Why no response yet?

Elsonso

armchair wrote: »

I think I understand the OP and agree if they mean that well thought out intelligent posts in feedback threads created by the staff should be responded to regularly. This comes across as engagement interaction transparency.

It would be cool if they could just publish a once-per-week combat team update during PTS. What they are looking at, what they are changing, and what they are not, along with some information as to why. Patch day would work for that.

At best, we will get the developer comments about what they are changing in the patch notes, which is better than nothing, but not complete.

Vahrokh

chetter_hummin wrote: »

Pts feedback, or at least 99% of it can be summarize like this : I don't want change, I don't want to adapt and improve, revert all changes except my favorite class x skill.

This is not feedback. U didn't present a couple of cmx parses on pts or test the pvp damage. U just whine thinking u know without testing that everything is nerfed and game will collapse.

So yeah how can they respond when no feedback was provided.?!

This is the classic "Progressive Democrats" vs "Conservative Republicans" reaction all over again.

Just because someone does not love to see every gameplay constantly ravaged and twisted every 3 months does not mean he's "bad". It means that he wants to keep what is GOOD and change only what's bad.

ESO is getting into a frantic twirl of constant game breaking changes that just annoys people looking for some fun and relax. We don't need to read or listen 24/7 to Youtubers of forums just to know whether our gameplay and gear is going to become useless tomorrow or not.

starkerealm

Wayshuba wrote: »

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VaranisArano wrote: »

For all the histronics on the forums about "I'm unsubscribing/quitting if this goes Live", those players are a tiny portion of the playerbase which is in constant turnover all the time. Its a drop in a bucket.

Handling combat changes and "balance" is exactly what the executives have a Combat Team for. So they don't have to deal with it.

Very dangerous assumption to make. Similar situation happened over at SWTOR with the Galactic Command System in the 5.0 patch. Very heavy amount of uproar about during testing about how bad the system was, how much it was reversing five years of the game, and that it would be bad if it went live.

Well, it went live. And it resulted in a massive loss of players and ultimately cost the producer his job. Now they operate with a skeleton crew and spent two years walking back the disaster that was this system they were warned would have a big negative impact.

So don't always assume it is a small minority. Sometimes, it just might happen to be a warning sign you are about to make a huge mistake.

From what I recall, the Galactic Commendation System was serious grind inflation in the overall design. It didn't nerf players outgoing damage, it flat out locked all endgame content behind months of grinding, and put some horrific RNG on that grind, meaning you could, potentially, spend years locked out of end game simply because RNG gave you the middle finger. It meant that existing endgame groups were flat out prohibited from continuing to run the content they enjoyed.

Yeah, that was a bad idea. This is a nerf of abilities that were over-performing.

HowlKimchi

They usually respond if at all through patch notes.

Nordic__Knights

starkerealm wrote: »

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DeathStalker wrote: »

Am I over-reacting or is anyone else insulted they won't even respond to the feedback they are receiving to this PTS patch? I mean I get they can't respond to everything but what did they expect to hear after 50-63% damage nerfs? What happened to communication? What is the point of testing anything on the pts if they don't listen or even engage the players testing?

Might be because they're looking for feedback, not uninformed tantrums masquerading as feedback.

They read the boards, a lot. Doesn't mean they post. And when you get people wandering in and crying about, "well, buh, Alcast told me..." shut up. Test it yourself, and form an opinion of how it affects you. Don't just look at the numbers on the page and start screaming about how the sky is falling.

I've seen people put out videos detailed explicit videos and not even get a thank you and still it go live so to say that the feedback they're getting is X Y or Z as the reason they're not responding would be incorrect
But then again I've also seen people post doctored up tooltips and they go in Nerf the *** out of something that didn't need it

Wayshuba

starkerealm wrote: »

From what I recall, the Galactic Commendation System was serious grind inflation in the overall design. It didn't nerf players outgoing damage, it flat out locked all endgame content behind months of grinding, and put some horrific RNG on that grind, meaning you could, potentially, spend years locked out of end game simply because RNG gave you the middle finger. It meant that existing endgame groups were flat out prohibited from continuing to run the content they enjoyed.

Yeah, that was a bad idea. This is a nerf of abilities that were over-performing.

Yes it was a seriously bad grind inflation. The point being that there was a massive negative uproar about how bad the system was while on PTS and people begging them not to go live with it due to the damage it would cause the game. They went live with it and, as was foretold to them, it did cause a massive player exodus (and, as a result, also cost the game producer his job).

I don't disagree that some things need to be adjusted. What people are fed up with though it the massive swing from one patch to the next. If U23 was that DoTs were underperforming and they upped them too much an cut them back, that is one thing. However, what they are doing is cutting them back to be WORSE than they were in U22. So how could they be so underperforming one patch, and now be cut back to be below the level they deemed they were underperforming at?

What people are sick of is the wild swings from one extreme to the other. Most other MMOs you see incremental adjustments happening from patch to patch. Not these swings from extreme to extreme each patch. It is much less about the details of the adjustments and more the frustration that they really don't seem to have a clue what they are doing and, moreso, the way they are doing it is causing people to lose faith that they will ever achieve some kind of stability.

Edit: Wanted to add one thing here to this about that producer. He did an interview after he left running SWTOR. He said, in the interview, that his mistake was mis-judging the feedback that they got during the testing cycle. He claimed that he believed it was a minority of customers who felt this way and that the majority were okay with it (even though he did comment that a lot of customers who normally weren't active on the forums actually came to comment about the system this time). Turns out, where he was wrong was that is was indeed a majority who felt this way. He finally admitted that the massive drop in customer population following that patch going live was what made the company decide to "move him to other opportunities".

Nordic__Knights

Wayshuba wrote: »

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starkerealm wrote: »

From what I recall, the Galactic Commendation System was serious grind inflation in the overall design. It didn't nerf players outgoing damage, it flat out locked all endgame content behind months of grinding, and put some horrific RNG on that grind, meaning you could, potentially, spend years locked out of end game simply because RNG gave you the middle finger. It meant that existing endgame groups were flat out prohibited from continuing to run the content they enjoyed.

Yeah, that was a bad idea. This is a nerf of abilities that were over-performing.

Yes it was a seriously bad grind inflation. The point being that there was a massive negative uproar about how bad the system was while on PTS and people begging them not to go live with it due to the damage it would cause the game. They went live with it and, as was foretold to them, it did cause a massive player exodus (and, as a result, also cost the game producer his job).

I don't disagree that some things need to be adjusted. What people are fed up with though it the massive swing from one patch to the next. If U23 was that DoTs were underperforming and they upped them too much an cut them back, that is one thing. However, what they are doing is cutting them back to be WORSE than they were in U22. So how could they be so underperforming one patch, and now be cut back to be below the level they deemed they were underperforming at?

What people are sick of is the wild swings from one extreme to the other. Most other MMOs you see incremental adjustments happening from patch to patch. Not these swings from extreme to extreme each patch. It is much less about the details of the adjustments and more the frustration that they really don't seem to have a clue what they are doing and, moreso, the way they are doing it is causing people to lose faith that they will ever achieve some kind of stability.

I for one I am one of those people 600k every 3 months to maintenance 16 characters is getting way out of hand not even talking about learning to play them each patch to be effective it's just a waste of time to learn new rotations and new setups every 3 months just for them to be thrown in the dirt again

Wayshuba

lordrichter wrote: »

ZOS knows that the work they are doing is the right thing to do. They have to do this work because they probably believe that it will make the combat better and the game easier to maintain going forward. If they are going to come up with new standards for the combat and gear in the game, there is going to be change. Some of that change is going to be minor, some of it large, and a lot of it unpopular with the current players. Hopefully, they will be able to pull it off and, while the game may be different, it will be right.

ZOS knows that the forum is going to have a toddler meltdown. The forum always has a toddler meltdown. It is predictable and expected any time there is change. Or, no change.

I can't tell if you are being serious or sarcastic. But if you are serious this statement couldn't be further from the truth.

When you up DoTs once patch then nerf them back to be worse then they were when you upped them - it doesn't take much to realize they haven't the foggiest clue of what they are doing. What is doubly frustrating with this coming patch, is because of that massive swing, no one even knows what they are shooting for for targets (in fact, I don't think they even know what they are shooting for).

Please tell me in what world someone thinks the patch before that DoTs needed to perform better and then the very next patch they nerf them worse than the previous patch, that this shows a team that doesn't know what they are doing.

Furthermore, as for the "forum" meltdowns. You can tell it is much, much different this time. Most negative feedback with other patches comes in small doses with a lot of different things being discussed negatively. This time there seems to be a very broad consensus of negativity around one thing - people are fed up with the wild swings that reset the meta from patch to patch every three months.

Elsonso

Wayshuba wrote: »

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lordrichter wrote: »

ZOS knows that the work they are doing is the right thing to do. They have to do this work because they probably believe that it will make the combat better and the game easier to maintain going forward. If they are going to come up with new standards for the combat and gear in the game, there is going to be change. Some of that change is going to be minor, some of it large, and a lot of it unpopular with the current players. Hopefully, they will be able to pull it off and, while the game may be different, it will be right.

ZOS knows that the forum is going to have a toddler meltdown. The forum always has a toddler meltdown. It is predictable and expected any time there is change. Or, no change.

I can't tell if you are being serious or sarcastic. But if you are serious this statement couldn't be further from the truth.

No. I am absolutely serious.

People use the back and forth on DoTs as some sort of example that ZOS is lost, failing totally to understand that ZOS works iteratively. That much is plain as day. They have an overall goal, but they are not wedded to a particular goal. If something doesn't work as they want, they are obviously not afraid to try a different approach.

Additionally, since they are not doing everything at once, we are seeing these iterations. Work that was done two iterations ago might be revised in the current iteration, as decisions made this iteration impact those made in the past.

I can't say that this is the least stressful (to the players) way to do it, and this makes the players beta testers on Live servers, but it also means we don't have to wait 2 years for them to roll monolithic changes, like you might see in other games.

Furthermore, as for the "forum" meltdowns. You can tell it is much, much different this time. Most negative feedback with other patches comes in small doses with a lot of different things being discussed negatively. This time there seems to be a very broad consensus of negativity around one thing - people are fed up with the wild swings that reset the meta from patch to patch every three months.

Different this time? Not really. This isn't even the worst of them. People get caught up in the emotion of the cause, and that makes it seem special and important. I don't keep metrics. ZOS probably keeps tabs on this. To me, this all seems pretty average.

Revokus

starkerealm wrote: »

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Wayshuba wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

For all the histronics on the forums about "I'm unsubscribing/quitting if this goes Live", those players are a tiny portion of the playerbase which is in constant turnover all the time. Its a drop in a bucket.

Handling combat changes and "balance" is exactly what the executives have a Combat Team for. So they don't have to deal with it.

Very dangerous assumption to make. Similar situation happened over at SWTOR with the Galactic Command System in the 5.0 patch. Very heavy amount of uproar about during testing about how bad the system was, how much it was reversing five years of the game, and that it would be bad if it went live.

Well, it went live. And it resulted in a massive loss of players and ultimately cost the producer his job. Now they operate with a skeleton crew and spent two years walking back the disaster that was this system they were warned would have a big negative impact.

So don't always assume it is a small minority. Sometimes, it just might happen to be a warning sign you are about to make a huge mistake.

From what I recall, the Galactic Commendation System was serious grind inflation in the overall design. It didn't nerf players outgoing damage, it flat out locked all endgame content behind months of grinding, and put some horrific RNG on that grind, meaning you could, potentially, spend years locked out of end game simply because RNG gave you the middle finger. It meant that existing endgame groups were flat out prohibited from continuing to run the content they enjoyed.

Yeah, that was a bad idea. This is a nerf of abilities that were over-performing.

SWTOR flopped way before that when it was full of bugs worse than ESO with lack of content past lvl 50. They never recovered from this unlike ESO. Also they copied WoW combat system abilities for abilities.

I was there at launch and SWTOR was one of the biggest disappointment in my entire life LOL. Waited for 5 years for the next Star Wars MMO. I wish they would make a Star Wars MMORPG again with ESO's combat system but as long as it's with EA we are better off. They pushed the devs to release SWTOR when it was not ready and they do this with all of their games.

But yeah SWTOR was a skeleton crew way before Galactic Commands.

The only difference is ESO got lucky since Zenimax probably gave the devs more flexibility and less employees lay offs compared to SWTOR to repair and keep the game running unlike EA. We can probably thank Zenimax being a private company for that.

Ozby

Bad feedback is just missed opportunities, and I'm sure the policy is duly noted and quickly forgotten lol! Just kidding, they of course read as much of this as they can but at the end of the day if they don't want to implement something they wont and of course it has to fit their vision. Responses are normally done in patch notes as many have already said here.

Elsonso

Ozby wrote: »

Bad feedback is just missed opportunities, and I'm sure the policy is duly noted and quickly forgotten lol! Just kidding, they of course read as much of this as they can but at the end of the day if they don't want to implement something they wont and of course it has to fit their vision. Responses are normally done in patch notes as many have already said here.

To add... No matter how "expert" the players are, they are not part of the development team. Players have opinions, but are not the people making the decisions. As such, ZOS can share whatever they want, but they are not obligated to do so. Even if we want them to share more, because sharing more would help the forum and streamer experts understand.

starkerealm

lordrichter wrote: »

No. I am absolutely serious.

You're also, absolutely right.

I say this as someone who loves ESO, but the combat has been an idosyncratic mess. Kyle and I spent, probably, eight hours on the podcast going over weird behaviors, odd interactions, stuff that doesn't make any sense outside of context for ESO. A lot of these changes have been streamlining things that we talked about. I still remember when I had to sit there and go through the full explanation for how bleed damage bypassed resistances, and why that was such a huge deal in picking your skills. So, when ZOS phased that out with Scalebreaker, I was thrilled. I no longer had to sit down and explain that, "no, there's a completely unique set of rules for this. It is now it's own thing.

The only change I'll take issue with is Bosmer losing their stealth passive. That still feels like a thematic mistake. Especially since their detection passive feels so useless.

On the whole, these changes are building towards something better and cleaning up a lot of weirdness baked into the game.

starkerealm

Revokus wrote: »

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starkerealm wrote: »

Wayshuba wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

For all the histronics on the forums about "I'm unsubscribing/quitting if this goes Live", those players are a tiny portion of the playerbase which is in constant turnover all the time. Its a drop in a bucket.

Handling combat changes and "balance" is exactly what the executives have a Combat Team for. So they don't have to deal with it.

Very dangerous assumption to make. Similar situation happened over at SWTOR with the Galactic Command System in the 5.0 patch. Very heavy amount of uproar about during testing about how bad the system was, how much it was reversing five years of the game, and that it would be bad if it went live.

Well, it went live. And it resulted in a massive loss of players and ultimately cost the producer his job. Now they operate with a skeleton crew and spent two years walking back the disaster that was this system they were warned would have a big negative impact.

So don't always assume it is a small minority. Sometimes, it just might happen to be a warning sign you are about to make a huge mistake.

From what I recall, the Galactic Commendation System was serious grind inflation in the overall design. It didn't nerf players outgoing damage, it flat out locked all endgame content behind months of grinding, and put some horrific RNG on that grind, meaning you could, potentially, spend years locked out of end game simply because RNG gave you the middle finger. It meant that existing endgame groups were flat out prohibited from continuing to run the content they enjoyed.

Yeah, that was a bad idea. This is a nerf of abilities that were over-performing.

SWTOR flopped way before that when it was full of bugs worse than ESO with lack of content past lvl 50. They never recovered from this unlike ESO. Also they copied WoW combat system abilities for abilities.

I was there at launch and SWTOR was one of the biggest disappointment in my entire life LOL. Waited for 5 years for the next Star Wars MMO. I wish they would make a Star Wars MMORPG again with ESO's combat system but as long as it's with EA we are better off. They pushed the devs to release SWTOR when it was not ready and they do this with all of their games.

But yeah SWTOR was a skeleton crew way before Galactic Commands.

The only difference is ESO got lucky since Zenimax probably gave the devs more flexibility and less employees lay offs compared to SWTOR to repair and keep the game running unlike EA. We can probably thank Zenimax being a private company for that.

Probably can thank Zenimax's goals, over EA's. Remember, at launch TOR was the fastest selling MMO of all time, and failing to meet sales expectations. EA wanted TOR to be at least as popular as peak WoW overnight, and when that didn't happen, they cut staff and threw the game under the bus.

It was never a shareholder issue, it was a management problem.

As far as I can tell, Zenimax never expected ESO to be the most popular MMO in the world the instant it released, and they were committed to the idea that the game would be around for years, (something else that EA seems to have issues understanding when it comes to MMOs, and even live service titles.)