What are your predictions for U36?

casparian · September 2022

At this point I think it's fair to say even ZOS knows U35 needs a lot of polishing, to say the least. There has been a lot of discussion about what players think should happen now, including reverting most or all of U35's changes, but I think we all know ZOS isn't really going to do that. I'm interested in predictions about what ZOS will do, as opposed to what they should do. I'm pretty confident we'll see the following things:

Standardization of DOT durations. Right now the durations of DOTs, HOTs, shields, and other over-time abilities are about as unstandardized as you could possibly make them, with at least 11 different durations spread across different abilities. This creates a situation which, in @ZOS_Gilliam's words, "reinforces a need to glue your eyes to your action bars, taking you out of the action happening on screen." The thing is, those are Gilliam's words describing what was wrong in U34 that U35 was intended to fix. The fact that U35 has made that stated pain point worse is one of the most boggling things about it, to my mind, especially since standardizing abilities to have less variation across the board has been a standard ZOS move for literal years at this point. U36 is almost certainly going to standardize over-time ability durations to just a few duration types. Confidence: 90%
Nerfs to dungeon/trial bosses. We have already seen a nerf of some kind to the health of some dungeon/trial enemies (we don't know exactly which because ZOS won't provide a changelog). ZOS' plan for U35 all along was almost certainly to collect data over the span of U35 to see what changes to dungeons they need to make in U36 in order to adapt to the new normal introduced by U35. The health nerf we saw is just a foretaste of that to tide players over, offered early because of the backlash to U35. Expect to see continued nerfs to enemy health and/or damage. Confidence: 80%
New one-bar playstyle gear. While Oakensoul itself is probably never getting unnerfed, I'm sure ZOS has data showing how popular it was and continues to be among players. The fact is that a more action-oriented playstyle that feels less like Barswap Simulator Online is a very fun, popular way to play the game, and ZOS now knows that. I expect we'll see more gear in the next DLC catered toward those players and enabling one-bar playstyles. Confidence: 70%.
Nerfs to dungeon/trial mechanics. ZOS' data no doubt reflects a huge dropoff in the number of teams completing or even attempting to higher tiers of content in new and recent vet content. Part of the issue, as many players have pointed out, is that U35's changes are intended to balance player performance against DPS dummies (and seemingly only tested in these circumstances), not the increasingly mobile fights that ZOS has been churning out recently. Highly mobile fights make ground-based HOTs and long-duration DOTS significantly less useful than ZOS' balancing assumes they are, making U35 far more punishing to players of all skill levels than ZOS seems to have anticipated. There is really no way to fix this problem without walking back some of U35's changes, which ZOS won't do, so I wouldn't be too surprised to them dampen or even remove some of the mobility required in certain fights. Confidence: 60%

Those are my predictions. What do you think? Regardless of what you'd like to see, what do you predict ZOS will do in U36?

_Zathras_ · September 2022

Honestly, who knows.

But, I imagine it will involve a Wack-a-Mole that has design decisions taped to their heads.

Dr_Con · September 2022

since last patch pretty much went like this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhtVaXc_oBU

1. I predict a paradigm shift that makes people spend 3 mil on dreugh wax, tempering alloy, rosin, kuta, hakeijo, indeko, etc. to gold out a set, and an additional 3.6 mil to gold out the jewelry. Confidence: 100%

2. That the tanky ball ult dump burst meta in Cyrodiil goes relatively untouched. Confidence: 100%

3. That Oakensoul gets minor heroism removed as it shouldn't have it in the first place as it can be abused with balorgh's to get pen that a tanky person didn't have to sacrifice their gear in their build for (500 ult use on balorghs is +11500 pen and +500 spell/weapon damage for 12 seconds btw). The devs will appreciate that people should get ult generation from drinking dragon juice, full set bonuses as a temporary proc not just while you are in combat, or from hitting/healing things. Heck, they made it so you need to be in combat to activate the Arkasis set, the devs probably already knew this was coming. Confidence: 65%

4. In the future, minor or major Heroism, or any form of ult generation won't be added to an item again as a passive that just needs you or a group member to wear it or to be in combat to activate, so that nerfs to these items don't need to happen. Confidence 0.1%

SpacemanSpiff1 · September 2022

i think it's gonna be really good.

starlizard70ub17_ESO · September 2022

i predict a lot of upset players will come on the forum to rant about how U36 killed the game. Threaten to quit and yet still be playing so they can post rants about U37, U38,,,,,

"Forums, forums never change."

Ragnarok0130 · September 2022

SpacemanSpiff1 wrote: »

i think it's gonna be really good.

You kept saying the same exact thing about U35 being "good" yet here we are...

BloodyStigmata · September 2022

_Zathras_ wrote: »

Honestly, who knows.

But, I imagine it will involve a Wack-a-Mole that has design decisions taped to their heads.

Or adding actual whack-a-mole to the game as next year's feature.

markulrich1966 · September 2022

I predict that there will be a new region to explore, and that's it basically.
The rest will be minor adjustments to correct some issues from U35.
I think the next "gamechanger" will arrive with the next chapter, after the PVP server upgrades and server code rewrite. We then will see a stronger focus on PVP related issues, as they announced that they will add new content once these steps are completed.

As the work for such a huge change starts already a year before the release, they most likely will not have the resources to "undo" most of the changes we had in U35.

kwinter · September 2022

ZOS will likely only make minor combat changes for U36. This was change they made to avoid negativity from changes affecting chapters and DLC releases.

Remathilis · September 2022

Dr_Con wrote: »

3. That Oakensoul gets minor heroism removed as it shouldn't have it in the first place as it can be abused with balorgh's to get pen that a tanky person didn't have to sacrifice their gear in their build for (500 ult use on balorghs is +11500 pen and +500 spell/weapon damage for 12 seconds btw). The devs will appreciate that people should get ult generation from drinking dragon juice, full set bonuses as a temporary proc not just while you are in combat, or from hitting/healing things. Heck, they made it so you need to be in combat to activate the Arkasis set, the devs probably already knew this was coming. Confidence: 65%

4. In the future, minor or major Heroism, or any form of ult generation won't be added to an item again as a passive that just needs you or a group member to wear it or to be in combat to activate, so that nerfs to these items don't need to happen. Confidence 0.1%

1. ZoS realizes certain buffs are not viable for PvP but useful for PvE and starts using battle spirit to balance gear rather than bludgeoning every set or mythic that grants a benefit better than Max Magicka to death from the constant cries of the PvP community. Confidence: -0000000000000000.1%

Toxic_Hemlock · September 2022

My prediction will be they will break a few sets/skills/passives, not listen to their tester when told that they busted it and push it through to release anyways...

You know same stuff different patch!

Sandman929 · September 2022

They will not rework what doesn't currently get used by anyone.
They will rework what people do use until people don't want to use it.
They will not rework sets that no one anywhere uses.
They will introduce new sets that everyone will use because they are poorly thought out and broken.

edward_frigidhands · September 2022

- Oakensoul changes (could be nerfs/buffs or both)

- New 1 bar build option of some kind (maybe a monster set)

- Dark Cloak now heals for 33% of missing health over 33 seconds but you have to now stand still the entire time or else. (we as experts felt it was the only way to ensure this ability is not used and all Nightblades roll some kind of stealth build because of class identity. Thanks and bye.)

- New set: Mara's Soothing Balm (healer specific version of Mara's Balm) - hopefully this is balanced

- New set: Nocturnal's Plan (Application of any debuff steals 1 random Major and 1 random Minor buff from your opponent and gives it to you for 13 seconds. 13 second cooldown.

- All Templar animations and sounds are now less prominent and more "quiet". We had them at 7 and we're gonna need them at 2. Silence is golden and so are Templars.

- All Dragon Knight abilities are now basically just Corrosive Armor because its the most balanced thing since a Shake-Weight.

- Warden can now choose between a larger fluffier bear pet or a lil skinny boi bear pet.

zaria · September 2022

SpacemanSpiff1 wrote: »

i think it's gonna be really good.

Agree, it will be an rollback from 35 because lack of player interaction and income.
It would probably be ordered, might even swing to far as people know their jobs is on the line.

If I wanted to nerf I would nerf on chapter release as all would run around doing the zone and leveling Ember and Isobel and adjust during that time.
No hard nerfs on dungeon dlc rather add QoL stuff as they are weak DLC.

They rolled back Morrowind changes after all.
I say that most want is stop of the insane jo-jo stuff balancing it has been decent the last year.

Caribou77 · September 2022

I don’t think they are going to upgrade the servers and rewrite the code for EU, or North America Consol players.

ArchMikem · September 2022

An adventure zone that will be just pretty enough for me to look around gawking just for about two days, and a story that may hold my hand with a death grip thinking I'm five years old and can't comprehend match three puzzles.

...........I'm still gonna buy it.

Dragonlord573 · September 2022

My hope is that the changes in U35 are reverted and they focus on the hybridization changes they promised.

My expectation is for that to not happen and for me to cancel my sub.

MJ202 · September 2022

Predictions for U36 on the game? That's hard to say.

Predictions for U36 on the forums? I predict there will be dozens of posts whining and complaining that it wasn't what "the entire player base" wanted or needed; complaints about how ZOS missed the issue by fixing the wrong things and broke things. I predict there will be posting about how this will force more players to quit. I also predict when U36 goes live, what we will see in the forums will prove what I predicted above to be correct.

Kiralyn2000 · September 2022

OTT drama, and predictions of Doom™.

Again.

Finedaible · September 2022

I get the impression that they don't even know for sure what they are gonna mess around with in U36. My guess is they will steamroll whatever random changes are scheduled to happen before finishing up ongoing reworks. The Empower rework in U35 seemed like an entirely unplanned change for example, and there are many skills they did not adjust with that so I'm guessing Empower will get nerfed in U36 and a few skills will still be thoroughly unviable (like Ambush). They never completely finished the hybridization changes from earlier this year, and we haven't received any changes to alchemy they mentioned either.

There are some good things that came from U35 but I think it would be prudent of them to finish solving existing problems before introducing even more problems.

EldritchSun · September 2022

They will fix a floating tree or a stone in the place you didn't ever notice. High Isle Bosses? What High isle bosses?

Tryxus · September 2022

ESO_Nightingale · September 2022

I don't think anyone knows what their random number generator will do next

Muizer · September 2022

I agree with the OP that a reduction of difficulty in veteran content would be a logical next step from ZOS' point of view as they explained it ahead of U35.

Jaraal · September 2022

You’d have a better chance at winning the lottery than predicting what ZOS will do in three months.

joergino · September 2022

Simple: everything gets even worse for players while words like "accessibility" will keep getting thrown around without referring to anything concrete anywhere.

Beffagorn · September 2022

Hopefully a nerf to Corrosive Armor and Coagulating Blood. Gutting dots in pvp forced even more DKs to run Corrosive because ZoS, as usual, didn't think their changes through for longer than 15minutes.

karthrag_inak · September 2022

Another exercise in randomized optimization - "let's change something else in some random manner and see if anything improves".

RBAP28 · September 2022

More torches and pitchforks.

Tornaad · September 2022

Someone is going to be upset about something. Someone will be happy. Someone will be ambivalent.

rexagamemnon · September 2022

No idea, i just want templars back the way they were. But they probably wont change it back. This update was an abomination