An Open Letter to ZoS About Parse Culture, DPS Inflation, and the Erosion of ESO’s Gameplay Identity

Athory · May 17

I’m writing this as someone who genuinely loves ESO, someone who wants the game to thrive for years, not just survive patch to patch. This is not an attack on high‑end players, competitive raiders, or people who enjoy optimization. Every MMO needs mastery, progression, and challenge.

But ESO’s PvE environment has drifted so far into parse culture, DPS inflation, and combat‑log‑driven balancing that the core identity of the game is being quietly hollowed out.

Players aren’t engaging with content because it’s fun, immersive, or mechanically interesting.
They’re engaging with content to chase numbers.

And that shift is reshaping the entire game, often in ways that are invisible until the damage is already done.

ESO Used to Be About Playing Encounters, Not Parsing Them
At its best, ESO’s combat was thrilling because encounters demanded respect.
Players had to:

react to mechanics,
position intelligently,
manage resources,
survive under pressure,
and cooperate as a group.

DPS mattered, but it wasn’t the only thing that mattered.
Today, raw damage is so inflated that mechanics often never happen at all:

dungeon phases evaporate,
bosses die before abilities fire,
teamwork becomes optional,
and older trials are brute‑forced instead of played.

This creates a fundamental design problem:
The game no longer teaches players how to play the game.
New players reach veteran content without ever learning mechanics because the leveling and dungeon experience never required them to. Then they hit a wall, not because the content is unfair, but because the game stopped teaching encounter gameplay years ago.

Parse Culture Has Rewired the Community’s Priorities
Combat logs and DPS‑sharing addons didn’t just measure performance, they reshaped it.
Instead of asking:

"Did we execute mechanics well?"
"Did we survive consistently?"
"Did everyone contribute meaningfully?"

The conversation becomes:

"What’s your parse?"
"Can you hit X on a dummy?"
"Why is your DPS lower than mine?"
This shift creates three major problems.

1. Players optimize for target dummies, not encounters
A dummy is a perfect, artificial environment:

no movement,
no danger,
no mechanics,
no survival responsibility.

Balancing around dummy numbers pushes players toward rotation worship instead of encounter mastery. Gameplay becomes secondary to uptime.

2. Gatekeeping intensifies
Because DPS is easy to measure and easy to compare, it becomes the default metric for judging players.

This leads to:

exclusion of casual players,
hostility toward experimentation,
fear of underperforming,
and shrinking build diversity.

Players stop asking "Is this fun?"
They start asking "Will people reject me if my parse isn’t high enough?"

That is not healthy for ESO.

3. DPS inflation becomes permanent
Once extremely high DPS becomes normalized, every new class, set, and mythic is evaluated through the lens of maintaining those numbers.
This creates exponential power creep.

And when damage gets too high:

older content collapses,
mechanics lose relevance,
tanks and healers lose purpose,
encounter pacing breaks,
and group identity dissolves.

At that point, balancing old content becomes nearly impossible without redesigning it from scratch.

DPS Sharing Creates a Balancing Trap for ZOS
This is the part almost nobody talks about.
As long as the community has full access to detailed DPS logs, every balance change becomes politically radioactive.
Players aren’t defending gameplay.
They’re defending numbers.

Any nerf feels like:

lost identity,
lost status,
invalidated effort.

This pressures ZOS to avoid meaningful reductions even when the long‑term health of the game demands them.
So instead:

DPS keeps rising,
mechanics keep disappearing,
encounter design space keeps shrinking.

The developers become trapped by the expectations created by parse culture itself.

High DPS Is Quietly Destroying Encounter Design
Some players say:
"If old content is easy, who cares?"

But encounter structure is the backbone of an MMO.

When mechanics no longer matter:

dungeon identity disappears,
boss uniqueness disappears,
teamwork disappears,
support roles lose meaning,
and content becomes repetitive burn phases.

When every solution becomes "just burn it harder," the game loses depth, lose the fun and gets boring.

ESO’s greatest strength used to be dynamic, reactive combat.
That strength is gone.

The Psychological Shift: Players Start Playing Numbers Instead of the Game
This is the most dangerous long‑term effect.

Parse culture rewires the reward loop:

watching numbers rise,
comparing logs,
chasing percentages,
validating performance externally.

But MMORPGs thrive on:

exploration,
cooperation,
strategy,
memorable encounters.

When players care more about a combat log than the dungeon they’re in, the soul of the game erodes.
ESO begins to feel less like an RPG world and more like a spreadsheet competition.

What Could Be Done?
There is no single fix, but there are directions that would help:

reduce global DPS scaling,
re‑evaluate how combat logs interact with PvE balance,
limit real‑time DPS broadcasting,
make mechanics matter again,
restore meaningful roles for tanks and healers.

Not everyone will agree with these ideas.
But ignoring the issue has already caused years of power creep and mechanical erosion.

ESO Should Be Fun Because of Gameplay, Not Because of Parse Numbers
Players should log in because:

encounters are engaging,
teamwork is rewarding,
mechanics are satisfying,
builds are creative,
and dungeons feel alive.

Not because they’re chasing another number on a parser.
High‑end optimization should support gameplay, not replace it.

Right now, in too much of ESO’s PvE experience, the numbers have become more important than the game itself.

"We’ve played this dungeon for 10 years and we’re tired of it."
Okay, then don’t run it.
But being tired of something is not a valid reason to remove its mechanics or turn it into a 15‑second burn. Your personal burnout shouldn’t dictate the design of content that thousands of other players still enjoy, still learn from, and still use to understand the game.
If you’re bored, you can choose something else.
What you can’t do is demand that the entire game be redesigned around your boredom, especially by pushing for more and more DPS to skip the very content you say you’re tired of.

Side Note:
This post is not written to attack, bait, or provoke anyone. It is simply my honest feedback based on what I see in the game. You are completely free to agree or disagree with my perspective, that’s normal.
But disagreement does not give anyone the right to bait, provoke, or troll my point of view.

ESO deserves better.
And so do the players who love it.

jm42 · May 17

the only thing I agree with is that old instances need overhaul to match modern numbers. the only old trials that are still fun are cloudrest, dreadsail reef and rockgrove because of their unforgiving mechanics that you can't outparse even now (but some of them you can ignore). everything else is a joke, including solo arenas. I am all for mechanics heavy combat design because it is fun while turning every encounter into trial dummy is not fun.
im wow you can scale old raids through chromie time, which is not very optimal but at least something

Gabriel_H · May 17

So a few things you seem to have not considered:

1) Older content is also progression content. You don't hit CP 160 and immediately jump into vLC.

2) "Just burn it harder" does not work in any trial or dungeon consistently.

The older trials have become somewhat easier with the powercreep, but they still have mechs that need doing, they still need co-operation and group interplay. If a group doesn't know positioning, timings, phases there DPS doesn't matter, they'll wipe.

Renato90085 · May 17

So …do you mean to return the version to black wood or buff content dmg?

Reginald_leBlem · May 17

It's annoying me some of your points are numbered and some aren't but oh well that's AI for you.

"ESO Used to Be About Playing Encounters, Not Parsing Them" Please tell me the most complicated mechanic you can think of in a base game dungeon hardmode or Craglorn trial hardmode and then compare that to the titan boss battle fight in Ossein Cage hardmode.
"The game no longer teaches players how to play the game" This point I halfway agree with. I think the combat tutorial should be longer and you should have a mandatory mini quest before you do your first group dungeons where you get an explanation of how sets work, and the expectations of the 3 different roles.
However this will never happen because Zos relies heavily on other players to teach incoming players how to play.
"Parse Culture Has Rewired the Community’s Priorities
Combat logs and DPS‑sharing addons didn’t just measure performance, they reshaped it.
Instead of asking:
"Did we execute mechanics well?"
"Did we survive consistently?"
"Did everyone contribute meaningfully?""

Someone has never actually reviewed logs apparently, because yes, these are EXACTLY the questions that get asked. Are you not aware of the replay function of logs? Or that you can see how many times a player rezzed another? I was in a guild that awarded prizes to people based on the number of rezzes performed.

1. Players optimize for target dummies, not encounters: Not true. When parsing players optimize for the dummy. When in a trial or dungeon, you optimize for the encounter.
2. Gatekeeping intensifies: When I first started playing the game in 2019 people wanted a parse and a list of your prior clears before you received tags to join content. If anything, there is less gatekeeping these days. There certainly isn't more.
3. DPS inflation becomes permanent: As we have seen, the community as a whole hates it when things recieve a substantial nerf, so yes powercreep is real.

"DPS Sharing Creates a Balancing Trap for ZOS
This is the part almost nobody talks about."

Where on earth have you been?

"High DPS Is Quietly Destroying Encounter Design" this one is a halfway fair point, although I'm not sure its the problem you think it is. Grab a random group in the group finder on a random Tuesday afternoon and go do vMoL, then come back and tell us if you think high dps is still a problem. A highly coordinated group that optimizes for the content does trivialize some of the older trials and their mechanics, but those groups are the minority.

"The Psychological Shift: Players Start Playing Numbers Instead of the Game" This is simply not true for many of the mechanic heavy newer trials. Doing damage is still an important part, because the bosses have health and the goal is to reduce that health to 0, but dps arriving with support sets, self-heals and shields is very important for a lot of these newer trials. There is a HEAVY emphasis on teamwork and communication that actually gets criticized for making a trial "unpuggable".

"What Could Be Done?
There is no single fix, but there are directions that would help:"
"reduce global DPS scaling," Not sure what this means.
"re‑evaluate how combat logs interact with PvE balance," Its raw data. Are you suggesting information is bad?
"limit real‑time DPS broadcasting" I guess we just really don't like data.
"make mechanics matter again," They literally do.
"restore meaningful roles for tanks and healers." When was the last time you did a trial without a tank? Even on normal?

"ESO Should Be Fun Because of Gameplay, Not Because of Parse Numbers" No one is saying parsing is the best part of eso. Not one single person.

'"We’ve played this dungeon for 10 years and we’re tired of it."
Okay, then don’t run it.
But being tired of something is not a valid reason to remove its mechanics or turn it into a 15‑second burn." A bit disingenuous. If vet players are running base game dungeons its generally for the transmutes, a golden pursuit, or keys. The game NEEDS vet players to run those base game dungeons or the dungeon queue would be in worst shape than it already is. And when, exactly, has a vet player argued for making Fungral Grotto 1 easier? Have any of these mechanics actually been removed from the game? Never, and none. This argument is hallucinating problems that don't exist.

jm42 · May 17

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

Please tell me the most complicated mechanic you can think of in a base game dungeon hardmode

stop killing daedroths and wait for 3 of them to spawn to even get that hardmode in banished cells is nearly impossible for random queue even if you are yelling in group chat with caps lock on. Mezeluth in Crypt of Hearts 2 (the boss who pulls the group to itself) is freaking impossible for pugs even not having hardmode, lol

NoticeMeArkay · May 17

Athory wrote: »

I’m writing this as someone who genuinely loves ESO, someone who wants the game to thrive for years, not just survive patch to patch. This is not an attack on high‑end players, competitive raiders, or people who enjoy optimization. Every MMO needs mastery, progression, and challenge.

But ESO’s PvE environment has drifted so far into parse culture, DPS inflation, and combat‑log‑driven balancing that the core identity of the game is being quietly hollowed out.

Players aren’t engaging with content because it’s fun, immersive, or mechanically interesting.
They’re engaging with content to chase numbers.

And that shift is reshaping the entire game, often in ways that are invisible until the damage is already done.

ESO Used to Be About Playing Encounters, Not Parsing Them
At its best, ESO’s combat was thrilling because encounters demanded respect.
Players had to:
react to mechanics,

position intelligently,

manage resources,

survive under pressure,

and cooperate as a group.

DPS mattered, but it wasn’t the only thing that mattered.
Today, raw damage is so inflated that mechanics often never happen at all:
dungeon phases evaporate,

bosses die before abilities fire,

teamwork becomes optional,

and older trials are brute‑forced instead of played.

This creates a fundamental design problem:
The game no longer teaches players how to play the game.
New players reach veteran content without ever learning mechanics because the leveling and dungeon experience never required them to. Then they hit a wall, not because the content is unfair, but because the game stopped teaching encounter gameplay years ago.

Parse Culture Has Rewired the Community’s Priorities
Combat logs and DPS‑sharing addons didn’t just measure performance, they reshaped it.
Instead of asking:
"Did we execute mechanics well?"

"Did we survive consistently?"

"Did everyone contribute meaningfully?"

The conversation becomes:
"What’s your parse?"

"Can you hit X on a dummy?"

"Why is your DPS lower than mine?"
This shift creates three major problems.

1. Players optimize for target dummies, not encounters
A dummy is a perfect, artificial environment:
no movement,

no danger,

no mechanics,

no survival responsibility.

Balancing around dummy numbers pushes players toward rotation worship instead of encounter mastery. Gameplay becomes secondary to uptime.

2. Gatekeeping intensifies
Because DPS is easy to measure and easy to compare, it becomes the default metric for judging players.

This leads to:
exclusion of casual players,

hostility toward experimentation,

fear of underperforming,

and shrinking build diversity.

Players stop asking "Is this fun?"
They start asking "Will people reject me if my parse isn’t high enough?"

That is not healthy for ESO.

3. DPS inflation becomes permanent
Once extremely high DPS becomes normalized, every new class, set, and mythic is evaluated through the lens of maintaining those numbers.
This creates exponential power creep.

And when damage gets too high:
older content collapses,

mechanics lose relevance,

tanks and healers lose purpose,

encounter pacing breaks,

and group identity dissolves.

At that point, balancing old content becomes nearly impossible without redesigning it from scratch.

DPS Sharing Creates a Balancing Trap for ZOS
This is the part almost nobody talks about.
As long as the community has full access to detailed DPS logs, every balance change becomes politically radioactive.
Players aren’t defending gameplay.
They’re defending numbers.

Any nerf feels like:
lost identity,

lost status,

invalidated effort.

This pressures ZOS to avoid meaningful reductions even when the long‑term health of the game demands them.
So instead:
DPS keeps rising,

mechanics keep disappearing,

encounter design space keeps shrinking.

The developers become trapped by the expectations created by parse culture itself.

High DPS Is Quietly Destroying Encounter Design
Some players say:
"If old content is easy, who cares?"

But encounter structure is the backbone of an MMO.

When mechanics no longer matter:
dungeon identity disappears,

boss uniqueness disappears,

teamwork disappears,

support roles lose meaning,

and content becomes repetitive burn phases.

When every solution becomes "just burn it harder," the game loses depth, lose the fun and gets boring.

ESO’s greatest strength used to be dynamic, reactive combat.
That strength is gone.

The Psychological Shift: Players Start Playing Numbers Instead of the Game
This is the most dangerous long‑term effect.

Parse culture rewires the reward loop:
watching numbers rise,

comparing logs,

chasing percentages,

validating performance externally.

But MMORPGs thrive on:
exploration,

cooperation,

strategy,

memorable encounters.

When players care more about a combat log than the dungeon they’re in, the soul of the game erodes.
ESO begins to feel less like an RPG world and more like a spreadsheet competition.

What Could Be Done?
There is no single fix, but there are directions that would help:
reduce global DPS scaling,

re‑evaluate how combat logs interact with PvE balance,

limit real‑time DPS broadcasting,

make mechanics matter again,

restore meaningful roles for tanks and healers.

Not everyone will agree with these ideas.
But ignoring the issue has already caused years of power creep and mechanical erosion.

ESO Should Be Fun Because of Gameplay, Not Because of Parse Numbers
Players should log in because:
encounters are engaging,

teamwork is rewarding,

mechanics are satisfying,

builds are creative,

and dungeons feel alive.

Not because they’re chasing another number on a parser.
High‑end optimization should support gameplay, not replace it.

Right now, in too much of ESO’s PvE experience, the numbers have become more important than the game itself.

"We’ve played this dungeon for 10 years and we’re tired of it."
Okay, then don’t run it.
But being tired of something is not a valid reason to remove its mechanics or turn it into a 15‑second burn. Your personal burnout shouldn’t dictate the design of content that thousands of other players still enjoy, still learn from, and still use to understand the game.
If you’re bored, you can choose something else.
What you can’t do is demand that the entire game be redesigned around your boredom, especially by pushing for more and more DPS to skip the very content you say you’re tired of.

Side Note:
This post is not written to attack, bait, or provoke anyone. It is simply my honest feedback based on what I see in the game. You are completely free to agree or disagree with my perspective, that’s normal.
But disagreement does not give anyone the right to bait, provoke, or troll my point of view.

ESO deserves better.
And so do the players who love it.

I think what you posted makes of a very good summary of the initial issue. Many problems that are regularly discussed on this forum are mere symptoms of it.

I read your post and tried to view it from different roles, as I've played as a DPS and Healer for years and just now retried tanking. The latter for the exact reason you mention: To focus on gameplay rather than numbers. Because as a tank I don't have to think about the perfect parse and rather be observant and trained on sounds (May it be specific dialogue of the boss or 'helpful' npc in the back) and animations indicating an upcoming mechanic I need to react on. (I don't use combat addons, so I don't act on a warning message popping up.)

Playing a tank in vet dungeons and trials has me enjoy the game because I get to focus on it.

Playing a healer has become so dull that I cannot enjoy it anymore. Sure as a healer I'm still necessary to get my team through several mechanics, but only if those mechanics get to happen and aren't skipped by an incredibly high group parse.
And outside of vet trials, I'm barely needed. I'm the first role to get kicked out of the rooster in favor of an additional DPS to burn things down. It feels like one can count the number of encounters that would require a healer to cleanse the group or power heal them through a mechanics off on a single hand. I'm obsolete outside a very tiny space that makes PVE.

Playing a DPS is a double sided coin. Is it fun to do mechanics and deal damage? Yes. If the mechanics get to happen.
What I don't enjoy over DPS is that in the content I want to do, vet trials/hm achievements etc. My build is forced into a mold with 0 room for experimentation. "Daggers and a Greatsword. Don't you dare show up with a Bow or a fire staff." - Because If I choose to run any other weapon and miss out on 5-10k damage because of it, I'm not allowed to play with you guys. Instead I get my combat performance logged and uploaded to ESO-Logs and shamed openly in the ingame chat as the trial proceeds.

It creates nothing but frustration and has me sit here and wish ZOS would have buffed the passives of my favored weapons over these two. Just as others feel the same with their favorite skill lines, curses or armor sets.
The playerbase cries "Buff older sets and skill lines" but what we actually mean is "Let us be on par with this specific loadout everybody runs, so we don't get canceled out and shamed."

Reginald_leBlem · May 17

jm42 wrote: »

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

Please tell me the most complicated mechanic you can think of in a base game dungeon hardmode

stop killing daedroths and wait for 3 of them to spawn to even get that hardmode in banished cells is nearly impossible for random queue even if you are yelling in group chat with caps lock on. Mezeluth in Crypt of Hearts 2 (the boss who pulls the group to itself) is freaking impossible for pugs even not having hardmode, lol

Second part of that remark was and compare it to OC hm

Blood_again · May 17

How to tell that you didn't play the latest group content without saying it.

The Opulent Ordeal trial is the thing you're asking for.
Well, it is a part of the Night Market content that you hate in each and every post I've seen from you. Not your cup of tea, I see.

Both dungeons in the Feast of Shadows DLC.
Oh, how many parsers smashed themselves into the Voskrona Stonehulk Poxito immunity even on normal.
You either haven't seen it or ignore it, I guess.

As a result, your open letter is outdated by at least 8 months. Sorry.
Surely, you can try and check the NM trial. If you love ESO enough.

OsUfi · May 17

With the exception of score pushing and trifectas, you can finish damn near everything in the game with any gear sets and any skills. ZoS have raised the floor for all builds. ZoS have given us the tools for diversity.

It's player choice to go meta.

tomofhyrule · May 17

Every single one of these “DPS share addons bad” threads always very obviously ignores one major thing: in the absence of those addons, people would then use other methods of gauging capability. Look at console - they only just got addons, so groups asked for players to submit videos of their parses or had a third party time them parsing to get a number. Heck, even before target dummies and most major addons, PC asked for Bloodspawn parses.

Besides, a lot of us have been playing enough that we understand how long things take. I’ve been the full tank in a vet dungeon with some questionable DDs, and I didn’t need an addon to tell me that it was taking as long as it did when it was just me and a Companion.

I will also say that probably 80% of people who claim “DPS doesn’t matter, it’s all about mechanics!” are the types of player who have low damage and also not able to do mechanics. I’ve played with actual low-DPS people who listen and volunteer for mechanics and they are lovely people because they try. But I’ve also run with the people who mess up every mechanic because they think they know it (and they don’t, and won’t listen to anyone telling them how to do it right), and they also have low damage. Those people are not fun to run with, and tend to blame everyone else.

This is all not to say that sometimes, “do high damage” is the mechanic. There are hard and soft DPS checks in the game - ‘hard’ ones like the Reef Hearts where you have to kill something in a set time or it’s a wipe, and ‘soft’ ones like the Market’s B’kyfzi/dragons achieve where the longer the fight goes, the harder it gets on the supports.
That’s something that a lot of people don’t realize until they tank is that a lot of fights are exponentially harder on the supports if damage is low, meaning you need godmode tanks and healers to clear if the damage is low… and there’s already a shortage of support roles.

And as for the power creep we’ve had? Yes, that’s a major issue. But it’s not something easy to fix after a busted thing gets off PTS. That was the point of U35 was to rein in power creep, and it ended up leading to severe nerfs (that a lot of endgamers bounced back from quickly, but the mid-tier was decimated), and was honestly one of the first things leading to the death of the endgame population. Some power creep is acceptable, but blanket nerfs and pendulum swings in balance just frustrate people.

spartaxoxo · May 17

Gabriel_H wrote: »

So a few things you seem to have not considered:

1) Older content is also progression content. You don't hit CP 160 and immediately jump into vLC.

2) "Just burn it harder" does not work in any trial or dungeon consistently.

The older trials have become somewhat easier with the powercreep, but they still have mechs that need doing, they still need co-operation and group interplay. If a group doesn't know positioning, timings, phases there DPS doesn't matter, they'll wipe.

Yup! I've seen strong DPS lose at the twins in VMOL plenty of times because people kept blowing each other up. It took me a long time to clear VMOL not because of lack of dps but because of the twins mechanic. I tried every once in a blue moon and didn't succeed because of people blowing each other up (and these were random pugs not guild groups). My first successful clear was actually after addons were added just because people could see the colors better.

olsborg · May 17

I agree very much to the OP here, the parse culture specificly is just ruining the enjoyment of pve for me too. Doing trials doesnt feel fun anymore, its all about the numbers not the content.

spartaxoxo · May 17

Blood_again wrote: »

How to tell that you didn't play the latest group content without saying it.

The Opulent Ordeal trial is the thing you're asking for.
Well, it is a part of the Night Market content that you hate in each and every post I've seen from you. Not your cup of tea, I see.

Both dungeons in the Feast of Shadows DLC.
Oh, how many parsers smashed themselves into the Voskrona Stonehulk Poxito immunity even on normal.
You either haven't seen it or ignore it, I guess.

As a result, your open letter is outdated by at least 8 months. Sorry.
Surely, you can try and check the NM trial. If you love ESO enough.

Yeah, the Opulent Ordeal Trial is mech heavy not DPS heavy. Half the reason people are complaining about the Nightmarket being too hard is that it has mobs that can and will one shot you if you're not following the mechs. Even as someone who can handle the trash packs alone, I do die if I'm not keeping watch of certain things like bashing adds in the Parch or making sure I slot a snare removal.

colossalvoids · May 17

An issue of average players looking up at competitive players and just mimicking what they see without venturing into the context most of the times.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · May 18

Athory wrote: »

I’m writing this as someone who genuinely loves ESO, someone who wants the game to thrive for years, not just survive patch to patch. This is not an attack on high‑end players, competitive raiders, or people who enjoy optimization. Every MMO needs mastery, progression, and challenge.

But ESO’s PvE environment has drifted so far into parse culture, DPS inflation, and combat‑log‑driven balancing that the core identity of the game is being quietly hollowed out.

Players aren’t engaging with content because it’s fun, immersive, or mechanically interesting.
They’re engaging with content to chase numbers.

And that shift is reshaping the entire game, often in ways that are invisible until the damage is already done.

ESO Used to Be About Playing Encounters, Not Parsing Them
At its best, ESO’s combat was thrilling because encounters demanded respect.
Players had to:
react to mechanics,

position intelligently,

manage resources,

survive under pressure,

and cooperate as a group.

DPS mattered, but it wasn’t the only thing that mattered.
Today, raw damage is so inflated that mechanics often never happen at all:
dungeon phases evaporate,

bosses die before abilities fire,

teamwork becomes optional,

and older trials are brute‑forced instead of played.

This creates a fundamental design problem:
The game no longer teaches players how to play the game.
New players reach veteran content without ever learning mechanics because the leveling and dungeon experience never required them to. Then they hit a wall, not because the content is unfair, but because the game stopped teaching encounter gameplay years ago.

Parse Culture Has Rewired the Community’s Priorities
Combat logs and DPS‑sharing addons didn’t just measure performance, they reshaped it.
Instead of asking:
"Did we execute mechanics well?"

"Did we survive consistently?"

"Did everyone contribute meaningfully?"

The conversation becomes:
"What’s your parse?"

"Can you hit X on a dummy?"

"Why is your DPS lower than mine?"
This shift creates three major problems.

1. Players optimize for target dummies, not encounters
A dummy is a perfect, artificial environment:
no movement,

no danger,

no mechanics,

no survival responsibility.

Balancing around dummy numbers pushes players toward rotation worship instead of encounter mastery. Gameplay becomes secondary to uptime.

2. Gatekeeping intensifies
Because DPS is easy to measure and easy to compare, it becomes the default metric for judging players.

This leads to:
exclusion of casual players,

hostility toward experimentation,

fear of underperforming,

and shrinking build diversity.

Players stop asking "Is this fun?"
They start asking "Will people reject me if my parse isn’t high enough?"

That is not healthy for ESO.

3. DPS inflation becomes permanent
Once extremely high DPS becomes normalized, every new class, set, and mythic is evaluated through the lens of maintaining those numbers.
This creates exponential power creep.

And when damage gets too high:
older content collapses,

mechanics lose relevance,

tanks and healers lose purpose,

encounter pacing breaks,

and group identity dissolves.

At that point, balancing old content becomes nearly impossible without redesigning it from scratch.

DPS Sharing Creates a Balancing Trap for ZOS
This is the part almost nobody talks about.
As long as the community has full access to detailed DPS logs, every balance change becomes politically radioactive.
Players aren’t defending gameplay.
They’re defending numbers.

Any nerf feels like:
lost identity,

lost status,

invalidated effort.

This pressures ZOS to avoid meaningful reductions even when the long‑term health of the game demands them.
So instead:
DPS keeps rising,

mechanics keep disappearing,

encounter design space keeps shrinking.

The developers become trapped by the expectations created by parse culture itself.

High DPS Is Quietly Destroying Encounter Design
Some players say:
"If old content is easy, who cares?"

But encounter structure is the backbone of an MMO.

When mechanics no longer matter:
dungeon identity disappears,

boss uniqueness disappears,

teamwork disappears,

support roles lose meaning,

and content becomes repetitive burn phases.

When every solution becomes "just burn it harder," the game loses depth, lose the fun and gets boring.

ESO’s greatest strength used to be dynamic, reactive combat.
That strength is gone.

The Psychological Shift: Players Start Playing Numbers Instead of the Game
This is the most dangerous long‑term effect.

Parse culture rewires the reward loop:
watching numbers rise,

comparing logs,

chasing percentages,

validating performance externally.

But MMORPGs thrive on:
exploration,

cooperation,

strategy,

memorable encounters.

When players care more about a combat log than the dungeon they’re in, the soul of the game erodes.
ESO begins to feel less like an RPG world and more like a spreadsheet competition.

What Could Be Done?
There is no single fix, but there are directions that would help:
reduce global DPS scaling,

re‑evaluate how combat logs interact with PvE balance,

limit real‑time DPS broadcasting,

make mechanics matter again,

restore meaningful roles for tanks and healers.

Not everyone will agree with these ideas.
But ignoring the issue has already caused years of power creep and mechanical erosion.

ESO Should Be Fun Because of Gameplay, Not Because of Parse Numbers
Players should log in because:
encounters are engaging,

teamwork is rewarding,

mechanics are satisfying,

builds are creative,

and dungeons feel alive.

Not because they’re chasing another number on a parser.
High‑end optimization should support gameplay, not replace it.

Right now, in too much of ESO’s PvE experience, the numbers have become more important than the game itself.

"We’ve played this dungeon for 10 years and we’re tired of it."
Okay, then don’t run it.
But being tired of something is not a valid reason to remove its mechanics or turn it into a 15‑second burn. Your personal burnout shouldn’t dictate the design of content that thousands of other players still enjoy, still learn from, and still use to understand the game.
If you’re bored, you can choose something else.
What you can’t do is demand that the entire game be redesigned around your boredom, especially by pushing for more and more DPS to skip the very content you say you’re tired of.

Side Note:
This post is not written to attack, bait, or provoke anyone. It is simply my honest feedback based on what I see in the game. You are completely free to agree or disagree with my perspective, that’s normal.
But disagreement does not give anyone the right to bait, provoke, or troll my point of view.

ESO deserves better.
And so do the players who love it.

I agree with you Athory. I really wish they would end the test Server and conduct combat studies solely on their own out of the public eye and without the same people who have brought us to the awful state of combat that exists today. They need to regain control of their out of control combat and set boundaries, limitations, rules and drawbacks and enforce them. Classes are a perfectly good example of it and we need an immediate return to it. And a lot of other things.

@Athory I commend you for caring about the game. I share your frustrations about so many of these things and they keep falling on deaf ears. I truly do love Eso but since last Summer (the Subclass disaster a year ago), Im struggling to hang onto a game I never questioned I loved and enjoyed. And it seems like every day more and more people I know are leaving it because they're angry their characters were destroyed. They're sick of playing characters they dont want and dont enjoy. They're tired of being told they're inferior. Or that they have to play a certain build. Or with a combination of skills they detest, just to be considered competitive. They wont even go back into PvP anymore. For anything. Like you, I have come to the forums and other places to try to do something about the awful state of affairs with something that has been a part of my life going on 11 years.

Ravenshadow6513 · May 18

Athory wrote: »

I’m writing this as someone who genuinely loves ESO, someone who wants the game to thrive for years, not just survive patch to patch. This is not an attack on high‑end players, competitive raiders, or people who enjoy optimization. Every MMO needs mastery, progression, and challenge.

But ESO’s PvE environment has drifted so far into parse culture, DPS inflation, and combat‑log‑driven balancing that the core identity of the game is being quietly hollowed out.

Players aren’t engaging with content because it’s fun, immersive, or mechanically interesting.
They’re engaging with content to chase numbers.

And that shift is reshaping the entire game, often in ways that are invisible until the damage is already done.

ESO Used to Be About Playing Encounters, Not Parsing Them
At its best, ESO’s combat was thrilling because encounters demanded respect.
Players had to:
react to mechanics,

position intelligently,

manage resources,

survive under pressure,

and cooperate as a group.

DPS mattered, but it wasn’t the only thing that mattered.
Today, raw damage is so inflated that mechanics often never happen at all:
dungeon phases evaporate,

bosses die before abilities fire,

teamwork becomes optional,

and older trials are brute‑forced instead of played.

This creates a fundamental design problem:
The game no longer teaches players how to play the game.
New players reach veteran content without ever learning mechanics because the leveling and dungeon experience never required them to. Then they hit a wall, not because the content is unfair, but because the game stopped teaching encounter gameplay years ago.

Parse Culture Has Rewired the Community’s Priorities
Combat logs and DPS‑sharing addons didn’t just measure performance, they reshaped it.
Instead of asking:
"Did we execute mechanics well?"

"Did we survive consistently?"

"Did everyone contribute meaningfully?"

The conversation becomes:
"What’s your parse?"

"Can you hit X on a dummy?"

"Why is your DPS lower than mine?"
This shift creates three major problems.

1. Players optimize for target dummies, not encounters
A dummy is a perfect, artificial environment:
no movement,

no danger,

no mechanics,

no survival responsibility.

Balancing around dummy numbers pushes players toward rotation worship instead of encounter mastery. Gameplay becomes secondary to uptime.

2. Gatekeeping intensifies
Because DPS is easy to measure and easy to compare, it becomes the default metric for judging players.

This leads to:
exclusion of casual players,

hostility toward experimentation,

fear of underperforming,

and shrinking build diversity.

Players stop asking "Is this fun?"
They start asking "Will people reject me if my parse isn’t high enough?"

That is not healthy for ESO.

3. DPS inflation becomes permanent
Once extremely high DPS becomes normalized, every new class, set, and mythic is evaluated through the lens of maintaining those numbers.
This creates exponential power creep.

And when damage gets too high:
older content collapses,

mechanics lose relevance,

tanks and healers lose purpose,

encounter pacing breaks,

and group identity dissolves.

At that point, balancing old content becomes nearly impossible without redesigning it from scratch.

DPS Sharing Creates a Balancing Trap for ZOS
This is the part almost nobody talks about.
As long as the community has full access to detailed DPS logs, every balance change becomes politically radioactive.
Players aren’t defending gameplay.
They’re defending numbers.

Any nerf feels like:
lost identity,

lost status,

invalidated effort.

This pressures ZOS to avoid meaningful reductions even when the long‑term health of the game demands them.
So instead:
DPS keeps rising,

mechanics keep disappearing,

encounter design space keeps shrinking.

The developers become trapped by the expectations created by parse culture itself.

High DPS Is Quietly Destroying Encounter Design
Some players say:
"If old content is easy, who cares?"

But encounter structure is the backbone of an MMO.

When mechanics no longer matter:
dungeon identity disappears,

boss uniqueness disappears,

teamwork disappears,

support roles lose meaning,

and content becomes repetitive burn phases.

When every solution becomes "just burn it harder," the game loses depth, lose the fun and gets boring.

ESO’s greatest strength used to be dynamic, reactive combat.
That strength is gone.

The Psychological Shift: Players Start Playing Numbers Instead of the Game
This is the most dangerous long‑term effect.

Parse culture rewires the reward loop:
watching numbers rise,

comparing logs,

chasing percentages,

validating performance externally.

But MMORPGs thrive on:
exploration,

cooperation,

strategy,

memorable encounters.

When players care more about a combat log than the dungeon they’re in, the soul of the game erodes.
ESO begins to feel less like an RPG world and more like a spreadsheet competition.

What Could Be Done?
There is no single fix, but there are directions that would help:
reduce global DPS scaling,

re‑evaluate how combat logs interact with PvE balance,

limit real‑time DPS broadcasting,

make mechanics matter again,

restore meaningful roles for tanks and healers.

Not everyone will agree with these ideas.
But ignoring the issue has already caused years of power creep and mechanical erosion.

ESO Should Be Fun Because of Gameplay, Not Because of Parse Numbers
Players should log in because:
encounters are engaging,

teamwork is rewarding,

mechanics are satisfying,

builds are creative,

and dungeons feel alive.

Not because they’re chasing another number on a parser.
High‑end optimization should support gameplay, not replace it.

Right now, in too much of ESO’s PvE experience, the numbers have become more important than the game itself.

"We’ve played this dungeon for 10 years and we’re tired of it."
Okay, then don’t run it.
But being tired of something is not a valid reason to remove its mechanics or turn it into a 15‑second burn. Your personal burnout shouldn’t dictate the design of content that thousands of other players still enjoy, still learn from, and still use to understand the game.
If you’re bored, you can choose something else.
What you can’t do is demand that the entire game be redesigned around your boredom, especially by pushing for more and more DPS to skip the very content you say you’re tired of.

Side Note:
This post is not written to attack, bait, or provoke anyone. It is simply my honest feedback based on what I see in the game. You are completely free to agree or disagree with my perspective, that’s normal.
But disagreement does not give anyone the right to bait, provoke, or troll my point of view.

ESO deserves better.
And so do the players who love it.

Agreed and well put.

I don't want to see ESO become WoW. I left WoW partly because of needing BiS, and the only thing mattering being endgame, while everything else just became cheesed, ignored by both players and developers, and just flat out removed when new content was released. That is what happens when your game chases numbers. And there are people who enjoy that, but I left a game like that for one that prioritized mechanics and story. That you could get farther in the game by knowing the mechanics of a fight, than by having raw numbers. I really like that about ESO.

Small rant: I've seen a lot more anger and frustration lately in the playerbase. And a lot more new players - before even launching the game - asking about meta and builds and how to quickly get to "max" level. It's all about the numbers now. A bunch of videos with 150k+, 200k+, etc. dps builds. And the one that gets me with any game: Is such-and-such worth playing? If the game looks fun to you, why are you letting a bunch of people tell you if you should like something before you even try it yourself. Ok, rant over.

coop500 · May 18

IMO damage as it stands can't be nerfed until the MASSIVE CANYON of worthless sets and skills are addressed. Damage is only insane *with specific cracked builds*
You try to play outside of the meta? Your performance is suffering by ungodly amounts. And nerfs don't just affect the top line, it affects the bottom line too, whether anyone wants to admit it or not.

But I agree that the culture of the game is ugly, it really is all about numbers now. Nobody cares about theme, or character, or such things. It's just what rainbow vomit subclass build can dish out the new 160K+ DPS. Yeah the ESO community is 'friendly' as long as you're a noob looking to just shove yourself in the same meta rainbow vomit build and need people to help you farm the same handful of sets everyone else uses.

However, the community becomes VERY ugly, VERY fast if you start wanting to run off meta things. And that's partly due to how anything NOT meta is so often just terrible dogwater. We're not talking about even just a 30% difference but it's MASSIVE. Meta deserves to be stronger than off-meta, obviously. But if you're not just abusing the FRICK out of the current flavor of the month, we're talking your damage being cut in half or more if you just step outside of the meta circle to any meaningful degree.

Pinktraining · May 18

The current damage inflation is primarily due to HA-builds, more precisely, HA Sorc. The excessive buff to Sorc has led almost everyone to use HA Sorc instead of other classes.
Sorc can deal massive AoE damage with just Lightning Staves and Wall of Elements, and can reliably inflict Major Breach on targets using Elemental Susceptibility—all with just Staves, which is absurd. Not to mention, Sorc also possesses Overload, Shattering Spines, and Daedric Tomb—three powerful AoE damage abilities—as well as Surge and Ward, two of the strongest healing/defense skills in the game.

Shoving so many powerful abilities into one class, while allowing weaker classes like NB and DK to continue struggling at the bottom, erosion of gameplay identity is entirely predictable. But ZOS stubbornly refuses to listen and insists on continuing to buff Sorc, which is truly disappointing.

Angnos · May 18

ZOS will never reduce DPS that much anymore. You cannot sell that to the player base anymore. You saw it with the Empower nerf. Even after the nerf, you could still do 98% of the game because of power creep. But a big part of the player base was up in arms and demanded a rework. Now imagine if they nerfed everything.

My problem with the game at the moment is that a lot of players are just lazy and don't want to commit time into getting better. Everything needs to be handed to them on a silver platter, and if something requires a bit of difficulty, we get 10 forum posts about it. So, instead of complaining about this or that, just spend some time getting better. Join good trial groups that are organizing stuff. Hump the dummy for 30 minutes to get used to the rotation. Ask around on the different Discords on how to get better at the game.

I totally understand that the meta is stale. And I genuinely don't understand why ZOS is so scared to rebalance other sets to make the meta broader. I had hoped that with Class Mastery, every class would get one unique buff so that groups always need all classes in a trial group. That way, somebody who is a Warden, Necro, or Nightblade DD can still join the group and be useful.

Maybe it's an unpopular opinion, but if people don't like to run add-ons or don't like that groups have requirements, why not make your own guild or trial group that forbids logs, add-ons, and DPS requirements? Why change the whole game just so you can have your way of playing? Add-ons in general are, for me as a raid leader, a way to finish the prog in a reasonable time. I think a lot of raid leaders know that the longer the prog takes, the higher the chances are that the prog will not finish (due to a carousel of backups or replacements, etc.).

I don't get paid by ZOS for hosting trials. If I did, I would love to take everyone with me in the trial since I'd get paid after two hours of raiding. I wouldn't care if we finished the trial or used add-ons and parses; I'd get paid at the end and go on with my life. But that is not the case, so I have to be sure that I have a group with me that is capable of doing the trial that I am hosting. And that includes knowing that a person can do a certain amount of damage, or checking logs so I can see that players have a reasonable uptime with Zen or Catalyst during trials. For me, as a team, everyone needs to pull their own weight.

lillybit · May 18

I agree mechanics for older content are obsolete now, but that's not a new thing. Way back when I did vMoL I never even saw Lunar Phase. To this day I don't know what it is. We never planned it, never even talked about it. The few times we were taking too long we were told to wipe so didn't see it either. I stopped doing trials after Sunspire.

When I was progging I was on the lower side for DPS but I'm good at mechs, so I was always one of the ones who did the extra jobs. That was great for me because I love fun mechanics. I get bored stupid with just stand and burn. Nobody complained about me being there. I doubt I'd even get in to a group now because it's all about the numbers.

Renato90085 · May 18

Blood_again wrote: »

How to tell that you didn't play the latest group content without saying it.

The Opulent Ordeal trial is the thing you're asking for.
Well, it is a part of the Night Market content that you hate in each and every post I've seen from you. Not your cup of tea, I see.

Both dungeons in the Feast of Shadows DLC.
Oh, how many parsers smashed themselves into the Voskrona Stonehulk Poxito immunity even on normal.
You either haven't seen it or ignore it, I guess.

As a result, your open letter is outdated by at least 8 months. Sorry.
Surely, you can try and check the NM trial. If you love ESO enough.

furthermore,making tanks/healers important in dungeon again and not skip mech would mean removing/nerf the survive and good dmg build like Oaken soul/shield beam too,
This is so contradictory.

Varana · May 18

Pinktraining wrote: »

The current damage inflation is primarily due to HA-builds, more precisely, HA Sorc. The excessive buff to Sorc has led almost everyone to use HA Sorc instead of other classes.
Sorc can deal massive AoE damage with just Lightning Staves and Wall of Elements, and can reliably inflict Major Breach on targets using Elemental Susceptibility—all with just Staves, which is absurd. Not to mention, Sorc also possesses Overload, Shattering Spines, and Daedric Tomb—three powerful AoE damage abilities—as well as Surge and Ward, two of the strongest healing/defense skills in the game.

Shoving so many powerful abilities into one class, while allowing weaker classes like NB and DK to continue struggling at the bottom, erosion of gameplay identity is entirely predictable. But ZOS stubbornly refuses to listen and insists on continuing to buff Sorc, which is truly disappointing.

Now that is a hilariously garbled AI text (at least I hope so) that has no frelling idea what it's talking about if I've ever seen one.

MaleAmazon · May 18

These problems come from both the side of the developer and the side of the community. And fundamentally, they are not new. I think they could be addressed. Not that I care that much; I am probably in the process of quitting ESO (the game is still fun but I hopefully have many other things coming up in the near future and I´d rather do those). But to sum up, roughly:

1. Problems caused by the devs. I guess one unavoidable one is the age of the game and volume of content. There is so much content that really, you shouldn´t have to bother with as a veteran player (I´ve played on and off since launch, with breaks sometimes longer than a year). However, ZOS has this as dailies etc and so I have reason to play Fungal Grotto for the 2986th time. The sheer amount of pretty trashy / subpar sets is also annoying and a bit of a QoL issue. The constant changes to skills and core PvP content can be quite confusing.

And... newbie PvP. Now don´t get me wrong, PvP was NEVER newbie friendly in ESO. I remember trying it out back in the middle 2010s (since I had just found some BLUE weapons I should be fine, right?) and getting my ass handed to me, finely carved up. And PvP in computer games is pretty elitist in general (people just have no perspective when it comes to das Leben der Anderen, and so don´t realise it). But there is no place to go, really, if you are new to it. Battlegrounds should be that place, but it isn´t. Whatever the MMR is BGs is supposed to do, I don´t think it is doing it.

And ZOS has really not done much (I guess they are trying with Vengeance, etc). The first experience new players have with PvP is likely to be one of these:

-Battlegrounds, match starts, death recap.

-Battlegrounds, you decide to get that ball (it seems important, it was in the name of the game). You get turned into a giant fat wolf (or, if you try again, an overzealous Dracula cosplayer). All your skills get switched out and you now have no idea what they do (oh yeah and one of them actually actively suicides you). Death recap.

-Cyrodiil. You ride for 10 minutes towards the thunder. Death recap. Your PUG ball group leaves your corpse and ride off.

-Cyrodiil. Event. You need to complete some quest or other that has nothing at all to do with PvP, so you can gather 1/80 of a memento porcelain Khajiit or whatever. You go to the quest objective. Nightblade sound effects, death recap.

-Imperial City. Nah. It´s empty.

And ZOS have designed the game to be about running the same content to get rewards, sets, maybe a chance for a part of an item, grind, grind... It makes the 'fetch quests' in the TES 3 Morrowind questlines seem positively Shakespearean. FOMO is a driving force. That makes for a worse experience.

This being said - I think ZOS generally have been quite good at addressing concerns. Many QoL additions have come throughout the years. The Group Finder is quite nice and easy to use, the Guild Finder as well. Zone Guide too. You no longer have to camp for 3 real-life hours in one place in the Rift (being drunk helped) to become a vampire, you just start it for free in the Crown Store. They changed the intro many times to try and accomodate new players who have no idea what to do first since there´s like 7 different questlines right away and you are not warned about the order. Such a shame to create those intros only to scrap them though.

Personally, I quite liked the "Gates of Adamant" tutorial. They should just have improved that one, that was well-made and at least tried to tie the threads together a bit. Plus it looked very nice and had some lore / in-game reason behind it.

2. Problems caused by the community - this is maybe more controversial. People are responsible for their own behaviour. If you just want to grind / speedrun dailies, etc, fine. But the lack of even simple courtesy chat annoys me. I usually throw in at least a 'gg' at the end of a PUG (which isn´t really even suitable, more like a head nod), and I´d say 50% of the time noone even bothers to answer. When you do get some slight banter going, it is quite fun. But that is rare. This was always the case but it seems to be more prevalent these days. I went into Night Market, joined a group (kudos to ZOS for improved group finding), just wrote hi in group chat and asked if someone could give basic pointers to what we were doing as a group (apart from the obvious). Complete silence. I just ran with it, killed some bosses, finished some 'kill X / find Y' quests I didn´t even know I had, resurrected some people, and.. well that was it. Didn´t want to make me go back, but I might try it with a guild some time I guess.

And the DPS fixation... I mean, that´s on players. There was always a meta, people chased DPS and other stats, some people cheated outright, some borderline (Miat´s...). Heck, I remember when tank = DK. If you were a non-DK tank, people were genuinely confused (and you could get unceremoniously kicked

). That being said, I played vet group content on a sorc tank (it was just fun) and it was perfectly doable with some great ESO moments. People choose what to fixate on.

And yeah, "stop complaining, join a guild". I´ve been and am in guilds. I am not complaining, just pointing out what the experience is unless you really are into ESO. And it is not good. It is a disjointed mess where PvP is super unfriendly to newbies, and only the people who push through that horrible experience play. The questlines otherwise are fairly disjointed as well.

Next post - my solution...

MaleAmazon · May 18

My solution (see previous post) - this is free fantasy of course, but wth, server is on maintenance and I want to put off cleaning the house for another couple of minutes...

1. Reboot the entire questline structure à la One Tamriel (EDIT: 1T for those who were not there, was what made it possible to travel freely on the map and do autolevelled content.When the game launched the Main Quest missions were locked behind ever increasing character levels and alliance zone content was levelled as well, so you would get quests that were ´grey´ with underlevelled enemies giving you no kill XP. They absolutely rehauled this brutally, which IMO needs to be done again but very differently of course).

- (Re)create a Gates of Adamant-style tutorial that teaches you the basics of combat, but more importantly, clearly lays it on you how the game is structured. Do it without breaking RP. Have some intro chatter, and also give people an in-game book that you can read and re-read, to help people with structure. Written something like:

"Many have walked this path before you, but that does not mean your path is not special and worthy. Time can be a fickle thing, as I once noted when I went on a date with Varyan Atles, famed chronomage. He was... quite a bit younger than I had expected. And I was quite a bit older than I had expected. Let´s keep it at that. No laws were broken.

Many people like to keep things in order. If so, I see... a prison. Oh, you came from there... You may continue on that great quest, where you might also walk with your alliance brothers and sisters... not that I would necessarily, those people really don´t have their priorities straight when the world is ending... and after that... perhaps a journey north, to an island where the ash on the ground is as dark as the thoughts in some hearts..."

Something like that. Maybe it exists now, I have played through it more than once and so don´t always pay attention.

But the quest structure is IMO in need of serious tidying up.

2. Outright delete many older sets by 'merging' them, or do some serious passes. The whole set business unfortunately got quite a bit wrong IMO from the beginning - the '2-4' set bonuses pretty much nail the 'sweet spot of stat trash' where something is quite uninteresting, yet you cannot completely ignore it. Do I get health, which I need, or stamina, which I need, or penetration, which I am also sure I need? The only thing that´s interesting is the 5th bonus, and it often isn´t. Interesting, that is.

Given the current situation though, I might just leave them as 'there, but don´t bother', same as any crafting material that isn´t lvl 1 or lvl 50 CP 150-160 (really, just delete all those too. 'Nightwood'?).

"Where is my Topgrain Hide? It must have hidden!".

I´d color code new sets to make them stand out as a new and better batch. Reorganize old sets, maybe
bring some tiers to the set list and some order to it. I guess 'mythic' and 'epic' is taken, and 'ancestral' is too Diablo 4, but just find some word like 'exalted', 'heroic', 'divine', 'tremendously gargantuan', or something. Then add actual fun effects other than to the final bonus. Leave the old and start anew. Something better than the 'giant list of meh' we have now.

3. Fix PvP. Most people just want deathmatch or 'deathmatch with a slight twist'. Capture the relic has no place in PUG, and the chaosball transformations need to be at least properly explained. Fix Battleground rewards - make it so you get the daily reward for being on the losing team too, for example at least if you finish top 3 in that team. Some people just want to get that reward and get out, don´t make them stay in. It´s not good for anyone. Add in a PvP mode which is basically more of a Battle Royale. Just "let me get in and mess around". Organized groups in Cyrodiil are a different game. There is not a divide between casual and veterans in ESO PvP. There is an abyss, and it is... abysmal.

4. I was going to write "please make your game explainable, ZOS", but really, just add helpful links to ESO-hub and UESP. They´ve done better than ZOS could (probably).

Perhaps they are only for the birds, nevertheless, these are my words
Alas!
Fixing the game is Zenimax´s department, me I have to go now, and clean my apartment

Athory · May 18

I think some people are misunderstanding the core of what I’m saying.

I’m not claiming that mechanics no longer exist, or that every trial can be brute‑forced.
Obviously content like vDSR, vSE, vRG, etc. still demands coordination and punishes mistakes.

What I’m pointing out is how power creep changes the way players approach those mechanics.

Take vDSR as an example:
PuGs wiping because they can’t stop DPS in Twins isn’t the real issue.
The issue is that the fight even allows groups to nearly burn through phases that were originally designed to teach control, timing, and restraint.

When the game lets you almost skip mechanics through raw damage, players naturally stop learning them.
That’s the core problem I’m talking about.

It’s not that “mechanics don’t exist.”
It’s that the incentive structure pushes players to ignore them whenever possible, and that slowly erodes encounter design, role identity, and player expectations across the entire game.

My point is about the overall direction and culture of PvE over time, not isolated examples of difficult content.

A lot of replies are focusing on the top 1% of encounters, but most of ESO’s day‑to‑day gameplay happens in:

older dungeons
older trials
random queues
progression spaces
farming content

…and that content has been heavily trivialized by years of power creep.
That affects:

encounter pacing
role identity
how new players learn the game
and how the community evaluates each other

And yes, mechanics still matter in modern hard content.
But it’s also true that the community increasingly evaluates players through damage metrics first, often before awareness, teamwork, or adaptability even enter the conversation.

I never said logs are “evil.”
Data is useful. Elite raid leaders need tools. Progression groups need analysis.

What I’m questioning is how constant exposure to parse culture reshapes priorities, slowly, subtly, but consistently.

Some replies actually proved my point:

players saying builds are forced into narrow metas
people afraid to use non‑meta weapons or sets
healers feeling obsolete outside specific content
players judged primarily by numbers

That’s not a "player problem".
That’s an incentive problem.

To be clear:
I’m not advocating removing optimization, deleting challenge, or making everything slow.
I’m saying ESO is at its best when:

mechanics matter
roles matter
encounter design matters
and optimization supports gameplay instead of overshadowing it

There’s room for mastery and immersion.
The game doesn’t need to be entirely parse‑driven to be challenging or rewarding.

spartaxoxo · May 18

The game already isn't entirely parse driven. Most guilds and players do not care about your parse outside of some common sense minimums for the hardest content.

The only ones that care about parses are the people taking on the hardest challenges and the occasional pug group trying to make things easy despite not having a full guild roster.

Speaking of easy, it is normal for older content to become easier as time goes on for a long time. And that's a good thing because as time progresses when the best of the best players who found it challenging and difficult move on to the next thing, the skill tier of players that's a step below them can take it on as their character progresses, and then the content doesn't die out because the only people who can meaningfully take it on have moved on. By the end, it becomes good training content for new players because it's not at the tutorial level but it's not something difficult for established players anymore either.

That's a perfectly normal progression of an MMO.

And finally, not everyone actually wants challenging content that hard requires a group. Look at all the complaining about the Night Market. There's a ton of people who really don't enjoy anything harder than base game vet/normal dlc.

And there's really no issue with letting them continue as they have been for 10 years to try and incentivize people who have already done that content hundred times before to do it again.

We don't need the old group content overhauled for difficulty because that content is constantly being expanded on in a way that IS already satisfying for many challenge seekers. New dungeons are always fun. New trials too.

Marto · May 18

The fact that the mildest difficulty increase reduces your damage by 50% should be enough to convince everyone that ESO has a massive powercreep issue, and needs widespread, substantial nerfs to damage across the board to even be fun, at a baseline.

Other than nerfs, there's only a few things I can think of to alleviate the issue and discourage this unhealthy focus on numbers.

Remove exact damage numbers from skills and item sets, and instead display the relative damage of each skill.
Imagine if instead of

Slash an enemy, dealing 10683 Physical Damage

Skill description said something along the lines of

Slash an enemy, dealing 100 Physical Damage

While a ranged skill would be

Command a cliff racer to dive bomb an enemy, dealing 90 Magic Damage.

And a DoT skill would be

Blast an enemy with a charge of radiant heat, dealing 50 Flame Damage, and an additional 150 Flame Damage over 20 seconds.

This would discourage players from focusing too much on numbers, and give them a clearer idea on the strengths and weaknesses of every skill and effect.

Reduce the impact of stats on damage, making the line less steep overall.
Tanks and healers are a small portion of the population in every MMO. But in ESO the gap feels massive, making queuing, recruiting, and grouping a lot more difficult.

I suspect that if 2000 weapon/spell damage was merely bad instead of absolutely worthless as it is today, Tanks and Healers would be more common, simply because they'd be more fun to play.
They'd be more viable for casual content like questing, exploring, and harvesting. And more viable for solo content like Arenas and the Infinite Archive.

If Tanks and Healers accounted for around 25% of the DPS of a 4-person group, that would remove a lot of the stress from DPS players, and give Tanks and Healers more flexibility on how to make their builds. They wouldn't feel too bad about slotting and utilizing a damage skill here and there.

Ordinator199 · May 19

Pinktraining wrote: »

The current damage inflation is primarily due to HA-builds, more precisely, HA Sorc. The excessive buff to Sorc has led almost everyone to use HA Sorc instead of other classes.
Sorc can deal massive AoE damage with just Lightning Staves and Wall of Elements, and can reliably inflict Major Breach on targets using Elemental Susceptibility—all with just Staves, which is absurd. Not to mention, Sorc also possesses Overload, Shattering Spines, and Daedric Tomb—three powerful AoE damage abilities—as well as Surge and Ward, two of the strongest healing/defense skills in the game.

Shoving so many powerful abilities into one class, while allowing weaker classes like NB and DK to continue struggling at the bottom, erosion of gameplay identity is entirely predictable. But ZOS stubbornly refuses to listen and insists on continuing to buff Sorc, which is truly disappointing.

What are you talking about? HA builds are often not even allowed into top end trials, and they ALWAYS have worse damage than current meta builds. Sorc is not even overpowered in U49.

Pinktraining · May 19

Ordinator199 wrote: »

Pinktraining wrote: »

The current damage inflation is primarily due to HA-builds, more precisely, HA Sorc. The excessive buff to Sorc has led almost everyone to use HA Sorc instead of other classes.
Sorc can deal massive AoE damage with just Lightning Staves and Wall of Elements, and can reliably inflict Major Breach on targets using Elemental Susceptibility—all with just Staves, which is absurd. Not to mention, Sorc also possesses Overload, Shattering Spines, and Daedric Tomb—three powerful AoE damage abilities—as well as Surge and Ward, two of the strongest healing/defense skills in the game.

Shoving so many powerful abilities into one class, while allowing weaker classes like NB and DK to continue struggling at the bottom, erosion of gameplay identity is entirely predictable. But ZOS stubbornly refuses to listen and insists on continuing to buff Sorc, which is truly disappointing.

What are you talking about? HA builds are often not even allowed into top end trials, and they ALWAYS have worse damage than current meta builds. Sorc is not even overpowered in U49.

Let's stop pretending Sorc is weak, okay? If Sorc were really that weak, why do we keep hearing people complaining about pets blocking their view? Doesn't that just prove a lot of people are playing Sorc? Since so many people are still playing Sorc, doesn't that prove it's not weak?
And you can almost always encounter HA builds in any random PUG trial. If Sorc were really as weak as some people pretend, why are so many people still participating in the trials?
Not to mention Sorc's powerful passives. Sorc can gain 108 Weapon Damage through Expert Mage, but similar passives, like NB's Magicka Flood, only provide 6% resources.

Any experienced player can use HA Sorc to accomplish anything in the game. HA Sorc is undoubtedly the main culprit for game imbalance. It's a build that requires no resource management, doesn't require many skill activations, and deals incredibly powerful AoE damage; compared to it, other builds are a joke.

katanagirl1 · May 19

Now that we have subclassing, you can’t judge a character as a sorc just because they have pets. That character probably has a warden bear too.

Besides, sorc is neither powerful in PvE or PvP. HA sorc was good right after Oakensoul but was nerfed significantly after that. You will only find HA sorc in pugs, not in organized score pushing groups.