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

True for banished cells 2, but not for crypt pull boss: with good dps the boss won't even do this mechanic. As for the last boss, true, people burn the boss until even the first couple of ghosts can spawn.

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.

I think that was 3 years ago... HA sorc builds are sometimes even being kicked from raidgroups because their dps can't compete with meta builds.

coop500 wrote: »

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.

If this true, it may be I just don't know. But if it is true how very sad. I love playing the sets, some of the animations are hoot and I love trying new things. Why does meta have to be so narrow and boring?

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

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.

If this true, it may be I just don't know. But if it is true how very sad. I love playing the sets, some of the animations are hoot and I love trying new things. Why does meta have to be so narrow and boring?

Indeed, if this is true. And if it is true for coop, I would recommend choosing your guilds more carefully. I am in multiple guilds and in none of them you have to play the straight up meta. There are some projects, like our prog group, where we do optimise to the max, but there are plenty of other things to do in our guild if you don't want to start chasing the meta. So if you end up in a group where you have specific sets you need to use, at least in the guilds I am in, you have to specifically apply to them and show that you are up for the task. You don't randomly get told to make a meta build or get sneered at if you have some off meta build.

Other exception is farm runs for perfected gear. It's not as strict as prog groups, but we do prefer DDs do decent damage and supports know the mechanics, and that everyone has done it on vet a few times. We want the perfected gear fast so no teaching, no learning, no looting, no opening chests, just get to the final boss and get the perfected weapon, rinse and repeat. But it's a preference and priority is given to those who fulfil the criteria, not a hard requirement -- in our last vLC farm run we had one guy there for the first time. Unfortunately we could not explain the mechs because the plan was to farm, not to teach, so we just said follow others and do damage. It went fine.

Outside of the prog groups and farm runs, it's from anything goes to mild optimisation and even then the optimisation is mainly for supports.

Sometimes I don't really get it when people are talking about so toxic communities and such. There are wonderful guilds you can join. And if you don't like the guild, you can leave. No one is forcing you to stay. It's not even irl cultural thing. I have found nice guilds in PCEU and PCNA. There are nice guilds with chill people. If all the guilds you have been in are toxic, maybe the problem isn't the guilds.

This is the most ChatGPT written post I've ever seen on these forums. Many statements with hard contrasts of 'It's not this, it's that,' bulleted lists of mostly three items, and excessive paragraph breaks between shorts statements are all tell tail signs that this is largely AI written for anyone that's worked regularly with GPT.

Dalsinthus wrote: »

This is the most ChatGPT written post I've ever seen on these forums. Many statements with hard contrasts of 'It's not this, it's that,' bulleted lists of mostly three items, and excessive paragraph breaks between shorts statements are all tell tail signs that this is largely AI written for anyone that's worked regularly with GPT.

Because it is written by AI. The OP stated in other threads he uses it [snip] I forget the exact reason.

EDIT For Clarity: I feel this post is yet another attempt at complaining about prior game complaints.
[edited for baiting]

Athory wrote: »

Dalsinthus wrote: »

This is the most ChatGPT written post I've ever seen on these forums. Many statements with hard contrasts of 'It's not this, it's that,' bulleted lists of mostly three items, and excessive paragraph breaks between shorts statements are all tell tail signs that this is largely AI written for anyone that's worked regularly with GPT.

I never hide the fact that I use ChatGPT to help me fix my English. What's your point here? And do you actually have anything to say about the topic? Of course not. You don't care about the game at all, you're just trying to bait me, and absolutely nothing else.

Yes, I use ChatGPT. What are you going to do about it?

It's simply an observation. I'm not familiar with your post history. I personally prefer to know if something I read is a real person's thoughts or an output from a language model. I thought others might feel the same way.

I also use ChatGPT routinely, which is how I knew what I was reading; there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion. It's a useful tool. Yet what you've posted looks like a direct copy and paste of an AI output and not a language refinement or correction of a post you've written. I can produce a similar post with a simply question to GPT about high dps being a problem in ESO. If that's correct - that AI wrote the post - then why should a stranger spend time reading it?

As to the point of the thread, to the extent I made it through the post, I disagree. I PUG enough to see plenty of players with low damage on unoptimized builds struggling to finish content and make damage checks. And I do organized dungeon and trial perfectas enough to know that there's still plenty of challenge and fun to be had in this game at the top end. Mechanics are still relevant in lots of content and older content is becoming more accessible. For a game that lacks much vertical progression at end game, this is a fine way of managing things from my perspective. The game is still really fun and interesting. Like you, I love the game, even if we disagree about this.

What am I going to do about it? Move on.

so much creative LLM post writing. You folks who do this should just cut out the middle man and get gemini to make you a game

Well, I think the "what is your dps" issue can be solved:
if the group/raid's dps (or "NN% of totall HP per single hit" as an option) surpass a certain value:
a) The boss becomes invulnerable for a MM seconds
or
b) The boss applies a selfbuff that significantly reduces all damage taken.

So "level of difficulty" will be "more complex mechanics and timing"

Justosay wrote: »

Well, I think the "what is your dps" issue can be solved:
if the group/raid's dps (or "NN% of totall HP per single hit" as an option) surpass a certain value:
a) The boss becomes invulnerable for a MM seconds
or
b) The boss applies a selfbuff that significantly reduces all damage taken.

So "level of difficulty" will be "more complex mechanics and timing"

The inherent issue with meta vs non-meta in ESO is that the current meta is outperforming everything else by about 20%. Reducing the gap to below 5% will solve some of the problem, but there will still be people who demand that extra 5%, even though it itself is about 20% more than it needs to be if people just learned and did the mechs.

Other games get around this problem with things like threat generation. It forces players to throttle their dps giving it a cap, so the extra 5% or 20% doesn't matter, because you can't get there. ESO's taunt system is better than that imo, and a non-threat system means you can have some who front load damage, and others who make up for their lower front load with higher execute.

ZOS have tried to get around this already with invulnerability modes, it's annoying and breaks the flow of the fight. I'd prefer a mechs all at once mode. i.e. If the boss does mechs at 90%, 80% and 70% and it gets burned so fast that it "skips" the 90 & 80 they all happen at 70%. This would force players to throttle and have to think about the mechs, but good look getting the community to agree to that.

I disagree with much of what the OP said. It's missing a lot of context and experience, but they are no wholly wrong that the mindset of far too many is numbers, numbers, and numbers.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

lillybit wrote: »

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.

Yes, you can absolutely skip the lunar phase, and even skip doing backyards on hardmode if the dps is high enough BUT you can't skip hiding behing a pillar, or getting the colour swap right, or not getting blown back onto a cursed pad, or bypass the two one-shot murder kitties, or any other of a number of things that will kill you.

Getting the clear in vMoL is a lot easier these days, but getting the no death (the pinnacle achievement in there) still requires knowing, understanding, and playing the mechs.

Edit: Typos

I actually just now remembered that the lunar phase was a thing. But, I gotta say, I agree with you completely. VMOL has still been one of the biggest PUG killers in the game because the mechs are difficult and must be respected in enough of the trial that I would still rank it as a harder one.

I also think OP mentioning across multiple threads how they wear sub-par builds on purpose in an attempt to provoke people into swearing at them so they can report them in an effort to prove a point is important context for this whole discussion. This is not a discussion started in good faith.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

This is just punishing people for working hard to be good at the game.

Not for nothing, but you are kind of proving the OPs point, and honestly it's a somewhat reductive argument. You class being "good at the game" as doing as much damage as possible. While a skill in itself (a good weaver is skilled), doing the mechs correctly and consistently is also a skill. Which is harder? Which is the intent of ZOS? Damage or mechs?

If the former, then there wouldn't be much in the way of mechs. If the latter, then there wouldn't be both soft and hard dps checks. The reality is, it is both that matter.

So, if ZOS changed things tomorrow and moved to a totally mech based fight, where damage wasn't that important - much like OO is tbf, and people completed such content without anyone dying, in an allotted time, and on a hardmode would they not be good at the game?

Just something for you to think about.

It has been overwhelmingly my experience that the people who do the best damage also have the fastest reaction times, best raid awareness, and desire to actually do the hardest content.

I did OO with my regular raid team, all of whom do excellent damage, have multiple trial trifectas, and can swap roles freely. We went in completely blind, figured out all the mechanics, and cleared the trial in about 90 minutes, have gone back several times to get everyone their wing achievements and no deaths.

Meanwhile, the social guild I hang out in, have managed to scrap a single clear. ALL of them sincerely believe they make up what they lack in damage with their superior ability to perform mechanics. I have played with them. They are wrong.
This is why I roll my eyes whenever this argument gets brought up. Yes, there are a few parse monkeys that do good damage on a dummy but can't move out of an aoe if you drag them, but there is one of those for every ten "my build shouldn't matter as long as I know the fight" people who also can't move out of an aoe if you drag them

If there were a variety of ways to play and achieve high damage, we wouldn't be having this argument.

But there's not real balance in the game, so players converge on a very few playstyles. Anyone not using that then feels cut off from the game.

Dps inflation means mechanics in some trials aren't even noticed, and yet the mechanics in the newer trials vet hm are extremely demanding, and dps numbers are a proxy for showing the class/skills understanding needed to be sure a player will manage the mechanics (not just showing damage but understanding). So trials are not particularly balanced either.

I don't think this is about player vs player on choices of focus, with a right or wrong answer on player approach.

I think this is about the game that's been created, and how people are responding. The game needs balance and more than one way to play high dps.

If you want to send in minions to battle for you, if you want to use bows, or swords, or staffs, these should have different ways of playing but be all viable. If you want to use magic this too should be viable. It shouldn't all just be beams. It should be a range of magic types.

This is the balance the game is lacking not, a balance between dps parse goals, vs not.

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Reginald_leBlem wrote: »

This is just punishing people for working hard to be good at the game.

Not for nothing, but you are kind of proving the OPs point, and honestly it's a somewhat reductive argument. You class being "good at the game" as doing as much damage as possible. While a skill in itself (a good weaver is skilled), doing the mechs correctly and consistently is also a skill. Which is harder? Which is the intent of ZOS? Damage or mechs?

If the former, then there wouldn't be much in the way of mechs. If the latter, then there wouldn't be both soft and hard dps checks. The reality is, it is both that matter.

So, if ZOS changed things tomorrow and moved to a totally mech based fight, where damage wasn't that important - much like OO is tbf, and people completed such content without anyone dying, in an allotted time, and on a hardmode would they not be good at the game?

Just something for you to think about.

It has been overwhelmingly my experience that the people who do the best damage also have the fastest reaction times, best raid awareness, and desire to actually do the hardest content.

I did OO with my regular raid team, all of whom do excellent damage, have multiple trial trifectas, and can swap roles freely. We went in completely blind, figured out all the mechanics, and cleared the trial in about 90 minutes, have gone back several times to get everyone their wing achievements and no deaths.

Meanwhile, the social guild I hang out in, have managed to scrap a single clear. ALL of them sincerely believe they make up what they lack in damage with their superior ability to perform mechanics. I have played with them. They are wrong.
This is why I roll my eyes whenever this argument gets brought up. Yes, there are a few parse monkeys that do good damage on a dummy but can't move out of an aoe if you drag them, but there is one of those for every ten "my build shouldn't matter as long as I know the fight" people who also can't move out of an aoe if you drag them

Agreed.

However, in my experience, among the "parse monkeys" who only know how to DPS on training dummies, only about 1 in 10 will perform poorly in actual combat. But among those players who think "my build shouldn't matter as long as I know the fight," about half of them will perform poorly in actual combat, even worse than the "parse monkeys," because lower DPS increases fight time, putting more pressure on tanks and healers, and these players don't even know the purpose of their skills.

Pinktraining wrote: »

However, in my experience, among the "parse monkeys" who only know how to DPS on training dummies, only about 1 in 10 will perform poorly in actual combat. But among those players who think "my build shouldn't matter as long as I know the fight," about half of them will perform poorly in actual combat, even worse than the "parse monkeys," because lower DPS increases fight time, putting more pressure on tanks and healers, and these players don't even know the purpose of their skills.

Of course there will be poorer players than others, but the notion it will increase pressure on tanks and healers isn't a valid one. As a tank, I can burn through my resources in less than a minute. My ability to tank beyond that minute comes down to my skill of managing resources, recovering them, and mitigating their loss without compromising my survivibility. If I can do that for a minute, I can do it for two minutes, or twenty minutes. Does the probability of me making a mistake increase the longer the fight goes? Absolutely - BUT - to steal a line from my friend up there: I work hard to be good at the game so that doesn't happen.

And there in lies the contradiction. If I'm good at the game then it doesn't matter how long the fight lasts, yet others will claim that you can only be good at the game if the fight is as short as possible.