Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Mistakes to avoid. GCD and rotation stricked based combat.
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha Two
Bellow is an announcement by the studio that made eso.
After years of releasing fluff content, armor sets that meant to correct design issues, doing more combat than actual players and their skillbars, neglecting THE core gameplay design, of a video game, the combat, the said pretty much "our combat is bad and boring, even though it's 'fast' and 'skillfull' (it isnt. Really. For years I was PvPing with a roleplay build and I was doing fine against meta builds. Win some lose some. But with a non competitive build and australian lag).
Global cooldown allows players, with a tiny bit of practice, to through actions between the skills that are not visible. So people dont use their mind to counter them, they just mindlessly switch between offensive rotation and defensive rotation, without even looking at the game. Just the healthbars. I used to speak at their firums since 2015, I also mentioned the dangers of NOT CANCELLING the output of abilities if players choose to dodge or block for better judgement. And here it is.
On the second paragraph above they talk about Dots Hots and buffs.
If a dot does x2 the dmg of a spammable, over 20s, it's useless.
If all players have access to all buffs, and they just update them every 20s, like in eso, half the combat becomes a chore.
Selfbuffs per class should be unique.
Duration effect impact. They should vary and be unique
After years of releasing fluff content, armor sets that meant to correct design issues, doing more combat than actual players and their skillbars, neglecting THE core gameplay design, of a video game, the combat, the said pretty much "our combat is bad and boring, even though it's 'fast' and 'skillfull' (it isnt. Really. For years I was PvPing with a roleplay build and I was doing fine against meta builds. Win some lose some. But with a non competitive build and australian lag).
Global cooldown allows players, with a tiny bit of practice, to through actions between the skills that are not visible. So people dont use their mind to counter them, they just mindlessly switch between offensive rotation and defensive rotation, without even looking at the game. Just the healthbars. I used to speak at their firums since 2015, I also mentioned the dangers of NOT CANCELLING the output of abilities if players choose to dodge or block for better judgement. And here it is.
On the second paragraph above they talk about Dots Hots and buffs.
If a dot does x2 the dmg of a spammable, over 20s, it's useless.
If all players have access to all buffs, and they just update them every 20s, like in eso, half the combat becomes a chore.
Selfbuffs per class should be unique.
Duration effect impact. They should vary and be unique
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Comments
Currently, to be truly effective in ESO’s combat, you need to learn to manipulate something that is known as “weaving,” which refers to the act of squeezing multiple actions into the global cooldown window. Doing so drastically increases your agency and output, and it is a staple of the game that we’ve come to embrace, as it helps our combat feel different and exciting to participate in once you learn the ins and outs. However, the impact of weaving leads to a massive gap in performance where players who cannot interact with it as effectively are left miles behind those who can. While this is partially unavoidable and an important part of what makes the mastery of ESO or any activity utilizing a similar system particularly satisfying, we want to do what we can to shorten that delta. The closer the gap between the low and high end, the easier it is to create content that can accommodate a wider audience, while making more natural progression points for those looking to improve. To this end, we’ve started to look at the impact that one of the most common and important forms of weaving has in ESO: Light and Heavy Attack weaving.
Coming in Update 35, we’re reducing Light and Heavy Attacks’ impact in damage production by adjusting their damage to deal a flat amount, regardless of stats. We have spent a considerable amount of time investigating the baseline experience that a new player would have with these attacks, using that as our starting point for how much damage they do moving forward. The aim is to not harm the low-end experience, and target only the higher end. In doing so, we hope to reduce the difference of damage potential in a way that retains the satisfaction of learning to weave, where the impact is still felt, but to a much less degree than before.
For reference, in many of ESO’s high-end experiences and activities, the average build sees roughly 15–20% of their overall damage coming from Light Attacks alone, which is a huge contribution to the delta of power we see. While testing these adjustments internally, we’ve seen a reduction of 6–11% to overall damage, which allows for a much smaller and healthier gap while still retaining the sense of mastery and expression of that mastery with weaving.
With this adjustment, we’ll also be making a significant number of changes to item sets, passives, and buffs to ensure classes remain balanced in damage production, while also trying to do a better job allowing builds to amplify these actions (we’ve heard your cries, Heavy Attack build lovers, and we want better for you) without introducing unhealthy gameplay between PvE and PvP.
Combat Effects
The other area we have spent a considerable amount of time on for this update is the uptime of effects in ESO, as these are another huge way to improve your combat capabilities. Outside of weaving, the main limiter of your effectiveness in combat is your ability to output events, such as damage, healing, shielding, etc., which is bound by activating abilities, which in turn are bound within the global cooldown system. Activating an ability from your action bar locks out your other abilities for one second, so, a way to circumvent this system is to utilize actions that add power or extra events without your need to continuously activate them. These are often seen as buff and debuff abilities, or damage and healing over time abilities. Keeping as many of these abilities up as long possible dramatically improves your combat potential, creating another area of mastery and potential of power deltas.
Currently, many of these abilities fall within a 10-second window, meaning to maximize your efficiency, you must activate them once every 10 seconds. With 10 total active ability slots at your disposal, this often creates a situation where you want to load up almost every slot with one of these abilities, adding to your combat output for each duration-based effect you utilize. Between this and the engagement of weaving, this creates a reality where high actions per minute (APM) is required to be effective, as well as a robust rotation to keep as many of these effects up as possible. This in turn reinforces a need to glue your eyes to your action bars, taking you out of the action happening on screen. While this can create exhilarating combat experiences where you need to constantly monitor different activities on screen, it can also be overwhelming and particularly challenging for you to do so at the rate required to be effective.
As such, coming in Update 35, we are increasing the duration of many of these effects in game, primarily damage over time, buffs, and debuffs. By extending the duration, we hope to reduce the stress of many combat rotations, allowing for you to focus more on the action in front of you rather than the action of juggling buffs and debuffs on your ability bar and making the game far more accessible.
Since many of these effects currently add a tremendous amount of power per cast over their duration, simply increasing their duration would merely inject a significant amount of power into the game, where this is already in excess. To combat this, we’re adjusting many of these values to account for their increased duration; there will be overall increase of effectiveness per cast, while reducing their effectiveness per second while active. This should reduce the ceiling potential of many builds, while improving their baseline experiences where many players will have an easier time keeping these effects active. In simpler terms, we’re reducing the damage potential for these abilities per second, while increasing their total output overall.