MSattrtand wrote: »

People in this thread definitely should take off their tin foil hats and realise that correlation does not equal causation.

U51 PTS could be postponed for various reasons. Warden refresh is only one part of U51. Why do you all assume that it's not ready, it needs more time, or something like that? Maybe Crimson Veldt is not ready, maybe HUD Editor is not ready, or maybe it's even some backend code that prepares crossplay. Or maybe the problem lies in internal ZOS processes, or maybe the problem is the console certification process - we don't know. It's wild to assume that the state of the Warden refresh is the problem.

Wheeler and Gilliam were presenting combat refresh in previous streams. They were not announced as speakers this time. They were not present during the stream. Well, imagine my shock when no one spoke about the Warden refresh.

A simple explanation for why the Warden refresh wasn't mentioned: PTS was postponed, so ZOS needs some info to save for the next monthly stream, which is why they decided not to speak about Warden this time. Full stop on all your conspiracy theories. Just be patient, pretty please.

I gave a direct quote earlier, where it was said that U51 needed some polishing still and that was "relevant to what you're all asking about in chat", which for several seconds before she even said those words was predominantly people asking about the Warden rework. It's therefore quite easy to read the context that what might be causing U51 to get delayed a few weeks IS the Warden refresh. Now if it had just been left at "U51 needs more polishing" that would have made all that you suggested more logical. But "it is relevant to what you're all asking about in chat", when what was being asked about in chat was Warden rework, directly ties the two points together in SOME way.

No insult meant to anyone else but "Warden needing a bit more time" is literally the most logical reason given what was said in the stream. Warden being replaced with another Class is, imo, hardly an option because aside from Soc, I doubt they've gotten any real groundwork done for the other Classes yet. I'd be surprised if anything other than Sorc has had any real progress made on it at this point. Warden having whole Skill Lines like Winter's Embrace removed seems extreme and there's no precedent with DK losing any Skill Lines. Skills within a line might get changed or something but that's not the same as having an entire Skill Line yoinked.

MSattrtand wrote: »

U51 PTS could be postponed for various reasons. Warden refresh is only one part of U51. Why do you all assume that it's not ready, it needs more time, or something like that?

Because people entered the stream in hopes that Warden would be discussed, it wasn't. When directly asked about it, we got vague responses in return. That gave people a weird vibe and so far, they're making it worse.

And more importantly, this was their way of communicating for a decade until this year. So people are irritated by it because we've seen it too many times before.

We've all seen how topics of Cyrodiil, performance, PVP, crossplay, balance, class changes - the list goes - have been handled. We're saying we want a conversation or information, they're not meeting us there. No one wants ZOS to go back to their old ways of working.

MSattrtand wrote: »

Maybe Crimson Veldt is not ready, maybe HUD Editor is not ready, or maybe it's even some backend code that prepares crossplay. Or maybe the problem lies in internal ZOS processes, or maybe the problem is the console certification process - we don't know.

All they have to do is say that. And if it's something contractual, hey, just say that too.

MSattrtand wrote: »

It's wild to assume that the state of the Warden refresh is the problem.

It's really not, for the reasons mentioned above. And if they don't want people to have that assumption, which their vague communications is engendering, than just be transparent. It's pretty simple.

MSattrtand wrote: »

A simple explanation for why the Warden refresh wasn't mentioned: PTS was postponed, so ZOS needs some info to save for the next monthly stream, which is why they decided not to speak about Warden this time.

All they have to do is say that.

coop500 wrote: »

I for one wouldn't mind if Warden gets split into two classes, it honestly needs it. Too many themes half baked shoved into one class where other classes get one or two themes to truly shine.

I don't play a Warden so I have no horse in this race as it were, but I really doubt they'd split any of the Classes. That would require making a whole new Class, which given they've said they can't even add a few emotes for WW because it would cost too much memory, I can't see them adding in a whole new Class that would need all new animations any time soon.

hmm I dont think we will get more then 2 class refresh this year

MSattrtand wrote: »

People in this thread definitely should take off their tin foil hats and realise that correlation does not equal causation.

The issue is bigger than Warden.

The biggest frustration we had with the team over the past two years was their habit of playing coy and trying to surprise us. We knew Chapters were being sunset, and in its place was… “we can’t wait to show you!” We wanted to know if we could still expect new zones, new Classes, new content, and we got… “we don’t have any information yet, and we’ll tell you as soon as we can!”

It’s frustrating. It’s evasive. And more often than not, the “big surprise” finally got revealed and it ended up falling flat because nobody considered half of the playerbase when they dreamed it up, and it made the game actively worse for them.

We’ve known Warden was planned for U51 since January. DK’s and Werewolf’s reworks were really well received from a large portion of the playerbase, save complaints of balance (with the promise that other Classes would be brought up in time). So since U50 dropped, we should have been hearing about the exciting things coming in U51…
But we haven’t even heard the word ‘Warden.’ Why? The rework was probably the most anticipated thing in this patch, so why is the team not only demurring, but actively acting like it doesn’t exist? After all, the solo dungeons are a Season Two thing - Warden’s rework would drop with U51 during Season One.

The problem now is that, in the face of uncertainty about the status of the refresh, the answer (in the thread about Wardens!) is… “Yeah, we had to delay U51 for some unspecified reason. We will make sure to get input on all of the refreshes.”
…so, nothing about Warden. Not even the name is mentioned.
And in the stream, “the thing chat is talking about.” Really? You can’t even name the thing chat is talking about?

Again, massively evasive. Why can’t the team release a statement like: “hey, the Warden rework is on schedule and is unrelated to the PTS delay, but here’s a quick teaser to sate you before you get to see it on PTS in a month!” or “hey, we needed to delay PTS because of one issue with Warden, but here’s a teaser for something we did so you can see something before you get your hands on it!” or “hey, Warden gave us a lot of issues so we had to pull it from U51, but it’s looking like an U52 thing is possible. By the way, here’s some cool concept art of some of their new stuff.” or “hey, so we’re deleting Warden as is from the game and converting it into a Beastmaster, so I hope none of you planned your Wardens as frostmages!”

Something. Anything. Because if all we have is silence and evasion, then doubt and conspiracy will fill the gap.

Warden is season one content, so it can be U51 or U52 indeed, if you look at the yearly roadmap it is on the right side of season one so probably U52.

Masteroshi430 wrote: »

Warden is season one content, so it can be U51 or U52 indeed, if you look at the yearly roadmap it is on the right side of season one so probably U52.

That's a mega ouch if so, and also means Sorc somehow still needs to fit into this year
Update 51 isn't dropping on Live until mid to late September, update 52 is realistically the last update for the year.

And if Sorc isn't fitting in this year, that means we only got two class reworks and Werewolf in one year. There's no way they're doing the rest of the classes in time.

Thanks @ZOS_JessicaFolsom for stopping in, it’s always great hearing from you.

When you’re able to, if your team has an answer to any of these questions, it would help clear up any confusion created by that dev stream.

-Are we getting another Stream before Update 51?
-Will that stream mention Warden’s rework?
-Is Warden still projected for Update 51?

Arunei wrote: »

Malprave wrote: »

Why do you want a warden refresh now that we have the class masteries? What can they do now other than mess it up? You want them to fiddle with it until it ends up in a bad place like pve dk?

...what?

The Mastery Passives were never meant to be a replacement for the reworks. Ever. They're meant to bridge a gap between Subclassing and Pureclassing while the reworks are being done. People have even speculated about if the Mastery Passives are going to stay in the game once all the reworks are complete; I imagine they will since DK had Whip's buff moved to one of the Masteries (don't remember which one).

And what do you mean "bad place in Pve"? PvE DK isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination.

The whip buff was not moved. And relative to other classes it isn’t great. It was quite good initially but not after the first week of the pts.

Soarora wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Why can’t the team release a statement like: “hey, the Warden rework is on schedule and is unrelated to the PTS delay, but here’s a quick teaser to sate you before you get to see it on PTS in a month!” or “hey, we needed to delay PTS because of one issue with Warden, but here’s a teaser for something we did so you can see something before you get your hands on it!” or

Because it can take many days or weeks to prepare such a teaser.

They can't show concept art of animations that for some reason or another got canned. Because then the playerbase will treat this as a promise of future content, when in reality it's a work in progress that is subject to change.

The ESO playerbase keeps asking to see how the sausage is made, and then freaks out when it looks bad, or freaks out when the final producs looks different.

You don't actually want to see concept art. Concept art is messy, low quality, and includes dozens if not hundreds of ideas that never make it to the final stage, and they're not supposed to. What you actually want to see is a form of key art. Concept art that has been polished and framed to be released to the public.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

“hey, Warden gave us a lot of issues so we had to pull it from U51, but it’s looking like an U52 thing is possible."

They also can't just say this, because they haven't decided. When a developer makes a plan, and the plan doesn't work out for one reason or another, it takes time to write a new plan. And that's probably going to get revised as well.

Devs are not going to share that second plan, until they know for certain what shape it's going to take.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Something. Anything. Because if all we have is silence and evasion, then doubt and conspiracy will fill the gap.

And this is a selfish and toxic behaviour that the ESO playerbase needs to grow out of.

The whole point of moving away from the predictable and repetitive chapter structure is for the devs to have the freedom to adapt. And by thinking and talking like this, you're refusing to give devs the freedom to adapt.

I do agree that showing us concept art would be bad, unless they’re looking for feedback. Because they would get feedback whether they’re asking for it or not. I think the tendency of the community to “freak out” would explain why they wouldn’t say things they don’t have worked out yet.

But I don’t think it makes sense to call the tendency of people to speculate “selfish” and “toxic”. We should not put on our tinfoil hats, it’s rather pointless and none of the possible options really make much sense. But it is true that silence and weirdness breeds conspiracy, there will be people who speculate. I would say this is human nature, if anything.

Absolutely, ZOS going through with flexible release dates is a good thing. It’s just really weird how averse they are to saying the word. It’s nitpicky, it just weirds me out.

Agreed. I was hurt by this schedule change but i completely welcome it if its for the sake of quality. But i would have expected more of an honest update.

Yeah I'm not asking for anything to be SHOWN, I don't need to see concept art or whatever. But the silence, avoidance of even breathing the word Warden or Warden Rework is just bizarre and it's not toxic or unreasonable to wonder what the heck.

coop500 wrote: »

That's a mega ouch if so, and also means Sorc somehow still needs to fit into this year
Update 51 isn't dropping on Live until mid to late September, update 52 is realistically the last update for the year.

And if Sorc isn't fitting in this year, that means we only got two class reworks and Werewolf in one year. There's no way they're doing the rest of the classes in time.

Since the shift to the season system they are:
- fixing/optimizing/modernizing under the hood things (lots of non visible work)
- doing overhauls of game systems and adressing long overdue QOL improvements (including the class rework)
- working on the crossplay (also lots of work)
- adding new game systems (including monitoring things and work on future fixes/improvements)
- (most probably) working on the next zone

The new seasonal system allows them to add things when they are ready and removes the pressure of a yearly big update deadline so they can take more time to fix, improve and create things needing more than a year of work.

There clearly was a shift for the better in how they work, It doesn't matter if some features are delayed, they are coming anyway.

Arunei wrote: »

Malprave wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Malprave wrote: »

Why do you want a warden refresh now that we have the class masteries? What can they do now other than mess it up? You want them to fiddle with it until it ends up in a bad place like pve dk?

...what?

The Mastery Passives were never meant to be a replacement for the reworks. Ever. They're meant to bridge a gap between Subclassing and Pureclassing while the reworks are being done. People have even speculated about if the Mastery Passives are going to stay in the game once all the reworks are complete; I imagine they will since DK had Whip's buff moved to one of the Masteries (don't remember which one).

And what do you mean "bad place in Pve"? PvE DK isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination.

The whip buff was not moved. And relative to other classes it isn’t great. It was quite good initially but not after the first week of the pts.

How exactly is DK not great compared to other Classes?

And to keep this from getting too off-topic, the devs don't need to share anything they, for whatever reason, can't or just aren't ready to share. It just seems odd that they won't even outright say "Yes U51 going to the PTS is delayed because of Warden" or "no Warden is not what's causing the delay of U51 on the PTS". Instead we got what amounts to the former via "U51 needs more polish and it's relevant to what you're all asking about in the chat" and chat was blowing up about the Warden refresh. I don't think they need to even tell us WHY it's delaying U51, just either confirm whether it is or isn't.

Recontextualized does not mean moved. I'm not even sure it's a word. Orwellian double-speak crap.

But back to the point, a quick youtube search will reveal that the top dk parses are around 165-175k, which isn't even close to the best classes which are going over 200k. Even the poor Templar beats out dk.

If you're not a top player, and I'm certainly not, proportionally you are still going to feel the difference at whatever damage level you're at. Dk just doesn't do as well.

And I'm not trying to sidetrack this thread, I hate that, I was just trying to make a point. Right now I can put together a good frost warden, far better than in the past. If Zos touches the warden too much what can happen there other than it gets worse?

I find the Warden visuals to be pretty good. It was easy to see how a dk needed a little more pizzazz. I don't see that warden is visually lacking. So yeah, I think for me warden can only get worse from here.

I'll say it again: If Warden needs to be delayed for any reason, most of us will be fine with that. Some things need to cook longer, and that's okay. Releasing things in a half-baked state is way worse than just tabling it for a patch and giving it the time it needs
(See the reception to Subclassing and "oh, the balance will work itself out" idea)

Them taking time isn't an issue. At all. Them being coy and pointedly not even saying the word "Warden" is.

We have said for years that the "tee-hee we can't wait to tell you" style of communication was horrendous. They had the massive leadership changes, and they did say that communication and transparency was a weakness of theirs that they wanted to work on. And this whole thing is going right back to the old habits.
We don't want to see that old style of non-communication return. We hated it then, and we hate it now.

I get that they can only make announcements if they are given leave to do so. But that means someone somewhere on the chain is saying "hey, don't even say the word Warden." That's the attitude we don't want to see.

Delayed? Fine, much better late than bad. But "we can't wait to surprise you with something that half of the players are going to like and the other half will hate, and now it's too late to change it to something that everyone will like" like they did every other time they played coy like this is not good.

I believe most are fine with and understand things needing more time. No one is, from what I see, arguing about "they need to push Warden immediately!" or anything. It just really is strange how vague and almost evasive the wording was:

*Chat was asking about Warden info when it became clear the stream was wrapping up.
*Several moments later we get told "to reiterate what was said at the start, the PTS is getting delayed a few weeks"
*It's then added that "it's relevant to what you're all asking about in chat".

So the PTS getting delayed has to be tied at least to some degree to something with Warden, because that was by far the thing being brought up most in the chat. And if that's the case why not just say "The PTS is being delayed due to things relating to the Warden rework"? It just does feel really weird that they wouldn't come out and say it and tiptoed around it instead.

I'm also not trying to be all conspiracy over here either, just to put that out there. I don't think it's anything rather extreme like Warden being swapped for another Class, Warden losing Skill Lines, Warden being remade into something entirely different thematically, or anything like that. I think it's either something not quite done yet, or not quite working properly yet.

In fact, given what we were told about how WW can't have any unique emotes or animations beyond what we got with the rework because it'd take too much memory, I wonder of it's maybe animation/memory stuff they need a bit more time for?