Developer Public Relations

Jordan.nick11b14_ESO

washbern wrote: »

No one in their right mind would ever go to the forums and try to talk to the masses. As much as I dislike this patch thus far, I think that their communication about it is reasonably acceptable for now.
They told us why they think the changes are good them when we were not happy they told us when to expect updates.
To come on the forums and try to make peace is a rather suicidal maneuver. Everyone will never be happy and to open one self to public outrage is not something that anyone wants.
I am sitting with my fingers crossed that they indeed look at the ample feedback and test results we provided, got their heads out of the sand and understood how bad the proposed changes were. Next Monday we will find out.

I was going to just let this thread rest since I said most of what I wanted when I created it, but having read this comment I felt like adding a bit more. I'm certainly not advocating for a professional apologist to come onto the forums with the stated goal of "[making] peace."

Still, I'd love to see a new face work to bridge the growing gap between developers and players. Something isn't clicking like it should. Players like myself are feeling a bit alienated and I'd like to see that change.

I'd like to know, why are these very unpopular updates being rolled out in the first place? You seem to be better informed that I am...where are they posting their long-term vision, goals, and rationale? Twitter? I mean, I'm not looking to knock the developers or anything but it seems like they've identified the threshold for bare minimum engagement are are toeing that line with great precision.

I remember when DAOC was in it's heyday how nice it was to have a weekly "Camelot Herald" postings where the dev team, mainly Sanya, would post relevant news and talk to the community about goals, initiatives, and projects while highlighting player vs player activities and interesting things going on in the game. ESO sorely misses that kind of developer / player interactions. Where's the engagement and light-hearted banter and fun?

Jaraal

Jordan.nick11b14_ESO wrote: »

I remember when DAOC was in it's heyday how nice it was to have a weekly "Camelot Herald" postings where the dev team, mainly Sanya, would post relevant news and talk to the community about goals, initiatives, and projects while highlighting player vs player activities and interesting things going on in the game. ESO sorely misses that kind of developer / player interactions. Where's the engagement and light-hearted banter and fun?

That’s an interesting point. The director of DAOC is also the director of ESO.

What changed? What has the current development team done to make players so angry that they avoid interacting with us whenever possible? What did the DAOC team do differently that facilitated the positive interaction that you describe?

Elsonso

.

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

I just miss the bi-weekly ESO live with a member of the dev team as a guest.
Even if they couldn't always talk about something new or what they were working on rn, it still brought the studio and the community closer together. These days you'd be forgiven for getting the impression that the dev team actively avoids their players.

I miss those too!
And I'll say it. I miss Paul Sage and Nick Konkle.
How Rich can ask us to trust them after AWA is beyond me.

Don't forget about perfected Maelstrom weapons...

Marto

washbern wrote: »

No one in their right mind would ever go to the forums and try to talk to the masses. As much as I dislike this patch thus far, I think that their communication about it is reasonably acceptable for now.
They told us why they think the changes are good them when we were not happy they told us when to expect updates.
To come on the forums and try to make peace is a rather suicidal maneuver. Everyone will never be happy and to open one self to public outrage is not something that anyone wants.
I am sitting with my fingers crossed that they indeed look at the ample feedback and test results we provided, got their heads out of the sand and understood how bad the proposed changes were. Next Monday we will find out.

This right here.

I've seen the amount of harassment, toxicity, and vitriol that the forums community has sent the devs after any comment they post. Like multiple pages of ageist comments towards Matt Firor.

I too want the devs to be more active and communicate more. But I'm pretty sure every interaction will boil down to

Player: You should do X instead of Y.
Dev: We believe Y is better than X
Player: [One reason why X is better]
Dev: You're right, but [a dozen reasons why Y is better]
Player: That's stupid. You're stupid. Why are you catering to those that want Y?? You're so out of touch with the community.
Dev: Because we brainstormed it, developed it, playtested it internally, did a market research, crunched the numbers, and compared how Y works when combined with the [2023 Chapter Feature that we can't talk about yet]. You've been discussing this for a week, we've been discussing it internally for two years.
Player: Wow this is how you talk to a paying customer?

Game Developers have a different perspective than your average gamer. ZOS is more concerned with turning ESO into a game they believe is better, while veteran players want the existing game to cater to them and only them, regardless of whether it's good design or not.

The game ZOS is trying to make is not the game the veteran ESO forums community wants. ZOS wants a better game, the ESO forums don't want a better game.

Because of this, ZOS devs don't see a point in arguing with forum users, knowing very well that they are going to disagree on everything.

alanmatillab16_ESO

Marto wrote: »

I too want the devs to be more active and communicate more. But I'm pretty sure every interaction will boil down to

Player: You should do X instead of Y.
Dev: We believe Y is better than X
Player: [One reason why X is better]
Dev: You're right, but [a dozen reasons why Y is better]
Player: That's stupid. You're stupid. Why are you catering to those that want Y?? You're so out of touch with the community.
Dev: Because we brainstormed it, developed it, playtested it internally, did a market research, crunched the numbers, and compared how Y works when combined with the [2023 Chapter Feature that we can't talk about yet]. You've been discussing this for a week, we've been discussing it internally for two years.
Player: Wow this is how you talk to a paying customer?

Game Developers have a different perspective than your average gamer. ZOS is more concerned with turning ESO into a game they believe is better, while veteran players want the existing game to cater to them and only them, regardless of whether it's good design or not.

The game ZOS is trying to make is not the game the veteran ESO forums community wants. ZOS wants a better game, the ESO forums don't want a better game.

Because of this, ZOS devs don't see a point in arguing with forum users, knowing very well that they are going to disagree on everything.

Don't forget:

Player:You won't do what I want! You don't listen to your community!

ADarklore

First off, I think many times turnover can be GOOD for a long-term project. Many times the creators of something have a vision, and many times they stay stuck to that vision regardless of the clear indicator that it's failing... DCUO is a prime example of that. Unwilling to change from their original "MMO=group" mentality, they saw the population plunge from thousands to just a few hundred left. Which is where I give ESO credit for realizing early on that the MMO demographic changed and it was actually mostly SOLO-centric players who were fueling MMO population increase. So they changed ESO to cater to the new demographic and it thrived... FFXIV did the same thing and now they're the #1 most populated MMO, with ESO being about #4.

[snip] There is no need to fix what isn't broken, and clearly that's what they're doing... just so they can spend months trying to fix it all over again; history repeating itself. When will MMOs learn to just 'leave well enough alone' and add content vs feeling a need to 'shake things up'?!? In reality, we don't want things 'shaken up' we just want new content... and with High Isle, we really barely got that.

[Edited for Bashing]

JKorr

Jordan.nick11b14_ESO wrote: »

washbern wrote: »

No one in their right mind would ever go to the forums and try to talk to the masses. As much as I dislike this patch thus far, I think that their communication about it is reasonably acceptable for now.
They told us why they think the changes are good them when we were not happy they told us when to expect updates.
To come on the forums and try to make peace is a rather suicidal maneuver. Everyone will never be happy and to open one self to public outrage is not something that anyone wants.
I am sitting with my fingers crossed that they indeed look at the ample feedback and test results we provided, got their heads out of the sand and understood how bad the proposed changes were. Next Monday we will find out.

I was going to just let this thread rest since I said most of what I wanted when I created it, but having read this comment I felt like adding a bit more. I'm certainly not advocating for a professional apologist to come onto the forums with the stated goal of "[making] peace."

Still, I'd love to see a new face work to bridge the growing gap between developers and players. Something isn't clicking like it should. Players like myself are feeling a bit alienated and I'd like to see that change.

I'd like to know, why are these very unpopular updates being rolled out in the first place? You seem to be better informed that I am...where are they posting their long-term vision, goals, and rationale? Twitter? I mean, I'm not looking to knock the developers or anything but it seems like they've identified the threshold for bare minimum engagement are are toeing that line with great precision.

I remember when DAOC was in it's heyday how nice it was to have a weekly "Camelot Herald" postings where the dev team, mainly Sanya, would post relevant news and talk to the community about goals, initiatives, and projects while highlighting player vs player activities and interesting things going on in the game. ESO sorely misses that kind of developer / player interactions. Where's the engagement and light-hearted banter and fun?

I will venture a personal opinion; my viewpoint only; they have attempted engagement with the forum before, and learned it is a "very bad idea". Anything a dev posts will immediately be deconstructed, read between the letters [forget lines], quoted out of context to support the "quoter's" personal bias/opinion, and used forever so posters can point to it and scream TEH DEVS LIED!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once a dev came to the forum when a poster "called him out", politely, and asked when he played the game, what his favorite class was, armor, weapon, favorite content and stuff like that. Nothing that he couldn't answer because of legal issues. A very fun and interesting conversation started about the game, until the less than mature, dissatisfied spoiled brat types showed up. FIX YOR POS GAME ZOS, THIS CRAP IS BROKEN ZOS ONLY CARES ABOUT TEH $$$$$$$$, and other comments and questions the dev couldn't legally answer that had nothing to do with the fun discussion some of us were having. After numerous less than helpful comments frustration got the better of the dev, who was posting AS A PLAYER, after hearing all the reasons the poster thought the game sucked, replied "You don't have to be here." This reply was immediately used to rant "ZOS DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THE PLAYERS", no mention of context, and reappeared every time there were changes posters didn't like. Why would anyone subject themselves to crap like that?

Gnesnig

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

Last I knew, Game Development was relatively poor pay and poor hours relative to the skill set most of the individuals possessed.

Not sure where you get that from. When looking here for example, I'd say it's on-par with backend developers and competences are similar. When looking at actual job offers, I'd say they are higher, such as here. But not lower for sure. Hours is something you control, not your boss, but many devs need to learn this .

Freelancer_ESO

Gnesnig wrote: »

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

Last I knew, Game Development was relatively poor pay and poor hours relative to the skill set most of the individuals possessed.

Not sure where you get that from. When looking here for example, I'd say it's on-par with backend developers and competences are similar. When looking at actual job offers, I'd say they are higher, such as here. But not lower for sure. Hours is something you control, not your boss, but many devs need to learn this .

It appears they've had a recent climb in pay.

Glass Door now has Game Developer above Software Developer.

If you look at articles of game developer vs software developer pay virtually all of them go the other way citing glassdoor for prior years.

Flangdoodle

Jordan.nick11b14_ESO wrote: »

I've never seen a more divisive environment in this game since I joined the community in 2013. From BETA to today I think it's important developers ask themselves why they're doing the job they have. Is it because of money? You can make money doing a lot of things. This game requires passionate people who love the game 'and' the consumer base. I feel over the years that's been lost. They push through updates THEY want to see regardless how the community feels. In a way, many ultimately feel like developers serving themselves--not those paying to be here. And, the passive-aggressive tones coming from the company to the players. Wow. That's just sad; talk about a step backwards. If players are unhappy and complaining, why miss the opportunity to engage with the community to learn why? I just don't get it.

Something has to give. [snip]

[Edited for Bashing]

NGL - it does seem from several of the public communications I've seen that there are signs of burnout. It happens. When you've been in any job for a sustained period of time, stuff that used to roll off your back can wear at you and will trigger responses that you might've previously been able to keep in check, or at least more measured.

Having spent some time in Customer Service, I can also tell you that one of the dangers is the "us vs. them" attitude that can set-in if you're not careful.

I hope the devs can remember that no matter what people say here, the fact that they're saying it here means that they love this game - otherwise there'd be no reason to bother. Cheers.

Elsonso

Marto wrote: »

Player: You should do X instead of Y.
Dev: We believe Y is better than X
Player: [One reason why X is better]
Dev: You're right, but [a dozen reasons why Y is better]
Player: That's stupid. You're stupid. Why are you catering to those that want Y?? You're so out of touch with the community.
Dev: Because we brainstormed it, developed it, playtested it internally, did a market research, crunched the numbers, and compared how Y works when combined with the [2023 Chapter Feature that we can't talk about yet]. You've been discussing this for a week, we've been discussing it internally for two years.
Player: Wow this is how you talk to a paying customer?

Game Developers have a different perspective than your average gamer. ZOS is more concerned with turning ESO into a game they believe is better, while veteran players want the existing game to cater to them and only them, regardless of whether it's good design or not.

Game developers do have a different perspective, and while that exchange above might work for some studios, I can't say that it really applies here.

It would go more like this.

Dev: This is what is in The Release
Player A: Why? You should do X instead
Player B: No, Y would be better.
Player A: Nope, Y would ruin the game, X is better.
Player B: That is insane, Y is better
Player C: Actually, Z would be best, X and Y are both bad for the game.
Player A & B: (to Player C) #!$%#!!!!1!!!
Moderator bans Player A and Player B



P.S. --- I would be thrilled if a Dev would show up and explain why X, Y, or Z are not as good was what they are doing.

anadandy

I lost all faith in dev communication during the Bosmer Incident. Pages upon pages of polite, well thought out, reasonable feedback - completely and utterly ignored.

The issue was brought up by during a player rep meeting, given a non answer and <crickets>. Then the thread was closed months later by a mod for being "old".

To this day, Bosmer have not received any explanation as to why they were gutted nor the promised "something better".

So yeah, sometimes the forums can be a toxic cesspool of negativity. But that is not an excuse when they still ignore reasonable feedback.

Holycannoli

Marto wrote: »

Player: You should do X instead of Y.
Dev: We believe Y is better than X
Player: [One reason why X is better]
Dev: You're right, but [a dozen reasons why Y is better]
Player: That's stupid. You're stupid. Why are you catering to those that want Y?? You're so out of touch with the community.
Dev: Because we brainstormed it, developed it, playtested it internally, did a market research, crunched the numbers, and compared how Y works when combined with the [2023 Chapter Feature that we can't talk about yet]. You've been discussing this for a week, we've been discussing it internally for two years.

I hope you don't mean in regards to the current PTS because if they brainstormed, developed, playtested internally, did market research, crunched numbers and came up with that travesty of a patch from it all then something's wrong.

LikiLoki

Indeed, the gaming community has different views on the development of the game. Therefore, developers try not to shine their nicknames on the opinion forum. But we still need at least a sign that our opinions are being read. It is not necessary to say that "this thing and this one" is being taken into development, let it remain behind the scenes so as not to cause chaos. Just a sign, words that: "This topic and opinions have been taken into account and will be evaluated for decision-making". But now, we feel that we are shouting into the ocean, and the words dissolve into the noise of the waves.
It would suit me to have a special emotion icon, a marker with the symbol of the ouroboros. And I understood that the topic was read by someone from the ESO team

Destai

Holycannoli wrote: »

Marto wrote: »

Player: You should do X instead of Y.
Dev: We believe Y is better than X
Player: [One reason why X is better]
Dev: You're right, but [a dozen reasons why Y is better]
Player: That's stupid. You're stupid. Why are you catering to those that want Y?? You're so out of touch with the community.
Dev: Because we brainstormed it, developed it, playtested it internally, did a market research, crunched the numbers, and compared how Y works when combined with the [2023 Chapter Feature that we can't talk about yet]. You've been discussing this for a week, we've been discussing it internally for two years.

I hope you don't mean in regards to the current PTS because if they brainstormed, developed, playtested internally, did market research, crunched numbers and came up with that travesty of a patch from it all then something's wrong.

Gilliam playtested this for 80 hours, according to his stream with Nefas, I believe. While for one person that may seem like a lot, I'm not convinced that's enough given the gravity of changes. And given the community sentiment, they should be streaming their testing of these changes.

shadyjane62

He may have playtested it for 80 hours, but his experience was influenced by the DESIRED outcome.

Greeneyes526

shadyjane62 wrote: »

He may have playtested it for 80 hours, but his experience was influenced by the DESIRED outcome.

Without question!

Dragonlord573

Just having the devs talk with players on the forums rather than just moderate would go a long way. The PTS could be an actual place for the developers to say their piece and cooperate with players.

Elsonso

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Just having the devs talk with players on the forums rather than just moderate would go a long way. The PTS could be an actual place for the developers to say their piece and cooperate with players.

Yup. First, they have to get out of their 🐢

Dragonlord573

Elsonso wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Just having the devs talk with players on the forums rather than just moderate would go a long way. The PTS could be an actual place for the developers to say their piece and cooperate with players.

Yup. First, they have to get out of their 🐢

I watched my first For Honor dev livestream yesterday and just listening to the devs talk about the training grounds program (for ease of context imagine a 2 week long PTS in ESO that everyone can participate in full of proposed changes that players test and give feedback on via a survey, then the responses are actually taken into consideration) was inspiring. They said they got a lot of negative feedback regarding one aspect, which they also explained the intent of the change during stream, and said they won't add it but will add the part people liked (a dodge attack for the Highlander hero) and said that in the future we'll see every hero who doesn't have a dodge attack will be getting one.

For having a very, and I mean very tiny dev team and budget they're very open with the player base.

Another side note is they also had 40 minutes of the stream was content creators who were invited to the studio to test the new hero in some matches, imagine if ZOS invited trifecta teams to showcase new trials and dungeons?

Psiion

Greetings all,

After review of this thread, we have had to remove quite a few posts that violated the Forum's Community Rules. The forums are intended to be a place for civil discussion on all things ESO, as well as a place for players to leave their feedback and concerns for the team to review but discussion and feedback should always stay respectful and constructive. Bashing, Naming and Shaming, or otherwise disruptive comments are never acceptable on the ESO Forum's, and provide little in terms of genuine feedback for the dev team to look into.

Moving forward, please remember to keep discussion respectful and within the Forum's Community Rules.

Faded

I've been watching this thread and am highly amused at what is considered bashing and what isn't.

Also moderately impressed its been allowed to stay up at all this long. Good for whoever made that call.

Gnesnig

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Dragonlord573 wrote: »

Just having the devs talk with players on the forums rather than just moderate would go a long way. The PTS could be an actual place for the developers to say their piece and cooperate with players.

Yup. First, they have to get out of their 🐢

I watched my first For Honor dev livestream yesterday and just listening to the devs talk about the training grounds program (for ease of context imagine a 2 week long PTS in ESO that everyone can participate in full of proposed changes that players test and give feedback on via a survey, then the responses are actually taken into consideration) was inspiring. They said they got a lot of negative feedback regarding one aspect, which they also explained the intent of the change during stream, and said they won't add it but will add the part people liked (a dodge attack for the Highlander hero) and said that in the future we'll see every hero who doesn't have a dodge attack will be getting one.

For having a very, and I mean very tiny dev team and budget they're very open with the player base.

That's usually the thing. Big budgets and some level of success fosters arrogance. Small budgets foster humility and will to understand and see reason.

To be honest, I'm starting to think that the dot changes are for no other reason than performance. They haven't managed to tackle some (if any) of the performance issues with database sharding and so halfing the time dot damage needs to be calculated, applied and sent to group members, surely helps the server out a lot. At least, it's reasonable to expect that.

Cause I can't help but find the "you don't have to refresh your dots as often, but the penalty is that your DPS is half or more" a really weak argument. It's like going to your favorite restaurant where they tell you "Our food now arrives in twice the time and we increased our prices, but you now have more time to have a good conversation with each other!"

Elsonso

Gnesnig wrote: »

To be honest, I'm starting to think that the dot changes are for no other reason than performance. They haven't managed to tackle some (if any) of the performance issues with database sharding and so halfing the time dot damage needs to be calculated, applied and sent to group members, surely helps the server out a lot. At least, it's reasonable to expect that.

Cause I can't help but find the "you don't have to refresh your dots as often, but the penalty is that your DPS is half or more" a really weak argument. It's like going to your favorite restaurant where they tell you "Our food now arrives in twice the time and we increased our prices, but you now have more time to have a good conversation with each other!"

Performance reasons should not be ruled out. I think that they are pulling out all the stops for performance this year. Someone, somewhere, wants this fixed and fixed finally, if I had to guess. Maybe management is getting tired of seeing this as a line item every year.

A lot of game play stuff they are doing seems to have ties back to performance. AwA database storage reduction/efficiency for achievements. Flat LA/HA damage rather than calculated. DoT tick rate changes that might have doubled the ability to handle DoTs. Add to that the cold storage work they did, and we are seeing a lot of little things that I think they expect to add up to big returns. Don't forget the mystery "rewrite" they are doing on part of the backend engine. This is work that we may see in 4Q or early next year.

This makes me wonder whether we will keep the rollback for the static DoTs, or whether they will just circle back in a couple updates and notch it back up to 2 second ticks again. For the performance.

If it is management getting tired of seeing a performance line item, I next hope they get tired of seeing stacks of unfixed bugs everywhere.

Troodon80

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

The thing is... what percentage of the devs do you think play ESO as their primary game? And for those that do... do you imagine that they're doing anything other than the sort of casual questing and normal mode instanced game play that seems to be their vision for the game these days?

To be perfectly honest, I've never expected game developers to play their own game to the degree of end game, PvE or PvP. You're working on it all day and you come home to what should be free time, relaxation, and something to do that's not work related. So what do you do? Sit down and play the thing you've been working on all day. It's a great way to kill the passion in the thing you've been working on as you burn out on it.

I remember when, for example, Gilliam used to do various YouTube videos; possibly one of the most known -- for people who remember -- is the bucket and broom vMA. Sadly, the videos section of his YouTube channel is now empty and all you can see are the featured videos from four years ago.

More recently, he's been playing FFXIV. An MMO competitor to the MMO he's directly working on. Which I find slightly amusing. But for the reason above is perfectly understandable.

https://twitter.com/gilliamtherogue/status/1530475592180703232

Troodon80

Marto wrote: »

The game ZOS is trying to make is not the game the veteran ESO forums community wants. ZOS wants a better game, the ESO forums don't want a better game.

Agreed, but it's not just veteran. Everyone has an opinion as to how the game would be better if they were somehow making the decisions. A somewhat amusing Tweet over the last couple weeks showed that various people don't care how the end game community gets hit, they're all in favour of it. Until it also affects them, and hooo boy. "You should go ahead with all the other changes, but leave my playstyle alone." Given this, there's absolutely no way that ZOS can balance the game for everyone. All they can do is what they think is the best move according to the stats and feedback they have on their end.

Not that I agree with the recent changes on PTS, mind you. But I get where they're coming from and a discussion with the developers would be great. But I also understand why that discussion is unlikely to ever happen in a public space like this forum.

Gnesnig

Generally speaking I won't mind slower dots. However, we only have 10 skills we can use and each class has one or two DoTs at most. So you can't really stack them and generate big tick damage. From a role playing perspective, you also don't have the typical disease versus poison dots, where poisons are high damage, low amount of ticks and diseases are low damage that stick like superglue.

So there aren't a lot of options here to work with and ironically, you'd have to introduce more complexity, like stacking rules based on damage type, to give classes more identity and need again, if you want to promote diversity in group layouts.

As things stand I would expect the players that stay to start calculating mob resistance levels and which ever class has the dot damage type that the bosses are most sensitive to gets to be the DPS choice for this round. So instead of opening up the game to more playing styles, choices will become more limited, because PUGs will no longer ask for DPS but for specific spells to be armed.

Pevey

I think from certain devs' point of view, every time they try to communicate with players, there is a big uproar. That is partly true, and I think that is not all on players. Something they are doing is eliciting those reactions, but they just see it as unwarranted toxicity. So they turtle up.

The two recent communications from the combat dev who is the face of the U35 changes (not sure if he is leading the effort or just the unlucky scapegoat being trotted out), were very baiting and got a very negative reaction. This developer is the epitome of being very spreadsheet and "coefficient" focused, and it showed in the messages. Not really the person you want crafting your message in a crisis (or the overall vision for your combat, IMO). Anyone who had looked over the messages prior to their being released could have predicted the backlash. No one reviewed it, or no one cared, or no one had the power to overrule it.

So, yes, I think they could do with some PR help or player advocates. I get the impression a few of the devs think they are Steve Jobs and they don't listen to the customer because they think they know better what the customer really wants. Of course, they are not Steve Jobs, and they don't.

Elsonso

Pevey wrote: »

I think from certain devs' point of view, every time they try to communicate with players, there is a big uproar. That is partly true, and I think that is not all on players. Something they are doing is eliciting those reactions, but they just see it as unwarranted toxicity. So they turtle up.

This is to be expected, and yes, they have cultivated this manner of response. What I see that annoys me is a combination of "something they are doing" and something they are not doing.

Granted, it doesn't take a lot of skill to cultivate that manner of response.

Been over this a gazillion times over the years. Not much of a reason to expect change, but hope springs eternal.

Jaimeh

LikiLoki wrote: »

Do you want to see a new face? An angel descended from heaven? This will not give results, he does not understand the ant language and is too arrogant. We need an ant from the players who ascended to the sky. Only in this case the voices will be heard

But we already had a player 'ascend to the sky' as you put it... and yet here we are.