What Ruined Combat In ESO?

katanagirl1 · October 21

Muizer wrote: »

I know I won't get the popularity vote for this but I would never have put in player centered AOE in the first place. I think their impact on gameplay is just bad in every way. Apart from self-buffs, self-heals, and self-shields all abilities should have been targeted. On top of that offensive AOE should have had a minimum range. I think this would have shifted some emphasis from rotating though skills to positioning and targeting, making combat as a whole more sensible.

I feel exactly the opposite. It’s not fun having to hit an enemy with a slew of single target skills until you kill him, then rinse and repeat for the next, and on and on. It was much more fun when you had aoes that ticked every second and did more damage.

Pinja · October 21

Well I'm glad OP is talking about balance and about not performance. There was a time on these forums when balance discussions were fervent and common. Then they all switched to posts about lag, crashes, and performance. I don't necessarily agree with all of OP's statements, as I am a fan of sub classing.
Although as he said plane classes probably didn't need the nerfs. To credit the Dev team, they didn't nerf Socerer they just moved stuff around. I lost some Health recovery on a super tank build, but gained perks as a strait sorcerer DPS. And with the way I sub classed for pvp I just became stronger (I don't run Animal Assassin.)
This system reminds me of Oakensol release. There are a lot of players that get to feel strong for now before Herald of the Tome gets scaled back.

Muizer · October 21

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Muizer wrote: »

I know I won't get the popularity vote for this but I would never have put in player centered AOE in the first place. I think their impact on gameplay is just bad in every way. Apart from self-buffs, self-heals, and self-shields all abilities should have been targeted. On top of that offensive AOE should have had a minimum range. I think this would have shifted some emphasis from rotating though skills to positioning and targeting, making combat as a whole more sensible.

It’s not fun having to hit an enemy with a slew of single target skills until you kill him, then rinse and repeat for the next, and on and on.

I have no problem with offensive AOE as long as it's ranged and the player is outside of the blast zone at the time of casting.

Edited for clarity

StihlReign · October 21

What Ruined Combat In ESO?

A strategic commitment to destabilization as a monetary policy vs stabilization as a long term monetary strategy.

One is what we have now. The other is what we know is possible, have often wished for, see in other games, and know deep down is what will stabilize the game as it promotes an underlying sense of fairness.

TL;DR? - Unhealthy FOMO combat vs. healthy FOMO combat

BXR_Lonestar · October 22

The combat system in this game is EASILY the thing I hate the most in it, and it is all because your ability to do good DPS isn't determined by build (we can all look up builds) or gear (we can all grind for gear, and even normal trials gear will give you 97% of the DPS you'd get with perfected gear), but whether or not you can flawlessly animation cancel, bash cancel, or light attack weave. And this becomes an even more difficult feat for those who have average internet connections and live in rural areas.

Stack ontop of this that the game puts artificial pressure on you to maintain high uptimes on short-lived bonuses, and it feels like playing DPS in this game is more about muscle memory and button mashing than build. I just don't like this system.

This would not be so bad if we had more varieties of styles for DPS, but we don't. We have the meta animation canceling beamers, and then if you don't like animation cancelling, you can use low-tier beamer builds or heavy attacks which are so ridiculously far below the meta that its a joke IMO. I recognize there will always be a META, but the META shouldn't be that much better than other builds.

Then beyond the animation cancelling system, I don't think hybridization and/or subclassing were good for the game. Hybridization squished the stam and magika metas together so now there is just a single meta regardless of spec, and subclassing has basically eliminated all semblances of class, neither of which are good changes for the game IMO.

Gabriel_H · October 22

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

The combat system in this game is EASILY the thing I hate the most in it, and it is all because your ability to do good DPS isn't determined by build (we can all look up builds) or gear (we can all grind for gear, and even normal trials gear will give you 97% of the DPS you'd get with perfected gear), but whether or not you can flawlessly animation cancel, bash cancel, or light attack weave.

Yes/No. What you are referencing is doing "maximum damage" - Now in ESO that does mean doing good dps ... BUT ... in other MMOs like FF XIV, WoW, GW2 etc that maximum damage becomes maximum allowed damage - and DDs have to pull back on the damage they are doing.

Those games have a damage cap determined by the threat mechanics. As ESO relies on a taunt mechanic it means (because of how mechs can be skipped) the DDs can go all out.

Games with threat mechanics have the balance set around alloweable damage. In ESO the balance is set around the trifecta. Now, that might mean a DD has to output 50k dps for the whole trial to satisfy the time requirements; but the problem is that some builds can output more than that - but it isn't necessary to do so - and it is the players who are saying the 50k is bad dps and the 50k+ is good dps.

Techwolf_Lupindo · October 22

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

Not fixing animation canceling and basically making every class something with Arcanist

This so much. Keeping an "exploit" forever anenates players over the long term as players don't like cheaters overall. The Arcanist just needs some tweaking to dial back its beam to align with other class skills power.

pelle412 · October 22

What ruined combat for me (as I stopped playing the game) was the dumbing down of light attack weaving, hybridization and sub-classing. Everything that made each class and build feel unique paired with the subtle weaving to maximize performance was beautiful. Now it just feels dull.

Techwolf_Lupindo · October 22

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Most players aren't going to be too upset if their meta builds one year later are no longer meta but within 5% of the new meta. That is what we call tweaking.

But losing 30% of your dps after a major patch is not tweaking, it's death. After Patch 35 my stamwarden was no longer viable for prog runs and our nightblade in the prog simply gave up because he couldn't play his favourite class any more.

Werewolf tanking which was a niche build got destroyed not because it was overpowered but because the devs didn't approve of the playstyle. Players enjoyed it and it was not ruining the game in any way and yet the devs burned it to the ground!

This so much. A fellow guild player gave me a HA DK build that really worked well for me. I was in a actual prog group for a few months because of that. I parse 80K on that build, after a major patch, it went down to 40K to 50K. Ended up leaving that group due to could not put out the DPS to help the group complete endgame content. The builds everyone was complaining about was the Sroc HA builds that parse much higher then I did. But instead of looking at why the Sorc HA builds did so well and then tweak the sorc skills and passives to make there HA builds in line with other class HA builds, they nuke everyone. Including me.

The werewolf tank nukeler nerf was just baffling, there was no reason to do that. Many players, including me, like playing the werewolf. It is the original easy to play build sense the beginning of the game. A full pack of werewolves just tearing though a dungeon is fun. But ZOS does not think so and remove one of the few alternative fun playstyles.

blktauna · October 22

Marto wrote: »

Of course the lead combat developer knows how heavy attacks work. Of course anyone in the combat team knows what sets do. Or what the basic pros and cons of different skills are.

Who do you think made those skills and sets in the first place? Or do you think it was Skinnycheeks who came up with the idea of using Tome Bearer's Inspiration you only need to cast 2 Flails before casting Beam?

The man could not regain rss in a BG. He was getting the heads up in the chat anf those people were being timed out. It was amazing to see and not in a good amazing way. Most skills were not made by the current team.

Its also plain that Skinnycheeks, despite your apparent disdain, has made a deep study of the mechanics and has a better grasp on the realities of the system than the guy who let his stamplar run out of gas in a short BG.

Zyaneth_Bal · October 23

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Aliniel wrote: »

One thing I never understood about ESO is the dread of changes.

The most successful MMORPG of all times, WoW, has a regular change of combat. Classes get tweaked, redesigned, rebalanced, new mechanics are added, old removed... And this keeps the game fresh! This happens with every expansion (~2-3 year cycle). In between that, on patches you get regular balances where numbers get adjusted. And they do this on I-don't-even-know-how-many-classes-and-specs-anymore. Is it perfect? No. But there's enough of diversity to actually find something you enjoy.

We have had beam meta for how long now?

When was the last time a class got truly reworked? Some of the most useless skills Sorc had back on launch are still around. Short of some morph changes, all the skills are still here. None of them were ever completely replaced. Does ZOS consider ESO to be perfectly designed all those years ago? Yeah, sure...

It's not just change that the players are afraid of but the extent and how random it is at times.

Most players aren't going to be too upset if their meta builds one year later are no longer meta but within 5% of the new meta. That is what we call tweaking.

But losing 30% of your dps after a major patch is not tweaking, it's death. After Patch 35 my stamwarden was no longer viable for prog runs and our nightblade in the prog simply gave up because he couldn't play his favourite class any more.

Werewolf tanking which was a niche build got destroyed not because it was overpowered but because the devs didn't approve of the playstyle. Players enjoyed it and it was not ruining the game in any way and yet the devs burned it to the ground!

And how many necro mains gave up after Blastbones became a buff skill?

Calling some of the tone deaf and catastrophic changes that the devs have done to ESO 'tweaks' is like calling a Category 5 Hurricane 'mild relandscaping'.

BTW: I do play other MMOs and I don't fear the changes they make there because I trust those devs to use a scalpel and not a wrecking ball.

RIP overload🙏