Zenimax, what happened to connecting with your End Game?

Zvorgin

Well said. Zos is destroying the very game they built through complete overhauls every patch. I ask myself why even role a character not knowing what the class will even look like in 6 months. I get balancing for game play sake, but changing game fundamentals drastically is terrible.

The one thing ESO always had was the combat, but now we get a clunky heavy attack meta, if removing fun is their goal, they are doing great.

Cously

Things that can help more people to join the 1%:

1) Better rewards to motivate people to want to invest time in end game. The vast majority doesn't care about boasting on a stupid leaderboard. However people will go to extremes to get a mount/pet/collectible/whatever. (I got Emperor in Cyrodiil just because I wanted the throne for my house, 3 years playing and I never cared to try for it before).

2) Three modes. Normal, Veteran, Elite. The difficult from Normal to Veteran is way too steep. Even the best players had to spend months trying to clear vMOL. Imagine a casual, with limited time to grind gear / get a guild and learn mechanics that can take weeks/months. Maybe with a middle tier it would ease the progression for casuals from normal to veteran then elite, that while keeping the elite mode for the players who are already there, so they don't lose what they still have.

Perharps with intelligent motivation we can expand the PVE community without having to make the game easier. A larger PVE community means the company likely invest more resources on that content.

Saturn

Shadowmaster wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

I feel like the direction Zenimax is heading, and it's a shame because so much of the community has voiced their opinions on this patch and in the past that a lot of the feedback is being looked past

Its truly unfortunate that the analysts advising these studios aren't doing a better job of pointing out WHY games like WoW were successful. I am absolutely certain the staff at ZoS "gets it", but the ZoS team reports up the ladder. Hopefully in the future the bosses will be more inclined to listen to their staff at the different studios.

Can we take those fictional people and put them on the next ESO Live? It'd be a relief to see a developer who actually understands what they are making.

Nifty2g

I gotta be honest I actually laughed at the early access announcement. Curious at what they let go live though.

zuto40

usmcjdking wrote: »

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

Prive wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

Inig0 wrote: »

This is a sentiment that im worries not enough people are feeling out of pure ignorance.

This is not true. I'd venture to state it's actually the exact opposite.

ESO, like every other MMO, will constantly try to flush it's elites out. That is the primary purpose of instituting changes to this degree. This isn't done out of spite or malice, it's done because it needs to happen. Your seat at the table is a finite space - the information and feedback your provide is linear. A company and developers cannot have customers have a monopoly at the speaking table. The longer you hang onto it, the worse it wracks your mind until you eventually quit; check on the forums 6 months later and notice all new elite names and faces and the game still chugging on making a killing.

This happened with EQ.
This happened MULTIPLE times with WOW.
This happened with City of Heroes (although nowhere near as pronounced, best MMO to date).
This happened with LOTRO.
This happened with Neverwinter.
And now it's happening with ESO.

All you need to do is look at gaming communities that have been together 20+ years. Most of the elites would call them bad or whatever, but people are quick to forget often times these communities were in your exact same position 5-10-15 years ago. Do you see their outrage? No lol, because they know the business.

ESO and community lose nothing by losing the top players - it simply replaces them. It's a rough pill to swallow due to pride but that's how it works.

Until now ESO was unlike the rest, maybe they might go back to it. It's doubtful. Just sad to see a company take that road.

It's not sad. They have to go that route. I'm sorry but you cannot dictate endgame for as long as you please, or based on your merits as a player. That is a tremendous amount of power in a player that has absolutely NO VESTED INTEREST in anything other than their own communities.

I'm not trying to knock on you here for this post - it's sincere and there are some qualitative points to it.

But this is probably the 5th or 6th time I've seen this post. Not on this forum for clarification.

What do you mean, they don't have to go this route at all. Going this route means they're not aiming for long active players but DLC short term instead.

I have a feeling you are not objectively looking at the direction ESO is going and it's making you think they are trying to aim at a different demographic, when they are trying to usher in a new guard for more intelligible feedback to get them to their desired endstate. The blinders are not on, they are very aware they are going to temporarily crush their endgame community in participation, content creation, and population. Whilst that most certainly isn't the goal, it's a natural by-product of revitalizing an otherwise stagnant combat system that (and I'm not blaming anyone in general) has grown in power way beyond what the core game even supports due to feedback and end game appeasing. This is not new, it's not the first time it's ever happened and it won't be the last time.

Our individual value to the developers as players is not very high, orders of magnitudes lower than you probably think. The level at which a player understands a game and completes content at does not correlate to greater value, either. The guide makers and content creators are unimportant as there are hundreds more willing to take the place of the top dog regardless of what the developers do to the game. This is why a lot of feedback I see on PTS/Beta forums is ultimately pointless. The direction the game is going is straight back to it's roots in a very harsh manner and a lot of feedback is basically nothing more than "we don't like the core gameplay". If feedback isn't within the constraints of aiming to get the game back to it's core, then the feedback is pointless to the developers.

As players, we do have strength collectively - but you have to keep in mind that we are quite easily replaceable. Because we are replaceable, our conveyed attitude can easily backfire. The last thing people should be doing right now is raging even harder and providing feedback that is even greater in uselessness than previously submitted. They will not listen to you, us or anyone else until you have made it clear that you accept the direction the game is going and are doing nothing more than trying to get the game further in that direction. This goes without saying some changes make absolutely no sense whatsoever towards direction, or application (javelin change, siphoning strikes doing just about nothing???????????) and feeback is important there.

ultimately, player perception is important to them. However, it's easier, more economical, and better for their established game direction to ignore the bad perception(ers?) to the point they just leave the game than it is to deal with them. I made the exact same post you did when Planes of Power released for EQ almost 15 years ago, then subsequently quit the game along with a ton of us in Vagrants. Then Vagrants merged with Royal Norathian Guard and they just kept on keeping on doing stuff that made the other raids look like cakewalks which made me jealous. In retrospect, I wish I didn't quit. You can either learn it yourself or have other people learn it for you - it does suck & sting though.

A lot of people with bail once Morrowind hits. Well known raid guilds will become a shadow of what they once were, some dissolve entirely. But I guarantee you that by late July once the dust has settled some new batch of people will be working on HM VMOL.

@usmcjdking

If what you're saying is all true. How come they invited those players over to zenimax hq for an intense review and feedback week?

That doesn't seem to fit your point of view about "not caring", "just a number" or "making room for new players"

Information is valuable. The informee is not.

So anyone can be an informee, it does not matter if the quality informees are not longer available and less knowledgeable informees fill their spots?

I for one can be an informee, but I will admit strait up I am no @Gilliamtherogue or @FENGRUSH . Not even close.

BTW, good developers listen to those that have the information. Developers know the code but they have no clue about the details about how it plays out. I have seen developers change how aspects of the game worked when the LEARNED from theorycrafters how it was actually working was different than what they intended.

It is just the way it works. What we see in the changes is an EGO, not a vision.

Are you trying to convince me of something? I'm not the one who needs any convincing. I'm am stating an observation that is backed by almost 20 years of experience in MMOs. Every MMO i've taken part in has dumped their elites in one way shape or form, and flourished well past what the original crew of elites was capable of. If you can point to a specific example where a game self-imploded after an incident which saw an exodus of elites I'd be interested. Most people point to SWG and although I never played it, the NGE incident did not have a negative impact on the game considering it was losing subscribers at a ridiculous pace prior to NGE, which allowed the game to continue on another six years. If you can't pay the bills you can't make the thrills man. Developers are not threatened in any way shape or form at the loss of content creators, elites or endgame guilds. It might have an immediate negative impact, sure, but nothing that can't be recovered from in a relatively short span of time. My personal opinion is that they should be concerned about a potential exodus as well, but my opinion doesn't matter because the MMO model they follow and the tenacity of the 90-98%ers suggests that ZOS will have their cake and eat it too.

I can give you an MMO, Pirate101, the devs didnt update for nearly 3 years and left pvp broken, and now the games on life support with its only hope of surviving is getting on steam and praying enough people on there think it looks interesting enough to try

brandonv516

@Cously

I would actually rather have trials listed as veteran and elite. Obviously change normal to veteran and veteran to elite.

Dungeons are listed as normal and veteran and when new players decide they want to dip into trials, they need to understand that normal trials aren't a "walk in the park" like normal dungeons.

If there were to be a normal setting where things are easier than the current normal, I would be fine with it as long as the enemies were dropped to cp150 so the top end gear can't be grinded so easy.

aetherial_heavenn

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

aetherial_heavenn wrote: »

Caveat: I am aware the payment model is different between the 2 games discussed below, but the potential and actual customer base of both games has its strong similarities.

OP a well constructed post that triggered traumatic memories of the infamous introduction of skill trees in LOTRo, Helm's Derp and the steady decline that followed. During Beta we were told by the CM that raiders were elitists and less than 10%,of players raided, Raider bashing was actively encouraged, and feedback on skill issues, tree placement of those skills, and the effects on group content and PvP was r ignored or sneered at. My class ...the minstrel, had no developer feedback for 2 years while it became a one button heal bot. The 'every class should be able to dps and heal and tank' homogeneity made skill and class specific fun become irrelevant. Every class became OP but skills got clunkier at the same time. Getting better at your class through practice was set aside in favour of stadardising everything so it could be done by everybody, all the time, first time.

Then came the gear sets determining outcomes rather than skills used. Grinding solo dailies was the only way to 'git gud'. (Imagine doing MA every day on every alt for every single piece of armour for a minimum of 45 days to get one set done and then doing it again and again for a chance for an essence (equivalent of an enchant), The grind for gear or pay the store for 'convenience' model completely took over.

Eventually the large raid guilds left (many for ESO), the helpful guides dried up, the crafters had no one to sell to, and the 'stickiness' that had kept long term active community members playing because their guildies did, slowly vanished. And the number of logins went down and down and down.

edit: contrary to the assertions elsewhere LOTRO has about 30% of the logins it had prior to Helms Deep. Even less than that if you look at the F2P introduction as a bechmark. This can be seen looking here: http://lux-hdro.de/hdro-live-us.php. There are links to xternal data sources, like steam charts here too. Anecdotally, ie in my experience, The forums are much less active than they ever have been. yes the RPers are there and there are some PvPers and raiders still,but on Landroval PvP forum there is a new post once a month if you are lucky, there a no player guides of the depth and clarity of earlier guides and my favourite bands all stopped playing music 2 years ago. Yeah, some people play but to assert it is active as ever is just codswallop.)

The game aimed itself towards churning new players and getting them to gamble a few bucks on slot machine hobbit presents and hitting the ubiquitous store buttons for horse fluff and convenience/grind avoidance items, rather than keeping the long term players. (no, it shouldn't be a zero sum game but it seems marketers can only think in binaries.)

Finally the business side noticed that the 'churners' they aimed at tended to be the ones who played for free, did not spend much real cash and rarely bought expansions. They finally introduced a new raid and refocused resources on some new group activities and the main story. But it was too late. (takes a long time to turn an MMO around). The ship had sailed to the west with the old guard on board. The game exists and is trying to return to it's niche customer base...but it's hard to persuade people to return to, and spend money on a ten year old product, especially when those people were told they weren't wanted or needed on a daily basis for 3 years.

I like ESO: I like the community, the fact stuff is developed by the players for the players, I like the fact the store isn't shoved in my face everywhere I look, I like the group play and the fact that Zenimax seem to understand multiplayer means playing together in teams, as well as playing alone in a crowd and that both are viable. What I don't like the is the trend towards grinding gear sets that do more damage than my skills (raising the floor) and I don't like the trend towards ignoring endgamers' concerns about the proposed class changes (lowering the ceiling/removing unique class 'feel') for the sake of attracting a few customers who want to be able to play a new class using the same 3 buttons as they did on their last class, do it for a week and then leave. (I also don't want the templar changes....but that's another story.)

I just want to quite this because it's so well written.

Thank you. That's quite a compliment