The Concept of Trials is Inherently Toxic to Class Balance

Maverick827 · June 2014

Raiding in other MMOs (read: WoW) is (was?) successful and challenging because it was diverse. There were DPS races, yes, but they were accompanied by encounters where personal survivability, spatial awareness, and other non-DPS mechanics were the main focus.

It was never benefical to simply stack the class that had the highest DPS because doing so would have made your raid less effective in other encounters. DPS races were the vast minority of boss encounter archetypes.

You will never acheive PvE class balance if the entirety of your end game is based around who can beat it more quickly. There will always be a mathematically highest DPS class and spec no matter what you do, and serious guilds will always choose those classes and those specs if they aren't given reasons not to. Even tanks and healers are currently judged by how much damage they can also do in addition to their main roles.

At there plans to make non-trial "raid" dungeons that focus more on mechanics, stategy, and raid composition than time? I don't believe it is possible to create a good raiding environment solely with your current implementation of trials.

NerfEverything · June 2014

Trials aren't bad for class balance.

They just make the existing balance issues more apparent. This issues would continue to exist with or without trials.

drackonir · June 2014

time based trials should be optional

Now it is DPS based grind were u need to have high DPS to kill Boss before he drops a nuke/ultimate.

It is sad, rally sad, before the last nerf our mediocre group was able to reach AA4th boss after barely done 3rd boss, so everyone was excited and willing to continue trying.

After last fix, we lost like 30% DPS and were unable to kill 3rd boss. Yes ,our group was mediocre group having even NBs in our ranks but this inability of killing 3rd boss simply just took away a will of doing trials any more.

aipex8_ESO · June 2014

I do think it's funny that the first content update they released is for the people that blasted through content as fast as they could... and what's the objective? Blast through the content as fast as you can. Totally not my play style and I have no interest in trials.

The bigger, reworked world delves mentioned in the latest road ahead has my interest though. I love soloing delves in VR content, but they are just so short.

Maverick827 · June 2014

NerfEverything wrote: »

Trials aren't bad for class balance.

They just make the existing balance issues more apparent. This issues would continue to exist with or without trials.

But there will always be a highest DPS class/build. It's pretty much impossible for every class and every build to be equal.

The way you offset this is with various mechanics that make unique class tools more valuable than the amount of damage they aren't dealing (which isn't to any that you don't try to get them all close to each other).

Trials being all about time and DPS will create supposed disparities betwn classes where otherwise there might not be any (again, I'm not saying there aren't any now, but there can never not be any with trials as they currently are).

NerfEverything · June 2014

Maverick827 wrote: »

NerfEverything wrote: »

Trials aren't bad for class balance.

They just make the existing balance issues more apparent. This issues would continue to exist with or without trials.

But there will always be a highest DPS class/build. It's pretty much impossible for every class and every build to be equal.

The way you offset this is with various mechanics that make unique class tools more valuable than the amount of damage they aren't dealing (which isn't to any that you don't try to get them all close to each other).

Trials being all about time and DPS will create supposed disparities betwn classes where otherwise there might not be any (again, I'm not saying there aren't any now, but there can never not be any with trials as they currently are).

I understand what you are saying. But I really can't think of any mechanics that can utilize or put emphasis on unique class tools. It just doesn't seem like there are that many. Maybe I'm just not thinking creatively enough

coryevans_3b14_ESO · June 2014

I couldn't agree more with OP. Trials were a HUGE mistake for current "end game". It makes the min/max crowd MUCH more annoying. Also, if ZOS really wanted us to "play how we like", there wouldn't so many bosses that are dps races. It's rediculous.

Lalai · June 2014

I don't think trials were a mistake, but I do think that they appeal to a specific crowd, and they definitely highlight imbalances. The imbalances result in certain classes and playstyles being excluded from groups. It's not necessarily that those classes can't beat the minimum required dps to get past a fight, but they aren't near the top so people don't want them.. which gets the class deemed unplayable on the forums.

Heck, even in WoW you were often required to be a specific spec for your class. If you weren't that spec and you tried to group with random folks you'd likely be insulted for your choice, or kicked out of a group. They haven't been able to truly balance their game in the length of time it's been out and they have a lot less combination choices to deal with.

The only way to really fix it is to diversify the fights a lot, and I'm not sure even that will work as the only real separate skill lines are the class ones.. and I'm not sure those are varied enough (with the exception of maybe Templar and cleanse) to really tune a fight towards that class. They do need some sort of larger group content that doesn't fall into time trial stuff though.

ZiRM · June 2014

I love when people are advertising for AA Trials...

LFG: AA time trials run,Need DPS above 900, voice TS needed, must know runs, VR11+ Whisper your skills and rotation. No NB/Temp!

I'm surprised they aren't asking for personal information and a photo ID.

Any way you wrap it raids and things like this are a negative to most of the masses and only please a small amount of subscribers.

Nidwin · June 2014

It's impossible to achieve any real balance in this game, stop moaning about it.

How can you balance anything

solo PVE vs group PVE vs "raids" vs AvA vs player skills

Kaloran · June 2014

Trials aren't toxic. People are.

GeeYouWhy · June 2014

drackonir wrote: »

time based trials should be optional

I didn't realize I was being forced to do trials, silly me for thinking they are optional.

anakaki · June 2014

GeeYouWhy wrote: »

drackonir wrote: »

time based trials should be optional

I didn't realize I was being forced to do trials, silly me for thinking they are optional.

Hes saying time should be optional. Not that you have to do it. Sure you can ignore the time, but it's still there.

Sakiri · June 2014

Maverick827 wrote: »

Raiding in other MMOs (read: WoW) is (was?) successful and challenging because it was diverse. There were DPS races, yes, but they were accompanied by encounters where personal survivability, spatial awareness, and other non-DPS mechanics were the main focus.

It was never benefical to simply stack the class that had the highest DPS because doing so would have made your raid less effective in other encounters. DPS races were the vast minority of boss encounter archetypes.

You will never acheive PvE class balance if the entirety of your end game is based around who can beat it more quickly. There will always be a mathematically highest DPS class and spec no matter what you do, and serious guilds will always choose those classes and those specs if they aren't given reasons not to. Even tanks and healers are currently judged by how much damage they can also do in addition to their main roles.

At there plans to make non-trial "raid" dungeons that focus more on mechanics, stategy, and raid composition than time? I don't believe it is possible to create a good raiding environment solely with your current implementation of trials.

You never raided sunwell then.

Most of those fights were spriest, shaman fights. Bloodlust stacking and mana batteries.

Top guilds *still* class stack.

Now, anything with timed leaderboards is detrimental. Anything with limited attempts can be detrimental.

You have any idea how hard it was to get my raid leader in wrath to take my main to 10 man heroic raids? They wanted my alt, a holy paladin, rather than my restoration shaman. He stacked resto druids and paladins in 25.

The only time I got to do 10.... we got a tribute to insanity(no wipes) but still...

Ragefist · June 2014

Very much agree with OP

Timed trials and especially dps race mechanics killed the "play the way you want"

At the moment its more like "play sorcerer or DK with staff/light armor or dont bother playing at all"

The promising quotes "many VS many" made it only to trash mobs and at the end of the day we got the WoWlike oversized bosses with their enrage timers (minus proper threat mechanics).

I stopped playing my character, since I was stamina melee build and I really didnt like caster style, which is mandatory for trials. Now im just leveling an alt hoping in time they will balance it

Luvsfuzzybunnies · June 2014

Sakiri wrote: »

Maverick827 wrote: »

Raiding in other MMOs (read: WoW) is (was?) successful and challenging because it was diverse. There were DPS races, yes, but they were accompanied by encounters where personal survivability, spatial awareness, and other non-DPS mechanics were the main focus.

It was never benefical to simply stack the class that had the highest DPS because doing so would have made your raid less effective in other encounters. DPS races were the vast minority of boss encounter archetypes.

You will never acheive PvE class balance if the entirety of your end game is based around who can beat it more quickly. There will always be a mathematically highest DPS class and spec no matter what you do, and serious guilds will always choose those classes and those specs if they aren't given reasons not to. Even tanks and healers are currently judged by how much damage they can also do in addition to their main roles.

At there plans to make non-trial "raid" dungeons that focus more on mechanics, stategy, and raid composition than time? I don't believe it is possible to create a good raiding environment solely with your current implementation of trials.

You never raided sunwell then.

Most of those fights were spriest, shaman fights. Bloodlust stacking and mana batteries.

Top guilds *still* class stack.

Now, anything with timed leaderboards is detrimental. Anything with limited attempts can be detrimental.

You have any idea how hard it was to get my raid leader in wrath to take my main to 10 man heroic raids? They wanted my alt, a holy paladin, rather than my restoration shaman. He stacked resto druids and paladins in 25.

The only time I got to do 10.... we got a tribute to insanity(no wipes) but still...

Weird shaman heals were where it was at in WotLK your raid leader was an idiot....

Lynnessa · June 2014

Don't worry, when I get to VR I will gladly head up a trial group that doesn't care about the timer or exclude people for playing the build they WANT to play. We won't trap ourselves into thinking that a group has to be composed a certain way to be successful--we'll experiment, adapt, and have fun how we please.

Good night, everyone

$infraction2008b16_ESO$ · June 2014

Lalai wrote: »

Heck, even in WoW you were often required to be a specific spec for your class. If you weren't that spec and you tried to group with random folks you'd likely be insulted for your choice, or kicked out of a group. They haven't been able to truly balance their game in the length of time it's been out and they have a lot less combination choices to deal with.

In games like WoW it's fine to expect people of a certain class to spec in a certain way because the classes were built to be specced that way. Difference with this game though is the whole class system was meant to be built around diversity, with zenimax themselves advertising with the "be what you you want" tag line. Problem is the imbalances mean you can't be what you want, for example all main class skills which are generally going to your highest damaging abilities use magicka so equipping anything that doesn't help regen/regain that is a waste of time which is the main reason everyone seems to be a cross dressing mage with a destro staff.

To me that isn't like WoW where you were expected to spec into a certain tree, that's a failure on how the resource management was designed around classes which in turn causes people to only choose light armor/staffs for their build.

Drasn · June 2014

Lynnessa wrote: »

Don't worry, when I get to VR I will gladly head up a trial group that doesn't care about the timer or exclude people for playing the build they WANT to play. We won't trap ourselves into thinking that a group has to be composed a certain way to be successful--we'll experiment, adapt, and have fun how we please.

Good night, everyone

And then you will all start to change your builds because you won't be able to make it beyond the third boss in Archives.

It's not at all about a silly timer. It's about certain bosses using DPS race mechanics. That means if your group's dps is poop, well then you aren't going to be able to defeat that boss.

DeLindsay · June 2014

Maverick827 wrote: »

Raiding in other MMOs (read: WoW) is (was?) successful and challenging because it was diverse. There were DPS races, yes, but they were accompanied by encounters where personal survivability, spatial awareness, and other non-DPS mechanics were the main focus.

Calling BS on this from my 5 years in WoW, 3 years in Rift, among others. Raiding will ALWAYS have "best ofs" regardless if there's a timer or not, period. Once Guilds figure out what is the highest capable DPS build, the players wanting into that main raid will HAVE to chose that or get pushed to a different group.

Raiding in WoW:

Tanks: If during that xpac Pallys were best, you took Pallys.
DPS: If for that specific boss Hunters were best, you took Hunters.
Healers: If you could get by with ONLY Druid/Shammy combo, guess what...

Top end Guilds didn't take ANY class that under performed for that raid or boss encounter, unless they were carrying a Guild member, but for Progression, NEVER. They would take exactly what classes/builds were the literal top 1% and even then the only the players who could use those classes/builds at the level of a top 1%'er.

I 100% agree with @Nerfeverything that ESO Trials just revealed how badly balanced classes are at current.

ganja.mullarwb17_ESO · June 2014

Ive been playing Elder Scrolls games for a decent bit now and would like to add my 2 cents.
I believe, the way the game has been set up since lvl 1-v12 is encouraging the 'play as you want style'. It is blatantly obvious that ESO encourages people to explore new setups and basically allows players to not confine themselves to the classic setup of 'this class is only good for that role'.
With the introduction of trials, ESO has managed to smash their own unique style of gameplay that they advertised so much about before launch. Personally, i play a templar that has been tanking everything since lvl 1 and now in trials, temps only have a max of 3 spots (2 is more than enough in 99% of people's eyes).
The trials are really tough and that's ok, but what is not ok is that most of the players who are good (or what i like to call Pro) are already part of fixed trial groups and with the constant change in class skills, the idea of attempting trials is becoming less and less appealing.
Regardless, at the end of the day, you'll find me outside the doors of AA or HR attempting to get an experienced group together. Not because i have payed for 6 months or because i am sick of everything else, its because i enjoy the challenge with some mates - especially telling them they suck after we wipe xD
Cheers guys see in there

Arsenic_Touch · June 2014

Wow raids successful? diversity you say? not a dps race? ....are you actually being serious?

edit: DeLindsay pretty much covered it.

Ragekniv · June 2014

Trials are toxic because they're a bitter beer face inducing punch of reality!

The division of power and class representation in trials is a blatant indicator of woefully unbalanced classes!

Balance sustained DPS and resource mechanics for all classes and surprisingly, Trials will no longer be a toxic subject!

Maverick827 · June 2014

DeLindsay wrote: »

Maverick827 wrote: »

Raiding in other MMOs (read: WoW) is (was?) successful and challenging because it was diverse. There were DPS races, yes, but they were accompanied by encounters where personal survivability, spatial awareness, and other non-DPS mechanics were the main focus.

Calling BS on this from my 5 years in WoW, 3 years in Rift, among others. Raiding will ALWAYS have "best ofs" regardless if there's a timer or not, period. Once Guilds figure out what is the highest capable DPS build, the players wanting into that main raid will HAVE to chose that or get pushed to a different group.

Raiding in WoW:

Tanks: If during that xpac Pallys were best, you took Pallys.
DPS: If for that specific boss Hunters were best, you took Hunters.
Healers: If you could get by with ONLY Druid/Shammy combo, guess what...

Top end Guilds didn't take ANY class that under performed for that raid or boss encounter, unless they were carrying a Guild member, but for Progression, NEVER. They would take exactly what classes/builds were the literal top 1% and even then the only the players who could use those classes/builds at the level of a top 1%'er.

I 100% agree with @Nerfeverything that ESO Trials just revealed how badly balanced classes are at current.

I never said that a raid did not benefit from stacking the best class, but boss encounters in WoW were rarely designed with mechanics that required it. Hard enrage timers were rare, and soft enrage timers only really punished raids with bad players, not raids with bad compositions. Eventually Blizzard started designing encounters such that certain classes could excel on different bosses. Some were the best kiters, some had the best CC, some had the right mitigation tools, etc.

While I was never in a guild that ever really pushed for world firsts, over the course of seven years I was in guilds that were very hardcore; essentially the kinds of guilds one step down from "world first" guilds. We would get our kills a week or two after the world first, give or take. In all that time, I've never seen a WoW raid with two Warrior tanks, eight Priest healers, and thirty Mage DPS (or 2/6/17 for 25-man raids, or whatever the necessary ratio is).

Wifeaggro13 · June 2014

Maverick827 wrote: »

Raiding in other MMOs (read: WoW) is (was?) successful and challenging because it was diverse. There were DPS races, yes, but they were accompanied by encounters where personal survivability, spatial awareness, and other non-DPS mechanics were the main focus.

It was never benefical to simply stack the class that had the highest DPS because doing so would have made your raid less effective in other encounters. DPS races were the vast minority of boss encounter archetypes.

You will never acheive PvE class balance if the entirety of your end game is based around who can beat it more quickly. There will always be a mathematically highest DPS class and spec no matter what you do, and serious guilds will always choose those classes and those specs if they aren't given reasons not to. Even tanks and healers are currently judged by how much damage they can also do in addition to their main roles.

At there plans to make non-trial "raid" dungeons that focus more on mechanics, stategy, and raid composition than time? I don't believe it is possible to create a good raiding environment solely with your current implementation of trials.

the whole idea of trials sounds good on paper and is horrid in implementation. It has does nothing to encourage friendships. it has actually created a horrible enviroment no time to talk and strategize in fresh content. no room for learning. the limited res made for a terrible dynamic. all it does is force people to break group reset and try again. the mechanics are rudimentary and consist of DPS races and enrage timers. matter of fact the whole end game is about AOE dps. there are four rolls and all are DPS in end gme 4 mans. AOE dps taunt, AOE/heals, and pure AOE DPS.

The whole end game was poorly designed tested and balanced. Personaly i see this game with a limited premium time. from all the evidence of layoffs . no word on the additional guilds. and the utter and total imbalance i see the next 6 months of fixes and a Freemium sub option coming. and all that additional content that was promised are going to be DLC's with discounts to subs just like EA did with TOR.