virtus753 wrote: »

Doing the mechanics and skipping the mechanics via high dps are not the only two ways to get these achievements and their rewards, so curbing dps won’t accomplish the goal of restricting the achievements to those who can learn and perform the mechanics.

This ship sailed a long time ago, when ZOS explicitly condoned paying for carries for these achievements and other rewards. In doing so, they not only separated those rewards from actually doing the mechanics but even separated them in many cases from doing anything meaningful in terms of negotiating the content at all. When one is allowed to arrange for carries, as is officially permitted in ESO, it’s hard to argue for the preservation of the original sense of the rewards as representative of mastery of mechanics in group content. Curbing dps would make the encounters harder for most players, but it wouldn’t eliminate carries. It would just make them more expensive due to the increased difficulty and the probability that more players would seek them out in response to the feeling that they can no longer work up to the higher bar of mastering the content.

The current path ZOS has taken with powercreep therefore doesn’t open up the rewards to players who couldn’t do the associated content. They already had a path to those rewards in the form of carries. What it does is encourage players to participate more meaningfully instead of resorting to carries. The difference is significant in a video game predicated on power fantasies, as mentioned above.

There was a similar shift in rewards for content mastery when ZOS moved arena weapons to normal difficulty (and refused to provide perfected weapons to those who had the non-perfected versions from vet). This put the most desirable rewards for solo content, where carries are not permitted, within reach for many more players. For all practical purposes it’s impossible to distinguish between a non-perfected weapon earned before that change on vet difficulty or a non-perfected weapon earned after the change on normal difficulty. Here ZOS deliberately lowered the bar for achieving the usable rewards so more players could attain them.

That approach is consistent with their nerfing of mechanics from older content over the years (especially DLC dungeons and trials) to make them more achievable for more people. As with the arena weapons, rewards from doing content as released before the nerfs are indistinguishable from rewards for clearing the same content after said nerfs. When ZOS is not interested in keeping the rewards restricted to the original difficulty of the content over time, and in fact seem interested in deliberately making it easier to attain those rewards through multiple approaches (lowering the difficulty while raising our dps), it would be hard to convince them to reverse course there, especially given the effect it would have in terms of discouraging players from the content.

I actually agree with some of what you're saying. But I think you're mixing two different things here.
A player buying a carry is a completely different issue from a player actually playing the content and having enough DPS to completely bypass the encounter's mechanics.
I'm not trying to make achievements exclusive to players who can perform every mechanic perfectly. I'm saying that the mechanics should still be part of the game.
But when the optimal strategy becomes "don't learn the mechanics, just kill the boss before they happen", we've gone beyond simply making old content more accessible. We've effectively removed a major part of the encounter.

There is a difference between:
"We're stronger now, so we can handle this mechanic more easily."
and:
"We're so strong that the mechanic never happens, so there is no reason to know it."
The first one is character progression. The second one is the encounter losing its gameplay.

And that's ultimately what I'm arguing against. Not people having achievements. Not carries. Not power fantasy. I'm arguing against the game progressively losing the mechanics that made the content worth playing in the first place.

Valkanos wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Doing the mechanics and skipping the mechanics via high dps are not the only two ways to get these achievements and their rewards, so curbing dps won’t accomplish the goal of restricting the achievements to those who can learn and perform the mechanics.

This ship sailed a long time ago, when ZOS explicitly condoned paying for carries for these achievements and other rewards. In doing so, they not only separated those rewards from actually doing the mechanics but even separated them in many cases from doing anything meaningful in terms of negotiating the content at all. When one is allowed to arrange for carries, as is officially permitted in ESO, it’s hard to argue for the preservation of the original sense of the rewards as representative of mastery of mechanics in group content. Curbing dps would make the encounters harder for most players, but it wouldn’t eliminate carries. It would just make them more expensive due to the increased difficulty and the probability that more players would seek them out in response to the feeling that they can no longer work up to the higher bar of mastering the content.

The current path ZOS has taken with powercreep therefore doesn’t open up the rewards to players who couldn’t do the associated content. They already had a path to those rewards in the form of carries. What it does is encourage players to participate more meaningfully instead of resorting to carries. The difference is significant in a video game predicated on power fantasies, as mentioned above.

There was a similar shift in rewards for content mastery when ZOS moved arena weapons to normal difficulty (and refused to provide perfected weapons to those who had the non-perfected versions from vet). This put the most desirable rewards for solo content, where carries are not permitted, within reach for many more players. For all practical purposes it’s impossible to distinguish between a non-perfected weapon earned before that change on vet difficulty or a non-perfected weapon earned after the change on normal difficulty. Here ZOS deliberately lowered the bar for achieving the usable rewards so more players could attain them.

That approach is consistent with their nerfing of mechanics from older content over the years (especially DLC dungeons and trials) to make them more achievable for more people. As with the arena weapons, rewards from doing content as released before the nerfs are indistinguishable from rewards for clearing the same content after said nerfs. When ZOS is not interested in keeping the rewards restricted to the original difficulty of the content over time, and in fact seem interested in deliberately making it easier to attain those rewards through multiple approaches (lowering the difficulty while raising our dps), it would be hard to convince them to reverse course there, especially given the effect it would have in terms of discouraging players from the content.

I actually agree with some of what you're saying. But I think you're mixing two different things here.
A player buying a carry is a completely different issue from a player actually playing the content and having enough DPS to completely bypass the encounter's mechanics.
I'm not trying to make achievements exclusive to players who can perform every mechanic perfectly. I'm saying that the mechanics should still be part of the game.
But when the optimal strategy becomes "don't learn the mechanics, just kill the boss before they happen", we've gone beyond simply making old content more accessible. We've effectively removed a major part of the encounter.

There is a difference between:
"We're stronger now, so we can handle this mechanic more easily."
and:
"We're so strong that the mechanic never happens, so there is no reason to know it."
The first one is character progression. The second one is the encounter losing its gameplay.

And that's ultimately what I'm arguing against. Not people having achievements. Not carries. Not power fantasy. I'm arguing against the game progressively losing the mechanics that made the content worth playing in the first place.

I miss mechanics as well when they’re completely blown through. (It’s why I prefer regular vets with a social guild or HM progs where we at least see the mechanics.)

That said, I don’t think curbing dps is a viable solution for a number of reasons. For one, it does directly impinge on the power fantasy of having power and feeling it grow. You may not intend for that happen, but it would be an inevitable and natural consequence of lowering dps, especially to this degree. Since we as an playerbase already have easy access to dps in far excess of some of the limits proposed, any cap or stat squishing would necessarily take away power from us in order to make the mechanics unable to be bypassed, and with these numbers it would be a significant loss.

While losing power is a valid power fantasy all its own, it’s not the one typically at play where people are trying to invest their time and energy to work up to difficult content. And when power is curbed, it doesn’t just hit endgame players who are blowing through mechanics; in my social guild I have often seen players share their frustration and discouragement after nerfs that what they could do before feels like it has been put out of reach for them. It feels like moving the goalposts, which denies a sense of accomplishment and thus again derails the power fantasy. We need a solution that doesn’t hurt people already grappling with the mechanics.

Being in a place of excessive power is very hard for ZOS to come back from. They face a choice between disappointing those who want the difficulty to chew on and upsetting those for whom the content would otherwise be out of reach (practically, if not theoretically). When they last got frustrated with players blowing through mechanics and completing content in a matter of minutes, they attempted to address our “obscene” dps with U35. They thought they could afford it then. I do not think they could now.

This is why increased overland difficulty was done the way it was, as a personal choice to one’s own tastes rather than an across-the-board nerf to players or buff to mobs. The difficulty of overland had been significantly reduced when we got the 300 CP bonus to stats put into our characters’ base stats instead, along with more base mitigation. Rather than pulling that back and reintroducing the barrier of more difficult overland for everyone, ZOS provided a way for players to take on increased challenge on an individual basis and to choose from a selection of difficulties to their tastes. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s better than forcing the same thing on everyone when the playerbase is as diverse as it is.

Beating mechanics in PvE as designed rather than obviating them is also a valid power fantasy. The difficulty at a design level is finding a way to allow mechanics to be enforced for those who want them that doesn’t either drop the floor out from under everyone (like stat squishing) or put an artificial hard stop on power (like with a cap). I’m having trouble seeing an across-the-board dps curb that wouldn’t have a broad negative impact on the playerbase, especially those who have only been able to step into vet content due to power creep.

In norm, one potential solution is a norm hard mode, where mechanics could be enforced. (That would also be a much better preparation for vet, though I despair about what may be in scope for the newly reduced encounter team.) In vet the question becomes harder.

In my social guild we regularly run vet trials where we can rarely skip mechanics. While some players don’t reach 30k in this content, others exceed it by a lot, and the combined dps is what enables the group to clear in a reasonable time period (1.5-2.5 hours for DLC trials). If a couple of dps are pushing the group through at 70k+ each for the whole log, but you limit them to half that, now the group loses a significant part of their overall dps. Trials become longer, wipes become more frequent, players struggle with the struggle, and many people do not want to keep coming back for that. As someone joining these trials, I would also have to think about whether to continue trying to do so when my dps doesn’t go as far. As tank, I’d have to think whether I’d want to help for probably closer to 2.5-3 hours than 1.5-2. And that wouldn’t just be because of mechanics that get skipped or not (as I said, we don’t skip very many as is), but more due to significantly lower group dps and increased probability of wipes.

So how do we get mechanics back for those who want them while not discouraging the people and groups who are still contending with those mechanics now? Not everyone and every group blows through mechanics. How do you not make things harder on those who don’t?

I don't think the poll results are going the way OP hoped reading his other post about this.

Mayyyybe.

I’d say a larger problem is the elitist culture amongst meta players who spend hours and hours parsing dummies and fine tuning their builds to reach massive DPS numbers which means anyone who doesn’t reach their levels when it comes to forming groups for tough trials, and harder group content in general, is excluded entirely. That’s yet another barrier for casual players to joining a group on top of the dreaded lines “MUST KNOW MECHS” or “LINK ACHIEVEMENT” in guild run and group finder descriptions.

As for the mechs: They aren’t getting easier, far from it, but there’s too big a difference between the normal and veteran trials. It’s getting more and more difficult to learn mechs via the normal mode (in large part due to the high DPS of so many players that it’s just blasted through) so that means to really prepare for the vet mode and “KNOW MECHS” you’d have to do extensive online research from various sites through headache inducing guides which just feels like studying for an exam...Like many others I’ve always learned through doing, not reading.

As a solo player with extensive vet trial experience (only vCR, vOC and vDSR remain uncompleted and I’ve gotten to the last boss in two of those), I’ve more or less given up on doing them now because it’s so miserable navigating that cliquey environment and the homework requirements that it’s just not worth pushing through for the rewards...I only want to do them in the first place to get the damn busts and achievement furnishings unlocked lol

Bottom line is I play eso to have fun and chill out, not to get stressed out😅

rebalance older content to preserve mechanics.
and halt the dps creep in general

Have you ever been in a low damage group for older content? You will see all the mechs if you're in a group like that even now with the power creep. A damage cap and nerfs only punish those who are already struggling, which is the reason it's always a bad idea to try to balance around players who can do enough damage to skip mechs.

Valkanos wrote: »

Radiate77 wrote: »

"...
Now my question is this, let’s play pretend and imagine that something so unnecessary as DPS caps on our ancient content became a thing, do you propose we strip everyone of their achievements?…
How do you differentiate between someone who took advantage of a patch their build was powercrept and someone who earned it after your proposed changes?

As an example, why do you believe a new player with 180k DPS deserves the same GH title as players who earned it by following all the mechanics when CR was released?
What about vAS? Why do you believe a group today with almost 2K DPS, who can complete the trial in less than 7 minutes by skipping all the mechanics, deserves the same title as the players who earned it by following all the mechanics when vAS was first released?
The same applies to any other achievement. Some older players actually had to learn and follow the mechanics at the time to earn their achievements. Now, all they see from many new players is DPS, because they have no idea how to handle the mechanics.
So why should they deserve the same achievement? It's exactly the same question you're asking, just looked at from the other side.

I'm an older player who got the achievements when the game was much harder and I couldn't care less if new raiders have it easier now. This just seems like envy and bitterness.

Nobody is facerolling vet Ossein Cage. I guess top flight meta groups are nuking Maw of Lorkhaj or something? Good. It's like 10+ year old content. There is a progression in trials from easier older Trials to really rough recent Trials. If you squish it all down to where every Trial is just as difficult as when it came out, you destroy progression. One of the benefits of an established game with lots of content added over many years is this gradually increasing slope of difficulty. It is one of the strengths of ESO that there is a lot of endgame content of varying challenge levels.

Eldovar wrote: »

I don't think the poll results are going the way OP hoped reading his other post about this.

And what makes you believe my opinionis more important than yours or anyone else’s?

dcrush wrote: »

Go join some random groups and see how many of them can burn through a vMoL twins fight. Or how many can get past the mirror boss in vLC. Yes, some fights and trials have become much easier but I believe that the majority of ESO players will still struggle in vet DLC trials despite the huge power creep.

A while ago I did vMHK HM with a pug.They tried and tried to burn through the last boss but kept dying to the adds that spawned too fast for them to burn through. Had to explain the mechanics and then… they only did the mechs and stopped doing damage 😅

Anyway, tldr - yes more people can burn through mechs but there’s still plenty of people who can’t. Adding caps or invulnerability phases isn’t going to make the game more fun for most players, just more tedious for the ones who can.

And you're 100% correct. But let's focus for a moment on why all of this happens.
From my point of view, I see the current situation like this:
Players form a group for vMoL, as you said. They try to burn the boss. Why? Because everyone believes DPS can solve every problem. But if the DPS isn't enough to burn the boss, they have to deal with the mechanics instead.

The problem is that some players have no idea what to do because they never learned the mechanics in the first place. Some players simply don't care about them because they're used to the idea that enough DPS will solve everything. And even the game itself encourages this mentality by allowing the first option to be “skip the mechanics.”
So what happens when neither the DPS nor the mechanics are enough? They leave the group.
The RL opens Group Finder or starts inviting new players. They try again. First they try to burn the boss, then they try to follow the mechanics. They fail again. More people leave, and eventually the group disbands.
And this happens not necessarily because the mechanics are too difficult, but because the group has been conditioned to believe that DPS should come first and mechanics are something you only deal with when DPS isn't enough.
The same thing happens with vLC and many other trials.

We can even see this mentality in Group Finder now. You can find groups looking for a healer or DD while the title says something like "Trial X Solo Tank." Even leaders are creating groups around solo tanking, sometimes while playing a healer or DD themselves. Before they even start, they've already broken one of the core aspects of the game and put all their faith in DPS alone.
And what happens to tanks? They start feeling like their role is becoming less important, so some of them move to DPS or other roles.
Do you see where all this power creep and the constant focus on DPS over mechanics is taking the game?

I'm not saying high DPS is bad. Of course a group doing 2KK DPS is going to be more effective than a group doing 200k DPS. I understand that, and I would probably prefer the stronger group myself. But high DPS shouldn't be a reason to completely bypass the mechanics.
That's the part I don't think is healthy for the game. We can become stronger, clear things faster, and make old content more accessible without turning the encounters into nothing more than a DPS race.


As for everyone else trying to get into the battleground, keep trying.

Absolutely NOT! Let's use Fungal Grotto and Asylum Sanctorum as examples. I enjoy content like this not just for the mechanics but to enjoy group time with friends and to appreciate the art, design and story, even of content I've done many times. I soloed FG1 yesterday. I still had to dodge, block and be aware of what effects I was impacted by. If I want more challenging content with mechanics that can't be skipped, I have options:
-veteran dungeons and trials, especially dlc ones
-arenas such as Blackrose Prison
-world bosses and incursions
Adding a dps cap would limit the progress players have made at becoming stronger. Also a lot of group content still requires mechanics despite dps. Go do sunspire and try to ignore mechanics.

No especially for group finder groups. I left the last guild group I was on because they couldn’t get past the first dragon in VSS. I have yet to complete that trial after multiple tries.

The percentage of players with super high dps is vanishingly small nowadays. The ones who have it form their own little exclusive groups and don’t interact with the rest of us. It’s their problem.