A response on communications

Destai

furiouslog wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

I think they knocked it out of the park on this one. If anything, parts of our community need to have more empathy for the ZOS community team. These guys had to do the following this week:

1. Work insane hours monitoring and understanding the situation (possibly while still hung over from Amsterdam, hehe).
2. Deliver news to a large and angry number of players, news that will be over-scrutinized by hundreds of people.
3. Determine a way to meet internal policies and objectives while still satisfying an important player cohort's requirements for fair compensation.

That's pretty stressful, and some of the community hand-wringing going on now is not cool. I totally get that some players don't feel like they got what they really wanted, but they got a lot more than what anyone probably expected, and that's about as good as it can get when you are trying to determine a "one size fits all" solution to a problem involving an extremely diverse population.

I have deep empathy for the support staff and CMs addressing the situation here. But, sympathy is a bit more challenging. I'll always be respectful, but I'll always advocate for holding them accountable. Ultimately, they're selling a product and people expect it to work. No amount of verbiage in the TOS is going to change that expectation. No amount of "we'll do better" or "we dropped the ball, sorry" will make up for better delivery and leadership communication.

A lot of this feels like process problems and management decisions; it feels like they're rushing. Leadership needs to see that, and see how it not only impacts us, but their staff as well. They need to see how these situations keep happening and address those issues (which are quite frequent) and sympathy will be an easier lift for many fans. Otherwise, I think the hand-wringing is quite fair.

For clarity, the hand-wringing I'm referring to involved the compensation packages and the relentless and emotional complaining on all sides of the issue, not addressable problems in general.

Thanks for clarification, that was my initial understanding too. My point is, these things don't happen in a vacuum.

They made the decision, for whatever reason, to make the attractive pages a grind. It's only a matter of time before that collided with some technical issue. Every event this year had some kind of issue, so this kind of situation feels inevitable.

Combining heavily-incentivized systems and frequent issues is a recipe for blowback. I get the blowback's uncomfortable, but at a certain point, it's on them. Their decisions and processes are a huge factor here.

They did right by those impacted, but should've made the event more palatable so that justified compensation didn't feel like an injustice. Players asked for a response and/or a change here, and have yet to get anything, so this is what ZOS has to deal with now.

I want what's best for the game, including greater harmony between ZOS and their players. I just hope they've taken measures to prevent this kind of situation from happening again. Part of the prevention should be easing up on the grind.

furiouslog

Destai wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

I think they knocked it out of the park on this one. If anything, parts of our community need to have more empathy for the ZOS community team. These guys had to do the following this week:

1. Work insane hours monitoring and understanding the situation (possibly while still hung over from Amsterdam, hehe).
2. Deliver news to a large and angry number of players, news that will be over-scrutinized by hundreds of people.
3. Determine a way to meet internal policies and objectives while still satisfying an important player cohort's requirements for fair compensation.

That's pretty stressful, and some of the community hand-wringing going on now is not cool. I totally get that some players don't feel like they got what they really wanted, but they got a lot more than what anyone probably expected, and that's about as good as it can get when you are trying to determine a "one size fits all" solution to a problem involving an extremely diverse population.

I have deep empathy for the support staff and CMs addressing the situation here. But, sympathy is a bit more challenging. I'll always be respectful, but I'll always advocate for holding them accountable. Ultimately, they're selling a product and people expect it to work. No amount of verbiage in the TOS is going to change that expectation. No amount of "we'll do better" or "we dropped the ball, sorry" will make up for better delivery and leadership communication.

A lot of this feels like process problems and management decisions; it feels like they're rushing. Leadership needs to see that, and see how it not only impacts us, but their staff as well. They need to see how these situations keep happening and address those issues (which are quite frequent) and sympathy will be an easier lift for many fans. Otherwise, I think the hand-wringing is quite fair.

For clarity, the hand-wringing I'm referring to involved the compensation packages and the relentless and emotional complaining on all sides of the issue, not addressable problems in general.

Thanks for clarification, that was my initial understanding too. My point is, these things don't happen in a vacuum.

They made the decision, for whatever reason, to make the attractive pages a grind. It's only a matter of time before that collided with some technical issue. Every event this year had some kind of issue, so this kind of situation feels inevitable.

Combining heavily-incentivized systems and frequent issues is a recipe for blowback. I get the blowback's uncomfortable, but at a certain point, it's on them. Their decisions and processes are a huge factor here.

They did right by those impacted, but should've made the event more palatable so that justified compensation didn't feel like an injustice. Players asked for a response and/or a change here, and have yet to get anything, so this is what ZOS has to deal with now.

I want what's best for the game, including greater harmony between ZOS and their players. I just hope they've taken measures to prevent this kind of situation from happening again. Part of the prevention should be easing up on the grind.

I think I don't agree. Having a technical issue and the implementation of low RNG drops are mutually exclusive, and you're apparently linking them as symptoms of the same core issue. Broadly speaking, any organization can be blamed for any issue they experience as derivative of their intentions, it's not really an insightful observation when you step back to ten thousand feet.

As for the grind, I am also anti-grind. That has nothing to do with the compensation packages.

Destai

furiouslog wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

I think they knocked it out of the park on this one. If anything, parts of our community need to have more empathy for the ZOS community team. These guys had to do the following this week:

1. Work insane hours monitoring and understanding the situation (possibly while still hung over from Amsterdam, hehe).
2. Deliver news to a large and angry number of players, news that will be over-scrutinized by hundreds of people.
3. Determine a way to meet internal policies and objectives while still satisfying an important player cohort's requirements for fair compensation.

That's pretty stressful, and some of the community hand-wringing going on now is not cool. I totally get that some players don't feel like they got what they really wanted, but they got a lot more than what anyone probably expected, and that's about as good as it can get when you are trying to determine a "one size fits all" solution to a problem involving an extremely diverse population.

I have deep empathy for the support staff and CMs addressing the situation here. But, sympathy is a bit more challenging. I'll always be respectful, but I'll always advocate for holding them accountable. Ultimately, they're selling a product and people expect it to work. No amount of verbiage in the TOS is going to change that expectation. No amount of "we'll do better" or "we dropped the ball, sorry" will make up for better delivery and leadership communication.

A lot of this feels like process problems and management decisions; it feels like they're rushing. Leadership needs to see that, and see how it not only impacts us, but their staff as well. They need to see how these situations keep happening and address those issues (which are quite frequent) and sympathy will be an easier lift for many fans. Otherwise, I think the hand-wringing is quite fair.

For clarity, the hand-wringing I'm referring to involved the compensation packages and the relentless and emotional complaining on all sides of the issue, not addressable problems in general.

Thanks for clarification, that was my initial understanding too. My point is, these things don't happen in a vacuum.

They made the decision, for whatever reason, to make the attractive pages a grind. It's only a matter of time before that collided with some technical issue. Every event this year had some kind of issue, so this kind of situation feels inevitable.

Combining heavily-incentivized systems and frequent issues is a recipe for blowback. I get the blowback's uncomfortable, but at a certain point, it's on them. Their decisions and processes are a huge factor here.

They did right by those impacted, but should've made the event more palatable so that justified compensation didn't feel like an injustice. Players asked for a response and/or a change here, and have yet to get anything, so this is what ZOS has to deal with now.

I want what's best for the game, including greater harmony between ZOS and their players. I just hope they've taken measures to prevent this kind of situation from happening again. Part of the prevention should be easing up on the grind.

I think I don't agree. Having a technical issue and the implementation of low RNG drops are mutually exclusive, and you're apparently linking them as symptoms of the same core issue. Broadly speaking, any organization can be blamed for any issue they experience as derivative of their intentions, it's not really an insightful observation when you step back to ten thousand feet.

As for the grind, I am also anti-grind. That has nothing to do with the compensation packages.

We can disagree, that's totally fine. But, I think you're misunderstanding my statement, all good though. I'll clarify one last time.

There's two independent issues here:
1. There's heavily-incentivized mechanics that compel some people to play. These can lead to burnout, resentment, and jealousy.
2. There's technical issues that impair the playability of the game. This leads to frustration.

Those are not the same core issue but they are colliding in this situation. To put it plainly, if ZOS hadn't made the grind for style pages so difficult, the compensation wouldn't have been so controversial. If the compensation had included non-event items in a non-event situation, I don't believe we'd see such uproar.

All I'm saying is that ZOS needs to recognize their role in how these situations arise, and better manage the upstream issues and decisions that lead to situations happening. It's not about blame, it's about accountability and recognizing patterns on their end that lead to stressful outcomes for all parties involved. We can all be our own worst enemy at times, ZOS included. This is coming from a caring place towards them.

furiouslog

Destai wrote: »

We can disagree, that's totally fine. But, I think you're misunderstanding my statement, all good though. I'll clarify one last time.

There's two independent issues here:
1. There's heavily-incentivized mechanics that compel some people to play. These can lead to burnout, resentment, and jealousy.
2. There's technical issues that impair the playability of the game. This leads to frustration.

Those are not the same core issue but they are colliding in this situation. To put it plainly, if ZOS hadn't made the grind for style pages so difficult, the compensation wouldn't have been so controversial. If the compensation had included non-event items in a non-event situation, I don't believe we'd see such uproar.

All I'm saying is that ZOS needs to recognize their role in how these situations arise, and better manage the upstream issues and decisions that lead to situations happening. It's not about blame, it's about accountability and recognizing patterns on their end that lead to stressful outcomes for all parties involved. We can all be our own worst enemy at times, ZOS included. This is coming from a caring place towards them.

Most of the uproar from people I talked to was about the fact that the "banned" guys got 16,000 seals of endeavor. That particular attitude is unhelpful, and it was what I was specifically calling out on the "what about me" side. I am pretty confident that they would have had the same reaction whether or not the style pages were in play. But I do understand where you're coming from, thanks for the clarification.

We have gone off topic from ZOS's communications, which I still maintain have improved greatly and were well implemented in this case. The 5 style pages with low drop rates, I agree was a bad decision and not fair to a certain number of players who were going to be left out due to the nature of probabilistic distributions. I've called out ZOS on this before, specifically on farming the Medusa set (now no longer a thing), and the Maelstrom staff (still a thing but fixed by curation). I have many nerdy posts on this subject. If they have 18 million players, by design, some will not get the rare style pages just because they will fall into that part of the distribution, so some are set up for failure.

I don't know why they choose to leave some people out like that, and I would like to hear why, but I don't expect any sort of response on that, because they have always chosen not to share the rationale for those decisions, which then leads to speculation, which then leads to general negativity, yadda yadda. I'm just trying to give credit where it's due in this case.