... nvmd. I won't fall prey to the adolescent flamebaiting that occurred yesterday.

It's truly sad that people cannot conduct themselves in a reasonable manner.

I shall exercise my employment adding to the ignore list.

There's a difference in generalizing and resulting to personal attacks.

And comments like "It culls the herd and weeds out the riff-raff" aren't condescending at all? You're defining irony for me right now.

But anyways. Certainly did not mean to be offensive or condescending, but if you want to get offended rather than actually respond to my points, go right ahead.

Why must the populous be unable to play a game because is select few people are lucky enough to have mini-super computers. I have a gaming laptop from about 1-2 years ago, i can run several games all at once at decent graphics settings and still get decent FPS on all of them, I go play SWTOR or DCUO and go to the Headquarters area for PVP or queuing PVE stuff, and i go down to FPS in the high teens, or low twenties ( if i am lucky) because so many people are around the game cannot keep up. and that is with them just standing there. If ESO expects to be able to run with 200 people on-screen all using abilities, Latency is a SERIOUS issue.

Also, if you find it fun to leave a boss fight halfway through because you used more arrows than you thought then that is you opinion, most people would prefer to cut to the chase and not have to make Archers worry about arrows.

DDO is very similar to ESO is several ways and has ammo, It is also one of the most hated aspects of it and few people play archers for partly because they need to fill half-their inventory with arrows/full quivers just to be absolutely sure to not run out.

I don't even know if you'll see this or not, but I did *not* attack you personally, and I take that accusation very seriously. I find your arguments to be exclusive and elitist, but that is no insult to you as a person, and is nowhere near the 'adolescent flamebaiting' you claim it to be. You just cannot take criticism.

I never drew first blood. However, your knife has the reputation for being rather sharp.

But... I guess congratulations is in order. You guys have managed to drag the discussion through the gutter once again. I will leave it with you. You have proven time and again that no one can have an alternate opinion about anything without being called out and talked down to. And God forbid that anyone stands up for themselves against it.

Then you start threads about wondering where the TES crowd went. Hell, you run them off. I sat her and watched three different members of a long time status come in, post a comment, get slammed and then left.

/forum

Okay, enough is enough. And more irony, given that this is a clear personal attack. Reporting time.

You were reported a half hr ago, Skippy.

I am starting to get really annoyed with some of you here. It seems you think snarky remarks, attacking one another and a "I know better" approach has become the order of the day. We don't either need or allow it so if I find any of this kind of posting from any of you - ever - again - then you will be relegated to being able to only read posts and not post for a good long time.

Don't push it - OK?

Ooooooookie doke. Moving on.

With the above in mind, does *anyone* have any counter-arguments regarding the imbalance issue?

I've never seen any, or at least none valid. All we get is "well it should be more real" or "it should be exactly like skyrim".

Whether some admit it or believe it or not, balance is a key determining factor of an MMO games quality. So no there is no counter-argument or justification possible IMO, for one type of class or build having to suffer an extra burden no other does.

Woah this got nice and heated.

As for counter-arguments on balance, here's my opinion:

While I am dissatisfied with the way archery is currently handled, and won't use it because it feels indistinguishable from magic to me, the balance issue, for me was never the core of the decision. It was in fact the lack of challenge that archery in ESO presents that is the let-down. In real-time combat MMOs, archery is always the most challenging avenue, and therefore often the most rewarding. You have to make sure you have ammo, you have to aim, lead and range targets. It's hard, but the balance usually comes, as someone else mentioned, that the damage output of a successful shot far outweighs the base potential damage of any other kind of attack (of course depending on bow quality and arrow quality as modifiers) but all things being equal bows become more powerful as they are more challenging to use. Also, there's nothing like the thrill of a well-placed shot downing your enemy.

That being said, you could essentially assign "ammo" to everything. The way you would do that is have melee weapons degrade as they are used, necessitating crafting supplies and repair kits to be maintained (prices or assemblage materials equivalent to that of arrows) and you make magic require reagents, essentially ammo for spells, which is a system I've always loved personally but is often way too hardcoe for most players.

Now I'm not saying that system would be appropriate for ESO, but that is one way to make things balanced, especially in a more sand-boxy, open-ended hardcoe type of game.