players.
These changes don't affect how relevent that content is at all. They either need to do it or not.
Lowering DPS doesn't change that.
Plus it makes the content harder for newer players.
So how does any player, and city of ash 2 benefit from the changes?
Ok, this would be purely my experience. I love challenging contents. I love doing contents for loots, for rewards. I would love it if these 2 components can come hand in hand with each others.
But now on live, if I want transmute stones, which is always needed for me, I'd have to slog through unengaging contents to get to the rewards I desire. I'm not saying that this patch will necessary bring me the enjoyment I want, but at least it's going in a direction in which a challenge is presented to me.
On the other end of the spectrum, I have seen so many players disengage with endgame content purely because they feel like they are playing a catch up game due to power creep. They can only pull 30k dps at CP160, meanwhile people with 1k+ CP is now doing 130k+. By the time they would eventually reach that 130k+, if power creep is still untouched, the ceiling then will reach so much higher, like 170k+, and their 130k dps achievement would feel trivia compare to the new ceiling.
If power creep is not dealt with, the game will stumble in the foot steps of games like WOW, FFXIV or Destiny 2, where it feels more like a marathon to reach the ceiling as fast as possible before it's raised again, then another dps marathon starts, and again and again until things get way out of hand, so the devs would just nuke the entire progression system and start from 0.
Look, I don't like to get nerfed as much as the next guy, but I would rather see myself and others get a little nerf (I went from 130k on live to 110k on PTS, no big deal for me), than witness another game got their progression system nuked.
PrincessOfThieves wrote: »Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
As someone who cleared vHoF in Morrowind patch...
First of all, 50k now and 50k are 2 different things. Back then, you'd have to be very skilled to pull 40k or so in a trial, and most people couldn't do it. Those who can do 50k now would be around 15k in Morrowind patch.
Secondly, even if they struggle on triplets, they can still get through. Instead of bashing their heads against a brick wall. Back then, many groups were stuck on that boss (and weaker groups were stuck on hunter killers, they're nerfed now, but their poison was op then).
So it wasn't more accessible... At least now you can invite people from a social guild and clear vMoL, vHoF, vSS, maybe other trials. Power creep can be a good thing.
P.S. "Arbitrary number" was a thing since the first dps addons were released. It was just more difficult to test dps, you'd have to find a tank, a healer and kill the Bloodspawn with them.
Yea I can see your point, power creep can be a good thing in that context. As I have stated above with the example of WOW and Destiny 2 recently, power creep if not being dealt with, can ruin the whole progression system.
Also, when I say dps is an "Arbitrary number", it means it's only matter if you turn it into a measurement tool. As you stated, 50k back then was very hard to pull off, but now it's a drop in the bucket compare to the ceiling. So the number of "50k" itself only has significant value when being compared to what the ceiling is, but if the ceiling keeps getting higher and higher overtime, then 1 day, even "100k" would means nothing in the grand scheme of things, which further devalue the effort players make to achieve that number in the first place.
Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
boi_anachronism_ wrote: »Consider that effectively 50k on a 3-6m dummy is pretty much exactly the same as 100k on a trial dummy if you take away the buffs. As for dps, I couldn't care less about prestige. I care about being able to do content. DPS is a tool that gets me there. They just took away my hammer and gave me a rock.
starkerealm wrote: »The real problem with U35 remains unaddressed with this patch. The biggest issue with the DPS nerf isn't on the upper end of the spectrum, it's how it craters out the floor. This still punishes new players over the power creep from endgame sets. Again, that light and heavy attack nerf is going to turn-off new players in their first few minutes with the game. Not because they're making an informed decision, but because it turns every basic encounter in overland into a slog, where you have to light attack over a dozen times to kill them. Yes, it would be more optimal to use a spammable, but when we're talking about the players who were like, "Skyrim was fun, I'm going to try ESO..." it's not going to happen.
So. 8.1.2 is still going to kneecap population growth from new players, because overland content still feels terrible. That hasn't changed.
This is a very tricky thing to discuss.
On 1 hand, a lot of players I have encountered complain that the early game is so dull because you can just light attack through it, no challenge, no skill required.
On the other hand, this. Keep in mind, newer player can only do roughly 3k with their LA, so lower it down to 2k ain't gonna change much. "But that's 33% loss in dps". No it's not, they are newer player, "dps" is not something they care about.
Here's my take on this issue: ESO is known to their "do whatever you want" model but with a "clunky combat system". Most of the time when I hear people complain about how clunky this game is, they would show a clip of themselves spamming LA/HA over and over again, refusing to cast any skill (even ultimate). IMO, you can play however you want, but if you play in an unoptimized playstyle, don't complain about arbitrary dps number or how you can't complete harder contents.
Ishtarknows wrote: »Skill gap and power creep make older contents irrelevant for vet players, scare new players away from the game and generally create a toxic mentality among the player base, in which they only care about an arbitrary dps number instead of actual skill and learning mechanics to overcome harder contents.
And if you think the higher dps you have, the better chance for you to clear endgame content, do remember when vHOF came out, the peak of dps back then was like 50k with heavy attacks being a mandatory action in any dps rotation, and we still made it. Meanwhile, I still witness people with 110k+ dps parse struggle to get through the triplets.
At the time of HoF coming out the dummy people used had either 3 or 6 million health and gave zero buffs. Hitting 50k back then was considered god tier, but 50k on today's standard - the raid dummy - is not comparable to that at all and it's disingenuous to suggest it is.
Far too many people treat dps numbers as being interchangeable between dummies.
They way I see it, they still need to address the scaling of content. Instead of nerfing, buff old content and make newer content easier. Or a moderate mixture. But don't slice damage so drastically while keeping us in the dark about whether they'll make the new trial trifectas even physically possible to do - especially on console where we have no help from addons whatsoever.
They way I see it, they still need to address the scaling of content. Instead of nerfing, buff old content and make newer content easier. Or a moderate mixture. But don't slice damage so drastically while keeping us in the dark about whether they'll make the new trial trifectas even physically possible to do - especially on console where we have no help from addons whatsoever.
I think when we talk about difficulty in endgame content, a lot of the time console players got left out of the conversation. No addon, locked fps, server works against you, etc.
I think we'd need a stream like back in the day, where Rich actually clear vMA on stream just to prove that it is still do-able with the new combat changes back then. I honestly wanna see the devs clear vSS HM.
Honestly? Good. Most of that are gankers, youtubers, abusers... community is in bad shape. ZOS shouldn't listen to people in 70% things.
Honestly? Good. Most of that are gankers, youtubers, abusers... community is in bad shape. ZOS shouldn't listen to people in 70% things.
You shouldn't assume...I know several people like me, who have been here since beta, paid our $14.99 every month rain or shine, and in my case, bought 6-8 21K Crown packs a year, who have finally had enough with the back and forth, "knee jerk" design decisions made every 3 months (or less now).
Maybe my financial investment in the game will be missed, maybe it won't. I know I'll feel better, and there are plenty of games out there to sit down and ENJOY. ESO isn't the only game in town.