Balance vs. Fun

merpins · August 2022

Balance in a game is good. It can make the game more fun if content is more balanced. But adjusting that content is the way to make it more fun for the players. If content is too easy, make it harder. That makes it harder for newer players to do end of end game content, but newer players aren't attempting end of end game content; they're working their way towards that content. That's not to say some end game content here is too easy, there's a lot of end game content that's now out of reach even to the end game community due to the blanket nerfs. And that's also not to say that nerfs and buffs to skills, classes, and gear aren't warranted. If a set is underperforming, give it a buff. If a skill is over-performing, give it a nerf. But don't do big buffs and nerfs all at once, do small incremental nerfs and buffs each week or two to tweak things rather than doing huge changes every 3 months. These two things combined makes for good balance, the type that a game of this age should be undergoing at this point.

Additionally, balancing is essential in a game where PVP exists. In PVE, you could do a million damage and it hurts no one. Have you seen those videos of four man hyper-optimized vet groups taking down hard vet bosses in 20 seconds flat? I have. And that hurts no one. You can't do that kind of thing in PVP unless something has gone horribly wrong. But because PVP in this game is tied to PVE, it causes this tug-of-war when it comes to balance. Shifting balance can be fun in PVP as well, but because it also effects PVE, you can't really do that without hurting the PVE side. PVE and PVP should be separated for that reason: because of balance versus fun.

The reason people are upset with this update is because the concept of fun wasn't taken into account when determining the changes. You made content at end-game easier, but also nerfed everyone. By doing so, the top-end are still doing around the same amount of damage, if a small amount less, against end-game content (relatively), while everyone else is just getting a nerf. This was claimed to be to lower the ceiling, but you lowered the floor more than the ceiling in the process. The game should be fun, and one of the main communities in this game is about score pushing, learning to do harder content, and getting more damage. It's not fun to see that you could do harder vet dungeons and some vet trials one day, only for the next to have a 25% dps loss alongside healers doing less, and thus you and your group wipes when doing the same content because you either can't heal enough, or because you can't do enough DPS to finish bosses.

Matherios · August 2022

Why would they change the dungeons,arenas,trials one by one based on clear times,boss hp,mechanics etc when they can just nerf fundamental stuff like la,buffs,debuffs etc and achieve the same goal… (sarcasm). They are just lazy but most importantly they don’t know their own game to begin with , there are people who have done every content multiple times and they have exp with it and yet they don’t go ask those people for combat changes instead they coin flip some changes hoping it will end up in the good side of the coin.
For me it feels that they have an ego that they are ‘right’ with the decisions that they make even if 95% of community says no that ain’t good even the casuals/rp/people with health issues that they are trying to help (which I am all down to) they still go with the changes.
I am not loggin on pts because I figured some time ago that it’s pointless and I feel bad for the people who go and test stuff there and write whole articles about their opinions just to end up been ignored(zos is getting paid to test stuff those people ain’t they are just wasting their time doing so). They also need to know that people who play the game for a very long time just by reading patch notes can understand if something is good or bad and not get a reply ‘knee jerk reaction without testing the changes..’
It's really hard to think that in such a long time that they game is alive they still haven’t balanced the classes and combat which doesn’t require that much skill to do(if they played their own game) and so every 3-6 months there is always a class that overperforms compared to the rest or a change in combat that people have to follow if they want to min/max.
People are upset because of the constant changes that people have to adapt to (and not because they added a new class or a skill line which I am pretty sure people would be happy about it and not upset),need to spend gold mats/transmutes/level up new classes, learn how to micromanage a new set, learn a new rotation , etc just for it to be a waste 3 months later. Been ignored is another , breaking promises (finishing hybridilization before other changes) and not making other big changes anymore, and many more.
They could have prevented all of those if they took changes slow and communicated with their community better (assuming they ask the correct people) and them playing their own game. All those are for the combat team and no other team in zos group.

barney2525 · August 2022

I'm reasonably sure they expect the experienced players to be on PTS to try things and give feedback.

It's what they do with the PTS information that comes to question.

When the Company,- Any Company - puts months of work into making a major change, they are Not going to decide (after it gets evaluated by players on PTS) - ' well, bad idea. Never Mind.'

The Change is coming. There may be some tweaking here and there, but the Change Is coming. They spent too much money and time on the Change and so are committed to it.

And if things don't work out, (and even if they do), you can expect a few months down the road, more changes to tweak these changes.

Its an endless spiral.

FeedbackOnly · August 2022

Yeah now we have tried it. I believe changes had right attempt but content wasn't updated properly for them.

Top tier players who hardly notice a difference haven't played we low or mid tier players. These people need more adjustments to recommendations on how to adjust to changes. I see people doing 10k damage now and just don't want to play with them.

Gameplay was designed to be fast now that's it's slower we need more engagement during some experiences. We need fresher animations for skills along with sounds.

If we are going to redesign game then we need to adjust achievements too.

YandereGirlfriend · August 2022

barney2525 wrote: »

I'm reasonably sure they expect the experienced players to be on PTS to try things and give feedback.

It's what they do with the PTS information that comes to question.

When the Company,- Any Company - puts months of work into making a major change, they are Not going to decide (after it gets evaluated by players on PTS) - ' well, bad idea. Never Mind.'

The Change is coming. There may be some tweaking here and there, but the Change Is coming. They spent too much money and time on the Change and so are committed to it.

And if things don't work out, (and even if they do), you can expect a few months down the road, more changes to tweak these changes.

Its an endless spiral.

Yes, the sunk cost fallacy seems to be deeply intertwined with these changes.

If they were thinking farther down the line they would realize that not making these mistakes would save them time and money next patch cycle cleaning them back up.

SeaUnicorn · August 2022

merpins wrote: »

Balance in a game is good. It can make the game more fun if content is more balanced. But adjusting that content is the way to make it more fun for the players. If content is too easy, make it harder. That makes it harder for newer players to do end of end game content, but newer players aren't attempting end of end game content; they're working their way towards that content. That's not to say some end game content here is too easy, there's a lot of end game content that's now out of reach even to the end game community due to the blanket nerfs. And that's also not to say that nerfs and buffs to skills, classes, and gear aren't warranted. If a set is underperforming, give it a buff. If a skill is over-performing, give it a nerf. But don't do big buffs and nerfs all at once, do small incremental nerfs and buffs each week or two to tweak things rather than doing huge changes every 3 months. These two things combined makes for good balance, the type that a game of this age should be undergoing at this point.

Additionally, balancing is essential in a game where PVP exists. In PVE, you could do a million damage and it hurts no one. Have you seen those videos of four man hyper-optimized vet groups taking down hard vet bosses in 20 seconds flat? I have. And that hurts no one. You can't do that kind of thing in PVP unless something has gone horribly wrong. But because PVP in this game is tied to PVE, it causes this tug-of-war when it comes to balance. Shifting balance can be fun in PVP as well, but because it also effects PVE, you can't really do that without hurting the PVE side. PVE and PVP should be separated for that reason: because of balance versus fun.

The reason people are upset with this update is because the concept of fun wasn't taken into account when determining the changes. You made content at end-game easier, but also nerfed everyone. By doing so, the top-end are still doing around the same amount of damage, if a small amount less, against end-game content (relatively), while everyone else is just getting a nerf. This was claimed to be to lower the ceiling, but you lowered the floor more than the ceiling in the process. The game should be fun, and one of the main communities in this game is about score pushing, learning to do harder content, and getting more damage. It's not fun to see that you could do harder vet dungeons and some vet trials one day, only for the next to have a 25% dps loss alongside healers doing less, and thus you and your group wipes when doing the same content because you either can't heal enough, or because you can't do enough DPS to finish bosses.

But top players are not doing same amount of damage, we went to vDSR HM yesterday with a team that was able to clear Taleria HM and discovered that we lost all of our progression and did worse than we did on day 1 of the progression team. We lost 20-25% AOE and bosses only were reduced by 10% max health. Healing is worse (10-40%) depending on a skill, but incoming damage is same. Everyone got nerfed. I can't express how unfair this patch is to the team that did not start progging SS right the way on PTS.

mocap · August 2022

plunge into the abyss of negativity
or
force yourself to solve the problem!

You Westerners have always been considered hardworking and stress-resistant people. So be them! ZOS threw you some problems, can't you solve them?

SeaUnicorn · August 2022

mocap wrote: »

plunge into the abyss of negativity
or
force yourself to solve the problem!

You Westerners have always been considered hardworking and stress-resistant people. So be them! ZOS threw you some problems, can't you solve them?

A lot of us spend hours and hours on PTS submitting feedback for all the issues people bringing up now. we did it each PTS cycle. We went into the trials and completed HM boss fights on PTS, such as vCR HM and vDSR HM and submitted very detailed feedback backed up by logs, analytics, tool-tip comparisons, parses. 99% of that feedback was ignored.

Can't solve the issue when you have 0 power to impact anything. I personally spent 8 hours+ each PTS cycle gathering end game PVE healing feedback. I can safely say all of it was ignored. That is over 40 hours of my work, i.e. full work week that we do not get paid for, but do offer to ZOS because we love the game. And we get nothing out of it. Worse, we got nerfed so hard that we lost full month of SS progression with one of my teams. That is 4 days a week 2.5 hours a day, so another 40 hours of my time went down to drain. And at this point the team is contemplating disbanding as well.

So all and all no, we are not just whining, we are hard-working, but all of our hard work is disregarded and ignored, because we are minority, the 1 percenters, who according to ZOS I quote: "do obscene amounts of damage, manipulate and circumvent game mechanics and do knee-jerk reactions". And not at all hard working people who invested HOURS and HOURS into learning the game, bettering our game play, theory crafting and sharing the knowledge with the community, helping other people to learn and grow in the end game...

sbr32 · August 2022

mocap wrote: »

plunge into the abyss of negativity
or
force yourself to solve the problem!

You Westerners have always been considered hardworking and stress-resistant people. So be them! ZOS threw you some problems, can't you solve them?

I know this isn't worth responding to, but why should I spend time and energy solving intentionally created problems when there are better gamed out there whose development team not only respect me, but don't jerk me around every 3 months.

mocap · August 2022

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

Can't solve the issue when you have 0 power to impact anything.

way more than 0 in the end

Such things are not solved retroactively when they already roll out a new update to the server. History shows that ZOS actually listen to community, but only after a while. I think towards the end of the year we will see the changes that players on the PTS have been asking for.

heaven13 · August 2022

mocap wrote: »

SeaUnicorn wrote: »

Can't solve the issue when you have 0 power to impact anything.

way more than 0 in the end

Such things are not solved retroactively when they already roll out a new update to the server. History shows that ZOS actually listen to community, but only after a while. I think towards the end of the year we will see the changes that players on the PTS have been asking for.

Do you think that’s a healthy development cycle? Releasing broken content, pushing forward with changes that people warn against, and being disrespectful towards the community in the process only to then “listen” next patch cycle and change/revert things that could/should have been adjusted prior to their initial release?

mocap · August 2022

heaven13 wrote: »

Do you think that’s a healthy development cycle?

yes, this is how all online games with meta balance work. Go for, idunno, Path of Exile, there's just hell on earth with builds like every minor update. What we have is nothing compared to some other online games.

Mayrael · August 2022

Well... Sergeant (Lightning staff + neck, ring and chest) Undaunted Infiltrator/Unweaver, Oakensoul, 1pc Slimecraw/Iceheart and just Heavy Attack everything it's easier than it ever was. You're welcome.

DizzyMac · August 2022

The all new ESO U35

FeedbackOnly · August 2022

mocap wrote: »

heaven13 wrote: »

Do you think that’s a healthy development cycle?

yes, this is how all online games with meta balance work. Go for, idunno, Path of Exile, there's just hell on earth with builds like every minor update. What we have is nothing compared to some other online games.

This isn't just a meta shake up but entire gameplay change. Also games are supposed to be fun.