Input Seldom Followed

NoSoup

I think if the PTS was more widely used then feedback would probably be higher. I know from the times that I've logged into the PTS the population is very low, very few people commenting in the forum section have actually been onto the PTS so their feedback is far more theory than practical observation.

Ringod123

NoSoup wrote: »

I think if the PTS was more widely used then feedback would probably be higher. I know from the times that I've logged into the PTS the population is very low, very few people commenting in the forum section have actually been onto the PTS so their feedback is far more theory than practical observation.

Population in the PTS became low after years of ignored feedback and many people saw that the PTS was more of a "going through the motions" type of deal rather than a literal "lets get player feedback to improve what we have". It's a catch 22.

Firstmep

sabresandiego_ESO wrote: »

Game design isn’t a democracy. They don’t look at what the masses “think” and then just do it. Believe it or not, the game designers actually understand the game far better than the vast majority of the player base. The devs consider all input, make tweaks, and adjust in future patches when they miss the mark. But they don’t simply bend to the whims and desires of the masses. Just because they didn’t make specific changes doesn’t mean they aren’t reading all input

They have many “things” on their radar and the game is constantly evolving

You are not wrong, but it's also wierd to have all these feedback threads then.
What is the point of gathering all the feedback on the pts, if they want to see how their changes are implemented in the live environment.

Shantu

Business as usual around here. Use the PTS to test things for yourself. Testing to provide dev feedback is a waste of time.

Now granted, a lot of feedback tends to be complaints about personal preferences. I can understand why this doesn't garner much priority. But the last PTS cycle we spent the last 3 weeks saying light attack weaving was broken for Magicka. We even reported easy steps to reproduced the issues. 3 weeks of this with no response or even acknowledgement. And guess what? Markarth was released with light attack weaving broken for Mag toons. As a result, any parsing or end game content was nigh impossible for anyone running Mag for another 3 weeks it took to fix the issue.

That pretty much tells you all you need to know.

preevious

And that's the PTS problem in a nutshell.

A lot of people here give a lot of different "constructive feedback" and considers that if their whims are not satisfied, then, they are "ignored".

Thruth is : they read your feedback, but they might consider it irrelevant.
Of course, players will complain if damage goes down. Even if it's necessary (I don't say it is, I'm just making a point).

Players opinions on systems are not fair, ever. Everyone preach his own chapel, and want the best for their playstyles.
Balancing teams are doing their best, and it's a whole lot more difficult than what most people think.

Jodynn

I get frustrated when a lot of things could be more fun or cool but what you end up with are sets like Ashen Grip and Ysgramors Birthright, or honestly even support sets like Z'ens that you reward others for using but not yourself.

Thrassians were great but gutted and annoying as hell to use now, it's fun if max stacks in PvP, risk but you have reward, hit real hard, but killing 50 things every time you die (zerg always) or accidentally sneak is annoying and NOT fun.

Don't even get me started about the fatal *** with blood for blood.. Only time magDK could sustain other than the asylum staff bug.

I have a lot of other complaints.. but most of my problem is stuff like that; Had a chance to make something amazing and truly fun but you end up with something gimmicky or just bad.

RedMuse

Gilvoth wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I can understand that a lot of opinions on balance and change suggestions are ignored. This game would be terrible if every player idea was implemented.

this ^ (above comment) is the correct Answer.
even though you, or a group of people, or even the entire forum viewers and posters think something "should" be implemented or done a certain way, it might destroy a game or even might not be possible for many reasons, the end product comes down to what the developers agree on.
for example:
the devs were working on making a 2 seated mount, that idea was changed and did not happen, it does not mean we did something wrong nor that the idea was bad or stupid. it just means the developers decided it was not good for the game. and i agree with them, we all should, its their game, and they are directing it in the way it should go to keep it running smooth and good.

@Gilvoth
The devs "decided" it wasn't a "good idea" with the two-seater because you literally got perma banned if you crashed while mounted. It was also a bug discovered and reported by players, idek what your point here is? And while I don't share this forum's generally incredibly negative attitude towards the devs, your version of deference and lack of critical thinking is not something I aspire to either.

QuebraRegra

sabresandiego_ESO wrote: »

Game design isn’t a democracy. They don’t look at what the masses “think” and then just do it. Believe it or not, the game designers actually understand the game far better than the vast majority of the player base. The devs consider all input, make tweaks, and adjust in future patches when they miss the mark. But they don’t simply bend to the whims and desires of the masses. Just because they didn’t make specific changes doesn’t mean they aren’t reading all input

They have many “things” on their radar and the game is constantly evolving

oh I'm sure they have a "vision"... That said they FAIL, when they fail to openly discussing their changes, and have a history of not re-considering even obvious bad decisions. We have a lack of dialogue that might perhaps bridge the gap between the groveling peasantry player base, and our on-high development lordlings?

My point is that communication is a failure.

NoSoup

Ringod123 wrote: »

NoSoup wrote: »

I think if the PTS was more widely used then feedback would probably be higher. I know from the times that I've logged into the PTS the population is very low, very few people commenting in the forum section have actually been onto the PTS so their feedback is far more theory than practical observation.

Population in the PTS became low after years of ignored feedback and many people saw that the PTS was more of a "going through the motions" type of deal rather than a literal "lets get player feedback to improve what we have". It's a catch 22.

Been here since Beta and can't say the PTS has ever really been full. The only exception would be when Imperial City first came out, that cycle there were a lot of people in it.

Seems strange that you complain about being put behind the curve again now that you're finally at 810cp but in other threads talk like you've been here since day one.....

Starlock

NoSoup wrote: »

I think if the PTS was more widely used then feedback would probably be higher. I know from the times that I've logged into the PTS the population is very low, very few people commenting in the forum section have actually been onto the PTS so their feedback is far more theory than practical observation.

Some of us would probably PTS if we were allowed to, but they don't make it available to console. All some of us can do is speculate based on reading things and thinking about how it might impact a player like us. We can't try to break things to report bugs or anything from systems we don't have access to.

xaraan

gariondavey wrote: »

Hi Everyone,

New to posting (but not reading) the forums. Just want to express my frustration at the tons of input the last few weeks for the PTS notes that went almost completely ignored. I don't understand why so many well thought out comments, threads, and feedback can't seem to change things.

Please let me know if you were disappointed in the PTS notes the last 2 weeks.

Yea, that's the way things have always been.

ZoS seems to avoid the most obvious solutions to problems and try and come up with some more complicated way to solve a problem that ends up not helping. Like the armor changes. There have been a ton of good suggestions on how to better balance it, but they are sticking to their guns and it's looking like it will be a mess.

They also don't have enough of a team I guess to actually make changes fast enough. We've had one actual change to the way they are doing the CP during PTS and the other two patches were fluff and fixes to a handful of bugs. So I'm guessing they just don't have the ability to actually use the testing for true testing. So they just make sure something isn't too broken, roll it to live and then we beta test it live for months while they decide if it's worth fixing.

Rkindaleft

Not only is input generally ignored, (I've gotten used to it, personally) I also feel that they've pushed out too many major changes at the same time. The CP rework should have been pushed out before or after the armour changes, at least. You can also argue that the immediate jump to 3600 CP even though you might only need ~1500 to be at good performance was quite a large increase right away, if you consider that when CP was increased in cycles you would only need an additional 30 CP every patch.

Armour changes are kind of a mess balance wise as well, and plenty of people have posted at least decent solutions to the problem but it still has not been responded to.

Ratzkifal

BlueRaven wrote: »

Gilvoth wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

I can understand that a lot of opinions on balance and change suggestions are ignored. This game would be terrible if every player idea was implemented.

this ^ (above comment) is the correct Answer.
even though you, or a group of people, or even the entire forum viewers and posters think something "should" be implemented or done a certain way, it might destroy a game or even might not be possible for many reasons, the end product comes down to what the developers agree on.
for example:
the devs were working on making a 2 seated mount, that idea was changed and did not happen, it does not mean we did something wrong nor that the idea was bad or stupid. it just means the developers decided it was not good for the game. and i agree with them, we all should, its their game, and they are directing it in the way it should go to keep it running smooth and good.

Then what is the point of the pts forums?

No, it’s not a democracy. But it is a business. And at some point they need to start listening and understanding what their customers want.

There was a time not too long ago that these forums were humming. The forums had such fast turn over that new posts could disappear to the next page quite quickly.
And now it’s easy to see there is less and less activity here. The pure pointlessness of these forums are taking its toll.

They don't need to listen to anything as long as people still buy their product. This only becomes a democracy if customers actually start to vote with their wallet, but most people are just so very willing to happily buy another 200 crown crates regardless of whether ZOS listened to good feedback or not.

The fact that we have not seen any proper parse data and a nice ranking of all the races after the changes shows that we've either lost all the players good enough, smart enough and willing to both pull that high-end damage on a dummy AND analyse the data properly or that ZOS broke the dummies so much that such parses are impossible and nobody actually knows how good anything is because testing just couldn't be done. Either way it doesn't sound good.

codierussell

There are a few reasons why you don't see the majority of the feedback on the forums be commented on by ZOS.

First: I would say 90% of people complaining about things on the PTS section of the forums don't even download the PTS, they read the patch notes and complain about something without knowing a thing about the change (just look at all the threads about damage being reduced).

Second: The majority of the feedback that is addressed is through the in came /feedback option on the PTS. This is the primary feedback source ZOS will use as it is more in depth of what they can explore such as time it happened and where it happened among other things. This also helps remove any chance of what is explained in the first reason happening, after all I don't want them to change something because a bunch of people who aren't testing are complaining about something they know nothing about.

Third: Their is only so much they can change and have time to change. Obviously if they had a magic wand to waive and fix these issues they would. The simple answer is they have to prioritise what is important to look at, such as game breaking bugs over something that the community wants to see them do. The resources involved also becomes a factor, fixing bugs can be largely time consuming for those of you that have never programmed in your life. Although it may seem like an issue to fix issue, it could take a team of people days to figure out what is causing it and figure out how to implement a fix.

Fourth: Maybe a lot of feedback they are getting is not the way they want to take the game. For example, everyone is complaining about DPS dropping this patch which honestly there isn't even that much of a change. ZOS has been very vocal about how the ceiling is way too high right now and the damage needs to be pulled down. This basically renders every forum post complaining about DPS going down irrelevant because that has always been a goal.

At the end of the day the PTS forums, and the forums in general, have been a overrun by people complaining for years. Instead of complaining about everything that is done players need to download and jump on the PTS to actually test and submit useful feedback. At this point I'm not surprised they don't listen to anything on the forums, seeing post after post about how Godslayer is going to be impossible this patch (that post happens pretty much every patch now) from people who will never be capable of doing Godslayer on any patch is extremely counterproductive and a waste of everyones time.

#rantover

gariondavey

thank you @codierussell for your thoughts

Kittytravel

A lot of it does get ignored but also with good reason. Arguments for different things go back and fourth as new people join the thread and input ideas/conceptions that have already been discussed and left on the other 23 pages in the thread.

I do wish that instead of an open-forum system for discussing ideas and such that they instead would allow a "Ask Us" thread that limits the character limit and post limit. To expose the post to more likely getting answered you would just simply vote it up with the already existing Insightful/Agree/Awesome.

This would be both a way to allow devs to only have to deal with answering a few questions at a time and giving a bit of transparency back to the community. There are a lot of ideas on the board that players alone can argue pros/cons all day long about relatively easily. As those questions get answered by the devs they get edited into the original post and then once the patch goes live they lock it and archive it; it's no longer open for discussion.

The most notable instance I can think of is the (rather late) response that was given in the housing section. They addressed the issues with the Furniture Limit in a very concise and clear manner and the housing community (mostly) accepted that response as a no with reasons given to us that while we may not agree with the reasoning was a solid answer from ZOS's end. In most cases I understand devs are scared to sit down and argue with their playerbase but that's generally not what has to happen; a simple 'no' with a explanation of why you want to take something in X direction would settle down the thoughts of a majority of the players. We respect the fact that this is not our game; but we also respect that we would like to have some kind of verifiable input into the game we've come to enjoy, love, spend time in, or has become our past time.

codierussell

Kittytravel wrote: »

A lot of it does get ignored but also with good reason. Arguments for different things go back and fourth as new people join the thread and input ideas/conceptions that have already been discussed and left on the other 23 pages in the thread.

I do wish that instead of an open-forum system for discussing ideas and such that they instead would allow a "Ask Us" thread that limits the character limit and post limit. To expose the post to more likely getting answered you would just simply vote it up with the already existing Insightful/Agree/Awesome.

This would be both a way to allow devs to only have to deal with answering a few questions at a time and giving a bit of transparency back to the community. There are a lot of ideas on the board that players alone can argue pros/cons all day long about relatively easily. As those questions get answered by the devs they get edited into the original post and then once the patch goes live they lock it and archive it; it's no longer open for discussion.

The most notable instance I can think of is the (rather late) response that was given in the housing section. They addressed the issues with the Furniture Limit in a very concise and clear manner and the housing community (mostly) accepted that response as a no with reasons given to us that while we may not agree with the reasoning was a solid answer from ZOS's end. In most cases I understand devs are scared to sit down and argue with their playerbase but that's generally not what has to happen; a simple 'no' with a explanation of why you want to take something in X direction would settle down the thoughts of a majority of the players. We respect the fact that this is not our game; but we also respect that we would like to have some kind of verifiable input into the game we've come to enjoy, love, spend time in, or has become our past time.

I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I think it would just lead to more of the same. I really think that the majority of what the player base wants ZOS would love to implement, they just don't have the resources to do it. Console players have been longing for something like dressing room, which ZOS has said in the past they have been looking into adding it to the base game, but really the amount of people that really want it doesn't justify the time do implement something like this. Honestly, I think that would be their answer to 90% of it.