PvPers how does this make you feel?

blktauna

The_Lex wrote: »

Anyone want to bet that they’re planning on phasing out Cyro PvP?

I've been saying this for the last two years.

edward_frigidhands

blktauna wrote: »

The_Lex wrote: »

Anyone want to bet that they’re planning on phasing out Cyro PvP?

I've been saying this for the last two years.

I doubt it.

They will probably divide it into different load screens if the server upgrades don't help.

ssewallb14_ESO

Honestly I saw this kind of thing coming when Rich began streaming regularly.

Devs are people too, they have opinions that others might not like and can't have their PR faces on 24/7. Any misstep becomes an ordeal.

There's a reason game developers don't really do this.

I do hope Rich and Terry continue to stream though, it's been really interesting and entertaining.

Olauron

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

Since I personally have no sympathy for the players, I can only applaud with approval. Developers should do what they think appropriate for the game. Players should either accept it or go away. Game as a vision of developers is more important than any player wishes or expectations.

Your comment is misplaced here.

Players are questioning quality rather than design choices.

Go look up some games where the players left.

Doesn't matter.

It does though.

If it didn't then zos would not constantly address it and state they are working on here.

You're kind of just arguing for the sake of it while missing the pretty obvious.

ZOS may repeat "we are working on it" how much ZOS wants. They may, but they don't have to. One time is enough to let players know that they are aware. Everything else is extra communication, as the result of the awareness is not the players' concern.

It actually is if they are paying for it.

Your argument here is quite silly.

Obviously the quality of the product is your concern and providing feedback in a forum where it is asked for is the right thing to do.

If the game is playable and is not subject to legal refund for being a broken game, then any bug or a fix is not a concern of the player. The developer (any developer) is not obligated to provide a time of the fix or the fix itself. If the bug is critical for the gaming experience of the player and is not critical enough to make game unplayable, then the only reasonable choice of the player is to stop playing. Asking the developer when the bug will be fixed over and over again is not something that will speed up the process even if there is a desire to fix such a bug.

There is a special subforum for reporting bugs and there is special in-game command for feedback (and reporting bugs as well). Those are appropriate ways to inform developer of the bug or to provide the opinion.

Swordancer

Just checked the game and PvP after a longer break. Maybe we'll see it fixed before 2077.

See ya next year!

kashat

CyberOnEso wrote: »

Whilst it isn't professional, or nice, it was his wife saying it, on a personal stream, who has no affiliation with the game.

I am sure everyone gets frustrated, Rich Lambert does stream very often and I haven't heard of him personally bad-mouthing anyone whilst constantly being asked about the game and his work for hours on end.

I certainly couldn't be asked questions on my job for hours on end and never slip up.

His wife does sit there and listen to him answer questions often, he has been asked that question many times and has always AFAIK, answered it respectfully saying that they have an engineering team assigned to the issue with the purpose of working on a way to improve the lag in Cyrodiil.

It was his wife 'defending' him, if you want to hear his answer to the question he does answer it often, and always in a respectful way.

Well I did not see him step in and correct her.
He smiled.

He did not make a statement to apologize for what she said, which makes me wonder what they talk about offcamera.
If she says pvp'ers can pvp somewhere else, I mean. It sounds to me like they badmouthing pvp'ers at the dinnertable.

Im not renewing my eso+ , I payed every month since launch. This was it.
I know it was not him saying this but she is also a reflection of their relationship.

VaranisArano

NagualV wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

NagualV wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

VaranisArano wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

This describes the most likely reaction, and that disappoints me.

Like, I'd really like for there to be a middle ground where the personal stream can stay personal and the official communication can be honest and step up to provide that official insight that players are turning to Rich to.

But part of that is also going to require the player community to behave themselves. I haven't forgotten that we lost a lot of communication from the Class Reps after they were savaged by the community for the Dev-driven Murkmire Nerfs, and even more so after a couple of Class Reps broke their NDAs.

While I do think a lot of the negativity about PVP is justifiable, it's also completely counterproductive to lash out at the Devs personally. That only encourages disengagement on their part, which is the opposite of the engaged, sympathetic behavior we want.

This is beautifully put, thank you for these posts. I would give you both a thousand awesomes if I could, but instead I'll give you a cupcake gif. I agree with this 100%

Ok one more thing, regarding the theme of these specific quoted comments.

A question - agreed that lashing out to devs doesnt really solve much.

What is the correct way the pvp community should reach out to devs to express their frustrations, comments about the game, performance etc?

How do you envision it, and has that already happened in the history of the game?

Since I was one of the quoted comments, here's my take on how the community in general and PVPers (of which I am one) in particular would do well to express themselves:

Be polite. Be respectful. Be reasonable. Be clear about your feedback, but also understanding that you, as an individual, are but one player.

That's worked pretty well for me, participating on the forums since Morrowind. In that time, I've had a handful of interactions with the Devs and Mods in the forums that have been pleasant and respectful even when I'm making suggestions or pointing out that they've bugged Plentiful Harvest.


Does it work?

Yes, actually. Sustained, respectful, well-thought-out feedback by a number of players has made substantial changes to ESO.

A list of the PVP-specific changes that happened due to players asking for them:

- Return of faction locked servers (and return of unlocked servers)
- Alliance Change Tokens
- separate campaigns for Imperial City
- various tests made to test things players asked ZOS to test
- no proc sets in one campaign
- Battlegrounds (like, maybe people forget that small scalers were begging ZOS for a gamemode to get away from the zergs of Cyrodiil?)

Some of those I advocated for. Some of those, I didn't. Not that it matters - I'm one person.

What they all have in common is that:
A. Enough people gave sustained, respectful, clear feedback that these were desirable directions for ESO PVP that the Devs decided it was worth doing.

B. They were doable with time and effort.


In terms of performance, we've got A down pat. The Devs know. We've told them.

What we don't have any evidence of is B. Time, yes. Effort, yes. Both have been spent to no avail.

So it's not like sustained negative feedback is going to help or somehow make the fixes doable by magic.

So why not be polite, respectful, and clear about our sustained feedback? We do far less harm that way.

I agree with you 100%, Varanis. I'm of the same school of thought.......

As I responded to the other person though, throughout the games history, numerous civil, well thought out posts/comments have been made by the pvp community. People have been courteous. Yet, look at what it took just to get a simple post from Matt Firor, today, likely a response to this whole thread.

What he posted today is exactly what many of us, for years, have been asking for. That cant be ignored. And although I concede that all by itself the "clip" in question is not as bad as people make it out to be, when taken into context, "big picture",its 100% understandable.

I almost want to argue that it was necessary, as it forced a statement from Matt Firor himself......

Some good has come out of this....

I think we were getting that info anyway. We only got it now as damage control.

Rich was dropping hints about it in his stream back in December - I know because someone brought it to the forums like "Hey, Rich says maybe they've found the culprit for PVP but it's gonna take a rearchitecture."

So I do believe Matt that they were planning on telling us eventually, unless Rich was going completely off script.


But in a way, it really illustrates for me the problems of the communications team not stepping up to provide more official updates.

I mean, here we've got the Creative Director talking about a huge PVP concern on his personal stream in December but the official Update is slow-rolled until who knows how long they've have not said anything in January.

Something's odd there. Maybe I'm expecting too much message discipline over the holidays, but it just seems to me that this mess could have been avoided by giving the update sooner after the point where Rich felt it was solid enough to talk about it on his personal stream.

spartaxoxo

AuraNebula wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

NagualV wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

VaranisArano wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

This describes the most likely reaction, and that disappoints me.

Like, I'd really like for there to be a middle ground where the personal stream can stay personal and the official communication can be honest and step up to provide that official insight that players are turning to Rich to.

But part of that is also going to require the player community to behave themselves. I haven't forgotten that we lost a lot of communication from the Class Reps after they were savaged by the community for the Dev-driven Murkmire Nerfs, and even more so after a couple of Class Reps broke their NDAs.

While I do think a lot of the negativity about PVP is justifiable, it's also completely counterproductive to lash out at the Devs personally. That only encourages disengagement on their part, which is the opposite of the engaged, sympathetic behavior we want.

This is beautifully put, thank you for these posts. I would give you both a thousand awesomes if I could, but instead I'll give you a cupcake gif. I agree with this 100%

Ok one more thing, regarding the theme of these specific quoted comments.

A question - agreed that lashing out to devs doesnt really solve much.

What is the correct way the pvp community should reach out to devs to express their frustrations, comments about the game, performance etc?

How do you envision it, and has that already happened in the history of the game?

Well one thing is I think the full context of what was said should be in the OP including who she actually is, rather than OP priming things for outrage with a clip taken out of context and sat alongside their own totally understandable and legit feelings of anger. It just causes discussion to be more inflammatory. And this kind of thing is exactly what makes people makes put up their walls.

I also think people should refrain from comments like "we paid for her house" etc.

They should also maybe keep these kinds of questions moreso towards Rich than his wife.

Just in general try to be fair and respectful.

Outside of stuff like that though, I think PvPers are already communicating the way the should be communicating. The party who's communication sucks is not the players, for the most part. It is the devs.

They should try to do more Q&As, be more active on the forums and respond to threads more than once, be giving updates and roadmaps etc.

Like the blame is 90% on zos.

No I didn't mention her name or Rich's because I did not want people shaming them personally, and that's what people did anyways. The answer to the question was not taken out of context. The question was asked and how she chose to respond is why it upset me and other people.

I love this game. I think the devs put a lot of work into the game. However, I do not think it is okay to talk about your customer base they way she did.

Also I agree with everything else you said.

You don't have to mention her name to mention she is the wife of a developer and not an employee of Zenimax.

It is also out of context because the stream was his wife's takeover stream and she was talking about a different issue when the question was asked.

"A developer's wife took over his personal stream the other day, and while she was discussing accessibility issues in video games, someone asked about her about skill delays in pvp as they felt it was also an accessibility issue. How do you feel about her reaction?"

Or something along those lines would have given context to the clip. The way it's currently framed makes it seem like this is a developer response or official stream. And that you have pages of responses that make that mistake should let you know that your communication of the context could be more clear in the opening post.

You don't need to name names, but context would go a long way.

_adhyffbjjjf12

Olauron wrote: »

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

edward_frigidhands wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

Since I personally have no sympathy for the players, I can only applaud with approval. Developers should do what they think appropriate for the game. Players should either accept it or go away. Game as a vision of developers is more important than any player wishes or expectations.

Your comment is misplaced here.

Players are questioning quality rather than design choices.

Go look up some games where the players left.

Doesn't matter.

It does though.

If it didn't then zos would not constantly address it and state they are working on here.

You're kind of just arguing for the sake of it while missing the pretty obvious.

ZOS may repeat "we are working on it" how much ZOS wants. They may, but they don't have to. One time is enough to let players know that they are aware. Everything else is extra communication, as the result of the awareness is not the players' concern.

It actually is if they are paying for it.

Your argument here is quite silly.

Obviously the quality of the product is your concern and providing feedback in a forum where it is asked for is the right thing to do.

If the game is playable and is not subject to legal refund for being a broken game, then any bug or a fix is not a concern of the player. The developer (any developer) is not obligated to provide a time of the fix or the fix itself. If the bug is critical for the gaming experience of the player and is not critical enough to make game unplayable, then the only reasonable choice of the player is to stop playing. Asking the developer when the bug will be fixed over and over again is not something that will speed up the process even if there is a desire to fix such a bug.

There is a special subforum for reporting bugs and there is special in-game command for feedback (and reporting bugs as well). Those are appropriate ways to inform developer of the bug or to provide the opinion.

lol ive been a dev for over 20 years, never seen such nonsense. great software houses seek out feedback and acknowledge and deal with issues transparently. I would also argue it is critical when PVP is unplayable in Cyrodill during any busy period (well below the market standard, and a key usp on release) and objective BG is actually not available as a result of an unasked for change. The answer is most certainly not for a paying customer to walk away from a product they paid for e.g yearly subscribers that give their money in advance.

spartaxoxo

NagualV wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

NagualV wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

VaranisArano wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

This describes the most likely reaction, and that disappoints me.

Like, I'd really like for there to be a middle ground where the personal stream can stay personal and the official communication can be honest and step up to provide that official insight that players are turning to Rich to.

But part of that is also going to require the player community to behave themselves. I haven't forgotten that we lost a lot of communication from the Class Reps after they were savaged by the community for the Dev-driven Murkmire Nerfs, and even more so after a couple of Class Reps broke their NDAs.

While I do think a lot of the negativity about PVP is justifiable, it's also completely counterproductive to lash out at the Devs personally. That only encourages disengagement on their part, which is the opposite of the engaged, sympathetic behavior we want.

This is beautifully put, thank you for these posts. I would give you both a thousand awesomes if I could, but instead I'll give you a cupcake gif. I agree with this 100%

Ok one more thing, regarding the theme of these specific quoted comments.

A question - agreed that lashing out to devs doesnt really solve much.

What is the correct way the pvp community should reach out to devs to express their frustrations, comments about the game, performance etc?

How do you envision it, and has that already happened in the history of the game?

Well one thing is I think the full context of what was said should be in the OP including who she actually is, rather than OP priming things for outrage with a clip taken out of context and sat alongside their own totally understandable and legit feelings of anger. It just causes discussion to be more inflammatory. And this kind of thing is exactly what makes people makes put up their walls.

I also think people should refrain from comments like "we paid for her house" etc.

They should also maybe keep these kinds of questions moreso towards Rich than his wife.

Just in general try to be fair and respectful.

Outside of stuff like that though, I think PvPers are already communicating the way the should be communicating. The party who's communication sucks is not the players, for the most part. It is the devs.

They should try to do more Q&As, be more active on the forums and respond to threads more than once, be giving updates and roadmaps etc.

Like the blame is 90% on zos.

Thank you, I think this is fair. Also. That 10% fault of the playerbase tends to be the ones that are not rational, aka the "toxic" ones...not representative of the majority of players.

You are right that this whole "clip" thing could have been presented much better

I ultimately think though that through the years, there HAVE been numerous attempts to present the "pvp perspective" in a wholesome, constructive way. Even though I would concede that all by itself, the whole "clip" thing is relatively "minor" when taken into context of the "big picture", these reactions are inevitable. It's a sore topic, and just like the devs are human, so is the pvp playerbase.

Absolutely. Like I said earlier. I totally understand how upset people are. I think an apology should be issued, and I am glad at the very least an official pvp update has finally arrived. Communication should not have broken down this far before that arrived and I hope they are more timely on their updates in the future.

Aldoss

As a passionate PvP player and as a small business owner who is surrounded by a passionate community of clients:

To think no one complains about their job, their clients, or their demands is extremely naive. Yet, you'd never in a million years catch me slamming the community that supports my business publicly.

I sub to Rich's stream. I opted to drop that sub the last time Terri was on and started spreading conspiracy theories about vaccines. Had that not happened, this clip would have ended my support.

It's not that I see Terri as a rep of ZOS, but Rich, regardless of whether or not he received clearance from the higher ups to operate his personal stream will always be seen as a rep of ZOS and to think that he doesn't personally benefit from that with his viewership is also naive. They go hand in hand. It would be different if he streamed any other game but the one that he creatively directs.

I know we can be demanding. I know that there are some of us that forget that adults shouldn't get so spiteful or hateful over a video game, but ZOS needs to be held to better standards.

We're done being told to wait. The year of performance was two years ago! Covid or not, there's been no real meaningful communication from any ZOS employee about what they're doing or updating us on what they're working on. They give us words with no meaning or general platitudes about how they're working on it.

All the while, they rake in money from subs and crown sales for a damaged product that they still publicly advertise as a major part of their game.

I'm disappointed by anyone who harasses Rich on his stream, but I also think this is something that deserves a public apology.

I have clients that drive me up a wall. It's therapeutic to curse their behavior in the privacy of my own self, my own family, or my own employees. If any client ever heard me, my wife, my employee, or my employee's spouse mock another client or a demographic of clients, I'd issue a public apology immediately.

If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen... Or stop serving fast food that you advertise as a 5 course gourmet meal.

spartaxoxo

VaranisArano wrote: »

NagualV wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

NagualV wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

VaranisArano wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

This describes the most likely reaction, and that disappoints me.

Like, I'd really like for there to be a middle ground where the personal stream can stay personal and the official communication can be honest and step up to provide that official insight that players are turning to Rich to.

But part of that is also going to require the player community to behave themselves. I haven't forgotten that we lost a lot of communication from the Class Reps after they were savaged by the community for the Dev-driven Murkmire Nerfs, and even more so after a couple of Class Reps broke their NDAs.

While I do think a lot of the negativity about PVP is justifiable, it's also completely counterproductive to lash out at the Devs personally. That only encourages disengagement on their part, which is the opposite of the engaged, sympathetic behavior we want.

This is beautifully put, thank you for these posts. I would give you both a thousand awesomes if I could, but instead I'll give you a cupcake gif. I agree with this 100%

Ok one more thing, regarding the theme of these specific quoted comments.

A question - agreed that lashing out to devs doesnt really solve much.

What is the correct way the pvp community should reach out to devs to express their frustrations, comments about the game, performance etc?

How do you envision it, and has that already happened in the history of the game?

Since I was one of the quoted comments, here's my take on how the community in general and PVPers (of which I am one) in particular would do well to express themselves:

Be polite. Be respectful. Be reasonable. Be clear about your feedback, but also understanding that you, as an individual, are but one player.

That's worked pretty well for me, participating on the forums since Morrowind. In that time, I've had a handful of interactions with the Devs and Mods in the forums that have been pleasant and respectful even when I'm making suggestions or pointing out that they've bugged Plentiful Harvest.


Does it work?

Yes, actually. Sustained, respectful, well-thought-out feedback by a number of players has made substantial changes to ESO.

A list of the PVP-specific changes that happened due to players asking for them:

- Return of faction locked servers (and return of unlocked servers)
- Alliance Change Tokens
- separate campaigns for Imperial City
- various tests made to test things players asked ZOS to test
- no proc sets in one campaign
- Battlegrounds (like, maybe people forget that small scalers were begging ZOS for a gamemode to get away from the zergs of Cyrodiil?)

Some of those I advocated for. Some of those, I didn't. Not that it matters - I'm one person.

What they all have in common is that:
A. Enough people gave sustained, respectful, clear feedback that these were desirable directions for ESO PVP that the Devs decided it was worth doing.

B. They were doable with time and effort.


In terms of performance, we've got A down pat. The Devs know. We've told them.

What we don't have any evidence of is B. Time, yes. Effort, yes. Both have been spent to no avail.

So it's not like sustained negative feedback is going to help or somehow make the fixes doable by magic.

So why not be polite, respectful, and clear about our sustained feedback? We do far less harm that way.

I agree with you 100%, Varanis. I'm of the same school of thought.......

As I responded to the other person though, throughout the games history, numerous civil, well thought out posts/comments have been made by the pvp community. People have been courteous. Yet, look at what it took just to get a simple post from Matt Firor, today, likely a response to this whole thread.

What he posted today is exactly what many of us, for years, have been asking for. That cant be ignored. And although I concede that all by itself the "clip" in question is not as bad as people make it out to be, when taken into context, "big picture",its 100% understandable.

I almost want to argue that it was necessary, as it forced a statement from Matt Firor himself......

Some good has come out of this....

I think we were getting that info anyway. We only got it now as damage control.

Rich was dropping hints about it in his stream back in December - I know because someone brought it to the forums like "Hey, Rich says maybe they've found the culprit for PVP but it's gonna take a rearchitecture."

So I do believe Matt that they were planning on telling us eventually, unless Rich was going completely off script.


But in a way, it really illustrates for me the problems of the communications team not stepping up to provide more official updates.

I mean, here we've got the Creative Director talking about a huge PVP concern on his personal stream in December but the official Update is slow-rolled until who knows how long they've have not said anything in January.

Something's odd there. Maybe I'm expecting too much message discipline over the holidays, but it just seems to me that this mess could have been avoided by giving the update sooner after the point where Rich felt it was solid enough to talk about it on his personal stream.

Yeah it feels weird that I brought it up on my thread about clothes before an official post was made because he talked about it a bit ago on stream. Really think they should have posted this sooner. The long delay don't make sense

Wolfpaw

A different perspective, @ZOS_RichLambert

Cyrodiil
A game mode/content that launched 2014/2015...

A game mode that has seen very little updates compared to other endgame content and systems that are necessary to keep players in-game & coming back: new PvE zones, trials, dungeons, housing, rewards, etc...PvE year-long saga content updates.

A game mode with little to no reward, "carrot on a stick": end of campaign rewards, costume, & a few other items hardly worth a mention all these years. Yearly rewards Battle Pass please.

A game mode that used to have the largest viewership of all ESO game modes on twitch.

A game mode that has taken a backseat to everything else resulting in performance problems, however all these years later has an average 40-90+ minute queue primetime...daily, & Whitestrakes Mayhem queue hours long.

Performance and attention aside, Cyrodiil game mode replay value is an accomplishment any other game dev/company could only dream for.

-From a Cyrodiil PvP player that still plays since beta, every day.
-Bought a PS5 and pays PS+ just for ESO.
-Pays for ESO+ 3/4 of the year.
-Spends money in Crown store almost monthly.
-Buys PvE updates just for PvP.
-Has never ran a trial and never will.
-Runs dungeons/arena just for PvP, never to return.
-Doesn't bother with ESO story since Greymoor.
-Doesn't care for housing

& still here PvP'n with great people. Cyrodiil is quite an achievement that deserves so much more.

Thank you.

Punches_Below_Belt

I have been a player since launch and have played PvP for chunks at a time and sporadically throughout that time. It has always been an albatross around ESO’s neck. No it was never executed perfectly, nothing ever is. Was it ever unplayable? Not that I ever noticed.

Competition, in my opinion, always brings out the worst in people. For every flaw in PVP there were a thousand toxic try-hards looking to exploit it. Badgering the developers became its own form of toxic exploiting. The number of Pvpers who want a fair fight if it means they are going to lose can be counted on one hand. There were never going to be “fair” fights in anything that bears the stamp of human imperfection.

We live in a world where even in a meaningless video game winning is more important than personal integrity or treating your fellow human beings well.

ESO has wasted so much time, money and resources on the least appreciative, most toxic and vile players in their game. Resources that could have been better spent elsewhere.

I will never understand why ESO hasn’t recognized this and ended PVP. Is it an underserved market that they think they can capitalize on? PvP doesn’t require large inventory space necessitating subscribing to ESO+. Very little in the crown store would suggest Pvpers are a reliable stream of revenues there.

I’ve enjoyed PVPing and hope it continues but it seems foolish to continue trying to please the unpleaseable. Even if ZOS created perfect PVP that everyone loved, the players would immediately set about trying to find things to exploit, ways to macro and invent cheats to turn perfection into a mess and of course blame ZOS for not having the foresight to prevent it.

Despite the adage, customers are not always right. Some customers are just way too big a drain from a cost/benefit analysis.

SilverBride

I'm not a PvPer but I do sympathize with their plight, and being made fun of and dismissed like this by someone answering questions that were most likely directed to Rich is inexcusable.

I know this is Rich's private Twitch stream and he can do what he wants, but surely he must realize that when someone directs a question to him they are not directing it to Rich the random player, but rather to Rich the Creative Director. Allowing anyone else to jump in and answer questions in this situation is very poor judgement.

OtarTheMad

spartaxoxo wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

NagualV wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

NagualV wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

VaranisArano wrote: »

etchedpixels wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

It was NOT an official stream in any capacity. Not only is entirely his personal stream with a lot of content about his personal life, the proceeeds go to animal rescue unaffiliated with ZOS. It was her personal hour to talk and she was mostly there to talk about that, accessibility in gaming, and her personal life NOT the game. The question was asked at an inappropriate time and she got annoyed and gave a totally inappropriate answer.

And as the saying goes - those without sin should cast the first stone.

I doubt any one of the people castigating him for a single carefully chosen clip of a single misjudged response haven't put their foot in it at some time.

If you really want Zenimax to communicate more this isn't the way to go about it. It's exactly why many companies produce nothing but faceless PR posts that basically say "no comment. no comment, here's something you didn't ask about we want to push" and have no developer streams, personal insights or anything else except specially staged obviously scripted "interviews".

This describes the most likely reaction, and that disappoints me.

Like, I'd really like for there to be a middle ground where the personal stream can stay personal and the official communication can be honest and step up to provide that official insight that players are turning to Rich to.

But part of that is also going to require the player community to behave themselves. I haven't forgotten that we lost a lot of communication from the Class Reps after they were savaged by the community for the Dev-driven Murkmire Nerfs, and even more so after a couple of Class Reps broke their NDAs.

While I do think a lot of the negativity about PVP is justifiable, it's also completely counterproductive to lash out at the Devs personally. That only encourages disengagement on their part, which is the opposite of the engaged, sympathetic behavior we want.

This is beautifully put, thank you for these posts. I would give you both a thousand awesomes if I could, but instead I'll give you a cupcake gif. I agree with this 100%

Ok one more thing, regarding the theme of these specific quoted comments.

A question - agreed that lashing out to devs doesnt really solve much.

What is the correct way the pvp community should reach out to devs to express their frustrations, comments about the game, performance etc?

How do you envision it, and has that already happened in the history of the game?

Since I was one of the quoted comments, here's my take on how the community in general and PVPers (of which I am one) in particular would do well to express themselves:

Be polite. Be respectful. Be reasonable. Be clear about your feedback, but also understanding that you, as an individual, are but one player.

That's worked pretty well for me, participating on the forums since Morrowind. In that time, I've had a handful of interactions with the Devs and Mods in the forums that have been pleasant and respectful even when I'm making suggestions or pointing out that they've bugged Plentiful Harvest.


Does it work?

Yes, actually. Sustained, respectful, well-thought-out feedback by a number of players has made substantial changes to ESO.

A list of the PVP-specific changes that happened due to players asking for them:

- Return of faction locked servers (and return of unlocked servers)
- Alliance Change Tokens
- separate campaigns for Imperial City
- various tests made to test things players asked ZOS to test
- no proc sets in one campaign
- Battlegrounds (like, maybe people forget that small scalers were begging ZOS for a gamemode to get away from the zergs of Cyrodiil?)

Some of those I advocated for. Some of those, I didn't. Not that it matters - I'm one person.

What they all have in common is that:
A. Enough people gave sustained, respectful, clear feedback that these were desirable directions for ESO PVP that the Devs decided it was worth doing.

B. They were doable with time and effort.


In terms of performance, we've got A down pat. The Devs know. We've told them.

What we don't have any evidence of is B. Time, yes. Effort, yes. Both have been spent to no avail.

So it's not like sustained negative feedback is going to help or somehow make the fixes doable by magic.

So why not be polite, respectful, and clear about our sustained feedback? We do far less harm that way.

I agree with you 100%, Varanis. I'm of the same school of thought.......

As I responded to the other person though, throughout the games history, numerous civil, well thought out posts/comments have been made by the pvp community. People have been courteous. Yet, look at what it took just to get a simple post from Matt Firor, today, likely a response to this whole thread.

What he posted today is exactly what many of us, for years, have been asking for. That cant be ignored. And although I concede that all by itself the "clip" in question is not as bad as people make it out to be, when taken into context, "big picture",its 100% understandable.

I almost want to argue that it was necessary, as it forced a statement from Matt Firor himself......

Some good has come out of this....

I think we were getting that info anyway. We only got it now as damage control.

Rich was dropping hints about it in his stream back in December - I know because someone brought it to the forums like "Hey, Rich says maybe they've found the culprit for PVP but it's gonna take a rearchitecture."

So I do believe Matt that they were planning on telling us eventually, unless Rich was going completely off script.


But in a way, it really illustrates for me the problems of the communications team not stepping up to provide more official updates.

I mean, here we've got the Creative Director talking about a huge PVP concern on his personal stream in December but the official Update is slow-rolled until who knows how long they've have not said anything in January.

Something's odd there. Maybe I'm expecting too much message discipline over the holidays, but it just seems to me that this mess could have been avoided by giving the update sooner after the point where Rich felt it was solid enough to talk about it on his personal stream.

Yeah it feels weird that I brought it up on my thread about clothes before an official post was made because he talked about it a bit ago on stream. Really think they should have posted this sooner. The long delay don't make sense

He's been talking about it even before December. Here is a video from the beginning of November by Real Godzilla.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=qEcXfwU3iRk

Rich's stream is fun and I hope continues but if information comes out on it then it should be relayed in an official manner as that is just his personal stream, not a ZOS one.

OtarTheMad

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm not a PvPer but I do sympathize with their plight, and being made fun of and dismissed like this by someone answering questions that were most likely directed to Rich is inexcusable.

I know this is Rich's private Twitch stream and he can do what he wants, but surely he must realize that when someone directs a question to him they are not directing it to Rich the random player, but rather to Rich the Creative Director. Allowing anyone else to jump in and answer questions in this situation is very poor judgement.

I get what you're saying but the question was asked during a segment of his stream where she takes over, everyone who watches the stream knows about it so to ask a question to Rich during that time is just a good way for it to be skipped or not answered.

Emmagoldman

At first, angry, but as a historian I would love to see the whole stream to understand the whole context. Its far to easy to use a short clip of anyone to stir emotions. Do you have a link to the whole stream?

OtarTheMad

Emmagoldman wrote: »

At first, angry, but as a historian I would love to see the whole stream to understand the whole context. Its far to easy to use a short clip of anyone to stir emotions. Do you have a link to the whole stream?

https://twitch.tv/videos/1256402903

Hawco10

There’s people in this thread who think there was nothing wrong with what happened.
Let that sink In for a moment.
Given the Zenimax culture, we can assume that there’ll be no word of any kind from a community manager, no word from the guy with the parrot. It will be crickets until this boils over and goes away.

sarahthes

Emmagoldman wrote: »

At first, angry, but as a historian I would love to see the whole stream to understand the whole context. Its far to easy to use a short clip of anyone to stir emotions. Do you have a link to the whole stream?

It's likely available on his channel. I'm not sure what date that clip is from, maybe Monday's stream? As I don't think usually streams on Tuesdays.

SilverBride

OtarTheMad wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm not a PvPer but I do sympathize with their plight, and being made fun of and dismissed like this by someone answering questions that were most likely directed to Rich is inexcusable.

I know this is Rich's private Twitch stream and he can do what he wants, but surely he must realize that when someone directs a question to him they are not directing it to Rich the random player, but rather to Rich the Creative Director. Allowing anyone else to jump in and answer questions in this situation is very poor judgement.

I get what you're saying but the question was asked during a segment of his stream where she takes over, everyone who watches the stream knows about it so to ask a question to Rich during that time is just a good way for it to be skipped or not answered.

Maybe she should have just skipped over it then instead of belittling the person asking. And it really doesn't matter if his followers are aware of her takeovers, it is still bad judgement to let her do so because of the potential for things like this to happen.

Rich is in the public spotlight and this reflects poorly on Zenimax as well.

OtarTheMad

SilverBride wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm not a PvPer but I do sympathize with their plight, and being made fun of and dismissed like this by someone answering questions that were most likely directed to Rich is inexcusable.

I know this is Rich's private Twitch stream and he can do what he wants, but surely he must realize that when someone directs a question to him they are not directing it to Rich the random player, but rather to Rich the Creative Director. Allowing anyone else to jump in and answer questions in this situation is very poor judgement.

I get what you're saying but the question was asked during a segment of his stream where she takes over, everyone who watches the stream knows about it so to ask a question to Rich during that time is just a good way for it to be skipped or not answered.

Maybe she should have just skipped over it then instead of belittling the person asking. And it really doesn't matter if his followers are aware of her takeovers, it is still bad judgement to let her do so because of the potential for things like this to happen.

Rich is in the public spotlight and this reflects poorly on Zenimax as well.

I just think some people are overreacting to her 20-second clip. Rich has been sincere, informative, calm and real about PvP issues and fixes on his stream dating all the way back to like November or so.

I see this as more on ZOS and not Rich (I know Rich is ZOS) because he has been answering the same question on PvP for months. Something official should have come out sooner than today. (Everyone should check out Matt Firor's post today btw) I get that they might not have wanted to make a post until they absolutely, positively knew the problem and had a plan to fix that problem but something should have come out sooner. I did love Matt's post and it was awesome but sometimes just little posts here and there can help.

SilverBride

OtarTheMad wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm not a PvPer but I do sympathize with their plight, and being made fun of and dismissed like this by someone answering questions that were most likely directed to Rich is inexcusable.

I know this is Rich's private Twitch stream and he can do what he wants, but surely he must realize that when someone directs a question to him they are not directing it to Rich the random player, but rather to Rich the Creative Director. Allowing anyone else to jump in and answer questions in this situation is very poor judgement.

I get what you're saying but the question was asked during a segment of his stream where she takes over, everyone who watches the stream knows about it so to ask a question to Rich during that time is just a good way for it to be skipped or not answered.

Maybe she should have just skipped over it then instead of belittling the person asking. And it really doesn't matter if his followers are aware of her takeovers, it is still bad judgement to let her do so because of the potential for things like this to happen.

Rich is in the public spotlight and this reflects poorly on Zenimax as well.

I just think some people are overreacting to her 20-second clip. Rich has been sincere, informative, calm and real about PvP issues and fixes on his stream dating all the way back to like November or so.

I see this as more on ZOS and not Rich (I know Rich is ZOS) because he has been answering the same question on PvP for months. Something official should have come out sooner than today. (Everyone should check out Matt Firor's post today btw) I get that they might not have wanted to make a post until they absolutely, positively knew the problem and had a plan to fix that problem but something should have come out sooner. I did love Matt's post and it was awesome but sometimes just little posts here and there can help.

I don't think they are overreacting. I have always had respect for Rich, but it was poor judgement to let his wife take over his streams, especially when it's well known who he is. I hope he considers stopping this practice before something even worse happens.

OtarTheMad

SilverBride wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm not a PvPer but I do sympathize with their plight, and being made fun of and dismissed like this by someone answering questions that were most likely directed to Rich is inexcusable.

I know this is Rich's private Twitch stream and he can do what he wants, but surely he must realize that when someone directs a question to him they are not directing it to Rich the random player, but rather to Rich the Creative Director. Allowing anyone else to jump in and answer questions in this situation is very poor judgement.

I get what you're saying but the question was asked during a segment of his stream where she takes over, everyone who watches the stream knows about it so to ask a question to Rich during that time is just a good way for it to be skipped or not answered.

Maybe she should have just skipped over it then instead of belittling the person asking. And it really doesn't matter if his followers are aware of her takeovers, it is still bad judgement to let her do so because of the potential for things like this to happen.

Rich is in the public spotlight and this reflects poorly on Zenimax as well.

I just think some people are overreacting to her 20-second clip. Rich has been sincere, informative, calm and real about PvP issues and fixes on his stream dating all the way back to like November or so.

I see this as more on ZOS and not Rich (I know Rich is ZOS) because he has been answering the same question on PvP for months. Something official should have come out sooner than today. (Everyone should check out Matt Firor's post today btw) I get that they might not have wanted to make a post until they absolutely, positively knew the problem and had a plan to fix that problem but something should have come out sooner. I did love Matt's post and it was awesome but sometimes just little posts here and there can help.

I don't think they are overreacting. I have always had respect for Rich, but it was poor judgement to let his wife take over his streams, especially when it's well known who he is. I hope he considers stopping this practice before something even worse happens.

And maybe some ground rules will be put down, who knows, but I fear that with some of the reactions on this it will lead to him not streaming. I honestly believe his stream, even if it's a personal one, has helped the game a massive amount more than hurt. I know it's really opened my eyes to things to the point where I stopped saying "zos doesn't care."

EDIT- Also it's not like it wasn't obvious what segment this was, the title of the stream and the fact that it was in Just Chatting area kind of gave it away.

Alucu

Hey, no hard feelings

Some members on our guild cancelled ESO +

You will now have to prove that Cyrodiil can be fixed within this year. Fair is fair

VaranisArano

Alucu wrote: »

Hey, no hard feelings

Some members on our guild cancelled ESO +

You will now have to prove that Cyrodiil can be fixed within this year. Fair is fair

Eh, I'd temper those expectations.

Remember the Groupfinder rework?

Well, I remember that it got delayed, and then it rolled out to great fanfare with the Undaunted Event...and then crashed and burned. Event halted, postponed, and the rework had to be reworked. That rework was then delayed a couple more times before it finally went Live as a success.

My expectations for the rearchitecture are pretty low. Everything takes longer than you hope and doesn't work as well as expected.

Maybe I'm just pessimistic.

Alucu

VaranisArano wrote: »

Alucu wrote: »

Hey, no hard feelings

Some members on our guild cancelled ESO +

You will now have to prove that Cyrodiil can be fixed within this year. Fair is fair

Eh, I'd temper those expectations.

Remember the Groupfinder rework?

Well, I remember that it got delayed, and then it rolled out to great fanfare with the Undaunted Event...and then crashed and burned. Event halted, postponed, and the rework had to be reworked. That rework was then delayed a couple more times before it finally went Live as a success.

My expectations for the rearchitecture are pretty low. Everything takes longer than you hope and doesn't work as well as expected.

Maybe I'm just pessimistic.

2020 was the year of performance, I'd say we tempered our expectations 2 years now!

SilverBride

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Also it's not like it wasn't obvious what segment this was, the title of the stream and the fact that it was in Just Chatting area kind of gave it away.

Just chatting would be the perfect time to ask questions. But it doesn't matter what he called it, it is Rich's stream and he represents Zenimax, private media or not, so he is accountable for what goes on and who he lets stream under his account.

milllaurie

Do you remember the quest in TESVSkyrim where you got drunk af and woke up to learn you married a hagraven? This has nothing to do with anything I just remembered a fun quest.