WRONG FEEDBACK SOURCE Streamers don't represent most players

bitels · February 2017

@willlienellson
As an experience PTS tester you probably know that they in fact read forum feedback and change couple of things. I still would like see more changes, i still think that there are a lot of things that should be adressed but saying that ZoS dont listen to us at all is just not true.
I do belive that you can get better results if you first ask small group of experience players, which can see flaws at early stages of development and then listen to open feedback.

Best example- Woeler video about frost tanking, where he pointed out a basic problems with whole concept, that could be easily fixed on the earlier stages, but at that point it was already to late to rework whole thing, so now we are stucked with it for at least next 4 month

LegacyDM · February 2017

Did they invite fengrush?

BRogueNZ · February 2017

Happy they chose who they did. There's a few toxic little creeps around that have no place speaking for the rest of us.

MidknightWolf · February 2017

willlienellson wrote: »

ZOS Focuses way too much on the feedback of elite "celebrity" gamers while they roundly ignore player consensus and feedback on the forums as a matter of course. It's a problem.
Original Post Below:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Apparently, right now, a select elite of ESO youtubers like Sypher and Deltia, etc are meeting in person with Zenimax after being invited to the headquarters.

While these youtubers provide a service with their content, they hardly represent the ESO player base neither formally nor informally. They most often represent each other. They represent a micro-industry that operates along side ESO. If anything in-game, they represent a small minority of elite guilds that don't experience ESO like the rest of us and are not good representatives.

Please allow me to explain and provide examples.

PvP: I'm not suggesting any of the specific youtubers or "celebrity players" cheat (although some do and have been banned for it), but they also don't experience playing against cheating, or even against OP players, in the same way. Members of this class of ESO players avoid combat with each other. Many of the known cheaters in this game belong to the same guilds as these elite celebrity ESO players. That doesn't mean the celebrity youtubers are cheating, but it usually means the cheaters don't fight against them. This results in this group having an unrealistically casual viewpoint on cheating as something more benign than it is.

Exploits/Secrets: And exploiting game glitches is the cousin of cheating. Things that aren't working as intended, but are unlikely to get you banned, are passed around as open-secrets within the group and become staples of builds, but are not shared publicly because they don't want them fixed.

Here are two examples of fixed exploits that people weren't getting banned for, that I think I can provide since they no longer work.

1) You could double enchant Flanking Set jewelry with a total of 6 jewelry glyphs instead of 3.
2) You could glitch out Hist Bark set to give a dodge bonus even after you took the set off.

So while you were making the hard choices about how to enchant your jewelry, some players were not. When you were spending 3000 stamina to cast Shuffle, or wearing 5 pieces of Hist Bark, others were dodging with neither.

I'm not accusing anyone of doing these things, but I know the people who did do these things are embedded within that small community. So, at it's most benign, this colors the feedback and impressions of the players in that community which are passed on to Zos as apparently about the only feedback they are actually interested in.

Powercreep: Even if none of the youtube celebrity player cheat, or exploit, or take advantage of tricks....the higher ceiling of performance that is enjoyed on average in these communities is exacerbating the power creep problem in this game. Members of this sector of the community are always the first to say, "This game offers me no challenge. VMA is too easy. This is too easy. That is too easy".

Balancing: Their opinion of balance rarely reflects the community because they rarely face players utilizing abilities to their maximum effectiveness due to the fact that players within this class avoid fighting each other. This is the only game I've ever played where friends cannot play against each other. I've had several of the people I consider members of this niche group actually tell me point blank, "Friends don't kill each other in PvP. I'll give you a pass and you give me a pass. Stop fighting against me or I'm taking you off friends list".

Instead of two great players with great builds fighting each other and learning that certain abilities are indeed out of balance, they pass by each other, high-fiving one another as they farm the pugs from each others alliances and convince themselves that the game is perfectly balanced but THEY are individually "Gods of PvP".
These players don't have experiences in the game that would allow them to adequately represent the larger player base.

The resources were used to have this elite youtube gathering session at Zenimax would have been better spent reading the forums, selecting a few issues with broad community consensus, and then having an internal meeting on how to best address those concerns. But that's too much to hope for.

Yes, I'm painting with a broad brush. There are exceptions to every rule and I'm not trying to disparage anyone specifically. I don't blame anyone for accepting the invitation. This is a rebuke of how Zos operates.

I subscribe to Deltia's channel, I like his content, and his personality. But I don't like him as a representative of ESO players.

If you like their videos, that's fine. If you run their builds, that's great. If you think I'm full of crap, that's okay. And Zos can invite whoever they want on a sleepover.
But, if you've ever wondered why this game is balanced around the top 1% of players and the roleplayers being bought off with mount reskins with everyone in the middle ignored, THIS IS WHY.

[Edit to remove mention of moderator actions and political references]

Try not to hate. These streamers have a very good understanding on the math, algorithms, and mechanics behind each and every ability and class. They have a vast amount of knowledge. My good friend craz got hired to be a developer because of her math skills and abilities to revers engineer. These streamers are selected because by watching their streams, ZOS has realized that they have great knowledge of the game and know the ins and outs of PVP (the largest part of the game that needs most improvements.) And yes, also to say thanks to them for spending hours upon hours of their time free of charge promoting their game. Dont hate, try to understand.

hamgatan · February 2017

basing game direction off the opinions of streamers is a very. very. bad thing.

do the streamers know the game? yes. are they critical? yes. are they unbiased/non-jaded? definitely not.

Here's the real problem. the 90% of the gamer base who doesn't really go too deep into testing builds, different setups, don't spend time PTS'ing, or theorycrafting, look for guidance from those who have already done it. They look for other people's builds and emulate them. Who do they turn to for that advice? the people that garner the most hits in google and have the highest exposure saturation, and that's your usual suspects - Sypher, Fengrush, Deltia, Alcast, nifty2g etc.. (and im sad to say even that toolbag ZERGBAD)

And that.. is there the FOTM builds are spawning from. Also whatever they say affects the game economy drastically. As they spawn their builds out, suddenly the gear they run becomes the meta and prices skyrocket (Uhh Plague Doctor + Green Pact anyone?). Thank god BSW is BoP right now or it'd be 500k for a Sharpened Sword too.

Everyone's been guilty of it at some point. The problem is that these builds are almost always situational and what works best for THAT streamer. It is not neccessarily the best setup for individual users play styles. Heck I've given tons of builds a go, some don't work for me.. and some have been absolute killer with a few personalised modifications.

Example - as much as i love @Alcast - he cracks me up with his vernacular, I have to be wary of his builds lately because they seem to be more oriented toward situations where you are in Trials where you have an expectation of Raid buffs to be up 100% of the time. These builds cannot be translated to a context like vMA, you just insta-die if you try... and for the most part, Casuals will get frustrated because they want a build that does everything and these builds will fail them time after time because they miss all the 'assumed knowledge' contained within these build videos. They want the abridged, concentrated version.

In real life, the point of 'focus groups' is to get a good cross section of your entire market segmentation and potential. Using streamers for that is not an accurate cross-section and so any developments will be based on the jaded viewpoints of the 'elite' rather than the other 90% of the population.

By not inviting input from the other 90% and only inviting the Streamers you are effectively putting them on a pedestal and giving them 'authority' which once again will lead to more of the above frustration from the 90% thinking that the viewpoints of the streamers are their bible that they should follow for their FOTM builds rather than encouraging people to experiment with different combinations 'play how they want'..

Appreciate what they do for the game, but I don't appreciate the god-like status you're conveying on them because its ruining it for the other 90%.

Oompuh · February 2017

Show me Gilliam's Stream, Show me Paulington's Stream, Show me the hodor member's twitch accounts who went to ZOS? Oh wait, Sypher and Fengrush arent everyone who went? Thats so weird... I thought this was a streamer convention?

jpeter88 · February 2017

willlienellson wrote: »

jpeter88 wrote: »

sypher hands down knows PvP

No doubt, but that doesn't mean his experiences reflect the average pvp experience.

His pvp environment adjusts to him. People out of fear, respect, and collusion give him a pass. I've seen it many times. And not just him. And that "pass" is just one example.

His experience is hardly representative.

Furthermore, suggesting that Sypher should have extra influence with Zos' balancing because he is great at pvp is ludicrous. It's like suggesting whoever hits the most home runs should get invited to MLB headquarters to make the rules for next season.

Im not saying its because he is good at pvp.........i said he knows pvp.......if you LISTEN to some of his streams he knows every classes strong and weak points, he knows what classes NEED instead of 9/10 people on here whining about stuff they WANT. i could care less if he is a good player or not, its the fact that he knows the pvp environment just as i would say alcast is one of the best that could bring in for PVE balance. These people explain WHY x skill needs changing and how it wont make it to op. There are to many forum posters that are like "reflective wings sucks, u suck zos, wing should be able to block 49 projectiles, heal you for 10k a second for 10 seconds and it should reflect every kind of damage in the game while insta killing anyone hit by projectile.

S1ipperyJim · February 2017

MidknightWolf wrote: »

free of charge

lol

willlienellson · February 2017

Cadbury wrote: »

Eh, it's just like politics.
The representatives get appointed

Ummmm...WUT?

willlienellson · February 2017

Gallifreyy wrote: »

You seem to have very little knowledge of marketing as well as how MMO's and games work. To my knowledge ZOS has selected people in the ESO community that actually play the game that are influential to a majority of the player base that actually plays the game (These includes streamers & YouTube content creators) to promote their game and not some random casual that plays maybe 1 or 2 times a week that doesn't know the difference between classes that doesn't talk to many people but is extremely vocal on forums accusing people left, right and centre.

@Yolokin_Swagonborn I thought you might get a chuckle from this.

@Gallifreyy I assure you I know a little bit about marketing and business enough to say that the symbiotic relationship between the streamers and Zos would exist without Zos pandering to them and giving them ANY influence in balancing decisions.

thankyourat · February 2017

This seems like a thing people would be happy about. ZoS is bringing in people who understand the game to help balance it. I just can't see any negative with this. Honestly it's about time the games gets less skillful every update

Wreuntzylla · February 2017

MidknightWolf wrote: »

willlienellson wrote: »

ZOS Focuses way too much on the feedback of elite "celebrity" gamers while they roundly ignore player consensus and feedback on the forums as a matter of course. It's a problem.
Original Post Below:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Apparently, right now, a select elite of ESO youtubers like Sypher and Deltia, etc are meeting in person with Zenimax after being invited to the headquarters.

While these youtubers provide a service with their content, they hardly represent the ESO player base neither formally nor informally. They most often represent each other. They represent a micro-industry that operates along side ESO. If anything in-game, they represent a small minority of elite guilds that don't experience ESO like the rest of us and are not good representatives.

Please allow me to explain and provide examples.

PvP: I'm not suggesting any of the specific youtubers or "celebrity players" cheat (although some do and have been banned for it), but they also don't experience playing against cheating, or even against OP players, in the same way. Members of this class of ESO players avoid combat with each other. Many of the known cheaters in this game belong to the same guilds as these elite celebrity ESO players. That doesn't mean the celebrity youtubers are cheating, but it usually means the cheaters don't fight against them. This results in this group having an unrealistically casual viewpoint on cheating as something more benign than it is.

Exploits/Secrets: And exploiting game glitches is the cousin of cheating. Things that aren't working as intended, but are unlikely to get you banned, are passed around as open-secrets within the group and become staples of builds, but are not shared publicly because they don't want them fixed.

Here are two examples of fixed exploits that people weren't getting banned for, that I think I can provide since they no longer work.

1) You could double enchant Flanking Set jewelry with a total of 6 jewelry glyphs instead of 3.
2) You could glitch out Hist Bark set to give a dodge bonus even after you took the set off.

So while you were making the hard choices about how to enchant your jewelry, some players were not. When you were spending 3000 stamina to cast Shuffle, or wearing 5 pieces of Hist Bark, others were dodging with neither.

I'm not accusing anyone of doing these things, but I know the people who did do these things are embedded within that small community. So, at it's most benign, this colors the feedback and impressions of the players in that community which are passed on to Zos as apparently about the only feedback they are actually interested in.

Powercreep: Even if none of the youtube celebrity player cheat, or exploit, or take advantage of tricks....the higher ceiling of performance that is enjoyed on average in these communities is exacerbating the power creep problem in this game. Members of this sector of the community are always the first to say, "This game offers me no challenge. VMA is too easy. This is too easy. That is too easy".

Balancing: Their opinion of balance rarely reflects the community because they rarely face players utilizing abilities to their maximum effectiveness due to the fact that players within this class avoid fighting each other. This is the only game I've ever played where friends cannot play against each other. I've had several of the people I consider members of this niche group actually tell me point blank, "Friends don't kill each other in PvP. I'll give you a pass and you give me a pass. Stop fighting against me or I'm taking you off friends list".

Instead of two great players with great builds fighting each other and learning that certain abilities are indeed out of balance, they pass by each other, high-fiving one another as they farm the pugs from each others alliances and convince themselves that the game is perfectly balanced but THEY are individually "Gods of PvP".
These players don't have experiences in the game that would allow them to adequately represent the larger player base.

The resources were used to have this elite youtube gathering session at Zenimax would have been better spent reading the forums, selecting a few issues with broad community consensus, and then having an internal meeting on how to best address those concerns. But that's too much to hope for.

Yes, I'm painting with a broad brush. There are exceptions to every rule and I'm not trying to disparage anyone specifically. I don't blame anyone for accepting the invitation. This is a rebuke of how Zos operates.

I subscribe to Deltia's channel, I like his content, and his personality. But I don't like him as a representative of ESO players.

If you like their videos, that's fine. If you run their builds, that's great. If you think I'm full of crap, that's okay. And Zos can invite whoever they want on a sleepover.
But, if you've ever wondered why this game is balanced around the top 1% of players and the roleplayers being bought off with mount reskins with everyone in the middle ignored, THIS IS WHY.

[Edit to remove mention of moderator actions and political references]

Try not to hate. These streamers have a very good understanding on the math, algorithms, and mechanics behind each and every ability and class. They have a vast amount of knowledge. My good friend craz got hired to be a developer because of her math skills and abilities to revers engineer. These streamers are selected because by watching their streams, ZOS has realized that they have great knowledge of the game and know the ins and outs of PVP (the largest part of the game that needs most improvements.) And yes, also to say thanks to them for spending hours upon hours of their time free of charge promoting their game. Dont hate, try to understand.

At least one of the players mentioned as being invited in this thread regularly credits other people for the maths and portions or even most of their builds. Nice guy? Yes. Good player? Arguably. Invited for in depth knowledge of the coded math behind the results? No.

StackonClown · February 2017

Although I had some initial doubts, I was convinced by many many fans of Andy.S what an amazing player he is and how well he understands all 4 classes.. And to top the leaderboards of VMA in every single class, he is one of the legends of the game... I am won over and a big fan.... I therefore hope Andy.S was invited since his understanding of mechanics and what can break mechanics would be really helpful to for the testing...

If there is still time, please invite Andy.S ??

idk · February 2017

@willlienellson

Zos gets feedback from many sources including these forums. Zos has good tiies with a variety of groups form those involved in end game PvE raiding to avid PvP players and more moderate players. They are active in keeping the variety of channels open to help them understand the various perspectives we have.

While I did not read the long OP, I did notice the comment about playing against OP players. While there have been issues with proc sets, beyond that OP players are often players that have worked on their builds and developed their skill/playstyle for how they choose to PvP. Those that often do not do well against them are often not equipped well with gear and skills for the situation they find themselves in. Just like the threads about skills like RD, I always found them interesting since I never died to RD except when I was low health. In part due to gearing properly and how i handled the situation. Also, many of those threads comment that they died to 5 and more players like they expected they should be able to survive.

esotoon · February 2017

Whilst I don't have a problem with these players talking to ZOS, I do have concerns. It all boils down to what ZOS is talking to them about.

My biggest concern, is that the Streamers do not necessarily have the same gaming experience as a 'normal' player. What I mean by this is, they can easily (for example) get into high end groups to both complete the content and farm the BIS gear. They do not necessarily have to spend time farming and making gold, as they are often given items, potions, mats, gold etc. from their viewers or struggle with getting groups together to do their dailies, let alone farm dungeons enough to guarantee they will get the set pieces they need..

This is totally at odds with the experience of the average player.

Take the housing for instance. Every streamer I have seen has stated how great the housing system is, and how they are going to buy the most expensive Manors. Not one of them has mentioned the grind a normal player will need to go through in order to furnish the most basic of houses.

And whilst that may be a specific example, it is indicative of the divide between the playing experience of the streamers and the playing experience of a normal player, that can in turn effect their impressions of the game and what they think needs to be done to improve it, and the priority they give those changes.

TheAntiHero · February 2017

I'm pretty sure someone who plays this game for a living or as a major part of their day, they are going to know how to balance more so than someone like you, who just makes post like these due to whatever reason. If not the streamers then who, you? Why is your opinion better? Why is someone's opinion better than someone else's? Everyone has a bias. And in terms of calling these top tier players cheaters, you realize they are considered top tier due to their skill and knlowedge of the game. Lol. There are not many cheaters; I'd say only exploiters now and they have been banned (double Mundus is one example) as well as things like hist bark being fixed. Seems silly to be so mad over this.

My ideal team to test would be Sribes Lemur Xinthisis Fengrush Sypher Deltia Faso Jules Kodi. Those guys play the game so much and know their stuff and are generally the THEORYCRAFTERS for every build pvp related and play all classes. I'm sure there are others who don't stream but those players have the best platform for feedback to zos and helping the community understand

Sausage · February 2017

Is this about balance? So what if they get the balance right, it doesnt mean nothing. Rift had PERFECT balance, and well designed Battlegrounds, Trion World is extremely talented at it, and even it failed. Balance doesnt mean success. I wish they would've gone out of the box way like they did at launch.

Doctordarkspawn · February 2017

willlienellson wrote: »

bitels wrote: »

Also- it isnt like they wont give us all chance to test things on PTS before realese, so maybe just chill

I'm so glad you brought that up. This proves my point ENTIRELY.
They almost never listen to any feedback from the PTS testers. It's a running joke.

Consider the Homestead patch released today. They were told weeks ago that there was a lighting bug that didn't exist during the first PTS patch. So, they did something to create this bug.

It's been the subject of multiple threads for weeks with hundreds of comments on the forums.
Zos never even bothered to reply at all, even up to the time of me writing this post afaik.

That is to say nothing of actual feedback on features and balance. It's a joke, and I must assume (correct me if I'm wrong) that you have no personal experience on the PTS, or you would have never used it as an example to refute me.

Players download 80GB of data to test patches on the PTS and are almost exclusively ignored. It's a GREAT EXAMPLE of exactly what I'm talking about when I contrast the way they treat average player feedback and consensus with the youtube/streamer/elite microcommunity to which they cater.

A great example of this on the balance front, was the Frost Staff changes, something nobody liked, everybody knew was exploitable, and neither side who wanted it or didn't liked it in it's current form.

Tinus_92 · February 2017

Start streaming yourself and get invited next time?

MrAppleman · February 2017

So should they invite the players who play 2
Twice a week? Or players who just run in giant zergs?
I'd rather them consult with these 2 on battlegrounds then some noob who runs viper tremor.

Deltia · February 2017

With all that's going on in the world and you're worried about this? Jealous man, smh.

StackonClown · February 2017

Deltia wrote: »

With all that's going on in the world and you're worried about this? Jealous man, smh.

Not sure who you are addressing this to.. but anyways...

Can you please ask Zeni to:
> fix all the well known exploits.. especially bugging out sets etc
> fix the botting problems rampant all over tamriel
> fix the fps/lag issues
> fix the crappy rng issues
> introduce a token system for vma
> let them know what you think about crown crates! and crown store pricing
> etc etc

actually theorycrafting is the least of my concerns... Zeni should just fix the well known multi year problems!!

Thanks for listening and enjoy the time at Zos!

LtCrunch · February 2017

LrdRahvin wrote: »

srfrogg23 wrote: »

willlienellson wrote: »

ZOS Focuses way too much on the feedback of elite "celebrity" gamers while they roundly ignore player consensus and feedback on the forums as a matter of course. It's a problem.
Original Post Below:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Apparently, right now, a select elite of ESO youtubers like Sypher and Deltia, etc are meeting in person with Zenimax after being invited to the headquarters.

While these youtubers provide a service with their content, they hardly represent the ESO player base neither formally nor informally. They most often represent each other. They represent a micro-industry that operates along side ESO. If anything in-game, they represent a small minority of elite guilds that don't experience ESO like the rest of us and are not good representatives.

Please allow me to explain and provide examples.

PvP: I'm not suggesting any of the specific youtubers or "celebrity players" cheat (although some do and have been banned for it), but they also don't experience playing against cheating, or even against OP players, in the same way. Members of this class of ESO players avoid combat with each other. Many of the known cheaters in this game belong to the same guilds as these elite celebrity ESO players. That doesn't mean the celebrity youtubers are cheating, but it usually means the cheaters don't fight against them. This results in this group having an unrealistically casual viewpoint on cheating as something more benign than it is.

Exploits/Secrets: And exploiting game glitches is the cousin of cheating. Things that aren't working as intended, but are unlikely to get you banned, are passed around as open-secrets within the group and become staples of builds, but are not shared publicly because they don't want them fixed.

Here are two examples of fixed exploits that people weren't getting banned for, that I think I can provide since they no longer work.

1) You could double enchant Flanking Set jewelry with a total of 6 jewelry glyphs instead of 3.
2) You could glitch out Hist Bark set to give a dodge bonus even after you took the set off.

So while you were making the hard choices about how to enchant your jewelry, some players were not. When you were spending 3000 stamina to cast Shuffle, or wearing 5 pieces of Hist Bark, others were dodging with neither.

I'm not accusing anyone of doing these things, but I know the people who did do these things are embedded within that small community. So, at it's most benign, this colors the feedback and impressions of the players in that community which are passed on to Zos as apparently about the only feedback they are actually interested in.

Powercreep: Even if none of the youtube celebrity player cheat, or exploit, or take advantage of tricks....the higher ceiling of performance that is enjoyed on average in these communities is exacerbating the power creep problem in this game. Members of this sector of the community are always the first to say, "This game offers me no challenge. VMA is too easy. This is too easy. That is too easy".

Balancing: Their opinion of balance rarely reflects the community because they rarely face players utilizing abilities to their maximum effectiveness due to the fact that players within this class avoid fighting each other. This is the only game I've ever played where friends cannot play against each other. I've had several of the people I consider members of this niche group actually tell me point blank, "Friends don't kill each other in PvP. I'll give you a pass and you give me a pass. Stop fighting against me or I'm taking you off friends list".

Instead of two great players with great builds fighting each other and learning that certain abilities are indeed out of balance, they pass by each other, high-fiving one another as they farm the pugs from each others alliances and convince themselves that the game is perfectly balanced but THEY are individually "Gods of PvP".
These players don't have experiences in the game that would allow them to adequately represent the larger player base.

The resources were used to have this elite youtube gathering session at Zenimax would have been better spent reading the forums, selecting a few issues with broad community consensus, and then having an internal meeting on how to best address those concerns. But that's too much to hope for.

Yes, I'm painting with a broad brush. There are exceptions to every rule and I'm not trying to disparage anyone specifically. I don't blame anyone for accepting the invitation. This is a rebuke of how Zos operates.

I subscribe to Deltia's channel, I like his content, and his personality. But I don't like him as a representative of ESO players.

If you like their videos, that's fine. If you run their builds, that's great. If you think I'm full of crap, that's okay. And Zos can invite whoever they want on a sleepover.
But, if you've ever wondered why this game is balanced around the top 1% of players and the roleplayers being bought off with mount reskins with everyone in the middle ignored, THIS IS WHY.

[Edit to remove mention of moderator actions and political references]

Yes, Zenimax should have invited me to come play test their game.

I probably would have turned them down because I just don't have that kind of free time on my hands, thanks to family and work, life in general... But, the thought would have counted, at least

I was part of the invite only Psijic Order alpha server that had several really big guilds in other games brough on to test stuff pre-pre-launch and I can confirm it wouldn't matter at all. ZOS doesn't pay any more attention to invited testers than they do to the forums.

This is all just PR and playerbase placating.

Deltia wrote: »

With all that's going on in the world and you're worried about this? Jealous man, smh.

I think OPs points are mostly fair. Might've gotten a bit too off focus with some of it, but the gist of it is something we, as a community, should be concerned about. ZOS has many avenues to gather feedback from the playerbase, but they rarely utilize it. The general thought is that they're listening to the voices of the few instead of the voices of the many. I know many of you are the tippy-top in terms of bleeding edge PVE/PVP, but it's concerning to think that the average player isn't going to have their voice heard by ZOS.

That being said I do think many of you guys that got invited genuinely just wanna see the game improved for the better. Because the better the game gets, the more players it gets, and then the more interest your videos/stream generate. So it's in your own interest to be smart about the feedback you provide and at least try to think about what the average ESO player would want in any given situation, not just what you want. Which I've seen you do before Deltia, so keep it going!

Fodore · February 2017

If the people in charge of ZOS had half a brain they would have invited them before the release/announcement of homestead to help with balancing.But no.

Turelus · February 2017

The only way you're going to get a "fair" representatives is to do something like EVE Online and have elected officals who represent the player base.

And by "fair" I mean whichever guilds/alliances/streamers have the most people they can tell to vote for their representative.

As for what ZOS is doing and who they chose, are we really surprised? At least they're going to get some input from players. I just hope they enforce the NDA should it be broken.

Nifty2g · February 2017

willlienellson wrote: »

ZOS Focuses way too much on the feedback of elite "celebrity" gamers while they roundly ignore player consensus and feedback on the forums as a matter of course. It's a problem.
Original Post Below:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Apparently, right now, a select elite of ESO youtubers like Sypher and Deltia, etc are meeting in person with Zenimax after being invited to the headquarters.

While these youtubers provide a service with their content, they hardly represent the ESO player base neither formally nor informally. They most often represent each other. They represent a micro-industry that operates along side ESO. If anything in-game, they represent a small minority of elite guilds that don't experience ESO like the rest of us and are not good representatives.

Please allow me to explain and provide examples.

PvP: I'm not suggesting any of the specific youtubers or "celebrity players" cheat (although some do and have been banned for it), but they also don't experience playing against cheating, or even against OP players, in the same way. Members of this class of ESO players avoid combat with each other. Many of the known cheaters in this game belong to the same guilds as these elite celebrity ESO players. That doesn't mean the celebrity youtubers are cheating, but it usually means the cheaters don't fight against them. This results in this group having an unrealistically casual viewpoint on cheating as something more benign than it is.

Exploits/Secrets: And exploiting game glitches is the cousin of cheating. Things that aren't working as intended, but are unlikely to get you banned, are passed around as open-secrets within the group and become staples of builds, but are not shared publicly because they don't want them fixed.

Here are two examples of fixed exploits that people weren't getting banned for, that I think I can provide since they no longer work.

1) You could double enchant Flanking Set jewelry with a total of 6 jewelry glyphs instead of 3.
2) You could glitch out Hist Bark set to give a dodge bonus even after you took the set off.

So while you were making the hard choices about how to enchant your jewelry, some players were not. When you were spending 3000 stamina to cast Shuffle, or wearing 5 pieces of Hist Bark, others were dodging with neither.

I'm not accusing anyone of doing these things, but I know the people who did do these things are embedded within that small community. So, at it's most benign, this colors the feedback and impressions of the players in that community which are passed on to Zos as apparently about the only feedback they are actually interested in.

Powercreep: Even if none of the youtube celebrity player cheat, or exploit, or take advantage of tricks....the higher ceiling of performance that is enjoyed on average in these communities is exacerbating the power creep problem in this game. Members of this sector of the community are always the first to say, "This game offers me no challenge. VMA is too easy. This is too easy. That is too easy".

Balancing: Their opinion of balance rarely reflects the community because they rarely face players utilizing abilities to their maximum effectiveness due to the fact that players within this class avoid fighting each other. This is the only game I've ever played where friends cannot play against each other. I've had several of the people I consider members of this niche group actually tell me point blank, "Friends don't kill each other in PvP. I'll give you a pass and you give me a pass. Stop fighting against me or I'm taking you off friends list".

Instead of two great players with great builds fighting each other and learning that certain abilities are indeed out of balance, they pass by each other, high-fiving one another as they farm the pugs from each others alliances and convince themselves that the game is perfectly balanced but THEY are individually "Gods of PvP".
These players don't have experiences in the game that would allow them to adequately represent the larger player base.

The resources were used to have this elite youtube gathering session at Zenimax would have been better spent reading the forums, selecting a few issues with broad community consensus, and then having an internal meeting on how to best address those concerns. But that's too much to hope for.

Yes, I'm painting with a broad brush. There are exceptions to every rule and I'm not trying to disparage anyone specifically. I don't blame anyone for accepting the invitation. This is a rebuke of how Zos operates.

I subscribe to Deltia's channel, I like his content, and his personality. But I don't like him as a representative of ESO players.

If you like their videos, that's fine. If you run their builds, that's great. If you think I'm full of crap, that's okay. And Zos can invite whoever they want on a sleepover.
But, if you've ever wondered why this game is balanced around the top 1% of players and the roleplayers being bought off with mount reskins with everyone in the middle ignored, THIS IS WHY.

[Edit to remove mention of moderator actions and political references]

Streamers are the ones voicing their opinions to a crowed that generally gets a good sense of feedback. You are not doing that. Also, I know a few players who are not streamers that are being invited. They are inviting theorycrafters out there.

I also believe that ZOS has said before that there is some copyright issues with taking suggestions straight from the forums, probably why the people invited signed an NDA agreement and such. Try not to be salty and think of it as a good thing. The people who are going are very influential people

Asmael · February 2017

They listen to streamers? They don't listen to the community? They only invite streamers for their playtest thingy?

Have I been lied to?

Humble opinion, but:

PvE class balance should be based around top players, unless you really enjoy hearing that "no, your stamina templar isn't going to make it for vMoL, that's on Zos, but you still can't come in" or "you're a magicka DK, so you'll never get 600k on vMA". I wouldn't mind seeing diversity in the top endgame raids, but what we got with Housing is quite the opposite.
PvE content balance should be based around target completions, and that's why they have forums, Reddit, polls and whatever else they're using. If people are getting absolutely r3kt by world bosses, they can lower the difficulty of specific bosses to increase said "target completion" (which is basically how many % of the players can actually defeat a world boss based on certain numbers and group compositions)
PvP is an absolute pain to balance since you can't work solely based on numbers, and this is where (surprise!) community feedback is often taken into account - prime examples being proc sets, jesus beam & destro ult nerfs.

Everyone is being listened to, even if we sometimes wish that not everything was heard by the devs.

On a side note: no, not everyone invited to the playtest thingy is a streamer, nor is uploading 10 videos a day. A lot of changes seen in the natch potes actually come from forum feedback, so watch what you say.

StackonClown · February 2017

Asmael wrote: »

They listen to streamers? They don't listen to the community? They only invite streamers for their playtest thingy?

Have I been lied to?

Humble opinion, but:
PvE class balance should be based around top players, unless you really enjoy hearing that "no, your stamina templar isn't going to make it for vMoL, that's on Zos, but you still can't come in" or "you're a magicka DK, so you'll never get 600k on vMA". I wouldn't mind seeing diversity in the top endgame raids, but what we got with Housing is quite the opposite.

PvE content balance should be based around target completions, and that's why they have forums, Reddit, polls and whatever else they're using. If people are getting absolutely r3kt by world bosses, they can lower the difficulty of specific bosses to increase said "target completion" (which is basically how many % of the players can actually defeat a world boss based on certain numbers and group compositions)

PvP is an absolute pain to balance since you can't work solely based on numbers, and this is where (surprise!) community feedback is often taken into account - prime examples being proc sets, jesus beam & destro ult nerfs.

Everyone is being listened to, even if we sometimes wish that not everything was heard by the devs.

On a side note: no, not everyone invited to the playtest thingy is a streamer, nor is uploading 10 videos a day. A lot of changes seen in the natch potes actually come from forum feedback, so watch what you say.

Agreed! I just with Zeny would also focus on fixing whats still broken

Talking about theory crafting - I thinking they should have invited YOU as well - unless you are there!

Zinaroth · February 2017

Both @Alcast and @Paulington from Hodor are there aswell. So it's not just famous streamers and YouTubers. It's also people in prominent positions on leaderboards and who statistically provided the most feedback on PTS. I know @Paulington spend a ton of time on PTS testing systems and squashing bugs, on top of data mining for the forum or presentic results from empiric analysis and studies on the game.

Tonnopesce · February 2017

U jelly bro?

At least they will listen to players...
You know someone who play the game daily, who have actually compleated vma or have become emperor or is the founder of a guild.

Better than nothing imho.