What an out of touch newspost.

People have been pointing out issues with subclassing and expressing their concerns this entire PTS cycle, which have largely been ignored. One of the foremost concerns I've seen is that pure classes are essentially dead for any type of real PVP or PVM encounter once this system releases, because there are almost no scenarios where a pure class is as strong as one utilizing subclassing. Yet according to this article, "there is no desire to reduce the effectiveness of pure classes". What about effectiveness by comparison? This comment completely glosses over the reality of the system.

Furthermore, the team says "Of course, with a change of this magnitude, there are balance concerns, but the team is prepared for what may come.". You haven't even acknowledged many of the balance concerns during the testing cycle for the patch! How can you possibly suggest that you're prepared to address these issues as they arise when you have already demonstrated that you have no intentions of addressing those that have already been brought up during the PTS?

Are you planning to have a more frequent patch cadence to accommodate balance changes in the near future? Or are we going to be waiting the typical 3+ months before you adjust a single thing, as has historically been the case with ESO?

How is adjusting(nerfing) ''outliers'' not reducing the effectiveness of pure Classes? If skill/passive X is ok when used by a pure Class, but when combined with Subclass it starts overperforming and suddenly an ''adjustment'' is required, how does that not reduce the effectiveness of a pure Class? What is the logic being used here?

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Alaztor91 wrote: »

How is adjusting(nerfing) ''outliers'' not reducing the effectiveness of pure Classes? If skill/passive X is ok when used by a pure Class, but when combined with Subclass it starts overperforming and suddenly an ''adjustment'' is required, how does that not reduce the effectiveness of a pure Class? What is the logic being used here?

Quoted for emphasis because it merits repeating.

I had to think about what I wanted to respond to this for a bit. My first read of this article was... not full of positive thoughts.

Anyway, I'll start by saying that I don't have a problem with the idea of Subclassing. I am very happy for the people who can build their characters to the fantasy they have, and in fact I'd prefer an even more free version of Subclassing where players could trade all three lines or to be able to accept more than one line from the same parent class, and one that there is no skill point or XP gain opportunity cost.

Having said that, the way Subclassing exists as it is now is specifically designed to pit the casual "I just want to build my character to my wishes!" and the sweaty endgame groups against each other. The balance needed to have been planned way better than it was.

A few things about certain parts of the article though:

We know the Subclassing system will infuse power into the player community. For example, players can drop their tank and support skill lines for more damage-dealing abilities and passives,” notes Day. “However, there is a trade-off—by taking all damage skill lines, you are more reliant on your team for support healing, shielding, and protection."

This is true in theory, but not in practice.

Firstly, only the DLC Classes (so less than half of them) have strict tank/support/damage lines, so for the majority of the Classes there's no easy way to drop a line that exclusively supports. This also goes along with certain skills like the Ardent Flame line's Inferno skill, which is a damage skill that had one morph that converts it into a heal.

Secondly, there are still some skills that are overloaded with regard to being able to shield and heal and damage. We had examples of Winter's Embrace's Arctic Blast morph being nerfed into near unusability since the heal was given a situational proc effect (the developer comment specifically called it out for its "overwhelming power they enabled in PvP situations," despite the other morph being the oppressive PvP morph) while skills like Pragmatic Fatecarver offer players with quick fingers the ability to block-cancel the beam for infinite damage shields in addition to a very heavy hitting cleave attack.

It seems that there is no consitency.

"Also, there is no desire to reduce the effectiveness of pure classes and their ability to complete content, and overall, the system should make the content more accessible to all players.”

But you did. There is no circumstance where a pure class player has the power/effectiveness that compares to any Subclassed build. Heck, most players are losing power/effectiveness compared to what they have right now on Live due to some heavy-handed nerfs (like the ones to DK sustain passives and to no-pet Sorcs, not to mention the upcoming corpse limits making PvP Necromancers literally unusable since they literally can't cast half of their skills).

If the team is of the opinion that a Subclassed build should have more power than a pure build due to the ability to drop support lines for more damage, then it should also follow that in places where one character needs to damage and support themselves (like solo arenas or PvP) that it would be preferable with a pure Class. But nope, pure classes are still not even close.

This is why people are getting up in arms. If it were balanced such that a pure class's effectiveness was within a reasonable amount of a Subclass, there would not be as much consternation. It makes sense that min-maxing would make a more effective character, but we should not be talking about a power delta of 50% or so.

“Class identity is still important for key aspects of our game: Achievement, class styles, class scripts, class item sets, and so much more,” Day emphasizes.

Wait, what? Things like Class Sets are linked to the class lines, so you intend that players should still be able to wear a set buffing a line they no longer have? And someone else who takes it and uses exclusively those skills can't. This seems like a strange time to all of a sudden care about Class Identity.

When players talk about Class Identity, they don't mean the sets you're able to wear. They mean the playstyle, the skills, the passives. With Subclassing, that Class Identity is gone, so hanging onto that identity for smaller things that are not as important is a strange choice.

Most importantly - the Class Set Styles. Those were unlocked for all characters on release in U40, but specifically locked by Class in U41. The fact that they were locked in the first place was bad enough, but to say that they're remining locked to "retain Class identity" when all other aspects of Class Identity are being dissolved is nothing short of infuriating. Do you not understand how important fashion is to your community, and your answer is to allow players to use any skill they want but God forbid they wear a facemask!?!

Of course, with a change of this magnitude, there are balance concerns, but the team is prepared for what may come.

“In general, with more options comes more combinations, which can lead to different capabilities beyond what players had prior to the Subclassing system,” Wheeler explains. “That’s something we’ll monitor while also looking for outlier combinations of abilities and item sets, so the game’s content isn’t suddenly a lot easier to complete."

The problem here is that it seems like balance was not even taken into consideration. We saw this on PTS where players were suddenly able to increase damage by up to 50% just by exploiting overloaded passives. Did the team not see some of these overloaded combinations coming?

The other issue is the “we’ll monitor” approach. While it’s clear that Live testing will give much more data than PTS, the fact that ESO does combat rebalances quarterly instead of in shorter timeframes (like biweekly) means that players will be stuck with overpowered combinations for three months. A much shorter cooldown on rebalancing would help a lot to make things feel more like the team is adjusting as time goes on.

And on that note, people are already feeling burned by the “we’ll monitor” approach in other areas. We were told in U41 with the change from Stalking Blastbones to Grave Lord’s Sacrifice that “We’ll be closely monitoring the engagement of these two versions of the ability over the next year, and will tweak and fine-tune the newer experience if necessary.” Feedback has been pretty universally negative, and yet no real tweaks or fine-tunes have occurred in the year since this change. See also the feedback on the Warden’s Arctic Blast above.

"We will be looking at feedback as always, and we plan to make adjustments as needed after we go live.”

This is the crux of the issues most people are having. We hear the team is looking at feedback, and yet it feels like they don’t want to hear anything from us.

I realize that many people online are complaining for the sake of complaining. But you have a PTS for a reason. Yes, there are whiners, but many of the PTS testers are experienced players who use CMX parses or videos to show what they mean. This is legitimate, actionable feedback, and nothing comes of it.

The PTS, particularly in the last two years, has felt like the team doesn’t actually want to hear anything from players. And it’s only gotten worse. We feel like we’re talking to a brick wall, and then any issues pointed out will invariably go live and be issues there. Why have official feedback threads if nobody’s looking at them? Why even have a PTS if the bugs and issues found are not addressed?

And it’s not just combat either. As an example, this patch is introducing a new modern UI, which has a feedback thread that is nearly universally negative. We still don’t know why that change is necessary, it still looks unfinished, and we all know it’s going to go live despite what anyone says.

I’ll reference the “5 pain points” thread (which was a great thing!) where Rich cane in specifically to say “there are also a few callouts that we weren't aware of and have added them to the list.” It makes us think that the dev team sometimes doesn’t know what issues players are having since we don’t talk much - after all, the fact that slotting Grim Focus caused the character to glow was complained about for almost two years, was never actioned on PTS, and had a massive thread in General… but I have a feeling the dev team didn’t realize it was an issue until a surprising number of people listed it as one of their 5 pain points.

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All in all, I will be keeping my characters pure, outside of the few hours a week I’m in my trial prog, since running a pure class is ridiculously underpowered compared to anything that Subclassing can bring. I built my characters around their class since I find that fun, and I wish it wasn’t such a massive self-nerf to play the characters the way I designed them.

In fact, the thing that makes me happiest is the fact that I just got the Lep Seclusa trifecta with my group yesterday, so I can go into this patch confidently saying that my main got every 4-man trifecta in the game as the Class I designed him to be. I love that I didn’t have to betray my personal lore in order to accomplish hard content, and I hope the balance will soon come to let us be able to do that again.

I truly wish the best for Subclassing. I really hope that Subclassing makes it possible for the team to go wild adding even more Classes in the future - I have some great character ideas that only need a Class to use them, and I find it fun to build around the Class skills. Subclassing would allow new Classes to be made as modular lines that could let new players and vets alike have fun in new ways, so I hope to see more coming. I’m praying for a new Class next year, and I would love it if we got even more than that.

Sorry, this was a lot, but I had a lot of thoughts and wanted to get them all down. Thanks again for giving us this wonderful world, and I’ll see you in Tamriel.

No shade im all in on subclassing but I don't see the point in not letting us take two lines from another class

Everyone hollerin about "balance" issues and devs being disconnected from the game they made etc etc etc. Can we please just take a moment and realize a couple of things...

1. You currently have to write the amount of possible combinations of gear and abilities in exponential form (REALLY REALLY big numbers of possibilities we can create)

2. With that many amount of possibilities of combinations its unrealistic to even begin to think any dev team could test ALL combinations.

How would one go about identifying the "meta" builds, how they work and what exploits are being used? Perhaps if ZOS could do something where the game collects damage being dealt, damage being absorbed, healing being done an received and plot this data out so they could see what "average" is for the player base for each type of build and then you would start painting a picture of outliers who has insane amounts of damage mitigated or over the top sustained damage / burst. If they wanted to get really granular do the same for the abilities in the game and then you take these outliers with that data to where it shows what items the player had on, what champion points were assigned, what abilities were being used and then throw that static information on a test character and study what combinations of things are being done to generate those numbers.

Maybe they're already doing stuff like this behind the scenes who knows? If so then just disregard everything I said

Personally I think subclassing is going to bring alot more joy to the game of feeling "unique" with what YOU are doing in the game as opposed to just being another sorc streaking around everywhere throwing mages wrath and maybe just maybe this change could be just enough to provide that "oh crap I didn't see that coming!" to these powerful "meta" builds that we currently have and allow other players to have some bit of advantage of a fair, fun fight. Granted yea, there's gonna be some big brained people who will just create a new "meta" that everyone will bandwagon to, but again HOPEFULLY the flexibility that is coming with subclassing the endless amount of options of what COULD happen in combat will keep even the new "meta" on it's toes of having that moment of "oh crap I didn't see that coming!" and the meta all of a sudden has a weakness....

Thank you,
Defatank

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Defatank wrote: »

Everyone hollerin about "balance" issues and devs being disconnected from the game they made etc etc etc. Can we please just take a moment and realize a couple of things...

1. You currently have to write the amount of possible combinations of gear and abilities in exponential form (REALLY REALLY big numbers of possibilities we can create)

2. With that many amount of possibilities of combinations its unrealistic to even begin to think any dev team could test ALL combinations.

How would one go about identifying the "meta" builds, how they work and what exploits are being used? Perhaps if ZOS could do something where the game collects damage being dealt, damage being absorbed, healing being done an received and plot this data out so they could see what "average" is for the player base for each type of build and then you would start painting a picture of outliers who has insane amounts of damage mitigated or over the top sustained damage / burst. If they wanted to get really granular do the same for the abilities in the game and then you take these outliers with that data to where it shows what items the player had on, what champion points were assigned, what abilities were being used and then throw that static information on a test character and study what combinations of things are being done to generate those numbers.

With respect, that's the point of the PTS.

A lot of people seem to think that people complaining about "oh, there are some overpowered combos" are just blowing smoke. Please remember that there is a testing server where experienced players go and test these combos, prove that they actually are overpowered, and then report it as such, both in-game using the /bug or /feedback commands and on the forums.

The PTS forum also has official feedback threads for both Subclassing and for general Combat Classes and Abilities. These threads have 11 and 19 pages of feedback respectively and include videos, CMX logs, and parses to prove the claims people made.

People aren't expecting balance in a vacuum. What they're salty about is 1) balance doesn't seem to have been an original thought, and 2) none of the feedback on what is/is not overpowered from experienced playtesters is taken into account. So to answer your question: that method to identify overpowered stuff exists and is being ignored, which is what leads to the frustration.

*nods* You absolutely have valid points indeed. I should have been a bit more detailed about "balance" etc comment as it was pointed at over the past 10 years of complaints really. I've seen more than my fair share of "Chicken Little" comments and post over the years about how A, B, C is going break the game etc etc, which some things absolutely have been critical breaks / exploits that clearly ruined gameplay. Most recent one that comes to mind is tarnished nightmare debacle that took a couple weeks to iron out but the devs got it, the set is still in play, its still a thorn in peoples sides and there are still people who complain about it. (not tryin to derail the conversation just making a point). The point being that yea there truly are some truly broken things that happen in the game, overall they're pretty few and far being (real actual game breaking things). Others are things that need tuning sure, but "breaking" no. My main point to my comment was really to point out some way that devs should be able to collect data proactively in live time or at least live enough ish in time to see what abilities and sets are over performing and how they're being achieved. There are absolutely players who test their hearts out and tell the devs exactly what they're doing and how they're doing it so the devs can review it, but you also have batches of players who understand the systems just as well as the devs do and they clutch to these exploits like their lives depend on it and its up to the devs to reverse engineer what they're doing because they dont say a word and look at it as "Well its the devs game, they put it in the game so its fine to use it and its their own responsibility to fix it and I'll just be a God in the game until they do" and they have a blast with it and grief players. Its quite sad really. At the end of the day we all want to have fun playing this game...

Where is the fun and how do you achieve it? Of course nobody wants to feel "weak" in the game and of course it feels great to just royally hand some monsters or another player a butt whoppin right? But the REAL fun comes into play where everyone involved is trying their best, giving it their all and the fights are close and when whoever dies they're just like MAN! I ALMOST HAD IT!!! while the person who won is sitting there saying HOLY CRAP HOW DID I NOT DIE!?!?! <<< THAT is where the fun is and I believe that is where the devs are trying to get us.

Classes should only exist in so far as they are predefined skill line selections.

We should be able to freely choose 3 skill lines on our toons when we create them.



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OldStygian wrote: »

Classes should only exist in so far as they are predefined skill line selections.

We should be able to freely choose 3 skill lines on our toons when we create them.
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since theyve offered no balance system in relation to the original classes this would seem to be their goal. Get rid of classes altogether at some point and just let players make their own. Certainly not a bad thing. More elder scrolls, less generic mmo.

Rungar wrote: »

OldStygian wrote: »

Classes should only exist in so far as they are predefined skill line selections.

We should be able to freely choose 3 skill lines on our toons when we create them.
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since theyve offered no balance system in relation to the original classes this would seem to be their goal. Get rid of classes altogether at some point and just let players make their own. Certainly not a bad thing. More elder scrolls, less generic mmo.

Call me casual, but as someone who has played TES games for 25 years, I've always built my own class based on how I wanted to play and so this change feels very right to me. I spend a lot of time on builds that feels both on-theme and moderately effective, but I'm not here to min-max. That being said, to those crying doom over the "end of class identity" or the dissolution of whatever they believed to be a state of balance, I think this should be taken as an opportunity to re-*** things in a positive way. It may take a little time, but ZOS intends to ensure that everything will feel good.

There's a lot of valid criticism going around but ever since the beta I was annoyed by the restrictions that classes placed on a player and I'm very glad to see them fall away somewhat.

Edit: The censored word I used above is a normal barkeeping term, and also commonly used to describe a scenario in which something is shaken up. It's fine.

That's... Disappointing to say the least. React and others already said enough, another point on the graph with absence of actual communication and no reaction to feedback given along the PTS cycles.

LunaFlora wrote: »

awesome post and video!

especially love the Oops All Pets build image

Why is stalking blastbones here? It's a bit insulting to show this and the original templar jabs in the subclassing promotional images, even though these abilities no longer exist.

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

disky wrote: »

Rungar wrote: »

OldStygian wrote: »

Classes should only exist in so far as they are predefined skill line selections.

We should be able to freely choose 3 skill lines on our toons when we create them.
.

since theyve offered no balance system in relation to the original classes this would seem to be their goal. Get rid of classes altogether at some point and just let players make their own. Certainly not a bad thing. More elder scrolls, less generic mmo.

Call me casual, but as someone who has played TES games for 25 years, I've always built my own class based on how I wanted to play and so this change feels very right to me. I spend a lot of time on builds that feels both on-theme and moderately effective, but I'm not here to min-max. That being said, to those crying doom over the "end of class identity" or the dissolution of whatever they believed to be a state of balance, I think this should be taken as an opportunity to re-*** things in a positive way. It may take a little time, but ZOS intends to ensure that everything will feel good.

There's a lot of valid criticism going around but ever since the beta I was annoyed by the restrictions that classes placed on a player and I'm very glad to see them fall away somewhat.

Edit: The censored word I used above is a normal barkeeping term, and also commonly used to describe a scenario in which something is shaken up. It's fine.

1. This is a multiplayer game, not a single player. This is why classes were created AND NECESSARY for balance.
2. It's disrespectful and dishonest to dismiss people concerned about class identity and balance who have not only shown severe concern over the implementation of subclassing, but tested it on the PTS and proven the community correct. Sublassing absolutely decimates balance in the game.

If you have studied people in raids/trials for the past 20 years or so, then you soon realize that weak DPS often get the boot. It is expected by most raid leaders and the community at large to be able to pull your weight in a raid.

Theorycrafters will find the optiimal build (not much different than now) and expect players to run this build if they intend on being brought along to a trial/raid.

The difference between now and post subclassing ESO is multifaceted.
• On live, classes can be balanced to ensure every player has the opportunity to accel based on what they play. After subclassing, this goes out the window meaning if a player intends to play a pure sorc...LOL good luck finding a group that will carry you.
• Class identity is gone, destroyed, obliterated, non-existent. There is no way to tell what another player is playing after subclassing. This is imporant in PVP where its necessary to understand how the enemy class is played. After subclassing, its a free for all.
• Once the "meta" is discovered (already has been), people are going to be expected to run this to run raids and due to the power differential being huge between a tuned subclass and a "normal" pure class build, you now have even LESS chance of being brought along.

The biggest turn off for me regarding ESO are two things.
1. ZOS moderation
2. Players harassing and abusing other players who do not "pull their weight" in vets, even when the player who is doing less DPS exceeds the threshold necessary to run the vet. Due to the 4 person party, its pretty obvious which DPS is not doing as good when you are the DPS doing 80% of the damage. The issue is people look at % not actual values of damage being done in conjunction with what is neccesary to do the content.

This issue, just got multipled by a massive factor with subclassing. People are already soloing vet march of sacrifices with it, something many folks can barely do right now with 4 people in game even if they understand the mechanics.

Subclassing and the multitude of build options are an illusion because folks who play with other people, especially strangers, are going to be expected to run a strong build.

There is literally more build diversity right now in game than there will be post subclassing, and its because the lack of being able to balance subclassing will result in people playing 1 build, vs a handfull on live.

People have always been expected to run a strong build in every group PvE scenario. Things are different now in a couple of ways:

- It will take a little while for balance to be sorted out due to this very significant change to the game.
- It may take somewhat longer to get to the build that suits your ideal group PvE setup.

That being said, I do recall players complaining about Arcanist outdoing basically every other class in PvE for a while before this was announced, and there were no doubt similar complaints prior to the existence of Arcanist for other issues. That will never stop. ZOS will never be able to create a perfectly balanced game, and they can't build a completely static game that never changes because it would become boring and people would stop playing. So the only choice is to do something new and interesting and hope people like it, and smooth things over with those who don't over time as the new system reaches a greater degree of balance.

I think one thing to consider is that this is such a big change that there will be a lot of new ideas coming to buildcraft for PvE, and we aren't going to figure out what's best right away. That sounds really fun and interesting to me. It's like New Game+ for ESO. Obviously there are players who like things as they were, but as previously stated, I just don't think an MMO can or should remain the same as the years go by. It's not good for the players and it's not good for the studio.

Change is an inherent part of the MMO experience. The game is supposed to evolve and improve, and I get that some people don't like what they're seeing now with subclassing and some of the critical feedback is certainly valid, but it's not as if it's going to stay that way forever. That feedback should be listened to and acted upon, but this feature, to me, feels like it's a step closer to the build freedom that TES games have always provided, and I never expected to see anything like it in ESO. I know we disagree but my interest isn't diminished just because it may make things a little more challenging to manage at release.

Edit: I should say this because I didn't really state it clearly - I disagree that classes are necessary for balance and I disagree that class identity should make a difference. The argument you're making is based on test server findings and speculation. None of what you've experienced is set in stone and the entire purpose of a PTS is to get feedback and make changes in the first place. It is good to speak up when you see a problem but I'm just kind of tired of people dooming about any change they deem somewhat significant, especially when they haven't even really experienced it.