The tyranny of the minority? Why is Zennimax changing Vet Content?

Irakandji

It is interesting as we face the upcoming changes to Veteran content that there are two (2) polls on this forum asking if veteran content is too difficult. In both cases approximately 60% of the population says No it is not.

That leaves about 40% on the table that want change, of this 40% some 10-15% want just a small change. That leaves a smallish minority (25-30%) that seems to be driving large scale change.

What proportion of any new games player base leave after the initial period?

• I have been on many new games and it seems to me about 30-40% disappear after the first 3 months. I think these are reasonably well off early adopters that look for novelty and the rush to level. I say this because I joined a number of guilds based on the beta forums and met / played with these folks, I watched them jump from game to game and it was not a small group (some 50 odd people) It also became clear that there were many more like them because of the inter-guild comradely. I also discovered that a large proportion of these folks were heavy users of gold sellers to get their early kicks and advantage. AND they were heavy critics of every game, both in forums and sad to say review sites.
• I have abandoned all contact with these folks after I saw the pattern. I hated being stranded with a viable character in an empty guild. Colour me stupid if you will.
• In my view such players should never have an impact on the games development. They will never stick around long enough to warrant the investment.

Zenimax, made a good decision in my view when they made the tutorial areas optional. The decision to take them off the "Critical Path" was made based on player feedback, which was highly negative at the time (Beta). But they did not remove them entirely.

• Of these people that were highly negative, how many are still around? I suspect not many! They are plying their trade elsewhere now.
• Oddly, I see that most players seem to do the island content even though it is optional. Is it the shards?
• The Magic in Zenimax's decision was to make it optional content. So why not find a way to make the Veteran Level difficulty optional with scaled rewards? Maybe it will be (crosses fingers)

You cannot please everyone so I wonder what an acceptable Minority is?

• How big is the group that will never be satisfied (In a general population, it usually runs at 5-15%).
• Given the disproportionate weight given to strongly negative "Nay Sayers" I have to wonder about the impact of these folks on the game.

It might be just me but I am feeling the tyranny of the Minority a bit. Dumbing down robs us of development resources that could be enriching the game making it richer and more diverse. I do not want the game dumbed down to satisfy folks that have no intention of staying anyway, whist dissatisfying a majority that has more likely committed to stay.

If only there was a way to make things optional to appease folks that find life to difficult. Of course they would complain they did not get the best stuff, but then again, it was afterall, their choice.

hamon

except the polls that point one way ask if its too hard. but dont leave the option of "i dont find it too hard but am ok with them being made easier"
asking folk simply if they find it hard isn't the same as asking if they want change.

i would also direct you to my poll where i simply ask if folk thing vet levels need rebalanced and its then 60% saying yes

Dayel

The majority of negative posts on the forums, does not indicate a majority in the game. The game and the forums are two very different places.

Lunerdog

The silent majority is exactly that, the Majority.

They don't vote in polls on forums, they vote with their feet and their wallets, Zen will do as any business will do and follow the money.

hk11

They may be looking at the population of the VR zones and listening to the chat in those zones to determine if a change needed to be made.

kieso

You can't just look at the poll numbers for that yes or no poll; a lot of people hit no but wrote that there does need to be some re-balancing. Quit fanning forum flames because you fail to see beyond your own nose.

Zorrashi

The polls here are not really that good at determining the opinions of the entire player base--half of which don't even visit the forums.

Sihnfahl

hk11 wrote: »

They may be looking at the population of the VR zones and listening to the chat in those zones to determine if a change needed to be made.

But that in itself would be skewed. How many people are in the zone? How many bothered replying? If there are 100 people in a zone and only 10% reply, you can claim a 60% rate of satisfaction if 6 people respond.

When, in truth, it's an unscientific poll that makes 6 people the representatives of all the players.

Nathano

hk11 wrote: »

They may be looking at the population of the VR zones and listening to the chat in those zones to determine if a change needed to be made.

My thoughts exactly. A poll on the forums isn't that accurate and I'm sure ZOS have statistics on the numbers of players that give up after hitting the VR levels. You only need to enter the VR zones (especially the latter ones) to see how empty they are compared to the 1-50 zones.

frwinters_ESO

Here is the thing. Those polls are crap for one as there is also an in game feedback system which probably gets more traffic then these forums alone. The devs would not just make a change if they did not feel it was warranted. Enough people gave feedback and they listened.

Irakandji

hamon wrote: »

except the polls that point one way ask if its too hard. but dont leave the option of "i dont find it too hard but am ok with them being made easier"
asking folk simply if they find it hard isn't the same as asking if they want change.

i would also direct you to my poll where i simply ask if folk thing vet levels need rebalanced and its then 60% saying yes

I also agree that the classes need "rebalancing", this has little to do with the zones. After reading your polls' comments most folks are talking about class rebalance in order the manage the zone. I am not having any insurmountable problems at least up to up to VR6.

born2beagator

Sihnfahl wrote: »

hk11 wrote: »

They may be looking at the population of the VR zones and listening to the chat in those zones to determine if a change needed to be made.

But that in itself would be skewed. How many people are in the zone? How many bothered replying? If there are 100 people in a zone and only 10% reply, you can claim a 60% rate of satisfaction if 6 people respond.

When, in truth, it's an unscientific poll that makes 6 people the representatives of all the players.

Well the poll up right now has 284 votes. Not saying its what they should base it on...but it shows this crying thread about "the minority won" isn't true at least by this site. We've had two polls on the same subject and two different results.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

richard.a.ellisb16_ESO wrote: »

It is interesting as we face the upcoming changes to Veteran content that there are two (2) polls on this forum asking if veteran content is too difficult. In both cases approximately 60% of the population says No it is not.

Because everyone knows the views of those who post on web forums are a totally reliable measure of the playerbase as a whole .. FACTS, such as statistics ZOS have about player behaviour don't count.

OK.

I'm pretty sure that ZOS have looked at far more than a couple of polls in a forum whose population is a trivially small percentage of players and a highly self-selecting one at that, that's a great way to gauge opinion across hundreds of thousands of players.

hk11

Sihnfahl wrote: »

hk11 wrote: »

They may be looking at the population of the VR zones and listening to the chat in those zones to determine if a change needed to be made.

But that in itself would be skewed. How many people are in the zone? How many bothered replying? If there are 100 people in a zone and only 10% reply, you can claim a 60% rate of satisfaction if 6 people respond.

When, in truth, it's an unscientific poll that makes 6 people the representatives of all the players.

I'm just saying they have more data than we do. If changes were driven by forum posts then we would have free respecs, unlimited bag space, etc, etc.

born2beagator

richard.a.ellisb16_ESO wrote: »

It is interesting as we face the upcoming changes to Veteran content that there are two (2) polls on this forum asking if veteran content is too difficult. In both cases approximately 60% of the population says No it is not.

Might want to learn to read next time. The second poll 60% says yes it is

kitsinni

Casuals keep games in business. Casuals found Vet levels to be to difficult, which I agree for most casuals it was. Casuals don't spend all day on the forum or participate in polls. ZOS wants to stay in business so they cater to their main audience.

Pretty simple huh?

EQBallzz

hamon wrote: »

except the polls that point one way ask if its too hard. but dont leave the option of "i dont find it too hard but am ok with them being made easier"
asking folk simply if they find it hard isn't the same as asking if they want change.

i would also direct you to my poll where i simply ask if folk thing vet levels need rebalanced and its then 60% saying yes

Agree with Hamon. The polls are way too simplistic to convey a more nuanced position that many people likely have. I'm one of the people who think it's largely good but in certain circumstances feel the difficulty needs balancing/tweaking. At the same time I have watch almost my entire guild of 60 people melt away to near dead and I don't think it's a coincidence that this mirrors the empty state of the vet areas which are also fairly dead.

There is also the fact that difficulty doesn't fully capture the problem with vet areas. One of the major themes you see in these poll threads from both sides is that the vet content is monotonous, tedious, not fun etc...So whether or not you think it's too hard it's very possible a large majority thinks the vet content is a boring slog which is just as bad if not worse. Changing the difficulty is one way to address that but there are other things they could do.

LariahHunding

I would think that beancounters are driving decisions not forums or unscientific polls.

Sihnfahl

hk11 wrote: »

I'm just saying they have more data than we do. If changes were driven by forum posts then we would have free respecs, unlimited bag space, etc, etc.

I'm leaning more to the population drop-off from early Vet zones to later Vet zones.

If people find content too difficult, they just won't do it.

One of the things folks commented on while I was doing Vet levelling is that V4-10 zone population dropped off significantly from V1-3. It's a bit of a hump there, both in VP required to level and in difficulty.

Audigy

Nathano wrote: »

hk11 wrote: »

They may be looking at the population of the VR zones and listening to the chat in those zones to determine if a change needed to be made.

My thoughts exactly. A poll on the forums isn't that accurate and I'm sure ZOS have statistics on the numbers of players that give up after hitting the VR levels. You only need to enter the VR zones (especially the latter ones) to see how empty they are compared to the 1-50 zones.

They are empty because Craglorn gives more XP and better rewards as you can go their at VR 1 and just leech for a few hours a day and get to VR 12.

The difficulty has zero to do with this.

flintstone

Vet zones are empty zones. Why don't you (so called majority) people populate them? Where is this majority?........where do they play?

1-50 zones are populated.

Audigy

kitsinni wrote: »

Casuals keep games in business. Casuals found Vet levels to be to difficult, which I agree for most casuals it was. Casuals don't spend all day on the forum or participate in polls. ZOS wants to stay in business so they cater to their main audience.

Pretty simple huh?

Please stop blaming Casuals for the changes. I am a Casual and don't mind hard content, you are referring to a totally different vocal minority, a minority that every MMO has. People that want it easy, that have fun ruining content for others etc.

Casuals have nothing to do with that change.

kitsinni

flintstone wrote: »

Vet zones are empty zones. Why don't you (so called majority) people populate them? Where is this majority?........where do they play?

1-50 zones are populated.

Umm .. Craglorn. Why would I do VR zones for crap quest rewards and very slow xp when I can get purples and level twenty times faster and actually have people to play with and talk to?

fromtesonlineb16_ESO

richard.a.ellisb16_ESO wrote: »

The tyranny of the minority?

Tell you what, I'LL give you one of those: Craglorn.

Here, have another one: Crypt of Hearts.

Here, have a third: the next content update is the third of the Craglon+ content updates.

There, three sets of content only a trivially small minority of players are able to play at present and likely will remain so even after this change.

Lodestar

Dayel wrote: »

The majority of negative posts on the forums, does not indicate a majority in the game. The game and the forums are two very different places.

People always say this, as though forums are no indication of a cross section, or exemplifying a symptom of a problem. Especially when it comes up so often as Vet content does.

Just to be sure, I am neither for or against the vet changes. As I have yet to reach those areas.

Nathano

Audigy wrote: »

Nathano wrote: »

hk11 wrote: »

They may be looking at the population of the VR zones and listening to the chat in those zones to determine if a change needed to be made.

My thoughts exactly. A poll on the forums isn't that accurate and I'm sure ZOS have statistics on the numbers of players that give up after hitting the VR levels. You only need to enter the VR zones (especially the latter ones) to see how empty they are compared to the 1-50 zones.

They are empty because Craglorn gives more XP and better rewards as you can go their at VR 1 and just leech for a few hours a day and get to VR 12.

The difficulty has zero to do with this.

I'm sorry but saying that "difficulty has zero to do this" it is utter rubbish. I know that for a fact because I have canceled my subscription and stopped playing because of the difficulty as well as several of my friends. Yes there are people who are using Craglorn instead of leveling in VR zones but to say that is the reason VR zones are empty is a complete over exaggeration.

smokes

i feel it prudent to point out that zenimax wouldn't have changed VR content based purely on forum polls.

zenimax have the data to backup what you would call the vocal minority wanting changes, unfortunately, you do not.

Adrastes

yep. most of the time casuals dont even use forums. so i highly doubt that is a minority. ZOS watches numbers of canceled subs and goes from there.

"hardcore" players are usually most vocal in forums

kitsinni

So the big change they do less damage and have less hitpoints. Want it harder use low level weapons and armor .. congrats it's back to the hardmode.

TRIP233

Zenimax is changing the Vet content because the Majority told them too. Not the Minority. The Minority wants it to remain the same.

The_Death_Princess

I thought this too when reading the notes. Sadly, its the loser botter/no investment players that cry the loudest. I am halfway through the Vet content on 2 toons and have yet to had an issue, and even laughably yesterday a boss I forget which went down as fast as a regular tank.

Love that Z is listening.... but I am starting to think they are listening to the wrong stuff.