Minnus wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

No, I'm pretty sure I was talking about using Negate Magic on the Harvester, not on the Nightblade... you, uh, you got that, right?

I'm not too sure if you're coherent at this point. There is too much to dissect, and I know a lost cause when I see one.

Also, you caught me with a typo, thanks!

"Your example implies that you want Negate Magic to have an equally effective impact on as an Assassination focused Nightblade."

So, you're saying words confuse you. Okay, if you ever figure out what you were trying to articulate, feel free to come back. In the mean time, there's an actual issue here with content being horribly balanced.

starkerealm wrote: »

But, not being able to play together does raise serious questions of, why is this an MMO?

Couldn't agree more. It is absolutely asinine for an "MMO" to force people into solo-only content that completely blocks progress.

To Uviryth;848972"

Quote: The problem is that the solo-"challenges" in this game are no challenges at all. End of quote

You forgot a little word there. What is it? 'You' To YOU the solo challenges are no challenges at all. Fair enough. To others however they are challenges.

Quote: Thats like 5 hours of playtime over the whole game. I still dont see the problem, sorry. End of quote.

Okay...so you do not see the problem. Fair enough. Others however do see a problem. So what?

Quote: If DualWield and Assassination doesnt cut it, then use something else. Thats the whole point of having all the skill-lines available. End of quote.

Who says? You? If a skill line does not cut it, it is useless and should be removed... That is a good point of not having a certain skill line at all. Says me.

Quote: Thats the design ESO choose. Everyone can do everything. The drawback of that is that tunnelvision will be a problem.
If you dont like that, you need to play a game with character classes. End of quote

Just in case you failed to notice, this game has Character Classes. So the question here is: Who has tunnel vision? The developers of ESO chose to create skill lines that do not perform well in higher levels. That needs to be corrected.

Quote: Or stop thinking inside that tiny box. End of quote.

Thanks, but people are free to think whichever way they want. "Die Gedanken sind frei." I think that with the comment; "Or stop thinking inside that tiny box." you put yourself into a box. Now please shut the lid and stay in there.

Uviryth wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

...and, that's the problem. You're assuming everyone else must participate exactly at your level. No one can have a different opinion, different tastes, or a different skill level. Everyone else must be you, or... you're going to vomit. Wonderful.

The problem is that the solo-"challenges" in this game are no challenges at all.
I just fear that if people say that even that is too hard, the game will be nerfed to restofthemmosoutthere-level. and I would hate too see that. The game is easy enough as it is.

Because, screw everyone that doesn't play at your level. Right, gotcha. Uh, you do realize you're not the only subscriber, and... well, if this game wants to keep going, it kinda needs subscribers.

Uviryth wrote: »

No one can play the game because they enjoy interacting with friends who they don't get to see anymore, because they're 5k miles away. No, everyone must participate in this solo, "epic," quest-line about running into a cave and saving the world in secret, like we're all 8 years old again. And, we can't bring anyone with us, because that would subvert the... what? Immersion? I don't even know.

Thats like 5 hours of playtime over the whole game. I still dont see the problem, sorry.

It becomes a serious problem when anyone gets speed bumped, falls behind, and is no longer able to participate. And, remember, if you don't finish the main quest, you don't get to see the veteran zones. Full stop.

There's also the part where, if I honestly wanted to play a single player game right now, I'd fire up Dark Souls. If I want to go questing with friends, I'm just *** out of luck.

Uviryth wrote: »

Again, I'm all for challenges in an MMO, that's fine. But, this isn't, it's a random build check with no warning, that serves no purpose beyond shoving people out of the game and breaking up groups of friends.

I get what you mean. But as long as ESO doesnt have scalable difficulties I dont see how they would change that.

If you allowed other players into the currently forced solo instances, nothing would be lost. Well, except for the elitists ability to claim, "no, we are the only ones worthy of playing this game."

Uviryth wrote: »

If you want an MMO with serious, vicious, casual clearing barriers on the way in, The Secret World's over there with it's ~10k remaining players. Sure, most of them, entirely willing to eviscerate you at the first sign of weakness. But, I'm sure that game has all the "challenge" you can stomach. Of course, by "challenge," I mean "gear checks," but that's a different issue.

First of all, TSW is fine, there are more then enough players online at all times.

Because going f2p in less than six months is the perfect symptom of success.

Uviryth wrote: »

Second, TSW is exactly the game which I reference as the perfect difficulty. Everything is stll soloable, but only if you know your skills and have a lot of builds up your sleeve.

Three things, first, TSW is actually built around loading up on alternate decks. TESO... isn't. But, I'll get back to that in a bit.

Second, please, by all means, tell me how you solo anything after the gatekeeper. By the way, I do have all the lair lore in the game, from solo excursions, so don't think I don't know what I'm talking about.

Third, TSW's entire game is built around gear checks. It's kinda sad once you step back and parse it all out. Even high level play isn't really determined by skill, the combat system's too basic for that. It's determined by, is your gear good enough, and do you have the right mix of skills. Now, the second one could be compelling if, you know, this wasn't the internet, and people didn't run cookie cutters.

Uviryth wrote: »

Third, the contentpatches are probably the best in the whole industry.

You mean, aside from the part where not one, to date, has managed to hit any deadline? I mean, in a month it will have it's second anniversary, and there have been, I believe, 8 monthly content packs. Or the part where Tokyo will only be a year and a half late?

Or do you mean where Issue 6 dumped a bunch of endgame grade enemies into the middle of a leveling zone? And how none of the paid content additions has been accessible to anyone below QL10 (short of some really screwy stunts with Tyler)?

Uviryth wrote: »

EDIT: There's actually, also, a second issue. Some builds get invalidated randomly. Take a single target, high damage, Dual Wielding Nightblade into a Harvester fight (except Drosha), and you'll find your otherwise completely viable build smeared all over the walls, with pretty much no recourse. And, it's not a skill issue, in building towards Assassination and or Shadow you can easily end up without any viable tools to deal with the fight. And the game doesn't provide any feedback telling you this, until you simply hit a boss you can't touch.

If DualWield and Assassination doesnt cut it, then use something else. Thats the whole point of having all the skill-lines available.

Yeah, and this is the one time when I'll give TSW credit for doing something right. I'll *** about how tedious it is to have to completely redo your build for a different proc, because as you're wandering through Trans enemies have a rotating set of immunities...

But, by the time you've hit trans, you should have every non-aux weapon type at 10, and you should have a large pile of abilities to draw upon for building a new deck...

In TESO... if you don't use, say, syphon powers, on your nightblade, you can't buy syphon powers. You can always grab the first one in the tree, so you can start earning XP.

So, if I'm facing a situation where I actually need a high end syphon powers, then I'm going to have to take Strife, wander out into the world, and use it long enough to level up to 20 or 42 in Syphon before I can switch to a new build.

The same thing is true for weapons skills. If you're not using that weapon, and it has what you need, you're going to need to stop playing and farm for a week before you can come back. Or, play with abilities that aren't actually useful in your current situation.

With TSW, when you needed Cleanup, you did have to buy everything to get out there, but you didn't have to do it with a shotgun equipped the entire time, and that's the difference.

Uviryth wrote: »

For a player, that's not "challenge", that's just terrible design. If there were warnings that, "hey, maybe you should have some of these abilities over here," and we were ignoring that, then, okay, great. But, instead it's simply an unrecoverable failstate.

Thats the design ESO choose. Everyone can do everything. The drawback of that is that tunnelvision will be a problem.
If you dont like that, you need to play a game with character classes.

Except, again, TESO is not TSW. If you want to build up alternate builds, you actually need to be playing those builds first. Which results in a lot of problems. If you need a staff for this one fight, and only this one fight, in the game, you need to go out, get a staff and use it until your character's skill is high enough that you can buy the talents you actually need.

On top of that, while you can get enough skill points to buy (nearly) everything eventually. That is a very late game situation for TESO, especially if you already are putting points into more than one class tree, your armor, your two weapons, and a crafting skill. Worse, the costs for respeccing are prohibitively high, almost punitively.

Uviryth wrote: »

How are you expected to deal with that fight? Roll up a new character.

Or stop thinking inside that tiny box.

As someone who has cleared the gatekeeper on a blood/shotgun tank, I think I might know a little more about thinking, and being, outside the box than you do.

Here's a thought, maybe they shouldn't randomly invalidate builds without giving the player actual tools to deal with the situation, or some kind of warning. You know, just a thought.

EDIT: as a fun aside, there in fact are AoE powers that Nightblades have access to. With the exception of the syphon ultimate, none of them actually do damage. However, there are a lot of Nightblade powers that can be morphed to do AoE damage... how do you find them? Go digging around online, and then keep that ability slotted, no matter how worthless it is, until it levels up to 4 and you can actually morph it... yeah, that sounds fun.

EDIT 2: I can't speak for anyone else, but there is also the part where my getting splattered is the direct result of playing the game as intended. With a medium armor, dual wielding, nightblade. By the mid-30s I haven't had access to any decent AoE attacks. This isn't some weird experimental build, this is how the class is supposed to be run.

Uviryth wrote: »

Allright, I give up. You can have your groupable singleplayerdungeons. But please dont demand any difficulty-nerfs.

Thanks

I wasn't asking for difficulty nerfs. Harvesters are designed as group bosses. Their mechanics: the hold of doom with the orb summons scream group mechanics. Fighting them alone is possible, with the perfect build, but aggravating as hell for no reason.

Of course, what we'll probably get is just difficulty nerfs because that's how design's been going lately.

bigjeff wrote: »

My wife and I came from wow, but have played many mmos for years , my wife pretty much plays a healer class , I'm a hybrid healing/dps, .......so I get to the end of the story line and I have to take down the big man, and its a very hard fight , one I've not yet finished and I was saying to the wife how hard it is, she replies then how is she going to do it? being a totally healer class she has no idea how to dps , has never had a interest in being a dps or a tank , we also find out we cannot progress in the game until bol is taken down? So ESO what do the healers and the non combat player's do?
I thought a mmo was about being what ever I want to be, and yet here we have a mmo that you can but you will have to repec and re learn all new skills so you can do what you want your way, I can understand you want everyone to finish the story but what if we cannot??? we just get stuck at rank one and do nothing? we cannot even group up and do it , it seems really freaking silly
my 2 cents
the little guy and his wife

wait for vet mode.. ive no idea how anyone does the end oh the daggerfall content in vet mode solo. the tharn woman. 3 or 4 harvesters to get to her. i had help lucky enough... but several times i just think, theres no way unless your playing the OP dk or sorc power builds.. that its even remotely fair to expect the average player to solo some of the "solo" story...

Grao wrote: »

hamon wrote: »

bigjeff wrote: »

My wife and I came from wow, but have played many mmos for years , my wife pretty much plays a healer class , I'm a hybrid healing/dps, .......so I get to the end of the story line and I have to take down the big man, and its a very hard fight , one I've not yet finished and I was saying to the wife how hard it is, she replies then how is she going to do it? being a totally healer class she has no idea how to dps , has never had a interest in being a dps or a tank , we also find out we cannot progress in the game until bol is taken down? So ESO what do the healers and the non combat player's do?
I thought a mmo was about being what ever I want to be, and yet here we have a mmo that you can but you will have to repec and re learn all new skills so you can do what you want your way, I can understand you want everyone to finish the story but what if we cannot??? we just get stuck at rank one and do nothing? we cannot even group up and do it , it seems really freaking silly
my 2 cents
the little guy and his wife

wait for vet mode.. ive no idea how anyone does the end oh the daggerfall content in vet mode solo. the tharn woman. 3 or 4 harvesters to get to her. i had help lucky enough... but several times i just think, theres no way unless your playing the OP dk or sorc power builds.. that its even remotely fair to expect the average player to solo some of the "solo" story...

Or maybe the best way... The right way... Is to actually have some help ^^

yes but if the best way to do solo content is to not be solo.. that sort of screams something isnt right unless you don't have a firm grasp of langauge comprehension. its like saying the best way not to get killed by someone is to kill yourself

Grao wrote: »

hamon wrote: »

Grao wrote: »

hamon wrote: »

bigjeff wrote: »

My wife and I came from wow, but have played many mmos for years , my wife pretty much plays a healer class , I'm a hybrid healing/dps, .......so I get to the end of the story line and I have to take down the big man, and its a very hard fight , one I've not yet finished and I was saying to the wife how hard it is, she replies then how is she going to do it? being a totally healer class she has no idea how to dps , has never had a interest in being a dps or a tank , we also find out we cannot progress in the game until bol is taken down? So ESO what do the healers and the non combat player's do?
I thought a mmo was about being what ever I want to be, and yet here we have a mmo that you can but you will have to repec and re learn all new skills so you can do what you want your way, I can understand you want everyone to finish the story but what if we cannot??? we just get stuck at rank one and do nothing? we cannot even group up and do it , it seems really freaking silly
my 2 cents
the little guy and his wife

wait for vet mode.. ive no idea how anyone does the end oh the daggerfall content in vet mode solo. the tharn woman. 3 or 4 harvesters to get to her. i had help lucky enough... but several times i just think, theres no way unless your playing the OP dk or sorc power builds.. that its even remotely fair to expect the average player to solo some of the "solo" story...

Or maybe the best way... The right way... Is to actually have some help ^^

yes but if the best way to do solo content is to not be solo.. that sort of screams something isnt right unless you don't have a firm grasp of langauge comprehension. its like saying the best way not to get killed by someone is to kill yourself

Where does it says the veteran level quests are meant to be soloed? ^^ Actually, the only mention to soloing in VR levels you will ever see is on Solo Dungeons and that is just a bad name (for many different reasons, the main one being... They are not really dungeons).

well i think its in the fact that it's meant to be scaled up content that ALL solo if you do it on your faction from 1-50. theres no mention of the fact that the entire other 2 factions levelling content has suddenly been taken from solo to group mode.. it was not the intent to make it all group only. and it isnt all group only . you can solo most of it still in vet mode . its just to do it at a semi-efficient non frustrating way you are forced into cookie cutter molds that kind of reduce the fun and freedom of the game .. a bad mistake and an error of scaling as i've said many times.

so many points

Or you could kill them with auto attack, like I did.

You hit like a truck in that fight, you have a ton of HP... it's easy. It is practically designed to be won. Especially if you are a healer. I took Molag Bal down with frikkin' autoattacks and by not standing in huge red circles.

[snip]

o.k... just needed to get that off my chest...

Fact: Harvesters are one of the most difficult mobs in ESO.

why?

let's review the Harvester:

1) high health:
this is to be expected from a high level daedra mob.
however....

2) resistance:
she has an apparent immunity/resistance to some spells.
as a Templar i have two damage skills, Aedric Spear and Dawn's Wrath.
I have leveled these spells since day one... they are maxed.
both spell lines do very very little damage to Harvesters. negligible.
MAJOR issue for Templar/Healer.

3) high damage:
gross understatement.
Harvesters are 2x-5x the damage of other creatures same level.
i have seen many a tank/knight, high health/high armor, wiped in two hits.
Being a healer, all my points have gone into mana/magic...
guess i am just [snip] when it comes to her attacks.
OH.... and guess what happens if her attack crits on you?
exactly: insta death... even for tanks... ouch!

4) Immobilizing:
Harvesters are immune to stun, knockdown, snare, slow, etc.
HOWEVER, they have an 'immobilizing' spell that is cast regularly.
during this time you are lifted off the ground, frozen, can't move,
AND it takes at least half your health (tank)...
75-100% health on squishy characters like healers/sorc/mage.
(p.s. she can immobilize through blocks, through cover, and around corners)

OH, BUT WAIT... THERE'S MORE!!!!

5) self healing:
as if all that other stuff was not enough for a common daedra mob....
this creature can self heal! [snip]?!?!?!?! this is not a boss.
yes, you have a shot at stopping the balls from healing mob... BUT...
targeting balls from distance is difficult or impossible...
hitting the balls up close places you in extreme danger of AOE or Stun.
one tiny mistake and your Harvester is now fully healed...

*sigh*

yes, in few dungeons i can get help... sometimes.

like many, my end game of Daggerfall was a nightmare!
thank the Divines, there were some other players to help.
otherwise i would not have been able to finish game... grrrrr.....
I was 5 levels OVER the creatures, but Harvesters STILL impossible to solo!

[edited for profanity bypass]

I have no idea if it's been said already, but solo content in a MMO is just ridiculous. The devs do know what the second M stands for, right?
I see ESO as I view SWTOR. A single player online game with some multiplayer elements.

If you want to easy-mode Harvesters, don't melee them. There, now they can't hit you with their hard attacks.

And since when is hitting their spheres from a distance difficult? ESO is using auto-aim. Just point and click. Oh, and try to lure them away from walls and cramped spaces, their spheres will spawn literally on top of them if there is no room.