10 years. Will ZOS finally learn from their mistakes?

Aldoss · September 17

Q4 marks the longest amount of time between game updates. ZOS has proven over a decade that they are unwilling to fix their game dynamically, even when it causes them and their playerbase significant harm. Overpowered classes, sets, skills, and game breaking mechanics almost always stay for an entire patch before they are ever addressed. These patch notes quite literally call these poorly thought out changes out. Just look at the dev comment on ghostly embrace.

Additionally, over the course of a decade, ZOS has proven to its playerbase that 99% of what gets proposed in week 1 of a patch stays and makes it to live, even when its playerbase volunteers hundreds of hours play testing and reporting problems and inconsistencies with content delivered in PTS patch notes.

It was made clear in the live stream reveal by Brian that over a year's worth of effort, time, and money went into this (much needed) BG update.

While I appreciate the update and the focus, I am calling ZOS out here as plainly as I can that your past actions and communication have created an atmosphere that causes anyone who has frequented this forum for at least two PTS cycles to be jaded and skeptical over what is about to happen.

I don't need to repeat what's already been said by numerous players in multiple threads, but just to restate, you have a significant number of well known, long term, BG focused players in this forum telling you that even though you've given us what we've been screaming for for years, your idea will 99% fail because of the lack of a true mmr.

Past experience tells me that you will do nothing about this during the next 3 weeks. You will be wrong to follow this habit.

Past experience tells me you won't communicate to us at all about the lack of a true mmr. You will be wrong to follow this habit.

You had the momentum in your favor the moment you called out PvP in a patch preview. People were psyched! Every PvP streamer's chat was lit with excitement! The lack of an mmr that works to cultivate a healthy population for this mode won't just kill this momentum, it will flip it.

Negative momentum is costly to counter. You know this. How much have you spent thus far on this revamp? How many salary dollars were devoted to creating and internally testing this? I bet it was significant. It's the main focus of this update!

Don't fail on this delivery. No one expects you to create a perfect mmr system in 3 weeks, but everyone is predicting that the current medal based system will completely kill this update, nullifying all the dollars wasted on this development and making it even more costly later to counter the negative momentum of your playerbase's attitude towards it.

Learn from your mistake. You need to start on this now.

Blackbird_V · September 17

This is how much they care about out feedback and testing:

Knee jerk reactions... while not unexpected, they are still tiresome and disappointing.

We give feedback, unanimously agree x change is bad.... and that's how they respond to us. It's not "Knee jerk reactions" that are tiresome and disappointing, it's the absolute lack of listening - especially when it comes to combat changes.

Now, I am not a PvPer, but this "MMR" system looks incredibly primitive. Go with Glicko rating or something, if that can even work.

To ZoS: I want to ask that if you are to censor my top paragraph, then how come you, as a company, can attack us players who pay for the game, DLC and other MTX, but yet we cannot criticise you?

gariondavey · September 17

@ZOS_Kevin please read this thread

Ocelot9x · September 17

Everytime i hear it took one year for some new bg maps i cant help but chuckle

Aldoss · September 17

Ocelot9x wrote: »

Everytime i hear it took one year for some new bg maps i cant help but chuckle

I'm going to urge commenters in this thread to please use constructive and fair language. It took time to write my thread and I'd really rather not have it get locked for violations.

It didn't take a year to make a map. It took a year to pitch a concept to an admin, get the clearance for whoever controls the funds to release them for the project, devote the resources to research and develop likely dozens of maps (of which the ones we have made it through testing), create the designs and systems on the back end, play test the maps to make sure it aligned with the overall content strategy of the game and its directors, and then finally get clearance to be put into a final game update. Likely also 100 other things that I don't know about because I'm not and never will be a game dev.

None of that means that we have to like what they've created, but I hope we can all communicate in a way that is still respectful of the time and effort and the attention that ZOS has finally given this neglected community.

LonePirate · September 18

Is this supposed to be a rhetorical question?

Pelanora · September 18

So the good mmr- how do they work?

Jierdanit · September 18

Completely agree with this thread.

It seems basically pointless to even give feedback on the PTS anymore because it feels like the feedback is not listened to at all.
Over the last years there have been a lot of times when ZOS got feedback that something they introduced needed to be changed before going live. Basically none of that feedback was actually used to change something still on the PTS.

Instead ZOS lets the flawed or outright broken features go live the way they are and then have to change them with the next update because surprisingly the PTS testers actuall knew what they were talking about.

What is the point of even having a PTS server to test the new patches if you just completely ignore the feedback the community is giving.
ZOS, you have multiple times said that you would try to improve communication with the community and still cant manage to ever really listen to community feedback.

Before the new BGs go live we need a proper MMR system (that is not just based on total medal score) and we need seperate queues for solos and groups. So that the new BGs dont lose most of the playerbase in the first few weeks.
Because once you lose those players its going to be much harder to get them to try it again.

Sockermannen · September 18

Can’t agree more.

I log into the PTS and observe these forums quite alot during PTS cycles and it’s discouraging to try and give feedback because it feels like my time is better spent doing anything else.

During a few instances have ZoS implemented what would have been good changes had they been done properly, people inform them that ”hey X is better because Y” and nothing changes. Take the templar blazing spear getting an immobilize on them for the purpose of helping tanks, while it’s a nice change it’s on the wrong, more commonly used DPS morph and could actually hurt tanking more. People pointed that out and they rolled it out anyways and never even commented on it.

Same with U36 or 37, can’t remember. People asked for offensive buffs for templars and more reliable self heals for sorcs. We got some minor (also redundant in team settings) offensive buffs for sorcs and a self heal buff for templars via their rune.

i’ve played several other MMOs in my life and ZoS is by far the worst when it comes to dev-playerbase communication. Not saying that other companies are stellar examples of taking feedback either but atleast they acknowledge when the playerbase is upset and respond to people who try and give feedback.

ZoS is just silent.

luchtt · September 18

posting on eso pts forums feels like that gif where there is a printer printing a piece of paper directly into a shredding machine.

incredibly detailed and well written feedback gets ignored and PTS week 1 is basically what you're gonna get for live, and if it gets any further iterations it's like a 50/50 whether they're even good or cause more bugs/terrible issues. I don't say this to be mean to the developers but there is something drastically wrong with how feedback is taken in, at least on the combat side of things. PTS is way too short, and too structured to get proper player testing in. It's always an identical cycle for even radically different update types. and there is no incentive for players to play on PTS aside from their own personal testing, so you dont even get proper testing.

JustLovely · September 18

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WolfCombatPet · September 19

luchtt wrote: »

posting on eso pts forums feels like that gif where there is a printer printing a piece of paper directly into a shredding machine.

Our upvotes/agrees are hidden unless we mouseover each post/reply individually.

We don't have forum moderators who specialize. There is too much about this game to expect forum moderators to understand all aspects of it.

We should have forum moderators who specialize. Lead PvP forum moderator. Lead group PvE forum moderator. Lead quest forum moderator. Lead Housing forum moderator. Lead Crown Store forum moderator.

Can you imagine how much money ZOS would make if they paid one forum moderator to collect data on exactly how many players would purchase which item on the crown store before they even made the items?
There is so much useless ugly boring stuff on the crown store.

At the very least, our upvotes should be VISIBLE without mouseover. The number of upvotes should be LARGE and show up beside the thread's name on the forums before we even click on the thread.

It should work like Enshrouded's feedback forums. We can sort Enshrouded's feedback forums via number of upvotes or via currently trending.
Enshrouded player satisfaction is stellar.

"Confirmed/Planning to Address" is a whole section of FFXIV forums. Because FFXIV informs players that they have HEARD an issue and are at least planning on giving players an answer.

ESO forums is like typing into the abyss. There is no easy visible data that any forum moderator can even present to higher-ups because upvotes aren't even visible.
We don't have a specific place for players to give Feedback either.

There are PTS feedback threads, but by then resources have been put into these systems. The crunch time is there to get the patch out by the proposed timeline.
PTS feedback is like trying to train your relay team when the last baton-carrier is already nearing the finish line on the last race of the season.

FlopsyPrince · September 19

The lack of ZOS showing any indication of really listening to players is one of the factors that pushes many players away from the game.

Rohamad_Ali · September 19

Aldoss wrote: »

While I appreciate the update and the focus, I am calling ZOS out here as plainly as I can that your past actions and communication have created an atmosphere that causes anyone who has frequented this forum for at least two PTS cycles to be jaded and skeptical over what is about to happen.