Does anyone else feel like ZOS doesn't care about their players and what the community asks for

Dojohoda · December 2024

They listen but we're not the boss. Many requests have been met and many haven't. Some requests were met creatively such as the sticker book to alleviate both gear grinding and inventory. Some decisions have shown me the exit but I haven't walked through that door yet.

Someday a radiant apex guar might be made.

I wonder just how wild, crazy or glowy that mount will be? Guars are generally lowkey beasts.

shadyjane62 · December 2024

Yes.

moderatelyfatman · December 2024

aliferis wrote: »

I've Been playing this game since release with a few breaks here and there and i see all these posts, discords, guilds, and other forums about what would make the game better, things the community want to see happen, and items added to the store with the most being (A RADIANT APEX GUAR!!!!!!!!!!!). I love this game and want to see it succeed but ZOS you need to start listening to your community.

ZOS has a lot of devs in diffferent areas so a simple yes/no answer as to whether they are listening to the players isn't adequate.

Regarding QoL changes, the devs do listen. If you look at the changes the past few years (e.g. The Stickerbood, The Armory, Gold Platings, Skill Scribing etc) these are responses from the requests by the community. While the response have taken a long time, it is evident that these devs have been listening and the playing experience has improved over the years because of this.

If you look at the PvE content (e.g. Dungeons and Trials) you have seen greater options available in the newer content such as challenge flags in response to player requests for harder options and secret levels and bosses. The type of mechanics require with bosses in such content have grown and changed over time in part due to the players asking for different challenges. I feel that the PvE content devs have done a great job here.

Regarding combat changes, the answer is no. The combat devs have been horribly out of touch with the playerbase for many years with little or no communication. This has led to update after update of unwanted changes and a playerbase that has been steadily diminishing with time.

Jierdanit · December 2024

LunaFlora wrote: »

no, because they do clearly listen to feedback.

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The retrospective letter mentions several things people have been requesting for years like Cyrodiil updates and base game visual updates.
And we just got an update for Battlegrounds.

The retrospective letter has been mentioning improvements for Cyrodiil in every single letter since 2019.
In those five years ZOS hasn't once managed to actually improve Cyrodiil consistently.
Instead Cyrodiil has gotten much worse and is now barely resembling the way it was when I started playing the game.

The update for Battlegrounds is something that I am generally happy about (lots of other players are not). But even this update is severely flawed.

BGs still have issues with Matches not filling up completely even tho there are people in queue, causing everyone to have to wait for 5 minutes to get kicked out of the BG. This is over a Month after the changes were originally made. Directly after the patch almost half of the matches did not start at all.

There is still no proper MMR, which causes lots of BGs to be very one-sided, this is something that lots of BG players were warning about before the patch even went live, but ZOS ofc didn't listen.

MMR is also still not visible. Which is a change they made on PTS which was basically the complete opposite of what people were asking for.

People have also consistently been telling ZOS that the scoring in BGs is horrible, that the leaderboards need a big change to be meaningful at all and that healers are massively overpowered. They didn't address any of this.

So saying that they mostly made the right decisions while looking at that is just absolutely wrong.

Calastir · December 2024

old_scopie1945 · December 2024

I think the problem is, being a large organisation, they give the impression that they don't care. But that is just the nature of things, the fact being the opposite in my opinion. ZOS has done things that I have not been happy with, as has most of us, I believe. It is a matter of one size doesn't fit all and I think ZOS does a reasonable job in catering to that task. So, at the end of the day, in their own way, ZOS does care for the game and the player base. It just makes good business sense to do so.

Lags · December 2024

BixenteN7Akantor wrote: »

What the community wants, what ZOS want to do and what they have the capacity to make (without sending devs into Crunch-land) are different things:
-Scribing: Community wanted it, ZOS was interrested and did it
-Radian Apex Guar: Community wants, ZOS doesn't want but can do
-More furnishing spaces: Community wants, ZOS wants too but can't (most obvious reasons are older consoles)
-Balancing old sets: Community wants, ZOS maybe wants but ZOS can do.
-Balancing invisibility: Community is splitted, ZOS tries to but eh... *scratches head*
-Out of Combat bug: Community wants, ZOS probably wants but ZOS has trouble to
-Overhaulted BG: Community wanted BG to be relevant again, ZOS did nothing for years but finally did it... but not what we expected.
-Overhauled Cyrodiil: Community WANTS, ZOS probably wants but ZOS has big trouble with this.
-Improve Imperial City: Community wants, ZOS was okay with and did some good things.
-Dungeon Rushers: Community wanted "Joining Encounter in Progress" for old dungeons, ZOS took some time but did it.
-Undaunted pledge keys logic: Community wanted more keys for DLC dungeons, ZOS was okay with and did it.
-Undaunted base game pledges fix: Community wants, ZOS maybe wants but ZOS can do
-Cadaverous Bear and Cernunnon fix: Community wants, ZOS wants but ZOS has trouble to do.
-Overland difficulty: Community WANTS, ZOS wants and ZOS will do.
-Lag fix: Community WANTS, ZOS WANTS but ZOS has trouble to, so in the meantime we have bandages (lower pop cap in cyrodiil for example).
-Antiquity leads too hard to farm: Community WANTS, ZOS doesn't want but ZOS can do. (They even fix bugged ones)
-Random bans: Community wants a full stop to bans without reports (such as conversation with a buddy with a slang language), ZOS wants to find a middle ground but players still get randomly banned.
-FOMO: Community wants a full stop to this, ZOS doesn't want but ZOS can do.

See, the truth is, ZOS aren't fondamentaly different from us and mostly agrees with us but time and workforce aren't infinite, managing them is tough to do. Almost everything not done in this list would require at least 3-4 months to do ALONE. Time to create stuff is vastly underestimated, especially with bugs that are like hydras, you fix one and two more appear.
I really don't like some things ZOS do, especially with FOMO but as long as I'm having fun with the game, we're on the same boat.

Many of these things have been problematic for years, some of them for almost a decade. And some of them are literally driving players away and they just dont care. Plus you missed a bunch of things but whatever. A big one is them giving us things we dont ask for. But how long is it ok for these things to go on? Just because you say they want to do it, but have trouble with it, doesnt make it ok, nor does it mean people arent quitting because of it.

Zos is very bad with timing. Some issues have lasted for years, some for almost the entire time the game has existed. Cyrodiil performance and the combat bug, to name a couple. Same thing with scribing, people didnt want scribing they wanted spell crafting from 2014. Watered down spell crafting was a compromise, but it came 10 years later. After tales of tribute. Rewards is another big thing. Ya, the last couple years have had better rewards than in the past. But nowhere close to what people actually want, and pretty much only in the newer content over that time.

The team like to do these large sweeping changes, and big changes out of nowhere, instead of smaller incremental changes over shorter periods of time, while making small adjustments along the way. And thats always been an issue. Sometimes its a set, a skill, a class, an instance, a bug, whatever. And sometimes it doesnt get touched until a couple years down the road, when people have been begging them to look at it for the entire time.

Or how about things on the PTS? Issues they are warned about and ignore, only to change them later after months or years of them causing issues in game, or worse nerfing a set they were told was broken after everyone spent time getting it. a small but good example would be undo, from summerset, that remained broken for years.

Its also a repetition of bad behavior. There is a difference between I want this now or im quitting vs a large amount of people asking for change, waiting, then asking again, and waiting, and so on for years. and then to have that same scenario play out over and over again. Communication ties in here too, and thats another issue they have failed at for some time.

They may be trying more lately. They may have made some good changes, and have more in mind. They may be listening to some things. But things have been going so poorly for so long that they really need to make some serious changes to core issues, in a timely fashion, to show people. Maybe issues they dont want to deal with. because at this point so many have lost faith. And these studio director letters dont help when you've been reading them for years and seeing nothing change.

Asdara · December 2024

Don't get biased, ZOS isnt unique, the whole industry is shifting.
95% of studios dont care about players feedback anymore, the only that does are leading the industry (Larian, etc)
So no, its not only ZOS its everyone...