Expecting each group to have all the buffs all the time is unrealistic.
People that provide particular buffs may be on vacation, or just missing, while the replacement may not have that set up.
Friends and family guilds may be more inclined to take anyone who shows up, and any buffs they can present is just a bonus.
Groups may not even know about buffs or at least know all of them. I know with the oak ring I had to look up at least one I never heard of.
Casual (low dps) groups aren’t static. Who shows up changes week per week. And to assume everyone knows what buffs they are supposed to bring seems unrealistic. If encounters are set up assuming they have all of the buffs that can be an issue.
It's the difference between a group that's gunning for a trifecta and one that isn't.
I'm 100% okay knowing that you can't get a Dreadsail Reef trifecta without building a group that has all the buffs and debuffs, and has 90% uptimes on everything.
As people said from the very first post about U35 combat changes before the patch, what they were proposing was going to hurt the casual / semi-serious groups far more than the trifecta runners.
Have you ever considered, that not everybody should be dealing high-end DPS? And that the AVERAGE PLAYER should deal AVERAGE DPS? As with everything in life, practice makes perfect. Just as you don't expect your country to take you to the Olympics over somebody who has practiced their whole life for it, you shouldn't expect to deal the same amount of damage as somebody who has spent ages perfecting their gameplay.
And no, I don't deal high-end DPS either. But I am ok with that, since I got better stuff to do in life than to play this game 24/7. Some people don't and thus are better at this game than me. And that is absolutely ok.
What annoys me though is, that this game is losing more and more flavor b/c everything is being homogenized and dumbed down in an effort to "raise the floor and lower the ceiling". How the hell did people even manage to kill normal NPCs back in the days before these past years of "raise the floor and lower the ceiling"?
There is only two reason why AVERAGE players cant reach HIGH END DPS and that reasons are lack of skill or lack or practice , very often lack of both. The very definition of high end DPS can be described as DPS achieved by most skilled and/or dedicated players and average player do not belong to that group. If someone decides to play casually because of any reason than he/she cannot expect to achieve high end DPS.
Now go do a parse on the 3 mil dummy, then one on the trial dummy, take a deep breath, think, and explain to me why the latter is twice as high as the former when it's all down to 'skill'.
Reading more than the headline is a good idea now and then, mate.
francesinhalover wrote: »- Group buffs - average trials don't have access to all of them.
Highend, optimized groups dealing extreme DPS is, by itself, indeed not a problem - and the OP hasn't stated such far as I have seen. We can observe however that this group optimization is a source, even a primary source, of this massive gap between ceiling and floor that ZOS wants to lessen. That too, by itself, is not a problem - a lessened gap makes it easier for people to reach or at least come closer to the ceiling instead of it ever moving further away, and it's easier for the design team to balance content; you just have to make sure you don't trivialize the extra effort these high end groups pour into their performance in the same vein.
But where I do see a problem is a) ZOS attempting to nerf individual character power to lessen that gap, because that will never work given the source are multipliers, not base values and b) this must invariably be accompanied by adjustments to content difficulty.
Lets be honest, content difficulty is just as much if not more over the place than damage numbers. There are extreme gaps in difficulty, and the difficulty names aren't really helping you either. Some dungeon normals are harder than some dungeon vets, even, and no normal adequately prepares you for their own vet either.
Seems to me any adjustment really needs to take all of that into account and do it's damndest not to break well-established groups at the same time.
BretonMage wrote: »Some average players might want to get better and reach endgame. If top end DPS continues to rise, and more and more content is created for the top enders, that leaves the average players playing catch up over greater and greater distances. It can be demoralising.
Players who want to get better have all the tools to do so. Nothing stops them. Keep practicing, keep reading about the mechanics and strategies, keep reading about builds, keep looking for a solid group and that's it. Of all the points that OP has mentioned, only two are real deal breakers for that process, the first one is lag and the second one - to a lesser extend - is his social anxiety. Everything else can be solved by putting a little effort into you play.
Catching up is far easier than you think it is, because mid tier players and top tier players are not progressing at the same pace. It is far easier to improve your DPS from 40kS to 90k than from 110k to 120k. Sure, there will always be better players out there, but that's life. Noone stops playing snooker because he is demoralized that Ronnie OSullivan is able to score 147 breaks.
Do they, though? I've done, and still do, all you've mentioned (practise regularly, read articles/posts, watch videos), and it has barely been enough to maintain my DPS. Am I missing something? Have people here already accepted that you need herculean levels of effort just to be able to do a normal trial?
At some stage, I think, in a game that I pay for, practise for, and participate in daily, I feel like I should be able to participate in most of the content. I don't need competitive-level DPS, I just want to experience the content (at a level of challenge that is interesting, not asking for story mode).
Do they, though? I've done, and still do, all you've mentioned (practise regularly, read articles/posts, watch videos), and it has barely been enough to maintain my DPS. Am I missing something? Have people here already accepted that you need herculean levels of effort just to be able to do a normal trial?
At some stage, I think, in a game that I pay for, practise for, and participate in daily, I feel like I should be able to participate in most of the content. I don't need competitive-level DPS, I just want to experience the content (at a level of challenge that is interesting, not asking for story mode).
You don't need much DPS to play a normal trial. In fact, you don't even need a rotation for normal content. Basically all you need is LA+spammable, which should get you to around 20k dps. That is sufficient DPS for a normal trial. Everything above that is a bonus. I joined the weekly guild raid the other day, we ran vHRC and vSO.. and some DD's were below 10k and we still finished the raid.
I don't know where you are struggling with your DPS but I am fairly sure that a closer look at one of your parse logs would identify the problem pretty quickly. In most cases it is parsing too fast and losing LA's and skills on the way.
Some average players might want to get better and reach endgame. If top end DPS continues to rise, and more and more content is created for the top enders, that leaves the average players playing catch up over greater and greater distances. It can be demoralising.
Players who want to get better have all the tools to do so. Nothing stops them. Keep practicing, keep reading about the mechanics and strategies, keep reading about builds, keep looking for a solid group and that's it. Of all the points that OP has mentioned, only two are real deal breakers for that process, the first one is lag and the second one - to a lesser extend - is his social anxiety. Everything else can be solved by putting a little effort into the game you play. Is that really too much to ask?
Catching up is far easier than you think it is, because mid tier players and top tier players are not progressing at the same pace. It is far easier to improve your DPS from 40k to 90k than from 110k to 120k. Sure, there will always be better players out there, but that's life. Noone stops playing snooker because Ronnie OSullivan being able to score 147 breaks is demoralizing.
simply not true. there is also a limit on what people can achieve. you can get a lot done by practise and hard work, but i know people who spent hundreds of hours on vMA and never cleared. in the end the decided it was too hard and just stopped.
I'm not saying everyone should be able to get trifectas, but don't pretend we're all physically, mentally or emotionally capable of the same successes.
the question needs to be where the goal posts are set and what content is acceptable to be out of reach.
Sorry, but if "you" spend hundreds of hours in vMA and can't clear it, then "you" are the problem, not the game.
Like most content it is just about memorizing the mechanics! You don't need 120k parse DPS to clear it. You could do vMA with a 1 bar build even before Oakensoul existed.
Keep in mind, this is coming from somebody who is dealing anything but high-end DPS!
yes, this is my point. some people have put in a lot of time and effort and are still incapable. I try to avoid statements like "Everything else can be solved by putting a little effort into the game you play." because a lot of people have put a lot of effort in and are still incapable. they watch the tutorials, they practise on the dummy, they spend so much time beating their head against the content and still can't do it.
i'm not saying the content should be nerfed or anything rebalanced, i'm just pointing out that it's very easy for those of us who can to make assumptions that the reason people can't is because "they are lazy" or something.
some people just can't.
I was extremely happy for a lot of people when they made maelstrom weapons drop on normal because every pve build calls for them and a lot of people felt locked out because they couldn't get them.
Everest_Lionheart wrote: »For what it’s worth the skill gap argument is a red herring. All we are doing here is pressing keys or buttons depending on your choose of input. Can you press them in the correct order? That doesn’t even take much practice. You don’t even have to press them at break neck speed in order to succeed, in fact that will only hurt you. For those that can’t press fast enough for certain sets that require stacks (too many in my opinion) there are sets that offer flat stats for about a 10% DPS loss. Honestly it’s a good trade if you have physical limitations.
With that out of the way what this game has is a knowledge gap. How do builds work, which skills proc which passives, what skills are boosted by which CP? Tooltips are murky at best so we have to seek knowledge. ESO is basically one big exam that through constantly shifting combat changes continuously keeps changing. This is only part of the knowledge gap however.
If you want to clear the hard content you need to study guides and videos to get an understanding of mechs. Skill matters less than study but all that studying in the world doesn’t pay off until you get into the actual mechanics. It simulates real life in a way, many of us went to college or university to learn our trade but once we got out in the real world we soon realized things were different. We understood the concepts of what we are doing but had to work hard to perfect our methods. Sounds a lot like any VetHM trial I have ever run.
Of course real life careers don’t shake things up every 3-6 months either and once you’ve gained the experience to fully utilize your knowledge you feel more comfortable pressing those keys in order.
So in order to be successful in this game you need the following things in this order:
1 Knowledge
2 Experience
3 Awareness
4 Skill I guess if pressing buttons can be considered a skill.
francesinhalover wrote: »Everest_Lionheart wrote: »For what it’s worth the skill gap argument is a red herring. All we are doing here is pressing keys or buttons depending on your choose of input. Can you press them in the correct order? That doesn’t even take much practice. You don’t even have to press them at break neck speed in order to succeed, in fact that will only hurt you. For those that can’t press fast enough for certain sets that require stacks (too many in my opinion) there are sets that offer flat stats for about a 10% DPS loss. Honestly it’s a good trade if you have physical limitations.
With that out of the way what this game has is a knowledge gap. How do builds work, which skills proc which passives, what skills are boosted by which CP? Tooltips are murky at best so we have to seek knowledge. ESO is basically one big exam that through constantly shifting combat changes continuously keeps changing. This is only part of the knowledge gap however.
If you want to clear the hard content you need to study guides and videos to get an understanding of mechs. Skill matters less than study but all that studying in the world doesn’t pay off until you get into the actual mechanics. It simulates real life in a way, many of us went to college or university to learn our trade but once we got out in the real world we soon realized things were different. We understood the concepts of what we are doing but had to work hard to perfect our methods. Sounds a lot like any VetHM trial I have ever run.
Of course real life careers don’t shake things up every 3-6 months either and once you’ve gained the experience to fully utilize your knowledge you feel more comfortable pressing those keys in order.
So in order to be successful in this game you need the following things in this order:
1 Knowledge
2 Experience
3 Awareness
4 Skill I guess if pressing buttons can be considered a skill.
Being honest, you can't go wrong with single target, direct dmg , thaumaturge and wraithfull strikes.
Unless your build is full of aoes ofcourse, but that's usually not the case.
Like the biggest challenge you have is chosing which one of those 2 (thau/wraith) you remove to instead use crit damage cp.
For me though i have tested and i would lose dps when using crit dmg cp, maybe it's because i lack enough crit chance.
francesinhalover wrote: »Highend, optimized groups dealing extreme DPS is, by itself, indeed not a problem - and the OP hasn't stated such far as I have seen. We can observe however that this group optimization is a source, even a primary source, of this massive gap between ceiling and floor that ZOS wants to lessen. That too, by itself, is not a problem - a lessened gap makes it easier for people to reach or at least come closer to the ceiling instead of it ever moving further away, and it's easier for the design team to balance content; you just have to make sure you don't trivialize the extra effort these high end groups pour into their performance in the same vein.
But where I do see a problem is a) ZOS attempting to nerf individual character power to lessen that gap, because that will never work given the source are multipliers, not base values and b) this must invariably be accompanied by adjustments to content difficulty.
Lets be honest, content difficulty is just as much if not more over the place than damage numbers. There are extreme gaps in difficulty, and the difficulty names aren't really helping you either. Some dungeon normals are harder than some dungeon vets, even, and no normal adequately prepares you for their own vet either.
Seems to me any adjustment really needs to take all of that into account and do it's damndest not to break well-established groups at the same time.
Ofcourse it's a problem. Like i don't say it because for me it's not the point of the post and i'm still not sure of my opinion on the subject however... If high groups deal insane dps like 140k+ when average groups do 50-80k than there's clearly a issue because new content like trials and dungeons will be developed having those higher dps numbers in mind, creating issues where average players will never be able to complete the content unless they make eso a job.
the easier fix for this issue is just to buff/nerf classes so there's a dps number in mind like 125k and z tries to keep the games dps around that number. ofcourse paying attention to how hard rotations that could surpass that number are. And trying to nerf things that won't bother players has much.
However from what i notice a big number of changes this game has seem rushed and with little thought put behind them. Like what we got with veiled strike.
One could even go as far as to buff classes by just improving how skills work to improve weaving, like say making the animation of necromancers scyth end 0.05/0.10 seconds earlier so it's easier to do a light attack after it.
Same applies to several aoe skills like scalding rune, lightning splash etc.
Instead we get changes that scare people A LOT.
BlackArgonian wrote: »In my opinion, they shouldn´t be catering to the highest tier players in general, 95% of the game is casual, your reward for improving your DPS or buff uptimes should be clearing the content faster and leaderboards scores. if it feels like it´s not enough then the endgame community needs to ask ZoS for some very large buffs to leaderboard rewards, ask for crowns or crown gems so they can stop selling runs for gold to buy crowns. At the end of the day people still sell Trifecta runs so the titles and mounts do not represent that you are skilled in any way.
The average player should be able to complete content they pay for, I´m not saying Hard Modes need a nerf, but all the Veteran Trials can use some toning down in my opinion, what is 1 stat line going to do from perfected gear if you can´t weave well or keep skills up. Might as well make the sets accessible to more people.
These large nerfs across the board were bound to happen when vertical progression got gutted years ago, once the CP cap stopped increasing monthly this was the route we were left with.
(Edited for better grammar and structure.)
Diligence and perseverance are certainly not the only reasons why some players achieve so much more dps. In my opinion, age plays a significant role. The younger you are, the faster you adapt to new situations and learn mechanics. A young person in their mid-20s-30s learns much faster and has a much quicker reaction time. Of course, this has an enormous effect on the gameplay.
There are a lot of players I know (including myself) who invest a lot of time and effort in the game. Practising, parsing, dealing intensively with builds and mechanics and still not getting into the upper dps range (100k+). Also hm progress is very difficult for them, or hardly possible. It’s very unfair to say that they simply don't want to improve because they are lazy or have no desire or interest. Younger players always have the natural advantage, but are not necessarily more committed.
You should take into account that far more players aged 45+ play ESO than you think
I am over 50*cough* and disabled. Yeah, it took longer, but I have done most HMs in the game now as dd or tank, I also parse over 100k. Age is not that much of an issue, though disability can be.
Diligence and perseverance are certainly not the only reasons why some players achieve so much more dps. In my opinion, age plays a significant role. The younger you are, the faster you adapt to new situations and learn mechanics. A young person in their mid-20s-30s learns much faster and has a much quicker reaction time. Of course, this has an enormous effect on the gameplay.
There are a lot of players I know (including myself) who invest a lot of time and effort in the game. Practising, parsing, dealing intensively with builds and mechanics and still not getting into the upper dps range (100k+). Also hm progress is very difficult for them, or hardly possible. It’s very unfair to say that they simply don't want to improve because they are lazy or have no desire or interest. Younger players always have the natural advantage, but are not necessarily more committed.
You should take into account that far more players aged 45+ play ESO than you think
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It's hard to reason with the players who think everyone should be at their level with a little effort. It's the same playerset who think overland content is too easy while other players are still dying to quest and delve/public dungeon bosses, and they are sweeping through in trial setups wondering why everything is melting.
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It's hard to reason with the players who think everyone should be at their level with a little effort. It's the same playerset who think overland content is too easy while other players are still dying to quest and delve/public dungeon bosses, and they are sweeping through in trial setups wondering why everything is melting.
You can hit 80k+ with crafted sets. Nothing from dungeons, just crafted.
I have a parse from a friend who hit almost 60k+ DPS using Rebedo Leather armor... no sets at all.
3. What group buffs are not accessible to every group? The group leader needs to make sure the buffs are being provided. If someone is not willing to wear a set bonus or use a specific skill to benefit the group, they need to be replaced as they are the problem.
You are zeroing in on a static trial group setup right there, which is a far cry from 'every group'.
Which, perhaps, is the primary challenge in regards to that power gap. ESO focuses hard on those static, carefully setup trial groups by design.
I agree that a poorly organized group is a problem. Just as a player needs to learn to play well so does a leader need to learn what they need to do in leading and organizing their group.
So again, the cause is the leader and group need to improve.
You misunderstand.
You posit the default assumption to be a static, organized group.
I posit that many trial groups aren't static or permanent in setup in the first place. These groups can consist of excellent players, but the very nature of the matter prohibits the individual parts to be as precisely optimized in gear choice as a permanent group; and that is were a massive bit of any performance disparity comes from.
Now, whether that is an inherently bad thing or not, if ZOS wants to narrow that disparity perhaps this hard focus on static, permanent and thus very well prepared groups is something to reconsider for them instead of hitting at individuals.
I did not posit any assumption. I made it clear I was speaking about an organized group with good leadership. The less organized a group is the less efficient that group will be and that is expected which is something I also made clear. It’s also why players like myself do not run in craglorn pugs. I either run with a guild group or a training groups knowing those players are learning and the group will not be perfect.
And this is to be expected and not something for the devs to correct and really not an issue that needs to be focused on.
The original statement:- Group buffs - average trials don't have access to all of them.
Your opposition to that statement:3. What group buffs are not accessible to every group? The group leader needs to make sure the buffs are being provided. If someone is not willing to wear a set bonus or use a specific skill to benefit the group, they need to be replaced as they are the problem.
A static group being the average group is already a bold statement. Implying all group buffs to be available to every group is straight up factually incorrect.
Mind you, I don't think that the heavy performance difference between high end groups and some random craglorn trial group is necessarily a problem; I'm just pointing out that this is where a massive chunk of the performance difference bothering ZOS originates. So to me, at least, this is less a question of numerical adjustments and more one of fundamental design choices on how important these static trial groups should be in the game.
Simply put. Just because a group does not employ a buff does not mean they do not have access to it. If the group chooses, actively or passively, to not use a buff that can benefit them, that is their problem and not a game design issue.
You're still not following. I'm not saying it's a problem, I'm saying it's the reality, for the reasons BlueRaven up there listed. And this is where a lot of this power gap that ZOS wants to address originates from. By extension, I'm also saying that your statement of every group having access to them is as incorrect as expecting to have more than a tank with Taunt and Major Breach in a Dungeon Pug, and even that is a gamble.
My own opinion of whether this is a good thing or not hasn't entered the discussion so far.
Oh no. I am following. I am merely pointing out it’s a choice they make. So my comment in my origins comment if factually correct 100%. I noted it’s the group leaders responsibility to ensure the group has the buffs needed. If the leader is lacking or a player is lacking in meeting the needs they need to be replaced.
It is that simple. I respect you have an oppinion that differs but it in no way alters the accuracy of my comment.
Have a good day.
No, you're not - the very fact that you maintain that this is a choice someone makes is evidence of that. This isn't my opinion, nor even something one could have an opinion about. Plenty groups simply operate under life circumstances that prevent these choices in the first place.
Whether ZOS should cater to those groups over others and how is another matter, but pretending every single trial group formed in the game has these choices is simply in ignorance of the limitations placed on random groups or even guilds made up of people with a more restrictive play time than 'I am available every night from 20:00 onwards'.
I find it slightly funny you get perfected gear from doing vet modes,
they want players with difficulty to catch up to pros yet reward ppl that already are good with better gear.
I find it slightly funny you get perfected gear from doing vet modes,
they want players with difficulty to catch up to pros yet reward ppl that already are good with better gear.
You are overrating perfected gear. The difference is minimal, the crucial 5 pc bonus is the same. Perfected gear is just a status symbol.
And of course the gear you get from beating veteran content is better than the gear you get from normal content, even if the bonus is just marginal. Why would you run veteran content if it wasn't the case? Normal content gets you imperfected gear, which helps you to beat veteran content. Veteran content gets you perfected gear, which helps you to beat veteran hardmode. Looks pretty logical to me.