Dear ZoS, I may have a genuine solution for your Balancing issues.

Einar_Hrafnarsson · October 2022

Greetings.

I have no idea if something like this has been brought up before but in my hopes of ESO not becoming more and more empty, i would like to offer this suggestion:

Rolespecific Stats. Now, hear me out. ESO is hard to balance because of how much freedom it gives and my suggestion will take away SOME of that freedom but will fix a lot of issues many of the community members and ZoS themselves have.

So, instead of choosing to spend points in magicka, stamina or health as you level up, you get to choose 1 Stat as you reach level 10. Endurance for Tank, Compassion for Healer and Power for DPS. These can be switched via the available scrolls, at the shrine or at the preset Table.
Endurance makes you very Tanky and gives you extra health while keeping your DPS and Healing at a lower level. Compassion boosts all your healing skills and stats but keeps your damage and Health at a lower level and finaly: Power. You do a lot of damage but your selfheal and survivabillity are tuned down.

This would fix a lot of balancing issues and other stuff like Fake Tanks and fake Healers when implemented with a requirement that only those who have chosen Endurance can queue up as a tank and so on. Undying DPS in PvP? Gone. Tanks that can still oneshot you? Gone. If you still wish to be a bit more Tanky as a DPS then you have to wear specific sets for this while suffering on your DPS side. How will this make ESO easier to balance? Well, since we would have these role specific stats/boosts. Heals would only be strong on Healers, DPS skill only Strong on DPS and so on. The Devs would not have to take every Set, class and skill into account when trying to balance things out because this would simply be done by the chosen path.

The only thing they would have to do is tune the numbers of each path (Endurance, Power, Compassion) so they are at about the same level respectively, only to be influenced by the sets we wear so we still have a way of creating unique builds.

Now i am interested what you all, and maybe even ZoS, think.

Have a pleasant day.

(And please keep it civil, this is really just a idea i thought might help the Game and the accessability ZoS craves)

Tandor · October 2022

What about those players who don't play specific roles? Most content can be done by any build, it's only the small ultra-competitive endgame subset of players that requires set roles and I don't really see how this system would offer any better balancing than the existing one which is fine as far as I'm concerned.

Heartrage · October 2022

I don’t think that making people go through these linear paths would be good. Pvp and solo players need a bit of everything to be able to be effective and this seems like it would have to make it harder to do to prevent people from fake role.

As for balancing in general, I think one of the issue is that healing spells are very strong even without perks/equipment to boost them. They are so strong, in fact, that you can build to heal way too much even for veteran dungeon. Since they also scale with damage stats, it means that it is easy for a dps in pvp to have very strong healing abilities and that healing sets that increase healing are redundant for healers.

Lowering base healing value, decreasing magicka and spell power scaling and increasing % healing done/received would help solve this issue.

dsalter · October 2022

make it so it only applies to dungeons, trials and PvP and i can see it working

Kessra · October 2022

The stat distribution is the tinest problem IMO. Especially in PvP it is usually more important of what set-combinations you are wearing. With over 500 sets you can choose from finding the right sets is the challenging part. Some sets are catered around being counter sets to certain gameplays. I.e. there are certain sets ideal vs. tanky players while they do almost no damage to other players and so forth. The problem here is, you can't balance 500+ sets equally. Usually a couple of sets are worn which streamers or ones who write guides for recommend. Therefore the sets reduce probably to like 50-100 in total, which is still a huge amount to balance and get right.

I don't think that the distribution into power, health and so forth will solve the problem. I.e. I as PvE Tank do not spend all my points into health as surviving stuff isn't my problem and any more health I gain through putting attribute points into it doesn't serve my purpose. Your argument is basically that all my stats should be health which cripples my already low stamina and magica bars which I actually need to block incoming damage and take control of mobs.

MerguezMan · October 2022

Hi,

If I get your idea, that would be adding a parallel skill tree with points to spend in either healing, tanking or damage, each perk reducing the others ?
1) I assume you would still be able to invest 1/3 of skill points in each perk, which would give similar results as the current status of the game, and wouldn't solve any issue.
2) Alternatively, you would probably be able to invest in 2 perks out of the 3 to find some still overpowered and unbalanced build (damage + healing or tanking ; or healing+tanking)
3) such system implies that you would have to respec to change roles, which you already have to (if you optimize your build a bit) with raw stats, CP perks, some active skills, and gear. That's already a lot to tweak, and I don't feel like tweaking one more skill tree just for changing roles for an hour or so.

The idea is not completely bad, but feels like CP system with predefined pickings ... I'm pretty sure it would lead to damage dealers becoming glasscannons, and it's not fun to continuously rez people as a tank or healer.

I'd prefer some gameplay overhaul of enemy AI and mechanics, and hopefully something not involving annoying dungeons oneshots or invincibility phases

Hapexamendios · October 2022

No thanks. I prefer have tanks and dps that can self heal and so do my friends. When we run dungeons, we use 3 dps and a tank or 4 dps. Your method would not work with our preferred play style.

TaSheen · October 2022

Personally much prefer to be able to self heal as necessary on my characters (who are all dps - I don't play tanks or healers).

Dr_Con · October 2022

This has been discussed before... I feel It would work better if you queued for a dungeon and your role that you picked made you tankier, heal more, or do more damage depending on what you queued for. Maybe there should also be consumable, role-specific food buffs depending on what role you picked... They should incentivize playstyles rather than punish. I think your solution is a bit overcomplicated for a simple issue.

TechMaybeHic · October 2022

This is trying to force a Trinity on a game that's slogan was "play as you want.". I get it. You WANT it to play as a Trinity, but that's your choice. Make friends and play together that way. It's really the most effective group comp in PvP (see ball groups), and viable for PvE but not everyone wants to play that way. And there's no reason you can't without forcing others.

Zenzuki · October 2022

ZOS simply needs to lean into Battlespirit!

This is probably the only way they'll truly be able to balance this game in the state it's in currently (considering how many sets and skills that exist today, and are added quarterly/yearly).

It's code that already exists in game and they've only touched on it with a few sets, and only in the most basic of ways.

Just go all-in ZOS and dedicate a small crew (making this their main project until completion), to going though all sets and skills, delineating which group (PVP/PVE) each go into (some will of course fit into both), once everything is grouped, the combat balancing team can assign whatever math (through Battlespirit) is necessary to balance PVP/PVE separately.

Then follow that process going forward. . . forever!

And realistically, not EVERY skill or gear set will need to change. There would more than likely be a large number of them that could simply be assigned as "legacy" due to them being non-problematic, already balanced in their respective play styles, or they're sets/skills that have fallen out of favor and simply aren't being used by the community in any appreciable way any longer.

Sure, it'll be a project (but not any harder then re-writing base code as they are already), but once the initial busy work is done bringing all the necessary previous set/skills into (and tuning them with) the battlespirit mechanic, it'll be much easier going forward with new sets/skills using that formula and should create a much healthier future for the game.

dmnqwk · October 2022

Einar_Hrafnarsson wrote: »

Greetings.

I have no idea if something like this has been brought up before but in my hopes of ESO not becoming more and more empty, i would like to offer this suggestion:

Rolespecific Stats. Now, hear me out. ESO is hard to balance because of how much freedom it gives and my suggestion will take away SOME of that freedom but will fix a lot of issues many of the community members and ZoS themselves have.

So, instead of choosing to spend points in magicka, stamina or health as you level up, you get to choose 1 Stat as you reach level 10. Endurance for Tank, Compassion for Healer and Power for DPS. These can be switched via the available scrolls, at the shrine or at the preset Table.
Endurance makes you very Tanky and gives you extra health while keeping your DPS and Healing at a lower level. Compassion boosts all your healing skills and stats but keeps your damage and Health at a lower level and finaly: Power. You do a lot of damage but your selfheal and survivabillity are tuned down.

This would fix a lot of balancing issues and other stuff like Fake Tanks and fake Healers when implemented with a requirement that only those who have chosen Endurance can queue up as a tank and so on. Undying DPS in PvP? Gone. Tanks that can still oneshot you? Gone. If you still wish to be a bit more Tanky as a DPS then you have to wear specific sets for this while suffering on your DPS side. How will this make ESO easier to balance? Well, since we would have these role specific stats/boosts. Heals would only be strong on Healers, DPS skill only Strong on DPS and so on. The Devs would not have to take every Set, class and skill into account when trying to balance things out because this would simply be done by the chosen path.

The only thing they would have to do is tune the numbers of each path (Endurance, Power, Compassion) so they are at about the same level respectively, only to be influenced by the sets we wear so we still have a way of creating unique builds.

Now i am interested what you all, and maybe even ZoS, think.

Have a pleasant day.

(And please keep it civil, this is really just a idea i thought might help the Game and the accessability ZoS craves)

This is not a good idea.

You essentially wanted to rename the stats for others that do exactly the same, except added in healing as an option when the game is designed that healing and damage are both part of the same power system.

If you'd explained you wanted to separate healing and damage power, you could - but that's not the proposition you laid out.

ESO is not hard to balance because of how much freedom it gives, it's hard to balance because of the options that are out there. Freedom to pick from 15 sets is very different to picking from 150 sets.

There's also the issue where you think this would affect fake tanks and healers because, it wouldn't in the slighest. It would have no bearing at all. I have 8 chars atm, 6 of whom can either tank or heal with current setups. Every single one of those has both a trial and a hybrid build set up - because I don't want to take a full, pointless healer into a normal dungeon for 10 transmute crystals when I can bring one that puts out 20-30k dps instead by using the system already in place. Same with tanks, 20-30k dps single target on bosses while easily fulfilling their actual roles.

People who fake tank or fake heal actively make a choice to neglect others, this will do nothing to change that.

barney2525 · October 2022

Which game are you trying to imitate here?

svendf · October 2022

OP. You will never get this through, simply because some people want to be in control. Part of the community is not ready for this.

Part of the DD community want status quo, simplt because it´s the only way for them to stay in control. They want their 3 or 4 DD runs. They want you to roll out and dd if you even don´t want to.

There are a reply in the post above mine, telling you exactly that. Others in this post is just wording it in another way.

You want change and I understand that. I don´t believe making roles even or equal important in this game is possible bacause of the large DD community and ZOS.

Good luck though xD

DMuehlhausen · October 2022

First off, things can never be "balanced" in a game where they try to balance PvE and PvP the numbers just don't work. Now if you're talking about balance between the classes and Magicka and Stamina then maybe.

The easiest would be to introduce something like Power as another attribute. This would become the stat for melee characters (mostly stam toons now). then you wouldn't have one class that has to use their ability to dodge and block. You could then make sure damage from both are equal on skills.

AcadianPaladin · October 2022

I suppose the trilogy system has a place but not really for me. My dungeon running is about 90% solo, 8% duo and only 2% with a group of 4. And any one of the trilogy in a pure form is lousy for solo dungeon crawling or questing. . . or really anything unless part of an organized group running a group dungeon or trial. If I can't hold a boss by the nose and kill him while keeping myself alive, I'd be looking for another game that better supports my goals.

Artim_X · October 2022

The game is meant to give us a sense of freedom, which is why content like solo arenas can even exist (essentially performing all three roles).

Due to horizontal progression, the game is intentionally balanced a certain way (seemingly constant changes) to ensure that most players are constantly grinding for something new and not staying stucks using the same stuff (if it ain't broke, don't fix it). Some players can get away for years using the same gear and skills, till ZOS decides to shake up their playstyle as well.

sPark101 · October 2022

I like the way thing are.

SilverBride · October 2022

I do not want to micromanage my characters this way.

FluffyBird · October 2022

Adding one more layer to an onion won't make you cry less when you cut it

Rogue_WolfESO · October 2022

Nah, I think they should just stop nerfing everything in the name of "balance" and just give everyone uncapped abilities. Now that would be balance for you!

Maximilian · October 2022

I like the current game as is

Baconlad · October 2022

There's not that many balance issues.

In ESO a particular issue of balance mostly stems from not just one set, one skill or one single other thing.

It's normally multiple things that come together to form that particular issue.

For example. You should consider a necro bomber. They are by far the best bombers in PvP. Using vicious death, the purple pull swirly proc set, and balorg with graveyard and harmony traits and colossus. All of those combined and ONLY combined make necro bombing OP

Take away any piece of that puzzle and you nuke necro bombing.

Unfortunately the way zos looks at these issues they normally choose the path that nukes all classes. Another example when DKs were the Bees knees last patch, they nerfed plaguebreak and oakensoul. which yeah it was strong...but it was strongest on DK...why? Because of specific DK synergies with it. My class got nerfed too, even though my class wasn't a culprit of being OP.

It's because of this I'd rather them just not try to balance things. Myself and the general community feels like they can't really balance in a positive way. They've been dropping balance on their head every time they try.

Vulkunne · October 2022

Einar_Hrafnarsson wrote: »

Greetings.

I have no idea if something like this has been brought up before but in my hopes of ESO not becoming more and more empty, i would like to offer this suggestion:

Rolespecific Stats. Now, hear me out. ESO is hard to balance because of how much freedom it gives and my suggestion will take away SOME of that freedom but will fix a lot of issues many of the community members and ZoS themselves have.

So, instead of choosing to spend points in magicka, stamina or health as you level up, you get to choose 1 Stat as you reach level 10. Endurance for Tank, Compassion for Healer and Power for DPS. These can be switched via the available scrolls, at the shrine or at the preset Table.
Endurance makes you very Tanky and gives you extra health while keeping your DPS and Healing at a lower level. Compassion boosts all your healing skills and stats but keeps your damage and Health at a lower level and finaly: Power. You do a lot of damage but your selfheal and survivabillity are tuned down.

This would fix a lot of balancing issues and other stuff like Fake Tanks and fake Healers when implemented with a requirement that only those who have chosen Endurance can queue up as a tank and so on. Undying DPS in PvP? Gone. Tanks that can still oneshot you? Gone. If you still wish to be a bit more Tanky as a DPS then you have to wear specific sets for this while suffering on your DPS side. How will this make ESO easier to balance? Well, since we would have these role specific stats/boosts. Heals would only be strong on Healers, DPS skill only Strong on DPS and so on. The Devs would not have to take every Set, class and skill into account when trying to balance things out because this would simply be done by the chosen path.

The only thing they would have to do is tune the numbers of each path (Endurance, Power, Compassion) so they are at about the same level respectively, only to be influenced by the sets we wear so we still have a way of creating unique builds.

Now i am interested what you all, and maybe even ZoS, think.

Have a pleasant day.

(And please keep it civil, this is really just a idea i thought might help the Game and the accessability ZoS craves)

Thank you for your thoughts OP.

There are two issues that I see with this approach.

a) Doing things this way lacks progression. In other words, I would be anchored, in a fundamental way, to accepting the fact that my role is more or less denied from doing certain things. Many times a situation will arise where I need a healer who can also do good DPS or I need a Tank whose a healer or DPS also. And in seeking this thing that I try out many different sets however if we go with this there is no longer any real progression as no matter what set I choose to use I am still fundamentally limited which means that on average most players of same role will all be of similar strength without having to try to be no better or worse.

b) All the responsibility for what everyone can or can not build will get put on the devs, as they will need to choose how strong a character should be, which is a weird approach. It is better to let the individual decide for themselves what strengths or weaknesses they wish to incorporate.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · October 2022

I dont see this helping balancing issues. The real balancing issues are between magic, stam, hybrid and class to class. This might solve some of the group finder rage surrounding fake tanks and healers, but balancing this game around the cesspool that is groupfinder would be a very bad idea...

Kingsindarkness · October 2022

Or just take the meta out back and put it out of its misery...

Josh Strife Hays created a great video back in 2020 about how Metas inevitably ruin MMO's and that's doubly true considering how ESO is distancing itself from the MMO title.

Meta never really makes the best that much better, it only really helps Hyper-competitive players and pretty much gives the finger to everyone else.

It's an unpopular opinion...but it would solve a lot of issues.

FluffyBird · October 2022

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

Or just take the meta out back and put it out of its misery...

Josh Strife Hays created a great video back in 2020 about how Metas inevitably ruin MMO's and that's doubly true considering how ESO is distancing itself from the MMO title.

Meta never really makes the best that much better, it only really helps Hyper-competitive players and pretty much gives the finger to everyone else.

It's an unpopular opinion...but it would solve a lot of issues.

Meta is simply the most optimal setup for the task. To get rid of meta ESO needs to be perfectly balanced (like all things should be), but you propose to balance by getting rid of the meta.

So, how ZOS could take out meta if not by balancing?

phaneub17_ESO · October 2022

Just give me 3 companions in group dungeons and call it Mission Accomplished.

Didgerion · October 2022

All they need to do is to get rid of classes. Then the game will be much easier to balance.

Dozen of skill lines each with unique skills is all players need. Let the player create their own class using skills.

Right now ZOS wants to balance the game while preserving the class identity. That is impossible to do.

CasgarTheSomnolent · October 2022

Just let people queue the way they want. Stop this Trinity nonsense; it's a terrible fit for this game. Funny how games that force the Trinity have awful queuing issues. This isn't even a pvp game like Overwatch.

There are always going to be an excess of DPS in any game. Let people queue for dungeons with four DPS if they want. Or one tank and three DPS. The 40+ minute DPS queue problems that have plagued the game indefinitely are immediately solved. Give players the options to set whether they'll accept being in a group with those compositions. If they want the standard Trinity setup, they can wait for that while others like me are happy to do 3 or 4 DPS. As @TechMaybeHic said above, the game is claiming it's trying to give you flexibility to play how you want; ZOS's right side of its mouth should listen to its left side here.

So, two things ZOS could do: Make the dungeon finder allow 3 and 4 DPS teams, and add game-wide party finder where a person can post specific activities and requirements and manually recruit their own teams. And if you want more nuance in your party composition, then you can go join one of the many guilds devoted to that sort of stuff.

Trying to overwrite the core systems of the game because certain things seem out of balance is not the issue. Helping people actually find and play with the people that match and complement their style is.

Kingsindarkness · October 2022

FluffyBird wrote: »

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

Or just take the meta out back and put it out of its misery...

Josh Strife Hays created a great video back in 2020 about how Metas inevitably ruin MMO's and that's doubly true considering how ESO is distancing itself from the MMO title.

Meta never really makes the best that much better, it only really helps Hyper-competitive players and pretty much gives the finger to everyone else.

It's an unpopular opinion...but it would solve a lot of issues.

Meta is simply the most optimal setup for the task. To get rid of meta ESO needs to be perfectly balanced (like all things should be), but you propose to balance by getting rid of the meta.

So, how ZOS could take out meta if not by balancing?

That's the thing though... this activistic need for balance...it's the hyper-competitive that demands it, no one else does. Most people play just to have fun, they could care less if they are doing .000000001% more damage than the other guy and honestly following the meta doesn't make you that much more profecient....all the meta has ever done is let a few people thump their chest and lord over others

It's silly and like the video I mentioned...I think it will go the way of the Dodo one day.

The Trinity the meta all of this needs to be abolished (rather the Trinity should be abolished and the meta reformed)...the Hyper-Competitive elements of this game does nothing but breed discord and toxicity. It has to end.