Trying to understand all the complaining

Heishi · June 2014

(If this reads funny I apologize. initially this was written as a response to a thread with people complaining about DK getting nerfed and NB getting buffed. I decided I'd rather make it its own topic to see what others thought).

I'm not quite sure why all the complaining is going on. NB are not getting buffed, they're getting fixed. Anyone who plays MMO's or RPGs in general should understand basic types and intended purposes.

Dragonknight (Warrior type)- Should be balanced between offense and defense. You can push them one way or another but not excelling to the extent that a class meant for this does. Likewise, they shouldn't fail in those areas as much as other classes even when pushed to one side or the other(ie: no glass cannon warrior).

Nightblade (Rogue type)- Should be among the highest dps, especially in short burst vs one target. On the down side they didn't to be a little squishy. A lot of times they are essentially the suicide class that runs in unleashes a full force of dps until they run out of resources and drop. Sometimes you get rogue types suitable for extended battles, but this is often not the case (excepting bow, ranger types, that usually do less dps but have range advantage and more survivability).

Sorcerer (Mage type)- Should have the highest AoE damage or high dps from nukes. Usually mages don't have quite the short term dps that rogues do, but are able to sustain that dps much longer. Mages with rogues are often glass cannons where the rogue is focused on dropping the most powerful target and mages a wiping out the trash mobs.

Templars (Paladin type)- Should have the highest defense and most survivability. Usually they are a big healing rock in the middle of a battlefield or your typical undead killers. The should theoretically be the lowest on the dps pole but rival a healing mage for healing (though zeni kinda screwed it on the healing mage since they gave that to templars as well). In tanking they should live longer than a warrior and much much longer than a rogue or mage.

Now Zeni has done an interesting thing similar to Rift, GW2, Secrect World, ect (a growing trend) where they want anyone to be able to do anything. So you have all kinds of weird hybrids like healing rogues. While these perform great in their role, there are still certain offsets/trade-offs in the hybrid that make them a little less efficient than something purely designed for it. Again with the healing rogue for example, it shouldn't heal as much as much as a pure healer from a healing class, on the other hand you get the great healing, but will likely do more damage than a pure healer. Same goes for all the hybrids, there are trade-offs from the pure types that come with it which should be understood. So if you have a dragon knight, meant to be balanced between damage and defense, and push it to do max dps, it still shouldn't do as much as an actual dps class, but at the same time it should still have the defense to live longer than an actual dps class.

Ohioastro · June 2014

A lot of people posting here simply don't understand that class balancing is a continuous process in MMOs.

Another large group doesn't understand that, in any complex game, there will be unintended glitches; locations with rewards much too good, overpowered skil combos, and so on. If not fixed, these end being de facto required for competitive play.

GrimCyclone · June 2014

Heishi wrote: »

Trying to understand all the complaining

If you listen to one post in this thread. This is the one that will answer it.

This man is trying to understand all the complaining.

The simple answer without debate is this:

A significant part of the population is displeased with this game more than usual for a variety of reasons.

And remember, you didn't do anything wrong. This is the developer's problem. I'm sorry you TES fans got shafted. There is a chance that they'll turn it around, but that's all there is.

And that's all guys.
Have a good day.

Heishi · June 2014

That's what I thought, but seeing all the complaining about nerfs, I was beginning to wonder if I'd just gone crazy. Like the most recent Bolt Escape, which from what I understand of the ability it meant to give you enough space to keep melee of you, get out of an AoE, or other such short quick movements and keep fighting. People abused it to go flying off into the distance, not the intended use, then cry about it when Zeni nerfs it to force people to use it as intended.

Wavemoore · June 2014

This is an MMORPG forum. It's the extreme of the extreme. If these people aren't complaining about something then they aren't happy.

Heishi · June 2014

Wavemoore wrote: »

This is an MMORPG forum. It's the extreme of the extreme. If these people aren't complaining about something then they aren't happy.

The thing that makes it sad is all these people are IN GAME too... except the rage quitters. I even saw one particularly elaborate complaint thread from "one of the highest ranking sorc" in a huge guild with the next emperor to be interviewed and other such things that was supposed to be impressive. One of the highest ranking sorcerers complaining about bolt escape being nerfed and it ruining sorcerers. It blew my mind. It was like he had no idea how it was supposed to be used, just that it ruined the blink in nuke blink out method that got popular. He noted not sorcerers had no survivability any more... which glass cannons aren't really intended to have.

GeeYouWhy · June 2014

Nerfs no matter how logical will always be met with rage. It is the 1st law of MMO forums.

The NB issues are a different beast as there were not only performance issues on NB abilities but bugs that at times made the NB unplayable. Some of those have been addressed and more fixes are on the way for the NB. The rage over this is that many feel that most of these issues should have been fixed before launch.

liquid_wolf · June 2014

The complaints, in any game/community, are indicative that a game is doing well.

You have people who are experiencing the game, and leaving negative feedback about it... as opposed to just leaving and saying nothing.

I've played an MMORPG with a single server and 500ish people on simultaneously. The forums have almost no complaints and nearly all the posts are well-written suggestions or community activity organization.

It is, quite literally, the paradise of an MMORPG Community. GMs actually show up to player-run events, and incorporate those activities into lore; using them as a method to expand the world, and reward players.

But... it is a single server MMORPG, with maybe 2K players total.

So... take your pick. These forums might appear to be a cesspool of complaints and posts by people who couldn't write a simple essay... but they are clearly interested in the game and playing it.

Dayv · June 2014

However good the arguments for nerfing something may be (and I'm not saying they were good reasons) , nobody likes having something taken away from them. It's pretty understandable that complaints are going to follow a nerf. I certainly find complaints about nerfs a lot more tolerable than people gloating about them.

Amsel_McKay · June 2014

The problem is the min/max players who insist: Dragonknight (Warrior type), Nightblade (Rogue type), Sorcerer (Mage type) and Templars (Paladin type). You can play any of these "types" in any "class" but its not the "best"...

From level 1-50 you can play and be successful in any build, but VR you need to specialize. I'm not sure if that was the game plan the whole time, I enjoy playing 1-50, but I dont like VR 1-12 its slow its painful and I cant find groups because I want to play a Medium armor, 2HD, Nightblade and a DK had 4 times the DPS and at the moment most of the VR12 people want the best of each (Healing, DPS, Tank)

Heishi · June 2014

My main is a NB. Notably I don't do much PvP, but for PvE the only real problem I had/have is combat lag and transition time between attacks. For example using Shadow cloak with only a 3 sec invisibility, I have to wait about 1-2sec of that before I can actually use one of my other abilities. Or like if I'm in stealth, for some reason my weapons like to be sheathed and if I wait until I'm on an enemy, I have to wait a sec or so before they draw and I can attack (which is how it usually goes, it goes into the drawn weapon animation pauses then attacks). Hitting the button to use shadow cloak and it missing the key stroke because of lag is an issue.

None of those are really game breaking or anything I can't get around.

@liquid_wolf @‌Dayv You could be right. I've waded through many MMO's and the best ones seem to have the most people complaining. I guess it does make sense that they get so into it that when something they're used to suddenly changes.

@Amsel_McKay Maybe that's why I don't see it so well. My main is just now starting into the VR areas. I spend a lot of time makings, running, and deleting test builds to try out things and have a better understanding of other classes capabilities and be at least a little knowledgeable in other areas. The whole jack-of-all-trades ordeal. Really I'm in this game for the long haul, so I wasn't worried about powering 1 char through to the cap.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO · June 2014

Heishi wrote: »

That's what I thought, but seeing all the complaining about nerfs, I was beginning to wonder if I'd just gone crazy. Like the most recent Bolt Escape, which from what I understand of the ability it meant to give you enough space to keep melee of you, get out of an AoE, or other such short quick movements and keep fighting. People abused it to go flying off into the distance, not the intended use, then cry about it when Zeni nerfs it to force people to use it as intended.

This is an excellent summary of the situation, as so often happens a section of the PVP player-base that abuses something then screams when their abuse is prevented; except in this case there isn't a noticeable damage done to the PVE use of this skill, too often PVEers are the collateral damage of such PVP QQing.

Stonesthrow · June 2014

@GrimCyclone‌

It's a significant part of people that go to forums and post, maybe.

Wouldn't speak for the entire population, as a vast majority of people don't come to the forums and are, or could be, enjoying themselves just fine. People tend not to search out ways to praise, just to point out whats wrong, needs fixing and/or rage at the machine so to speak.

That's why these posts have a few hundred to a thousand reads and not 100's of thousands or more.

The fixes are coming in. I've personally been banged around by the biggest bugs this game has offered, i.e. bye bye bank, the oops ban, etc…, and have noticed things getting better for the most part… for what I do and what I see.

Still enjoying the game immensely all things considered. But I don't have a "rush to end game" play style or enjoy PvP that much, might be part of it.

Leesha · June 2014

fromtesonlineb16_ESO wrote: »

Heishi wrote: »

That's what I thought, but seeing all the complaining about nerfs, I was beginning to wonder if I'd just gone crazy. Like the most recent Bolt Escape, which from what I understand of the ability it meant to give you enough space to keep melee of you, get out of an AoE, or other such short quick movements and keep fighting. People abused it to go flying off into the distance, not the intended use, then cry about it when Zeni nerfs it to force people to use it as intended.

This is an excellent summary of the situation, as so often happens a section of the PVP player-base that abuses something then screams when their abuse is prevented; except in this case there isn't a noticeable damage done to the PVE use of this skill, too often PVEers are the collateral damage of such PVP QQing.

And this is why I find it so amusing in the case of Bolt Escape. For once the pvp crowd cried about how op it was and for once the impact is felt solely in pvp.

Daethz · June 2014

Even with "DK's Survivability" we are still a glass cannon, just less so than some other classes.
But our damage cant even compare with other classes anymore, and each nerf just makes that even worse.

Plus the main issue is ZOS thinks class balance is the issue right now, when in reality destrostaff is immensely overpowered compared to any melee weapon or stamina based weapon entirely.

Class spells should not be TOUCHED untill stamina based weapon/spells are fixed(buffed) to compete with destrostaff, however bow dosent count, its already near-competitive with destrostaff.

GrimCyclone · June 2014

Stonesthrow wrote: »

@GrimCyclone‌

It's a significant part of people that go to forums and post, maybe.

Wouldn't speak for the entire population, as a vast majority of people don't come to the forums and are, or could be, enjoying themselves just fine. People tend not to search out ways to praise, just to point out whats wrong, needs fixing and/or rage at the machine so to speak.

That's why these posts have a few hundred to a thousand reads and not 100's of thousands or more.

The fixes are coming in. I've personally been banged around by the biggest bugs this game has offered, i.e. bye bye bank, the oops ban, etc…, and have noticed things getting better for the most part… for what I do and what I see.

Still enjoying the game immensely all things considered. But I don't have a "rush to end game" play style or enjoy PvP that much, might be part of it.

@Stonesthrow‌

The forums represent a smaller but generally proportionate sampling of the whole. Oh sure there might be small differences, but the forum is a diverse bunch. And regardless, too many different kinds of posters have mentioned and agreed that the displeasure with this game in the form of feedback is irregular.

This is backed up by the reviews.
This is backed up by the vlogs.
This is backed up by the popularity in general.
This is backed up by the empty guilds and friend lists.

Any way you wanna cut it, something is wrong.

Cogo · June 2014

@Heishi

Great post! I agree completely. But prepare to get flamed for it.
Sadly, the posters on these forums are a very small population of those who play the game.

I think the problem will solve itself. Those who are upset that their class being "nerfed" will not continue playing. Or they will and adapt.

There are more people then on these forums that likes the balancing Zenimax is doing.

Daethz · June 2014

Also just to point out, archers are likely the highest damage outputting stamina weapon in the game at the moment. I think they have better survivability than melees to, don't they?

The issues arent even in the class department, it is Weapon type balance that is needed.

Ridiculously Rigged: Destruction Staff, Bow(Exploit detected).

Underpowered, even complete trash: Dual Wield, Twohand

Shield was rigged due to a exploit but that got fixed and suddenly seeing a shield basher is a rare occurrence, now 70-90% of cyrodiil competitors use Destruction Staff and the ones not using it are likely using the bow animation exploit.

Ragnar_Lodbrok · June 2014

People are mad because the play your way promise sold to us was a complete lie. You can only play light armor staff for whatever role in trinity you want. Thats why people like me are upset.

tawok · June 2014

Some people complain because they're boring people. Everything has this problem.

Some complain because they're legitimately disappointed. *** things have this problem.

/thread

Heishi · June 2014

@Stonesthrow‌ yeah that's much the same for me. I got hit with the bank bug. No oops ban though fortunately. I got fortunate with the bank bug though and when I switched chars to the last one I went to the bank with before the bug, all the items that should have went missing were in his inventory. All I had to do was rebuy slots, which money's easy enough to make.

@Daethz‌ This is what I mean. DK shouldn't have as much dps as others. They're meant to be a balanced class. If you think of it as a slider, the higher you push the dps, the lower the defense should be, though def wouldn't be as low as an actual dps intended class. Like wise if you push for more def, there's less dps but should be more than Templar who should have more def. I haven't played my DK's since the patch, but last I checked Draconic has an armor buff that does damage and Earth has an ultimate which increases armor and does damage. Flame has the popular standard which reduces incoming damage as well. NB and Sorc don't really get any reduced damage or armor buff. In fact if you use reaper's mark you're even more vulnerable. Well, there's the shadow ultimate that reduces damage and the shadow's decoy that lowers an enemy's attack. But not nearly the reductions that DK get.

Exploits being used doesn't mean something is overpowered either, it just means that much like bolt escape, shield bash, vampires, and other things they need to be fixed. Which I'm sure people will get upset when they are fixed.

Dual wield I don't see how it's underpowered. I used DW with my NB have no problem with it. It's a well rounded skill tree, not a specifically focused one. You have whirlwind which isn't particularly strong if you use it at the start of battle because it does more damage the lower the enemy's hp is. There the slash that adds dots, and with one of the morphs even restores health. The throwing dagger gives you a decent ranged attack with a snare. Flurry when you add up the damage (and each hit can crit) becomes very viable, particularly with the attack speed boost adding more dps to your light/heavy attacks. Sparks I don't really care for, but it makes a target's melee attacks entirely miss for 4sec so if you're getting hammered on by a DK/Temp you can stop them long enough to use a pot. Actually if you were a DK or Temp this would be great to stop a crit'ing NB as well.

I admittedly haven't played with 2h enough to really judge its worth fully, but I've never ran into a problem with it the times I did try it.

AreoHotah · June 2014

Don't try to understand. Sigmund Freud wouldn't understand...

frwinters_ESO · June 2014

People complain for attention. They want to be heard, they want people to sympathize with them, they want to argue.

Dayv · June 2014

Heishi wrote: »

I admittedly haven't played with 2h enough to really judge its worth fully, but I've never ran into a problem with it the times I did try it.

For me, the 25% splash damage on normal attacks seems way more powerful than whirlwind and no magicka cost plus charge seems much more useful than throwing knives. I'd take 2h over dw any day.

nerevarine1138 · June 2014

The basic premise of your post (that they are simply making sure Dragonknights and Sorcerers aren't ridiculously overtuned) is correct. The rest of it is entirely wrong.

Nightblades aren't Rogues. Templars aren't Paladins, etc. Every class actually can fill every role and bring something effective to it. It's highly ironic that you mention a Nightblade healer having tradeoffs, as Nightblade healers are some of the most effective in the game.

Balancing in this game is more complicated than most, thanks to the extremely flexible class system. So we're going to have to be patient while they fine-tune things. But ultimately, the reward is that we end up with a much more open skill and combat system than in any other MMO to date.

Heishi · June 2014

Dayv wrote: »

For me, the 25% splash damage on normal attacks seems way more powerful than whirlwind and no magicka cost plus charge seems much more useful than throwing knives. I'd take 2h over dw any day.

Oh I didn't cover passives. I assume 2h is just as viable as dw for its own purposes. One of the dw passives basically makes the dw attacks stronger when the enemy is under 25% health. This is common with the NB anyways since moves like killers blade also does 300% damage when the enemy is under 25%. Whirldwind is the same except is has a gradient rather than just doing more when under 25%. Basically, the assassin dw NB is supposed to try to spike dps the enemy down to 25% then finish them.

I don't know much about charge though. I know it's a gap closer, whereas the throwing knives are not. They have slightly different applications. Charge won't aid you in escaping from an enemy. I don't know the damage difference off hand, I suspect Charge should have the higher damage. You can also spam throwing knives and strafe. DW is more suitable to a rogue type who might need a variety of different abilities for different situations rather than being focused on one specific function. The variety comes at the sacrifice of power.

Wifeaggro13 · June 2014

Heishi wrote: »

(If this reads funny I apologize. initially this was written as a response to a thread with people complaining about DK getting nerfed and NB getting buffed. I decided I'd rather make it its own topic to see what others thought).

I'm not quite sure why all the complaining is going on. NB are not getting buffed, they're getting fixed. Anyone who plays MMO's or RPGs in general should understand basic types and intended purposes.

Dragonknight (Warrior type)- Should be balanced between offense and defense. You can push them one way or another but not excelling to the extent that a class meant for this does. Likewise, they shouldn't fail in those areas as much as other classes even when pushed to one side or the other(ie: no glass cannon warrior).

Nightblade (Rogue type)- Should be among the highest dps, especially in short burst vs one target. On the down side they didn't to be a little squishy. A lot of times they are essentially the suicide class that runs in unleashes a full force of dps until they run out of resources and drop. Sometimes you get rogue types suitable for extended battles, but this is often not the case (excepting bow, ranger types, that usually do less dps but have range advantage and more survivability).

Sorcerer (Mage type)- Should have the highest AoE damage or high dps from nukes. Usually mages don't have quite the short term dps that rogues do, but are able to sustain that dps much longer. Mages with rogues are often glass cannons where the rogue is focused on dropping the most powerful target and mages a wiping out the trash mobs.

Templars (Paladin type)- Should have the highest defense and most survivability. Usually they are a big healing rock in the middle of a battlefield or your typical undead killers. The should theoretically be the lowest on the dps pole but rival a healing mage for healing (though zeni kinda screwed it on the healing mage since they gave that to templars as well). In tanking they should live longer than a warrior and much much longer than a rogue or mage.

Now Zeni has done an interesting thing similar to Rift, GW2, Secrect World, ect (a growing trend) where they want anyone to be able to do anything. So you have all kinds of weird hybrids like healing rogues. While these perform great in their role, there are still certain offsets/trade-offs in the hybrid that make them a little less efficient than something purely designed for it. Again with the healing rogue for example, it shouldn't heal as much as much as a pure healer from a healing class, on the other hand you get the great healing, but will likely do more damage than a pure healer. Same goes for all the hybrids, there are trade-offs from the pure types that come with it which should be understood. So if you have a dragon knight, meant to be balanced between damage and defense, and push it to do max dps, it still shouldn't do as much as an actual dps class, but at the same time it should still have the defense to live longer than an actual dps class.

I think the body of complaint is the nerfs and buffs in wrong area. Currently every class is just a caster . Dress and stick spec in the end game for optimum performance. there is no doubt about it.

As for night blade they needed a fix. but its a partial one fixing everything related to class and not addressing the stamina spec. across the board this affects all classes.

As for Dk nerfs .the nerfs they made and the ones they will make affect all the Real Tanky builds. the heavy armor and stamina builds the most. Sure it brought the Light armor stave build in line. but destroyed the utility the other builds relied upon. So really it made DK specs even more useless and left us like the rest of the classes Light armor and stick.

Audigy · June 2014

I don't think I ever complained about class balance in an MMO, as this is to be expected in an MMORPG. Back in the days it was totally fine that a specific class just didn't deal as much damage as another, or that one healing Char was more about CC than actual healing etc.

Over the time gaming companies started to add competition to MMO´s like with WOW and its Arena system and this started the whole "he does more damage than me, he has more items than me, he has faster boots then me...".

Its a sad trend, but a trend started by the Devs and with the Trials and the timer there, people will for sure start to be picky again

Good thing however is, that we can all use the random group finder - ZO just needs to fix some bugs there, but the competition will still be present sadly

AinGeal · June 2014

If people turned a blind eye to the game's faults, it wouldn't improve. People complain because they care, if they didn't then they would simply leave without a word. It's not hurtful, but rather helpful to complain about something. It brings it out to the open and if it really is a problem, hopefully it gets fixed.

I would say that the most hurtful are the players who, upon hearing a complaint, tell the complainer to "go back to <insert game name here>". Since the person you tell that to just might take your advice. I've seen it before where such people have said just that and those same people, a year later, are then complaining on how much of a ghost town most of the game has become.

Heishi · June 2014

Nyswar wrote: »

The basic premise of your post (that they are simply making sure Dragonknights and Sorcerers aren't ridiculously overtuned) is correct. The rest of it is entirely wrong.

Nightblades aren't Rogues. Templars aren't Paladins, etc. Every class actually can fill every role and bring something effective to it. It's highly ironic that you mention a Nightblade healer having tradeoffs, as Nightblade healers are some of the most effective in the game.

Balancing in this game is more complicated than most, thanks to the extremely flexible class system. So we're going to have to be patient while they fine-tune things. But ultimately, the reward is that we end up with a much more open skill and combat system than in any other MMO to date.

You are right about there being shades of grey. I didn't go into too much detail about the hybrids because the post was already getting lengthy. I also agree NB healers are some of the most effective. That also comes from player skill and flexibility. a Pure healer won't have the flexibility a NB healer would. I could be entirely wrong because I don't have the statistics to back it up, but I suspect the pure healers would have higher HoTs than NB, but that the NB healer would also output higher dps. Depending on the situation, the added dps with the hots is incredibly useful.

I actually really enjoy having the ability to hybrid classes rather than being stuck in the triad. There are many situations that you need something in between. I was just pointing out that there is a trade off (even if it's small and works better in different situations).

steveb16_ESO46 · June 2014

GrimCyclone wrote: »

The forums represent a smaller but generally proportionate sampling of the whole. Oh sure there might be small differences, but the forum is a diverse bunch. And regardless, too many different kinds of posters have mentioned and agreed that the displeasure with this game in the form of feedback is irregular.

This is backed up by the reviews.
This is backed up by the vlogs.
This is backed up by the popularity in general.
This is backed up by the empty guilds and friend lists.

Any way you wanna cut it, something is wrong.

Something is wrong but there's so much to like with this game I really want it to come back fighting.