ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi All, please read the community letter from Nick Giacomini about upcoming adjustments, Season updates, and our commitment to the future of ESO.

Link:https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/70213

DeathandDebauchery wrote: »

I agree with everyone that it was a /huge/ mistake to not make the Class Refreshs's the priority here. No one would rather have Solo Dungeons then class refreshes. No one would rather have 'rumors' or more 'dynamic encounters' then class refreshes.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

And why are people assuming the reworks AREN'T a top priority? Just because things are taking longer doesn't mean they aren't focusing on things, but people also seem to think everyone working in a game studio can just be thrown onto X thing or Y thing. That's not how it works, though. The people who design levels would not be able to work on balancing. The people who work on art would not know coding. I'm sure there ARE people who could be moved to the team working on the refreshes, but they can't reroute everyone to working on a single thing.

Yes, people trying to suggest that “hurr durr get the community managers on bugfixes” do not have a clue what they are talking about. But it is equally naïve to pretend that there are some things releasing that are not affecting getting the Refreshes.

Brian Wheeler is the “Combat and PvP Lead,” and that is the team that is working on the refreshes. As such, it is reasonable to consider that the team splitting their time between reworking Warden and modifying Vengeance means they are not splitting their time between reworking Warden and reworking Sorc. As such, Sorc is waiting on the backburner instead of Vengeance waiting on the backburner.

This was the whole reason behind the utter fury about the surprise Vengeance test. Why, when we had no news on the reworks, was the Combat team doing yet another Vengeance test when it was working fine. And now, I assume someone will be analyzing those results and coming up with future tests… instead of putting that energy towards the other 6 Reworks. The team really needs to come out with a statement: “We will allow Vengeance and Grey Host to exist as is until the Refreshes are done. After that, we will continue our testing and analysis.”

I’ll offer a personal thing: I’m sure everyone knows that the thing I want most for this game is a new Class. But even as much as I want an 8th Class, releasing that before Classes 2-7 get their Refreshes just seems like a strange series of priorities. I know that a new Class being made would directly affect how quickly the other Classes would get refreshed because it’s the same team working on it.

The Combat Team is also heavily investing in the Jerall PvP zone. I am still thinking that is splitting their time when they could do Refreshes in parallel which would affect more players, but the PvP community has gotten nothing new since… BGs in Morrowind? So I am more willing to give that a pass.

Still, if the argument is “well the Team can do more than one thing at once!”, why are we not assuming they could do multiple Refreshes at the same time so they get done faster? Again, the Class Refreshes are waiting for something else.

As for the other additions, QoL and Rumors and the Nowhere Vault really have little to do with Combat, so it’s sensible that the other teams could do them while the Combat team focuses on Refreshes. But the solo Dungeons… we know that there is an overlap there in the form of the new sets: Mylenne and Tarcyr are getting monster helms. That means they get proc effects. And that means the Combat Team, instead of designing a new skill for a Class Refresh, designed the monster procs. And then of course the Art Team got to make those proc effects, instead of making skill effects for the Refresh.

So it is not completely unreasonable to think that nothing they’re putting out had any effect on Warden’s Refresh or any of those to come. And with the Combat team being as bad at communicating as they are, we can only speculate… but they have not given us a reason to assume that the Refreshes are their foremost priority; from what we have seen, it more seems like Vengeance is their priority.

Arunei wrote: »

Why are we dooming when the letter literally states the game isn't going into maintenance mode? What about a delay to make sure something is done right mean they're "signing off" on anything? Would you rather them push out something before it's actually ready just so it can be said that it was released, the state of it be damned? The letter also states plainly they're looking into other ways to do stuff in the meantime, but we just ignore that part to make it seem like they're completely ignoring anything to do with Classes for now, I suppose.

And why are people assuming the reworks AREN'T a top priority? Just because things are taking longer doesn't mean they aren't focusing on things, but people also seem to think everyone working in a game studio can just be thrown onto X thing or Y thing. That's not how it works, though. The people who design levels would not be able to work on balancing. The people who work on art would not know coding. I'm sure there ARE people who could be moved to the team working on the refreshes, but they can't reroute everyone to working on a single thing.

HatchetHaro wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

Seraphayel wrote: »

alakeyfox wrote: »

1 rework a year will hammer the final nails in the coffin for the balance of the game.

As it stands - at the bare minimum we need class masteries removed from reworked classes, as well as remove WW ability to benefit from non-WW class masteries. Class masteries were introduced as a way to bridge the gap between reworked and unreworked classes, so it makes absolutely no sense to give them to the reworked classes, further raising their power floor.

Yes, Class Masteries need to be disabled for every class that has been reworked until the moment every class has been reworked.

This would be one bandaid yes. I honestly don’t know how they intend to keep players engaged, though. And negative online sentiment tends to multiply once it starts.

Arunei wrote: »

CAB_Life wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

React wrote: »

Good to hear the new PVP zone is releasing in January, that is at least something to look forward to. Fingers crossed it is well designed and worthwhile to participate in.

Hearing the news about the reworks is tragic, and has serious implications for the future of the game. These reworks NEED to be the number one priority for the studio. The game is currently in an unfinished state where DK and WW are so far ahead of everything that it isn't even fun to think about playing other classes. Delaying these reworks is going to SERIOUSLY harm your playerbase in both the short and long term.

Between this and the trials being delayed, it really feels like the studio is signing off on ESO's endgame. Sad to see, especially since it had felt like the game was on an upwards trajectory for the first time ever this year.

Why are we dooming when the letter literally states the game isn't going into maintenance mode? What about a delay to make sure something is done right mean they're "signing off" on anything? Would you rather them push out something before it's actually ready just so it can be said that it was released, the state of it be damned? The letter also states plainly they're looking into other ways to do stuff in the meantime, but we just ignore that part to make it seem like they're completely ignoring anything to do with Classes for now, I suppose.

And why are people assuming the reworks AREN'T a top priority? Just because things are taking longer doesn't mean they aren't focusing on things, but people also seem to think everyone working in a game studio can just be thrown onto X thing or Y thing. That's not how it works, though. The people who design levels would not be able to work on balancing. The people who work on art would not know coding. I'm sure there ARE people who could be moved to the team working on the refreshes, but they can't reroute everyone to working on a single thing.

Because the ‘next’ refresh is coming at least a year after the first if not longer. “Priority”, reasonably, would be dropping all the fluff between now and then and actually releasing the classes, patch after patch, in order until complete. The game is literally incomplete at the moment, with one class visually and mechanically head and shoulders above the rest. We have a decade of content for the game already. It hardly needs more at this very instant.

The letter said the next refresh is being aimed at for next year. That could be in January or February for all we know, they never said it wouldn't be until Spring or later. Just because they mentioned next year does not inherently mean mid or late year, it can also mean early.

And again, they cannot put everyone on a single project. Different people work on different things for a reason. They CANNOT realistically move a bunch of people onto one thing because not everyone is going to have the skills or experience to DO that thing. Also there's the whole "too many cooks" thing where having more hands on a project can actually make it take a lot longer to be completed and make things more complicated the more people there are that need to communicate and agree on things.

Okay. So obviously you can’t put the people in charge of the crown store or marketing on the class rework and expect efficiency. But—and I’ve been to ZOS HQ btw—you certainly have buckets of programmers, graphic designers, model and vfx asset designers, sound techs, bug testers, that are likely spread across multiple projects that should be focussing only on the class rework until it is complete. If you’re an environmental artist, you can probably get to work on refreshing the zones that we’ve already started and will probably not resume until who knows when.I don’t know why I need to clarify the obvious, but when I say everyone, I mean everyone that can possibly work on a specific task given their skillset.

That is not how game development (or by that metric, any software development) works. Brooks's Law applies fully here. Throwing more people at a project does not magically make it go faster. You might be familiar with the "too many cooks spoil the broth" and "nine women cannot make a baby in one month" concepts.

"Programmer" isn't one interchangeable job. Engine coders, network engineers, UI developers, and tools engineers don't work on combat balance or ability scripting. Taking a network engineer out of their domain of expertise and tasking them with combat design and balance is a recipe for disaster.

Even for creative roles, 3D modeling, effects, animation, and sound design all require the underlying combat design for the class reworks to be finalized first. The pipeline is sequential: combat design > concept art > modeling and animation > VFX and audio > QA and tuning. Throwing a fleet of sound techs and VFX artists at a class rework before the combat design is complete just either leaves those artists idle or churning out unusable assets. Besides, Brooks's Law still applies: having too many different VFX artists working on the same class rework risks delivering a mismatched visual identity with vastly different VFX styles on each ability.

Beyond these pipeline constraints, the demand to halt everything else just for class reworks and "idk environment artists can just do zone refreshes in the meantime" just completely ignores the rest of the playerbase. Yes, class reworks should still be a priority, but to completely abandon all other content, seasonal events, and balance updates that other players are excited about is objectively a terrible idea.