A Message from ESO's Game Director

Wuuffyy · July 30

hoangdz wrote: »

Wuuffyy wrote: »

Most of your ridiculous ‘predictions’ have been right based on your own skewed perspective yet I can pull a metric ton of clips with proof of mine right now.
.

My predictions were accurate, not ridiculous. For instance:

1) When Relequen was discovered to proc twice, I created 2 threads to warn people that it could be abused by certain ranged builds. People were accusing me of being a noob for dying to a PvE set. Months later, the set was widely used by ranged builds, and was super obnoxious to deal with. Threads started popping up on the forums, while people were complaining about it on the live server.

2)When Hardened Ward received a burst heal, it took me 1 hour of dueling on PTS to conclude that Sorc would be extremely broken if allowed to go live. I made 3 threads suggesting Hardened Ward's burst heal changed to a HoT. People disagreed and told me that I was being pessimistic. 3 months after the patch went live, the forums was flooded with threads complaining about Hardened Ward being broken, and some of the people disagreeing with me earlier have changed their opinion.

3) When DK got reworked, I spent a week dueling DKs and concluded that Incinerate and its morph were giving too much sustain, which allowed DKs to forgo recovery stats completely and front load all of their regeneration to damage and defense. People were telling me that it's a L2P issue. Months later, HoF is on everyone's bar because it carries sustain infinitely better than anything we've seen in the game, letting stat inflation go out of control

4) When WW got reworked, several players including me have warned about the class being too tanky while dishing out insane pressure. Then there's people like you who keep painting us in a bad light. Now that the patch has been live, WW is doing exactly as predicted.

You can call it "ridiculous" all you want, but I am firmly confident in my knowledge of ESO PvP and ESO theorycrafting. You can post all your evidence too, but you won't be able to convince me or people otherwise because I have extensively tested your class for the entire duration of the PTS cycle and came to the conclusion that WW absolutely needs to be toned down.

1) because of you then they annihilated Relequen to the point it’s basically unusable outside of a duel against one of your target dummies.

2) I still kill sorcs. Sorcs are strong yet for the most part, they can still die. I don’t care if the sorc runs away after a stale mate, they are not insta-killing me on my DK or my wolf and they’re one mistake with their shielding away from dying to me (especially on my DK)

3) you concluded the obvious, this was always the intent (high sustain in kit)

4) plenty of werewolves are either skewed towards more damage or more tankiness. My DK has been capable of killing any werewolf I’ve come across 1 on 1 and my werewolf can kill most other werewolves unless they’re high health builds with little to no intent for doing damage the average player can’t just heal out of.

*as is very obvious to everyone, anything reworked is significantly above things that aren’t reworked right now (but that means that further compensation should also be given to those classes in some capacity primarily)

I also really appreciate how you’ve stated ‘you’ve concluded’ like you’re the supreme authority on all things balance by the way yet you, React/Pelican, and gang are both nothing to me and nothing to a lot of players and I for sure don’t want things gutted because of your hyper-biased opinions.

metheglyn · July 30

Arunei wrote: »

All that said, there is something I have an issue with and don't understand:

Why are we being told things we knew were coming since last PTS, since WAY before the layoffs and everything, are being released for our "patience"? Literally none of this was stuff that was come up with AFTER the layoffs and in light of things being delayed, except MAYBE for the 3-team BGs coming back? Though I doubt that, it's also probably been something in the works since before the layoffs.

Why was content we already knew for months was coming (most of it anyway) now being marketed as something that's being released/added as as a thank you? It doesn't make any sense.

I read that as them reassuring us that those known items for season one were still coming, and the "additions" were the return of the battlegrounds and that new golden pursuit for crates. I don't remember either of those two being mentioned before today, but it is possible I missed it.

I was glad to read the letter and I got some reassurance from it. I love ESO and I'm glad to think it'll be here for a good long while.

Wuuffyy · July 30

@hoangdz - let me show you something based on your perspective:

You believe that nerfs for ‘fairness’ and viability serve to retain players. Ergo, at the time you would have likely been in the same camp of nerf Oakensoul as ‘it’s too easy’ and ‘reign in the drastic combat balancing’ such as that with U35 (same patch with huge Oakensoul nerf).

Here is something that should be obvious (of course content plays a factor and ‘Steam Charts’ aren’t everything but it isn’t surprising that overall sentiment was skewed negative after these changes… anyways):

Oakensoul released (providing for easier reference of time stamp)

Oakensoul nerfed and U35 (sweeping nerfs across the board) released:

Player charts in and around the time before and after Oakensoul release, nerf+U35:

Years later, a significant lull into DK rework (you can look at archived post for community sentiment, as needed)

A significant player increase for the ‘OP Dragonknight’ rework which was incredibly well received.

My point, however crude it is, that I’m trying to make-

You believe that you represent the majority in a full capacity yet you cannot seem to break your own bias for what you want. This should be obvious but this is a fantasy game (and not a competitive shooter), buffs on characters played with for years in a magical realm typically work far better for retention than outright nerfs for principle.

Chrlynsch · July 30

Most of the classes that are underperforming in pvp have masteries that have some sort of modifier for pvp... Quick and dirty adjustment is to just remove the limiters on these underperforming pure classes, get some data off live performance and scale back down from there.

Melivar · July 30

Some sad news for sure as I am looking forward to all the class refreshes but at the end of the day it is what it is, and I feel like I will have plenty to do during the extended wait for my Nightblade particularly. Sub still remains and I think I am satisfied enough by the plan that I will grab the 1st paid tier tome as well which I had on hold.

Excited for the 4v4v4 battlegrounds coming back. This means more opportunity coming back soon. The 2 Team BGS were always just so one sided and it just mattered what side of the coin you got drop into most of the time. Not really fun to be on the winning or losing side and mostly just waited to end for rewards or to try again.

To any new or returning folks don't sweat all the neigh sayers or doom seekers, you have so much available to do all these issues for us old-timers will be sorted out before it really matters to you.

To anyone on the fence or looking for a move, good luck out there and I hope perhaps you find what you're looking for but I've tried many and only once actually canceled by sub for a month before I came back again anyways. We'll keep the lights on for you.

To the vocal forum minority whose opinions we must be exposed to but matter little at the end of the day. Coke and a Smile folks

ZOS_JessicaFolsom · July 30

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Combat and Class balance is something that affects all facets of the game, from the most casual of overland questing to hypersweaty PvP. Leaving that to languish for any length of time will only serve to drive more and more people away. This is especially obvious from the recent surprise Vengeance test - Vengeance as it currently is was running fine and had a population that enjoyed it as is, so the Combat Team taking time away from the Refreshes to focus on modifying that mode (especially in a way that removed what its main userbase enjoyed to try in vain to entice a userbase that wants nothing to do with it) seemed like a case of skewed priorities.

Hey all, related to the above, while we aren't going go into specifics (and I recognize that's disappointing), the class refresh schedule change is not due to anything the Combat Team is or will be working on. Vengeance work is unrelated.

Dax_Draconis · July 30

Thanks for the update. I’m excited about the solo dungeons in season 2!

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · July 30

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

I understand you guys don't want to go into details but I think the main question would be important to update, because the announcement is somewhat confusing.

a) "Is the entirety of the class refresh being pushed back which means we should still expect 1 class at a time, restarting in 2027"

OR

b) "All the class will now refresh together but its all going to come in 2027"

If it's a) that means that most of the classes wont even see an update in 2027 right?

Erickson9610 · July 30

I am really glad that the Werewolf Refresh happened before the roadmap was revised. I know this sounds incredibly selfish, but I've seen a huge amount of new and returning people to ESO because of it — that's not something that just any Class Refresh can pull off. The Werewolf Refresh had a tangible increase in ESO's player count due to its marketability as something not solely ESO-related, whereas you'd already have to know about ESO's Dragonknights to care about that Class getting a rework.

Nordstern · July 30

Really happy to hear the new pvp zone is coming early 2027. I just hope we will have normal grey host pvp in there.

Besides that I think that all efforts should be put into class refreshes (with the actual gameplay being way more important than the visuals) and crossplay.

Dithieon · July 30

Thanks for the update, I wish the Team well in their endeavors.

baratron · July 30

Arunei wrote: »

ETA There is something I have an issue with and don't understand:

Why are we being told things we knew were coming since last PTS, since WAY before the layoffs and everything, are being released for our "patience"? Literally none of this was stuff that was come up with AFTER the layoffs and in light of things being delayed, except MAYBE for the 3-team BGs coming back? Though I doubt that, it's also probably been something in the works since before the layoffs.

Why was content we already knew for months was coming (most of it anyway) now being marketed as something that's being released/added as as a thank you? It doesn't make any sense.

The content we knew was coming is "Everything else in Season One will run as planned". The Golden Pursuit with up to 20 free Crown Crates is "a few additions to thank you for your patience".

If they're real Crown Crates and not the Ouroboros rubbish, that's a considerable number of free gifts for us. Some lucky people will win a couple of mounts, and the least lucky will get a small pile of Crown Gems to buy something they wanted.

CAB_Life · July 30

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Combat and Class balance is something that affects all facets of the game, from the most casual of overland questing to hypersweaty PvP. Leaving that to languish for any length of time will only serve to drive more and more people away. This is especially obvious from the recent surprise Vengeance test - Vengeance as it currently is was running fine and had a population that enjoyed it as is, so the Combat Team taking time away from the Refreshes to focus on modifying that mode (especially in a way that removed what its main userbase enjoyed to try in vain to entice a userbase that wants nothing to do with it) seemed like a case of skewed priorities.

Hey all, related to the above, while we aren't going go into specifics (and I recognize that's disappointing), the class refresh schedule change is not due to anything the Combat Team is or will be working on. Vengeance work is unrelated.

What are the combat team working on then if not combat changes for the class refresh? Broadly speaking if you can't give specifics? Because this comment is very confusing. Were they not working on Vengeance changes, ergo, as that poster posited it would in fact be shifting workload from the combat team working on the class refresh?

spartaxoxo · July 30

BretonMage wrote: »

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.

Isn't that because those were already largely done? I think everyone has made it pretty obvious that class refreshes were the number one thing that we were looking forward to, if it (well, Warden anyway) wasn't ready, it probably wasn't through lack of prioritisation.

Yeah. This seems obvious to me. There's actually zero good reason to delay finished new content for stuff that's going to take a lot more time.

Anyway, this is disappointing but not unexpected news. I hope they up the drop rate of the nowhere keys at least since that vault is going to have to be our main content for the whole rest of the year.

Arunei · July 30

baratron wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

ETA There is something I have an issue with and don't understand:

Why are we being told things we knew were coming since last PTS, since WAY before the layoffs and everything, are being released for our "patience"? Literally none of this was stuff that was come up with AFTER the layoffs and in light of things being delayed, except MAYBE for the 3-team BGs coming back? Though I doubt that, it's also probably been something in the works since before the layoffs.

Why was content we already knew for months was coming (most of it anyway) now being marketed as something that's being released/added as as a thank you? It doesn't make any sense.

The content we knew was coming is "Everything else in Season One will run as planned". The Golden Pursuit with up to 20 free Crown Crates is "a few additions to thank you for your patience".

If they're real Crown Crates and not the Ouroboros rubbish, that's a considerable number of free gifts for us. Some lucky people will win a couple of mounts, and the least lucky will get a small pile of Crown Gems to buy something they wanted.

That was on the graphic that was released with the Daggerfall TG quest stuff iirc, which would have been made before the layoffs. It might have been edited to remove the Warden update or something, but the Crate GP is something we've already known was coming.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
I won't comment on the Vengeance thing, but it just doesn't make sense that we can't be told why the reworks are being delayed, even if it's just a basic thing like "it's game code stuff" or "things aren't working out like we had hoped". Warden should have been on the PTS by now, it should have pretty much been ready to go for testing before the layoffs happened. So what's happened that something that should have been done and ready for testing by now is being delayed so long? You guys were talking about communication and transparency but you're turtling up on this and giving us absolutely no reason as to why it's happening.

I understand the delays on the other things. U51 going live only being delayed by a week and U52 only being delayed by maybe 2-4 weeks is completely understandable to me, that makes sense. I expected delays. But months and months and months for Class rework stuff when the next thing should currently be on the PTS? It makes absolutely no sense.

I won't say that I don't feel the reworks aren't being focused on, because the simple fact is we don't know WHY the delay has happened. We've already been told we can't have WW emotes or a couple of unique animations for them because the devs have to essentially carefully manage the memory for the game, so maybe the Warden rework animations are causing a problem (and by default other Classes that would also need refreshed animations). But you can bet a lot of people are going to assume things like "Warden rework wasn't even started" or other such things, simply because we aren't being told a single thing.

This isn't transparency. This is the opposite. I'm not really fussed about the reworks myself, I'm really excited and curious about what they'll entail, but even someone not invested in the reworks can see this is just...not good in terms of wanting to have "communication".

Estin · July 30

Thanks for the update.

It is disappointing to hear that the refreshes are being pushed out so far, and if it takes 9+ months per class, then it's going frustrating wait for a class like NB or Necro. But really, given the situation, nothing can be done about it. It's either a quality update or a rushed out one to appease players, and I will say the former is the preferable option.

Given that, there will have to be some serious stopgaps to accommodate the now extended release timeline. The class mastery system is a good idea, but that has only be largely beneficial for PvE. For PvP, if you're not on DK, Sorc, or Warden, you aren't gaining much if anything from your class masteries. Some classes get worthlessly tanky while still having no damage, while others straight up receive nothing. I personally think this should be the focus rather than the core skill lines of a class.

There's going to a lot of heated debated about what should be done. For instance, should WW and DK have access to class masteries, at least in PvP? DKs can casually hit 20k whips without them. If you don't want to adjust their core tooltips, then removing their class masteries in PvP is the only way to go with that. For WW, on its own it's strong, but it gets over inflated by the class masteries, mainly Sorc or Warden. I'm firmly of the opinion that they shouldn't have access to them in PvP. Removing the access would do so much for the current state of balance.

When it comes to the unworked classes, I think Sorc is in a healthy position. They can be squishy, but they have streak to accommodate for it. Some classes/passives would need a glowup of what they already have, potentially removing or decreasing the PvP limitation. Some classes/passives need to be entirely redone. Cutthroat's Focus immediately comes to mind.

I hope the class mastery system is kept on top of at all times. It is going to have to go through multiple iterations, and I hope those iterations can be done in a timely manner rather than months in between. Right now PvP is nothing but WWs and DKs with some Sorcs mixed in, and it causes a huge struggle when you want to play anything else.

BetweenMidgets · July 30

Public relations are gonna public relations. I'm not sure why people would assume what is conveyed in a PR release is the literal gospel.

Massaging words, leaving things unsaid, and assuring the playerbase not to abandon ship are priority right now after massive layoff. They have no honestly requirement to us. They have a fiscal requirement to their parent company and investors. I'm not accusing Nick of lying, I think he has been great for the studio (would be difficult for me to think anyone could be WORSE than Rich, though), and I felt like prior to the layoffs, ESO was moving in a good direction.

I do not feel that way anymore, though.

baratron · July 30

heaven13 wrote: »

I appreciate the communication being shared here, even while I am disappointed especially about the class reworks.

On the matter of transparency, I’d really love if you could share some of the struggles you’re experiencing with the warden refresh. Based on the original timelines, this class should have been ready for PTS release before the layoffs happened. I much prefer quality and polish over strict timelines, so if it needs to be delayed it should be delayed. That said, it’d be interesting to hear about some of the challenges the team has faced with this one. Personally, I find warden the most mishmashed of the classes thematically so just that alone I’d imagine would be a hurdle!

I honestly suspect that a big delay with the Warden has been the need to create so many totally new animations. Remember, it was the first class which launched with a separate Tank line, Damage line, and Healing line. Specifically the Tank line is Ice-based, the Damage line animal-based, and the Healing line plant-based.

Personally, I loved the idea of the three separate lines and thought all of the older classes should change to be like that. But then with Subclassing you ended up with Healers running three Heal lines and mixing and matching the best from each. Personally, I loved this but it was seen as "unbalanced", so the decision was made to remix the Warden and Necromancer classes to be more like the original four classes.

ZOS have needed to make Ice-Damage and Animal-Heals and Plant-Tanking, and Plant-Damage, Ice-Heals, and Animal-Tanking skills. That's actually really bloody hard! (I guess there might be an Animal Tank skill where you summon a Mammoth to sit between you and the enemy and shield you with its bulk?)

And now, just to complicate things further, the original designer of the Warden got laid off.

I absolutely agree that someone high up in the Combat team, Brian Wheeler or Gilliam, should be speaking out about what the delay actually is for transparency purposes. But I also believe that the Warden is a uniquely hard challenge and that other Class Refreshes will not be delayed in the same way.

Fruity_Ninja · July 30

Poor ZOS, I don’t think they’ve got the capability anymore to release enough content to keep the game growing. Class refresh, cross play, new trials and PVP zone- all important end game initiatives that would grow the community. Their announcement is what breathed momentum into the game.

A few minor pve quests with minimal replayability wont cut it for a lot of people.

Sad time for eso indeed.

alternatelder · July 30

Wuuffyy wrote: »

@hoangdz - let me show you something based on your perspective:

You believe that nerfs for ‘fairness’ and viability serve to retain players. Ergo, at the time you would have likely been in the same camp of nerf Oakensoul as ‘it’s too easy’ and ‘reign in the drastic combat balancing’ such as that with U35 (same patch with huge Oakensoul nerf).

Here is something that should be obvious (of course content plays a factor and ‘Steam Charts’ aren’t everything but it isn’t surprising that overall sentiment was skewed negative after these changes… anyways):

Oakensoul released (providing for easier reference of time stamp)

Oakensoul nerfed and U35 (sweeping nerfs across the board) released:

Player charts in and around the time before and after Oakensoul release, nerf+U35:

Years later, a significant lull into DK rework (you can look at archived post for community sentiment, as needed)

A significant player increase for the ‘OP Dragonknight’ rework which was incredibly well received.

My point, however crude it is, that I’m trying to make-

You believe that you represent the majority in a full capacity yet you cannot seem to break your own bias for what you want. This should be obvious but this is a fantasy game (and not a competitive shooter), buffs on characters played with for years in a magical realm typically work far better for retention than outright nerfs for principle.

You're showing the repeating trend every single year. I think you're trying to connect something to coincidence. The difference prior to when chapters stopped is that the fall off was later, in August. That negative drop was obviously because people finished the new content drops.

Destai · July 30

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Combat and Class balance is something that affects all facets of the game, from the most casual of overland questing to hypersweaty PvP. Leaving that to languish for any length of time will only serve to drive more and more people away. This is especially obvious from the recent surprise Vengeance test - Vengeance as it currently is was running fine and had a population that enjoyed it as is, so the Combat Team taking time away from the Refreshes to focus on modifying that mode (especially in a way that removed what its main userbase enjoyed to try in vain to entice a userbase that wants nothing to do with it) seemed like a case of skewed priorities.

Hey all, related to the above, while we aren't going go into specifics (and I recognize that's disappointing), the class refresh schedule change is not due to anything the Combat Team is or will be working on. Vengeance work is unrelated.

Thanks for clarifying that. I will say though - now is the time for specifics. Ultimately, people have been repeatedly asking for context on what happened with the warden and we have yet to see anything.

baratron · July 30

Techwolf_Lupindo wrote: »

"And three-sided Battlegrounds will return permanently on September 28, with Update 51 "

Good. Now that deathmatchers have there own que separate from everything else, the folks that was driven away from Battlegrounds can now return. Right?

I am absolutely looking forward to playing regular Battlegrounds again with my friends! I don't have the ability for the 4 v 4 Battlegrounds (I'd spend half the time dead and watching), and the 8 v 8 are fundamentally flawed in that you can't take a premade team on voice chat into them.

But the 4 v 4 v 4 are mixed PvP/PvE just like the Imperial City. You kill players, but you're also playing a game like hot potato (Chaosball) or land grab (Crazy King). This suits me so much better than Deathmatch, because I play Support and simply can't build a character with high enough burst DPS to kill others. Instead, I get to run with the group and keep them alive to the best of my ability. That's fun and challenging!

NettleCarrier · July 30

Thank you for the letter. I've been mostly absent waiting for more content to do, including a warden rework (my main class). It's really rough to have to wait even longer for this

. I do like the direction of continuing to give more content for free to those that don't have it, but please don't forget about the ESO+ members - especially those of us who have passed $1000 since launch at this point.

CAB_Life · July 30

baratron wrote: »

heaven13 wrote: »

I appreciate the communication being shared here, even while I am disappointed especially about the class reworks.

On the matter of transparency, I’d really love if you could share some of the struggles you’re experiencing with the warden refresh. Based on the original timelines, this class should have been ready for PTS release before the layoffs happened. I much prefer quality and polish over strict timelines, so if it needs to be delayed it should be delayed. That said, it’d be interesting to hear about some of the challenges the team has faced with this one. Personally, I find warden the most mishmashed of the classes thematically so just that alone I’d imagine would be a hurdle!

I honestly suspect that a big delay with the Warden has been the need to create so many totally new animations. Remember, it was the first class which launched with an Ice-based Tank line, animal-based Damage line, and plant-based Heal line.

Personally, I loved the idea of the Tank line, the Damage line, and the Healing line and thought all of the older classes should change to be like that. But then with Subclassing you ended up with Healers running three Heal lines and mixing and matching the best from each. Personally, I loved this but it was seen as "unbalanced", so the decision was made to remix the Warden and Necromancer classes to be more like the original four classes.

ZOS have needed to make Ice-Damage and Animal-Heals and Plant-Tanking, and Plant-Damage, Ice-Heals, and Animal-Tanking skills. That's actually really bloody hard! (I guess there might be an Animal Tank skill where you summon a Mammoth to sit between you and the enemy and shield you with its bulk?)

And now, just to complicate things further, the original designer of the Warden got laid off.

I absolutely agree that someone high up in the Combat team, Brian Wheeler or Gilliam, should be speaking out about what the delay actually is for transparency purposes. But I also believe that the Warden is a uniquely hard challenge and that other Class Refreshes will not be delayed in the same way.

Yeah , I was staunchly against the removal of the tank/healer/DPS standard that they had done with all of the modern classes from the Warden up only to go back and add further complications to an already bloated task list, because I suspected and even said that something like this might happen. Like why compound and already complex issue with new systems and a reworking of ones that you’ve already established?

The entire thing seemed like a make work project. Now here we are nothing will be done until 2027 and I highly doubt that all of the class refreshes will be finished by the end of that year if anything we’re looking at about 2028 2029 for them to finish. This is also assuming that Microsoft doesn’t make any more cuts and that there aren’t further hits to the business or pressures from external competitors. Neither of which is guaranteed to not happen.

Edit: Oh and the fix to the tank/healer/DPS thing with sub classing the above scenario, would simply be to limit people to picking one “type” of each tree no matter what class they’re picking it from.

Wuuffyy · July 30

alternatelder wrote: »

Wuuffyy wrote: »

@hoangdz - let me show you something based on your perspective:

You believe that nerfs for ‘fairness’ and viability serve to retain players. Ergo, at the time you would have likely been in the same camp of nerf Oakensoul as ‘it’s too easy’ and ‘reign in the drastic combat balancing’ such as that with U35 (same patch with huge Oakensoul nerf).

Here is something that should be obvious (of course content plays a factor and ‘Steam Charts’ aren’t everything but it isn’t surprising that overall sentiment was skewed negative after these changes… anyways):

Oakensoul released (providing for easier reference of time stamp)

Oakensoul nerfed and U35 (sweeping nerfs across the board) released:

Player charts in and around the time before and after Oakensoul release, nerf+U35:

Years later, a significant lull into DK rework (you can look at archived post for community sentiment, as needed)

A significant player increase for the ‘OP Dragonknight’ rework which was incredibly well received.

My point, however crude it is, that I’m trying to make-

You believe that you represent the majority in a full capacity yet you cannot seem to break your own bias for what you want. This should be obvious but this is a fantasy game (and not a competitive shooter), buffs on characters played with for years in a magical realm typically work far better for retention than outright nerfs for principle.

You're showing the repeating trend every single year. I think you're trying to connect something to coincidence. The difference prior to when chapters stopped is that the fall off was later, in August. That negative drop was obviously because people finished the new content drops.

Excuses.

It’s no surprise in ANY of the examples I provide that community sentiment post-change was negative. I legitimately believe that the 1% (vocal minority, if you will… especially those that are very nerf-focused) that come to forums and preach in this way are counter-productive to the longevity of a game (when given unfettered access to balancing via their medium of communication).

Anyways, Morrowind sustain nerf (horrific lull for 6+ months):

Nerfs on principle make people unhappy. Despite the 1% on forums complaining that sustain was ‘too easy’, I’d wager the majority either didn’t have a problem with it the way it was or didn’t appreciate significant nerfs.

*anyways, thank you all for the announcement! Just putting my unfortunate perspective in regarding everyone who tried to use this thread as yet another medium for unfiltered ‘nerf calling’ on things they don’t like/appreciate.

Roztlin45 · July 30

While I fully understand that only those at ZOS truly know the challenges of developing and maintaining an MMO as large and complex as ESO, I'd like to offer the perspective of a player who has spent years in the trenches.
From where many of us stand, it feels as though more resources should have been invested in ESO over the years rather than being spread across other projects. This game has earned a loyal community, and it deserves to remain the primary focus.
I don't believe this is the time to scale back. I believe it's the time to double down.

Please continue investing in ESO. Keep building content, improving performance, fixing long-standing issues, and giving players reasons to stay excited about the future. The MMO market is becoming increasingly competitive, and even short gaps in meaningful content can cause players to drift away. History has shown that once market share is lost, rebuilding that player base is far more difficult than maintaining it in the first place.
Many of us have invested thousands of hours—and years of our lives—into this world. We don't want to see ESO simply maintained; we want to see it continue to grow and lead the genre.
Please fight for this game with the same passion that your community has shown for over a decade. There are countless players who still believe ESO has its best years ahead of it, and we're asking you to make that future a reality.
We're not asking for perfection. We're asking for commitment.

Thank you for listening.

FluffyDoom · July 30

Ah yes, Morrowind aka Sorrowind.

First experience with a whole trial guild quitting and mass exodus of numerous friends/guildies.

Do wish players would stop begging for nerfs and ask for buffs instead.

Nerfs are not fun.

Buffs are fun.

Games should be fun!

coop500 · July 30

FluffyDoom wrote: »

Ah yes, Morrowind aka Sorrowind.

First experience with a whole trial guild quitting and mass exodus of numerous friends/guildies.

Do wish players would stop begging for nerfs and ask for buffs instead.

Nerfs are not fun.

Buffs are fun.

Games should be fun!

Yeah if DK and WW just get gutted I'm probably dropping the game again. I dropped the game before over crippling nerfs. I just want to have fun and actually DO content without HAVING to chase the full meta, and the reworks to those two actually made playing off meta builds achievable and fun while still doing hard content.

Vaqual · July 30

FluffyDoom wrote: »

Ah yes, Morrowind aka Sorrowind.

First experience with a whole trial guild quitting and mass exodus of numerous friends/guildies.

Do wish players would stop begging for nerfs and ask for buffs instead.

Nerfs are not fun.

Buffs are fun.

Games should be fun!

Fair and interactive gameplay is fun.
Coherent concepts are fun.

Buffs or nerfs have nothing to do with it. That is a simplification that has caused so much more harm than good countless times already.

Wuuffyy · July 30

Vaqual wrote: »

FluffyDoom wrote: »

Ah yes, Morrowind aka Sorrowind.

First experience with a whole trial guild quitting and mass exodus of numerous friends/guildies.

Do wish players would stop begging for nerfs and ask for buffs instead.

Nerfs are not fun.

Buffs are fun.

Games should be fun!

Fair and interactive gameplay is fun.
Coherent concepts are fun.

Buffs or nerfs have nothing to do with it. That is a simplification that has caused so much more harm than good countless times already.

Looks to me like the people speak with their attention. Doesn’t bode well for your claim at all.