Billium813 wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

I think U36-37 is likely going to be more dmg control on this when it hits live, if they keep at their current predictability, U38 will be the next chapter release so im assuming they would A) have to come up with something REALLY good for that chapter and B ) will likely have reverted 85% of the nerfs in this chapter before then lol

I think my biggest complaint is with HOW MUCH they are changing and HOW LONG they take to properly evaluate and test the changes. I feel like we see this everytime ZOS makes these large changes. They use the same PTS window of ~6 weeks to alpha test changes. The community provides feedback that they don't want these changes or that they should be changed in specific ways. ZOS meanwhile just wants to hear that none of their changes are "broken" and already plans on pushing them to live anyway! Our desired input during PTS testing is only to find legitimate bugs and breaks. They don't want to hear our constructive feedback on how to improve or change anything!

They want to change what they want to change and just want us to make sure it isn't broken. AND EVEN THEN they will still ship it to Live and just fix it later (which IMO is the worst part). They make changes for one reason, but then those changes either negate or impede the original reason, or break some other aspect they should have seen, or upset so much of their established player base that we have to question why these changes were pushed forward in the first place.

So, when are U36 & U37 expected dates? I think I'll be taking a break from the game for awhile. I don't feel like paying for a subscription to beta test their changes on live for several months.

i agree, in terms of the depth of these changes the amount of testing time should have at minimum been doubled, but zos is committed to pushing out 4 releases a year

aug 22 is release of this next update

if things are still consistent the new PTS will start up roughly 2-4 weeks after the release, and the PTS will last 6 weeks (so on avg every major release is about 3 months, high isle release was june, this dlc is august

i honestly would be fine if they changed to 2 major releases a year and just included those new dungeons in the bigger releases, if it would double the amount of time they had to test and think through the content than just vomit out content it would probably be better for everyone

with the quarterly release schedule though, its left virtually no time for them to address bugs as they are constantly working on new content

EldritchSun wrote: »

If only U35 were the only problem. The new OP sets (hello, Archdruid monster set and Turning Tide, farewell, necro class identity) and mostly useless class skills are the main reason for me to say 'farewell' once I collect all the gold from the guild sales just in case if I return to do housing and new overland stuff.

Yeah, while I have genuinely enjoyed the hybridization patch, it's contributed a lot to killing class identity. Weapon and Guild skill lines are so strong that all class rotations boil down to 5 weapon/guild skills and few of their own class skills. I feel focusing on that would have been much more productive than these changes.

AlekWithK wrote: »

EldritchSun wrote: »

If only U35 were the only problem. The new OP sets (hello, Archdruid monster set and Turning Tide, farewell, necro class identity) and mostly useless class skills are the main reason for me to say 'farewell' once I collect all the gold from the guild sales just in case if I return to do housing and new overland stuff.

Yeah, while I have genuinely enjoyed the hybridization patch, it's contributed a lot to killing class identity. Weapon and Guild skill lines are so strong that all class rotations boil down to 5 weapon/guild skills and few of their own class skills. I feel focusing on that would have been much more productive than these changes.

But killing class identity doesn't help with ZOS's mission statement that you can play anyway you want! Want to play as a NB Tank with Bow/Daggers? Go for it! Want to be a DK healer that uses inferno/2H? We support it! They are too busy making every playstyle legitimate that specific class strengths are completely lost unless you are pushing the top 0.02%. Race doesn't really matter. Class doesn't really matter. Weapons choice barely matters.

Billium813 wrote: »

But killing class identity doesn't help with ZOS's mission statement that you can play anyway you want! Want to play as a NB Tank with Bow/Daggers? Go for it! Want to be a DK healer that uses inferno/2H? We support it! They are too busy making every playstyle legitimate that specific class strengths are completely lost unless you are pushing the top 0.02%. Race doesn't really matter. Class doesn't really matter. Weapons choice barely matters.

Weapons choice actually do matters for support role, because of lacking decent alternatives in the class skills. NB doesn't have class taunt, DK heals are outperformed by the resto staff skills. This is a sort of soft gameplay restriction. Nobody tells you that you can't go on a tank with daggers, but you're just gonna be useless since dual wield will give you nothing for tanking unless you slot the undaunted taunt skill, but what's the point.

I come to thinking the 'play what you want system' is just failed, and we'd better have something like DK as tanks only, templars as healers etc, without all those guild skills. Or wouldn't have predefined classes at all or standard 'Warrior-mage-rogue' archetypes with further archetype-specific skill lines unlocked via the game progression.

Upd: Sorry for bad writing, I'm not an English speaker.

Agreed with everything said.

These past six weeks of the community doing thousands of hours of unpaid testing and having critiques ignored has led to many members of our small raiding community already quitting. They've already moved on to other games and I have no idea if they'll come back, whether by miracle patch delay or future update.

And while this population loss may seem small on paper, it has ramifications for larger parts of the greater community. Look at Nefas's Project Vitality, which was created with the same purpose as the developer's stated intention for this patch: to increase accessibility. Me and the officers in my guild were involved in this project as short-term raid leads and our goal was to introduce as many players as possible into vet raiding. Last I heard, the number of leads across all platforms went from 220+ to 60 after this PTS cycle. Consider this: every raid lead enables 11 other players to join a raiding session. So losing 150+ leads is the equivalent of 1.5k+ other lost raiding opportunities. (That's if raid leads only hosted one trial. There were many that were hosting multiple a day or week.)

This is just one project, albeit one hosted in the largest ESO community. There's been many other discords that become deactivated or no longer focus on ESO. Will there be a new generation of raiders to replace what was lost? Or will it be months on end of roster progs with an even smaller and more claustrophobic community?

I agreed with the stated intention of this patch. More accessibility is great. I raid lead for a couple of years and seeing people progress from my training runs to getting trifectas like GS was incredibly fulfilling. I got burnt out for other reasons and helping people develop into skilled raiders was not one of them. However this patch as currently implemented will not do that. I foresee many average groups being unable to clear content that they would've otherwise just barely squeaked by. I also see many months in the future dedicated to patches designed around rectifying the numerous pain points that this rushed and heavy PTS cycle will inevitably produce.

As for myself, I uninstalled the PTS a few weeks in when it was clear my feedback was going nowhere. From the sidelines I saw my friends continue to raid and parse on the PTS and have their feedback similarly end up nowhere. We are past the final week of the PTS and healer hots are still stuck on a 2s tick rate: how does this produce any accessibility for healers? If 2 experienced players are struggling to heal for just a clear of VKA HM or VCR HM, what does this say about newer to intermediate healers? No blanket health nerf to enemies will fix this -- and the health nerf as is does not compensate for the large amount of lost DPS from every single percentile of performing players. I wonder: has the development or internal testing team tried out Xalvakka HM or the newest trial HM with the new combat changes?

If more of my friends quit or if my PB prog (which just started resetting on death) has to disband or reset progression after the patch, I'm just gonna take the L on all my investment into this game and quit as well. I already cancelled my subscription. That's all and this will be my last bit of feedback on this topic.

HauteclereM wrote: »

Agreed with everything said.

These past six weeks of the community doing thousands of hours of unpaid testing and having critiques ignored has led to many members of our small raiding community already quitting. They've already moved on to other games and I have no idea if they'll come back, whether by miracle patch delay or future update.

And while this population loss may seem small on paper, it has ramifications for larger parts of the greater community. Look at Nefas's Project Vitality, which was created with the same purpose as the developer's stated intention for this patch: to increase accessibility. Me and the officers in my guild were involved in this project as short-term raid leads and our goal was to introduce as many players as possible into vet raiding. Last I heard, the number of leads across all platforms went from 220+ to 60 after this PTS cycle. Consider this: every raid lead enables 11 other players to join a raiding session. So losing 150+ leads is the equivalent of 1.5k+ other lost raiding opportunities. (That's if raid leads only hosted one trial. There were many that were hosting multiple a day or week.)

This is just one project, albeit one hosted in the largest ESO community. There's been many other discords that become deactivated or no longer focus on ESO. Will there be a new generation of raiders to replace what was lost? Or will it be months on end of roster progs with an even smaller and more claustrophobic community?

I agreed with the stated intention of this patch. More accessibility is great. I raid lead for a couple of years and seeing people progress from my training runs to getting trifectas like GS was incredibly fulfilling. I got burnt out for other reasons and helping people develop into skilled raiders was not one of them. However this patch as currently implemented will not do that. I foresee many average groups being unable to clear content that they would've otherwise just barely squeaked by. I also see many months in the future dedicated to patches designed around rectifying the numerous pain points that this rushed and heavy PTS cycle will inevitably produce.

As for myself, I uninstalled the PTS a few weeks in when it was clear my feedback was going nowhere. From the sidelines I saw my friends continue to raid and parse on the PTS and have their feedback similarly end up nowhere. We are past the final week of the PTS and healer hots are still stuck on a 2s tick rate: how does this produce any accessibility for healers? If 2 experienced players are struggling to heal for just a clear of VKA HM or VCR HM, what does this say about newer to intermediate healers? No blanket health nerf to enemies will fix this -- and the health nerf as is does not compensate for the large amount of lost DPS from every single percentile of performing players. I wonder: has the development or internal testing team tried out Xalvakka HM or the newest trial HM with the new combat changes?

If more of my friends quit or if my PB prog (which just started resetting on death) has to disband or reset progression after the patch, I'm just gonna take the L on all my investment into this game and quit as well. I already cancelled my subscription. That's all and this will be my last bit of feedback on this topic.

100% with you.. My friends and I walked away and are done.

With all these negative review with this update, if zos still continue to make this update go live then they should DELETE THE PTS FORUM SECTION. Its no need for feedback at all wasting our time

At this point, I am almost expecting them to just reverting back to week 1 of PTS given little to no communications outside of moderators deleting/censoring and Kevin sometimes trying to explain vague statements from devs' comments which ending up still not making sense. Maybe it is because this update doesn't make sense in its base level.

Jaraal wrote: »

duckdown wrote: »

With all these negative review with this update, if zos still continue to make this update go live then they should DELETE THE PTS FORUM SECTION. Its no need for feedback at all wasting our time

They use this section to get information from players about serious bugs and unforeseen exploits. Feedback about whether we "like" the changes or not seems mostly ignored.

Then we should stop doing their work for them.

For anyone interested there is a very interesting series by a guy on YouTube called "neverknowsbest" about the histt of mmos and how to "save" them. It's worth a watch if anyone has the time. Especially the second one. Pretty pertinent to what's going on in ESO right now.