Why is 65 pages of Customer Feedback regarding the Sorc class being ignored?

albesca

Lord-Otto wrote: »

This community must drop the rose-tinted glasses, shatter them and throw a nuclear bomb at the fragments.

On the other hand, I find the "I pay you so you must ply to my will and smile all along" attitude unbearable.
Sometimes the "you don't have to be here" answer is the only sensible one, really.

Lord-Otto

albesca wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

This community must drop the rose-tinted glasses, shatter them and throw a nuclear bomb at the fragments.

On the other hand, I find the "I pay you so you must ply to my will and smile all along" attitude unbearable.
Sometimes the "you don't have to be here" answer is the only sensible one, really.

Sure. Give me my money back, and we're game. Or, rather NOT game.
But that's not the point. The point is that the community does know better. This doesn't have anything to do with who's paying.

Eweroun

MalagenR wrote: »

The title basically says it all - it's clear our feedback thread has the largest number of posts by far in the history of ESO, while you can't assume the cause for this is specifically the changes being made by developers to the Sorc class in Murkmire patch, I believe it's reasonable to assume that the customers deserve more responses from ZOS due to the strong correlation between the changes they decided to implement, and the overall reaction of the customer to those changes.

Is it not reasonable for us as customers to get a serious explanation as to why these changes are still being implemented when the feedback provided correlates to the fact that this might be a disastrous change?

easy, you forgot to add a TL;DR

Turelus

Lord-Otto wrote: »

albesca wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

This community must drop the rose-tinted glasses, shatter them and throw a nuclear bomb at the fragments.

On the other hand, I find the "I pay you so you must ply to my will and smile all along" attitude unbearable.
Sometimes the "you don't have to be here" answer is the only sensible one, really.

Sure. Give me my money back, and we're game. Or, rather NOT game.
But that's not the point. The point is that the community does know better. This doesn't have anything to do with who's paying.

Does it though? I'm not trying to say the community is clueless, but how do you choose which ones know better and which don't, isn't that also part of why we now have class reps, so they can take issues and try to help ZOS filter out some of the information.

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess. There needs to be someone at the end who goes "actually, that's not best for ESO and this is" which the combat team is doing. They just don't seem to be doing it in ways many approve of.

Feanor

@Turelus

I would agree with you if ZOS had a clear idea that is communicated thoroughly and not just a bunch of random dev comments in patch notes that are puzzling most times.

Design, ideas, a red thread - that’s something you can discuss. ZOS doesn’t.

Lord-Otto

Turelus wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

albesca wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

This community must drop the rose-tinted glasses, shatter them and throw a nuclear bomb at the fragments.

On the other hand, I find the "I pay you so you must ply to my will and smile all along" attitude unbearable.
Sometimes the "you don't have to be here" answer is the only sensible one, really.

Sure. Give me my money back, and we're game. Or, rather NOT game.
But that's not the point. The point is that the community does know better. This doesn't have anything to do with who's paying.

Does it though? I'm not trying to say the community is clueless, but how do you choose which ones know better and which don't, isn't that also part of why we now have class reps, so they can take issues and try to help ZOS filter out some of the information.

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess. There needs to be someone at the end who goes "actually, that's not best for ESO and this is" which the combat team is doing. They just don't seem to be doing it in ways many approve of.

And I agree on the first part. Judging what's the good feedback is an arduous task, and who would do that voluntarily?
Oh, right.
;P

But the second part is my problem. I have the feeling ZOS are deliberately not doing what the community suggests, just to claim it was ZOS' design. I mean, at this point, there would have been quite some positive overlappings of ZOS and community ideas, but... One phrase that always seems to pop up in netch potes discussions is "changes that NO ONE ASKED FOR".

I'll give you a concrete example. Overload. It has been suggested to change only one morph. It has been suggested to design a cheap burst ult out of it, like Dawnbreaker.
Yet, we see something completely different. I can't remember anyone suggesting a temporal light attack buff at the cost of ult generation and the third bar. I mean...
*shrugs*

Turelus

Feanor wrote: »

Turelus

I would agree with you if ZOS had a clear idea that is communicated thoroughly and not just a bunch of random dev comments in patch notes that are puzzling most times.

Design, ideas, a red thread - that’s something you can discuss. ZOS doesn’t.

As I keep saying, we need some kind of dev blogs with a road ahead from each department lead.

To take shield changes as an example, we knew they were coming due to an off hand comment in the class rep feedback, but ZOS wouldn't tell us anything until the PTS notes.

I feel with something as big as that it would have been better to have ZOS' (Wrobel himself best as the combat lead), create and thread saying.

We're planning to change shields, there is no negotiation on this happening, however we want to work with you to try and get it right.

Here are our three ideas being kicked around the office

Idea 1
Idea 2
Idea 3

We then have the explosion of drama about how bad it is and how the game is dead. However we get effectively a month or two of forums debate, dissection and feedback before they place something on PTS.
Then the idea that lands of PTS gets tested and pulled apart.

Hopefully with the final changes being something more in line with community expectations. It'll never be what everyone wants and some will always have to accept that, but at least it wasn't a blind sided change.

Feanor

@Turelus

That process would be better, but the fun thing is that most Sorcs I know weren’t even adamant about shields. It was agreed upon that stacking isn’t a fun experience both for the user or the opponent in a 1v1 situation.

All Sorcs said was: Fine, change shields, but give us something as a secondary defense in return. And ZOS changed shields without giving anything. That’s what’s the most crucial thing to me - the utter lack of class insight.

albesca

Lord-Otto wrote: »

The point is that the community does know better.

There are many points, really, but let's focus on this one.

What is the community?

These are some numbers regarding its size:

Badges

• 1 comment: 145971 people have earned this badge.
• 10 comments: 35448 people have earned this badge.
• 100 comments: 7688 people have earned this badge.

The relevant discussion

• PTS Update 20 - Feedback Thread for Sorcerer: 1954 posts as of 26/10/2018 12:21 CET

Even assuming that every post in the discussion is made by a different person, where still looking at pretty low number.
And even when this small group reaches a consensus about what's bad, it is far from united when it comes to proposing solutions (other than "leave everything as it is", and even that is contradicted by all the nerf threads): at the very least there's always a divide between PVErs and PVPrs.

You say that the community knows better, I think that the community doesn't exists as a compact group and it's a small minority of the gaming population.

I don't think that, should we leave en masse, ZOS wouldn't care at all, as a dead forum community would lead to a dead game, but the general "us (the community that knows and loves the game) vs them (the devs that don't play their own game and don't even know how to code)" attitude isn't leading us anywhere.

The community is only relevant as long as it is constructive.

BalticBlues

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

MalagenR

There's no excuse for the lack of communication regarding the multiple features they've broken and an admission that mistakes were made. This is the 1st step in solving a problem that was created by a "it works but lets break it" approach to anything. You need to show your customers you're human, that you can mistakes, and that you're listening to them.

That's the only point I'm trying to make in all of this, their lack of effort to communicate and admit they broke some stuff without telling us why they broke it is infuriating.

Sorry if you don't like that.

Turelus

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

Those games with elected councils also had everyone at the council tell the devs an idea was terrible, the devs did it any way, people raged, the devs continued any way. The end of the day players and communities no matter how passionate about the game they're playing are not the ones who get to make development choices, we can guide them and a lot of changes in the game are based of our requests and feedback.
However it seems ZOS doesn't want player feedback and control over class balance, they want to do things their way. It's frustrating as hell when it misses the mark but I don't think we're going to change their view on that.

Valrien

Sleep724 wrote: »

jcm2606 wrote: »

More like why is 99% of the threads in this section being ignored? Sorc isn't the only thing being wrongfully nerfed.

This. I stopped reading them because it’s almost pointless. Other classes have been ignored a lot longer than Sorc has ie DK, Templar.

Doubt it, since Sorc has been getting nerfed going back til at least 1.2

Vahrokh

Turelus wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

I'm playing MMOs since 2000 and have played most of the "classic" ones and many "modern era" ones.
Of all of these, the only MMO where balance has been more or less done right has been EvE Online.

They - before anyone else - gathered extensive statistics about everything and could balance their game with the only, real valid rationale: they created a gaussian of performances and balanced the game on players withing a certain sigma below and above the average.

Balancing on "top uber elites" who have 10ms ping rate and can solo hm vCR+3 is not the way to go, yet it's what many MMOs do.

The result of balancing on the top elites is that they still appear godlike anyway, while everyone else are nerfed to grub status because of "what if". An "if" that for normal players won't happen.

Ranger209

Lord-Otto wrote: »

albesca wrote: »

Lord-Otto wrote: »

This community must drop the rose-tinted glasses, shatter them and throw a nuclear bomb at the fragments.

On the other hand, I find the "I pay you so you must ply to my will and smile all along" attitude unbearable.
Sometimes the "you don't have to be here" answer is the only sensible one, really.

Sure. Give me my money back, and we're game. Or, rather NOT game.
But that's not the point. The point is that the community does know better. This doesn't have anything to do with who's paying.

The problem with the community or the forums is that it's schizophrenic. It's 10,000 voices whispering in 1 head. Some of those voices want what is best for the game. Some of those voices want what is best for themselves. Some of those voices just want to cause trouble, or draw attention to themselves. Some want to save the game. All in all it is a lot of noise.

Generally every nerf/buff that comes through there is a portion of the community that is either for it or against it. Every once in a while you will get an issue like the shield cast time that just resonates throughout the forums. In those rare instances the community is hard to ignore. In my mind they listen to the community too much some times and not enough at other times.

I think, really, they just need to use more common sense when implementing, and do things more gradually. What I see are changes that always swing too wildly in one direction or another. Maybe they should do more balancing like on a monthly basis instead of quarterly. Perhaps the reason why they swing so hard with one blow is because they won't get another swing for 3 months. If instead they did things monthly for a balance pass maybe they could just tap it along.

rfennell_ESO

I guess if 65 pages of crying worked and now shields in pvp are more powerful (LOL), might as well make another attempt at buffs. It will probably work.

TheValar85

Turelus wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

Those games with elected councils also had everyone at the council tell the devs an idea was terrible, the devs did it any way, people raged, the devs continued any way. The end of the day players and communities no matter how passionate about the game they're playing are not the ones who get to make development choices, we can guide them and a lot of changes in the game are based of our requests and feedback.
However it seems ZOS doesn't want player feedback and control over class balance, they want to do things their way. It's frustrating as hell when it misses the mark but I don't think we're going to change their view on that.

wait why not? at this point then it is basicly usless then to have representatives, Ambassadors, and also it is became obvius than even the whole forum became usless then. Becasue at the end reguardless who many threads are opened and how many cosntrutive feedbacks were provided from the players But Ignoring the feedbacks from the very essence of the game? US the player base? The company digging its own grave then wich is completly out of logical sense. A gaming company wich dosent listen to the playerbase and ignoring their feedbacsk are on the very wrong way. And that company in time will endup falling.

And brothign this shameful acts on this game title with these acts from the developers is very disgusting. When it comes to Elder Scrolls the developers dosent have to luxury to ignore the feedbacsk from the community members even if we are talking about an MMO type one. Those should be fiered! Thats definetly out of the question. Becasue This type of behaviour is running the game, the brand of the game, and also it is only qualifies them in a not so positive ways sadly wich brings up the question why are they even working there? Becasue at this point they shouldn't be. Im not trying to be rude or harm the developers but in most case senarios like these in other companies they will be already fired becasue of these reguardless of their "excuse".

Crafts_Many_Boxes

I've done a lot of thinking over the last few days, and this is what I've concluded on the subject: the reason we feel that the devs miss the mark so often is that they're intentionally implementing unpopular changes.

Let me clarify. Players want balance, they want buffs, they want changes that will allow the meta they've worked for to continue, while benefiting even more than they already are.

Forgetting about what the devs actually want, let's ask ourselves what the bosses of the devs want: money. They want money. How do you get money? You retain players. You keep them grinding, keep changing the meta, keep nerfing players so it takes them even longer and they struggle harder to do content that you've already released. Keep them grinding for old set X that suddenly became 10x as good as it used to be, because the devs had "no idea" it would turn out like this.

When you look at it from this perspective, ZOS is doing a fabulous job. By continuously changing up the meta and actively making our characters weaker as time goes on, it guarantees that whoever doesn't ragequit this mess will be playing pretty much indefinitely. I'm sure their bosses are very happy with the devs and the sales / subscription numbers.

Turelus

@thevalar85 they do listen at times though, if they didn't listen ESO would be very different. We would also have 1 second cast times on shields right now.

They read and take in what is said, but that doesn't mean they're going to go the direction the players want every single time. As I said previously which players do you listen to of you start that kind of development.

Development by democracy? Idea that gets the list votes is the one they implement?

Mannix1958

Turelus wrote: »

Lumenn wrote: »

They DID respond years ago, and it covers everything since. "you know you don't have to be here right?" After that, what else is there? I don't agree with the changes, I'm watching as it almost seems they are headed towards forced grouping(and EQ was enough of that for me thank you) but it's their game, win or fail.

TBH I wish ZOS had more freedom to reply like that more often, there are more than a few snarky posters on these forums who deserve to be called out for it. His reply was pretty fair (IMO) considering he was doing an AMA of sorts and someone wanted to make a snarky comment to him.

Link for those who want to judge for themselves.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/3160562/#Comment_3160562

See I disagree on that one...telling customers they don't need to be here because of snarkiness..is exactly a behavior they warn about on the forums...not saying that I know from experience (cough cough)

jcm2606

Turelus wrote: »

@thevalar85 they do listen at times though, if they didn't listen ESO would be very different. We would also have 1 second cast times on shields right now.

They read and take in what is said, but that doesn't mean they're going to go the direction the players want every single time. As I said previously which players do you listen to of you start that kind of development.

Development by democracy? Idea that gets the list votes is the one they implement?

The problem is, the shield changes were a result of the forums collectively losing their *** and screeching at Zenimax to revert everything. When the forums have to go that ballistic to even get Zenimax to reconsider their changes, I don't call that listening, but buckling under the stress.

If Zenimax were actually listening, we wouldn't have had the rest of this update.

We wouldn't have had mobility being gutted the way it was.

We wouldn't have had the enchant meta we have now.

We wouldn't have had the completely useless half-baked band-aid "fixes" applied to DK that were secretly nerfs for magDK.

If Zenimax were actually listening, the game would be 100x more fun than it is now.

Zenimax isn't listening. They're reading what we're saying, but what we're saying is going in one ear and going right out the other. We aren't even telling them what to do, most of the time, merely that their changes are *** and need to be taken back to the drawing boards. And yet, they don't listen. Then the patch makes it live, and everything the community said comes true.

Zenimax didn't listen about Sloads, and it was utter cancer within PVP.

Zenimax didn't listen about mobility, and now, rather than players moving as fast as a cheetah, we move as slow as a snail, removing any semblance of fun and killing 1vX.

Zenimax didn't listen about enchants, and now they're 10x worse than Sloads ever was.

All of these things, the community pointed out on the PTS. Zenimax didn't listen, and they all came back to bite Zenimax in the ass, just as the community predicted.

kind_hero

Turelus wrote: »

@thevalar85 they do listen at times though, if they didn't listen ESO would be very different. We would also have 1 second cast times on shields right now.

They read and take in what is said, but that doesn't mean they're going to go the direction the players want every single time. As I said previously which players do you listen to of you start that kind of development.

Development by democracy? Idea that gets the list votes is the one they implement?

The 1 second cast time idea was wrong. So who came up with that made a mistake. They went back on that because it was so wrong, that it made the shield useless, no matter how much damage it blocked.

There was a lot of flaming in that huge thread but there were also good ideas and constructive feedback.

Two good solutions to the shield change could have been:
1) increase the cost of reapplying the shield (similar with streak)
2) allow only one shield active at a time

I am sure these were on the devs' table at one point or an other, but most likely they went ahead with their nerfs to encourage players to use the new sets and buy the DLC.

Problem is, the sorc did not get anything interesting or valuable in exchange for these nerfs, like the nightblade which got 2 points for HA, which is quite nice. I am not tempted to use some other sorc ability more than the old ones, I just need to compensate somehow, so it feels like your class was broken and now you are patching it up, not that you are moving to a new magicka play style.

What I do agree is that the players can not dictate to the devs how the game should be, but since the game lives from subs, the devs must listen to a point. I think the 65 pages thread was such an example where the devs should have made a compromise, more than reverting the cast time, which was, again, foolish from the beginning.

MalagenR

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

I'm playing MMOs since 2000 and have played most of the "classic" ones and many "modern era" ones.
Of all of these, the only MMO where balance has been more or less done right has been EvE Online.

They - before anyone else - gathered extensive statistics about everything and could balance their game with the only, real valid rationale: they created a gaussian of performances and balanced the game on players withing a certain sigma below and above the average.

Balancing on "top uber elites" who have 10ms ping rate and can solo hm vCR+3 is not the way to go, yet it's what many MMOs do.

The result of balancing on the top elites is that they still appear godlike anyway, while everyone else are nerfed to grub status because of "what if". An "if" that for normal players won't happen.

EVE Online did it right by a lot more factors than this. The fact that you were pigeon holed into specific roles in PVP / PVE depending on how you chose to plot your pilots skill gains. This made it so that if you chose the "Rogue" class - in this case, let's say "Interceptor" pilot is "Rogue" - then you had on specific responsibility, be able to fend off light drones, kill other ceptors, and understand how to tackle. You didn't have stupid crazy high DPS that could shred any tank, you could only hold a ship in place until your friends arrived. It forced cooperation in PVP. How many times did you have a T2 Assault Cruiser pilot friend complain about lack of solo PVP cause they got 2v1'd in their uber expensive sniper?

I used to run black ops baits on Goonies and the amount of *** hatred I got from players whose faction fitted Vaga's we popped and looted by sacrificing bait Drakes was absolutely ridiculous.

No Fantasy MMO has been able to achieve this because they want players to try to fall into the Triangle Model of Tank/DPS/Healer -

I think they need to stop trying to make it so that you can pick any class to do any role in Fantasy MMO's. Each class does a specific thing, period.

Turelus

MalagenR wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

I'm playing MMOs since 2000 and have played most of the "classic" ones and many "modern era" ones.
Of all of these, the only MMO where balance has been more or less done right has been EvE Online.

They - before anyone else - gathered extensive statistics about everything and could balance their game with the only, real valid rationale: they created a gaussian of performances and balanced the game on players withing a certain sigma below and above the average.

Balancing on "top uber elites" who have 10ms ping rate and can solo hm vCR+3 is not the way to go, yet it's what many MMOs do.

The result of balancing on the top elites is that they still appear godlike anyway, while everyone else are nerfed to grub status because of "what if". An "if" that for normal players won't happen.

EVE Online did it right by a lot more factors than this. The fact that you were pigeon holed into specific roles in PVP / PVE depending on how you chose to plot your pilots skill gains. This made it so that if you chose the "Rogue" class - in this case, let's say "Interceptor" pilot is "Rogue" - then you had on specific responsibility, be able to fend off light drones, kill other ceptors, and understand how to tackle. You didn't have stupid crazy high DPS that could shred any tank, you could only hold a ship in place until your friends arrived. It forced cooperation in PVP. How many times did you have a T2 Assault Cruiser pilot friend complain about lack of solo PVP cause they got 2v1'd in their uber expensive sniper?

I used to run black ops baits on Goonies and the amount of *** hatred I got from players whose faction fitted Vaga's we popped and looted by sacrificing bait Drakes was absolutely ridiculous.

No Fantasy MMO has been able to achieve this because they want players to try to fall into the Triangle Model of Tank/DPS/Healer -

I think they need to stop trying to make it so that you can pick any class to do any role in Fantasy MMO's. Each class does a specific thing, period.

Grrr Goons.

There are so many things from that game I wish ZOS could steal and bring over, especially in Cyrodiil. I don't think my dreams of ESO having that kind of sandbox PvP environment will ever be met though.

Vahrokh

Turelus wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

I'm playing MMOs since 2000 and have played most of the "classic" ones and many "modern era" ones.
Of all of these, the only MMO where balance has been more or less done right has been EvE Online.

They - before anyone else - gathered extensive statistics about everything and could balance their game with the only, real valid rationale: they created a gaussian of performances and balanced the game on players withing a certain sigma below and above the average.

Balancing on "top uber elites" who have 10ms ping rate and can solo hm vCR+3 is not the way to go, yet it's what many MMOs do.

The result of balancing on the top elites is that they still appear godlike anyway, while everyone else are nerfed to grub status because of "what if". An "if" that for normal players won't happen.

EVE Online did it right by a lot more factors than this. The fact that you were pigeon holed into specific roles in PVP / PVE depending on how you chose to plot your pilots skill gains. This made it so that if you chose the "Rogue" class - in this case, let's say "Interceptor" pilot is "Rogue" - then you had on specific responsibility, be able to fend off light drones, kill other ceptors, and understand how to tackle. You didn't have stupid crazy high DPS that could shred any tank, you could only hold a ship in place until your friends arrived. It forced cooperation in PVP. How many times did you have a T2 Assault Cruiser pilot friend complain about lack of solo PVP cause they got 2v1'd in their uber expensive sniper?

I used to run black ops baits on Goonies and the amount of *** hatred I got from players whose faction fitted Vaga's we popped and looted by sacrificing bait Drakes was absolutely ridiculous.

No Fantasy MMO has been able to achieve this because they want players to try to fall into the Triangle Model of Tank/DPS/Healer -

I think they need to stop trying to make it so that you can pick any class to do any role in Fantasy MMO's. Each class does a specific thing, period.

Grrr Goons.

There are so many things from that game I wish ZOS could steal and bring over, especially in Cyrodiil. I don't think my dreams of ESO having that kind of sandbox PvP environment will ever be met though.

Anyone who has EVER done low sec / null sec PvP (with a non throwaway ship) in EvE knows the feeling you get at going in for the first times. Heart pumping to 200, blood pressure up your home ceiling. Sweat covered mouse.

THAT's the feeling of the "unknown". Going in a 0.0 gate with no scout available, maybe stealthed, and find 30 ships in there, who don't see you but start probing and dropping stuff to get you...

And what about being inside a wormhole, maybe after 2-3 jumps from other whomholes and you see activity on scan...

man... no other game has ever done the same!

MalagenR

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

I'm playing MMOs since 2000 and have played most of the "classic" ones and many "modern era" ones.
Of all of these, the only MMO where balance has been more or less done right has been EvE Online.

They - before anyone else - gathered extensive statistics about everything and could balance their game with the only, real valid rationale: they created a gaussian of performances and balanced the game on players withing a certain sigma below and above the average.

Balancing on "top uber elites" who have 10ms ping rate and can solo hm vCR+3 is not the way to go, yet it's what many MMOs do.

The result of balancing on the top elites is that they still appear godlike anyway, while everyone else are nerfed to grub status because of "what if". An "if" that for normal players won't happen.

EVE Online did it right by a lot more factors than this. The fact that you were pigeon holed into specific roles in PVP / PVE depending on how you chose to plot your pilots skill gains. This made it so that if you chose the "Rogue" class - in this case, let's say "Interceptor" pilot is "Rogue" - then you had on specific responsibility, be able to fend off light drones, kill other ceptors, and understand how to tackle. You didn't have stupid crazy high DPS that could shred any tank, you could only hold a ship in place until your friends arrived. It forced cooperation in PVP. How many times did you have a T2 Assault Cruiser pilot friend complain about lack of solo PVP cause they got 2v1'd in their uber expensive sniper?

I used to run black ops baits on Goonies and the amount of *** hatred I got from players whose faction fitted Vaga's we popped and looted by sacrificing bait Drakes was absolutely ridiculous.

No Fantasy MMO has been able to achieve this because they want players to try to fall into the Triangle Model of Tank/DPS/Healer -

I think they need to stop trying to make it so that you can pick any class to do any role in Fantasy MMO's. Each class does a specific thing, period.

Grrr Goons.

There are so many things from that game I wish ZOS could steal and bring over, especially in Cyrodiil. I don't think my dreams of ESO having that kind of sandbox PvP environment will ever be met though.

Anyone who has EVER done low sec / null sec PvP (with a non throwaway ship) in EvE knows the feeling you get at going in for the first times. Heart pumping to 200, blood pressure up your home ceiling. Sweat covered mouse.

THAT's the feeling of the "unknown". Going in a 0.0 gate with no scout available, maybe stealthed, and find 30 ships in there, who don't see you but start probing and dropping stuff to get you...

And what about being inside a wormhole, maybe after 2-3 jumps from other whomholes and you see activity on scan...

man... no other game has ever done the same!

I loved baiting "non-throw away" ships

MalagenR

Well, looks like ZOS apologized for pushing the patch through without enough time. Glad they did the professional and adult thing.

Turelus

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

I'm playing MMOs since 2000 and have played most of the "classic" ones and many "modern era" ones.
Of all of these, the only MMO where balance has been more or less done right has been EvE Online.

They - before anyone else - gathered extensive statistics about everything and could balance their game with the only, real valid rationale: they created a gaussian of performances and balanced the game on players withing a certain sigma below and above the average.

Balancing on "top uber elites" who have 10ms ping rate and can solo hm vCR+3 is not the way to go, yet it's what many MMOs do.

The result of balancing on the top elites is that they still appear godlike anyway, while everyone else are nerfed to grub status because of "what if". An "if" that for normal players won't happen.

EVE Online did it right by a lot more factors than this. The fact that you were pigeon holed into specific roles in PVP / PVE depending on how you chose to plot your pilots skill gains. This made it so that if you chose the "Rogue" class - in this case, let's say "Interceptor" pilot is "Rogue" - then you had on specific responsibility, be able to fend off light drones, kill other ceptors, and understand how to tackle. You didn't have stupid crazy high DPS that could shred any tank, you could only hold a ship in place until your friends arrived. It forced cooperation in PVP. How many times did you have a T2 Assault Cruiser pilot friend complain about lack of solo PVP cause they got 2v1'd in their uber expensive sniper?

I used to run black ops baits on Goonies and the amount of *** hatred I got from players whose faction fitted Vaga's we popped and looted by sacrificing bait Drakes was absolutely ridiculous.

No Fantasy MMO has been able to achieve this because they want players to try to fall into the Triangle Model of Tank/DPS/Healer -

I think they need to stop trying to make it so that you can pick any class to do any role in Fantasy MMO's. Each class does a specific thing, period.

Grrr Goons.

There are so many things from that game I wish ZOS could steal and bring over, especially in Cyrodiil. I don't think my dreams of ESO having that kind of sandbox PvP environment will ever be met though.

Anyone who has EVER done low sec / null sec PvP (with a non throwaway ship) in EvE knows the feeling you get at going in for the first times. Heart pumping to 200, blood pressure up your home ceiling. Sweat covered mouse.

THAT's the feeling of the "unknown". Going in a 0.0 gate with no scout available, maybe stealthed, and find 30 ships in there, who don't see you but start probing and dropping stuff to get you...

And what about being inside a wormhole, maybe after 2-3 jumps from other whomholes and you see activity on scan...

man... no other game has ever done the same!

Agreed. I do enjoy ESO more than EVE these days (easier to play on a casual basis), but I miss the kind of PvP and rush you could get in EVE.
I really wish Cyrodiil could recreate that kind of sandbox PvP, but sadly fights lightning fast or just dull, there doesn't feel like there is ever the same kind of rush due to the unknown.

I was lucky enough to fly in a few (three or four) Alliance Tournaments and I can say that's the best gameplay I have ever had in any MMO.
The training, teamwork, planning and, nerves and rush I had going for that is something I've never had anywhere else.

MalagenR

Turelus wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

I'm playing MMOs since 2000 and have played most of the "classic" ones and many "modern era" ones.
Of all of these, the only MMO where balance has been more or less done right has been EvE Online.

They - before anyone else - gathered extensive statistics about everything and could balance their game with the only, real valid rationale: they created a gaussian of performances and balanced the game on players withing a certain sigma below and above the average.

Balancing on "top uber elites" who have 10ms ping rate and can solo hm vCR+3 is not the way to go, yet it's what many MMOs do.

The result of balancing on the top elites is that they still appear godlike anyway, while everyone else are nerfed to grub status because of "what if". An "if" that for normal players won't happen.

EVE Online did it right by a lot more factors than this. The fact that you were pigeon holed into specific roles in PVP / PVE depending on how you chose to plot your pilots skill gains. This made it so that if you chose the "Rogue" class - in this case, let's say "Interceptor" pilot is "Rogue" - then you had on specific responsibility, be able to fend off light drones, kill other ceptors, and understand how to tackle. You didn't have stupid crazy high DPS that could shred any tank, you could only hold a ship in place until your friends arrived. It forced cooperation in PVP. How many times did you have a T2 Assault Cruiser pilot friend complain about lack of solo PVP cause they got 2v1'd in their uber expensive sniper?

I used to run black ops baits on Goonies and the amount of *** hatred I got from players whose faction fitted Vaga's we popped and looted by sacrificing bait Drakes was absolutely ridiculous.

No Fantasy MMO has been able to achieve this because they want players to try to fall into the Triangle Model of Tank/DPS/Healer -

I think they need to stop trying to make it so that you can pick any class to do any role in Fantasy MMO's. Each class does a specific thing, period.

Grrr Goons.

There are so many things from that game I wish ZOS could steal and bring over, especially in Cyrodiil. I don't think my dreams of ESO having that kind of sandbox PvP environment will ever be met though.

Anyone who has EVER done low sec / null sec PvP (with a non throwaway ship) in EvE knows the feeling you get at going in for the first times. Heart pumping to 200, blood pressure up your home ceiling. Sweat covered mouse.

THAT's the feeling of the "unknown". Going in a 0.0 gate with no scout available, maybe stealthed, and find 30 ships in there, who don't see you but start probing and dropping stuff to get you...

And what about being inside a wormhole, maybe after 2-3 jumps from other whomholes and you see activity on scan...

man... no other game has ever done the same!

Agreed. I do enjoy ESO more than EVE these days (easier to play on a casual basis), but I miss the kind of PvP and rush you could get in EVE.
I really wish Cyrodiil could recreate that kind of sandbox PvP, but sadly fights lightning fast or just dull, there doesn't feel like there is ever the same kind of rush due to the unknown.

I was lucky enough to fly in a few (three or four) Alliance Tournaments and I can say that's the best gameplay I have ever had in any MMO.
The training, teamwork, planning and, nerves and rush I had going for that is something I've never had anywhere else.

Who'd you fly with? PL or go home.

Turelus

MalagenR wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

MalagenR wrote: »

Vahrokh wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

BalticBlues wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Letting the community direct game balance might be the best thing that ever happened, it might also turn into a horrible mess.

This patch is such a mess, I doubt that the community could have done worse. On the contrary, I am sure that renowned community members (like Alcast or Deltia) who have proven they love and understand the game to the fullest would veto many changes if they could, like Alcast did first with the cast times on shields or the OP enchants. I would love to see a kind of Community Council of renowned and elected community members with the right to submit community suggestions and the right to veto bad developer suggestions, as the developers are allowed to submit suggestions and veto bad community suggestions. The moment where both sides -developers and community- would have an equal saying in things and would we able to veto things, the need to find a common ground would make good changes more likely and bad changes less likely.

There are a lot of people who don't want to play in Alcast's version of ESO though, likely the same with Deltia.
There are already enough complaints from people how the class reps have too much influence on game design (which so far it seems they haven't).

I've played games with elected player representative and those elections are not really what you're looking for. It's all about everyone voting for "their" person. The people who are unknowns who could represent smaller areas of a games community get pushed out by the mass votes of groups of players who organise themselves.

I'm playing MMOs since 2000 and have played most of the "classic" ones and many "modern era" ones.
Of all of these, the only MMO where balance has been more or less done right has been EvE Online.

They - before anyone else - gathered extensive statistics about everything and could balance their game with the only, real valid rationale: they created a gaussian of performances and balanced the game on players withing a certain sigma below and above the average.

Balancing on "top uber elites" who have 10ms ping rate and can solo hm vCR+3 is not the way to go, yet it's what many MMOs do.

The result of balancing on the top elites is that they still appear godlike anyway, while everyone else are nerfed to grub status because of "what if". An "if" that for normal players won't happen.

EVE Online did it right by a lot more factors than this. The fact that you were pigeon holed into specific roles in PVP / PVE depending on how you chose to plot your pilots skill gains. This made it so that if you chose the "Rogue" class - in this case, let's say "Interceptor" pilot is "Rogue" - then you had on specific responsibility, be able to fend off light drones, kill other ceptors, and understand how to tackle. You didn't have stupid crazy high DPS that could shred any tank, you could only hold a ship in place until your friends arrived. It forced cooperation in PVP. How many times did you have a T2 Assault Cruiser pilot friend complain about lack of solo PVP cause they got 2v1'd in their uber expensive sniper?

I used to run black ops baits on Goonies and the amount of *** hatred I got from players whose faction fitted Vaga's we popped and looted by sacrificing bait Drakes was absolutely ridiculous.

No Fantasy MMO has been able to achieve this because they want players to try to fall into the Triangle Model of Tank/DPS/Healer -

I think they need to stop trying to make it so that you can pick any class to do any role in Fantasy MMO's. Each class does a specific thing, period.

Grrr Goons.

There are so many things from that game I wish ZOS could steal and bring over, especially in Cyrodiil. I don't think my dreams of ESO having that kind of sandbox PvP environment will ever be met though.

Anyone who has EVER done low sec / null sec PvP (with a non throwaway ship) in EvE knows the feeling you get at going in for the first times. Heart pumping to 200, blood pressure up your home ceiling. Sweat covered mouse.

THAT's the feeling of the "unknown". Going in a 0.0 gate with no scout available, maybe stealthed, and find 30 ships in there, who don't see you but start probing and dropping stuff to get you...

And what about being inside a wormhole, maybe after 2-3 jumps from other whomholes and you see activity on scan...

man... no other game has ever done the same!

Agreed. I do enjoy ESO more than EVE these days (easier to play on a casual basis), but I miss the kind of PvP and rush you could get in EVE.
I really wish Cyrodiil could recreate that kind of sandbox PvP, but sadly fights lightning fast or just dull, there doesn't feel like there is ever the same kind of rush due to the unknown.

I was lucky enough to fly in a few (three or four) Alliance Tournaments and I can say that's the best gameplay I have ever had in any MMO.
The training, teamwork, planning and, nerves and rush I had going for that is something I've never had anywhere else.

Who'd you fly with? PL or go home.

Caldari Independent Navy Reserve, old school PvP/Roleplay corp.
Alliance under Fourth District or CVA depending on dates, but Provi Bloc over all.

So erm... thanks for always dropping supers on me?

This is so going to get locked for being so off topic now.