Why ESO is the way it is and its not just ZOS's fault.

SithisKhajitiiLamae

After I joined the eso forums I see now why the original dev team left and the current dev team don't listen to the fans.

The fans have been whining on the forums for years for a new class and that classes all feel the same.

Arcanist comes out: more negative posts than positive ones. Mainly centered around the class being so different from the others.



They complain for years about wanting harder overland content.

Nightmare Wb aka overland comes out and is hard: omg its to hard. You can't even kill it by yourself.




Its sad that the official site where zos gets all their feedback from is like this.

wilykcat

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who strongly dislike, complain, disagree, or, harshly criticize everything. And there are people who are nice, thankful, and give compliments.

When ever there is a new feature, suggestion, or idea; it will always get a mix of negative and positive reviews/feedback.

It's ok for people on the dev team or community managers to say "no" to any suggestions or ideas they want to (just like everyone else).

Also no one here knows what is going on behind the scenes at the dev team.

Xandreia_

Zos listen to the wrong people, the ones they should be listening to stopped posting a long time ago. The casual players will moan about anything and everything. The fixes they demand can mostly be fixed with an addon or changing a few settings. The issues most of us want fixed get ignored or bombarded with casual players demanding lesser things are done. (I'm 100% going to get dragged for this lol) I'm not saying every casual player does this, but a good amount do.

I see quite a few posts saying how people enjoy skyrim and the other games and want to implimemt things from them into eso, eso is a completely separate game from the solo games. Yes it has elder scrolls in the title but it's not the same, nor should it ever be. (Rambling...)

On the topic of arcanist. Its great. Its fun, animations are completely new which is WHAT WE ALL WANTED! Green is a great colour for it. It's the most fun dps class imo, pvp it's ok, not amazing but still fun.
Everything about the class is great... people will never be 100% happy.

I'm one of the first in line to call out zos and their inability to communicate but some people just take the absolute P.

Agenericname

I think thats its safe to say that the devs do listen to the player base. Hide pets, curated gear, mass filet, hide shoulders, skill lines for purchase, accountwide achievements, just to name a few, are all things the players asked for. They may not have been how we wanted them, but we asked for them just the same.

As for the difficulty of overland, its not a homogenous voice. Its polarized. One group wants a harder overland and one group does not. Some are even opposed to optional difficulty. No matter what choice ZOS makes, someone is going to complain. Odds are, the folks who wanted overland to be more difficult are not the ones complaining now.

ZOS doesnt get all of their feedback in the official forums.

Braffin

Xandreia_ wrote: »

Zos listen to the wrong people, the ones they should be listening to stopped posting a long time ago. The casual players will moan about anything and everything. The fixes they demand can mostly be fixed with an addon or changing a few settings. The issues most of us want fixed get ignored or bombarded with casual players demanding lesser things are done. (I'm 100% going to get dragged for this lol) I'm not saying every casual player does this, but a good amount do.

You're mostly right on this, but I don't think the problem is related to "casual players", most of them aren't even on forums. It's a very small group of "veteran solo players", which are flooding every discussion with their personal opinion while pretending they are the majority. We are talking about approximately 10 to 15 people at most.

Lumenn

Anyone else wondering how long this thread will stay open? Anyone? Just me? Alrighty then.....😂

Arthtur

Is it really that hard to see that the ppl complaining about harder WB are the ones who were against any increased difficulty? Ppl that dont do group content and mostly just want to quest in peace in overland?
We (Vet Overland crowd) asked for OPTIONAL harder overland. What did ZOS do?
- FORCED harder WBs.
- Bastion Nymic which took away part of the game from casual playerbase. And there is no reason to do it anyway...
- Roaming mini-bosses that attack half of the map when aggroed.
- Nothing about difficulty of delves, quest bosses etc. The only difficulty in quest boss fight this year was a bug.

Sorry but its 100% ZOS fault. We had A in overland and asked for B. ZOS gave us C which wasn't asked by anybody or by very small amount of ppl. For example, when players asked for forced increased difficulty in overland, both sides disagreed with them. If ZOS gave us what we asked for there would be almost 0 problems.

It doesnt help the fact that many of posters who gave constructive feedback left or dont bother posting anymore. Stuff like U35, gamebreaking bugs reported on PTS that went live, questionable balance changes, toxicity from some parts of the community, lack of communication, AwA... and other things small or big. Many players got "hurt" by stuff that ZOS added, or in many cases HOW it was added.

And i wont bother commenting about the class. Its just simply what somebody likes/dislikes.

Tenthirty2

It's a game, I enjoy it so I play it.

I try not to overthink it, or get spun up in drama or criticize things I don't have enough data to form a worthwhile opinion about.

If I experience things I love I'll share praise, if I find something that I think could use the devs attention I try to offer constructive feedback.

It's a game, when I no longer enjoy it I'll play something different.

Marcus684

It's just the nature of forums. They are always cesspools of negativity. Happy players spend their time playing instead of complaining on the forums (except me, who's commenting when I should be working ).

Hurbster

I'm going to be honest here, these forums are incredibly tame compared to most game forums out there. I find that the people on here are often used used as a convenient scapegoats by certain content creators. Has anyone BEEN to other MMO forums?

Now I'm as much against bullying as the next person and it very rarely happens here, to be fair there was one example recently which was a bit close for my liking but that is very much in the rarity.

Heck, I'm old enough to remember the old Bioware forums and used to spend a lot of time on the WoW ones.

The only real problems with this website is that there is a tendency to blame everything on casuals, and a prevalence of 'I'm right and everyone else is wrong'.

Everything else is on ZoS, it's their game.

TaSheen

Hurbster wrote: »

I'm going to be honest here, these forums are incredibly tame compared to most game forums out there. I find that the people on here are often used used as a convenient scapegoats by certain content creators. Has anyone BEEN to other MMO forums?

Now I'm as much against bullying as the next person and it very rarely happens here, to be fair there was one example recently which was a bit close for my liking but that is very much in the rarity.

Heck, I'm old enough to remember the old Bioware forums and used to spend a lot of time on the WoW ones.

The only real problems with this website is that there is a tendency to blame everything on casuals, and a prevalence of 'I'm right and everyone else is wrong'.

Everything else is on ZoS, it's their game.

This. I too spent a lot of time on the Bioware and WoW forums. This one's a breath of fresh air in comparison.

NordSwordnBoard

SithisKhajitiiLamae wrote: »

After I joined the eso forums I see now why the original dev team left and the current dev team don't listen to the fans.

The fans have been whining on the forums for years for a new class and that classes all feel the same.

Arcanist comes out: more negative posts than positive ones. Mainly centered around the class being so different from the others.



They complain for years about wanting harder overland content.

Nightmare Wb aka overland comes out and is hard: omg its to hard. You can't even kill it by yourself.




Its sad that the official site where zos gets all their feedback from is like this.

You need to understand that this community is so large, one side speaks up when they are affected by changes or new releases and the other side has nothing to say because they are content. We get posts that praise the people working on the game, and I've made posts/comments going both ways.
The last thing we I want would be people withholding criticism out of fear of retaliation. You can't please all the people all the time.

colossalvoids

The main mistake of this post is that it assumes feedback being considered at all, second one being an assumption that contradictory and questionable feedback isn't filtered and just being distributed to the teams as is. Forums is just a forum, surely larger pieces of constructive feedback (not the one you personally like or relate to, but objectively constructive) might be considered same as ones from bug category as we're still free beta testers even on live server. And even when they're implementing questionable things be it nerfs or fixes for something never needing a fix it's their issue not being able to distinguish what's being legitimately an issue and what was just an overreaction.

It's all still 100% zos, don't make any mistakes.

valenwood_vegan

Anyone who has ever provided feedback during a PTS cycle... or anyone who was here for u35... knows that ZoS is going to what ZoS is going to do. It's on them, not the players.

Amottica

SithisKhajitiiLamae wrote: »

After I joined the eso forums I see now why the original dev team left and the current dev team don't listen to the fans.

The Number 1 and Number 2 people at Zenimax Online Studios were lead developers starting with the early planning stages of ESO. Matt Firor was brought in to lead the entire thing and it still the top person.

To characterize that the original dev team left is incorrect. Yes, some of the members of that core development team left for other opportunities, but that is not unusual for any game.

SerafinaWaterstar

Braffin wrote: »

Xandreia_ wrote: »

Zos listen to the wrong people, the ones they should be listening to stopped posting a long time ago. The casual players will moan about anything and everything. The fixes they demand can mostly be fixed with an addon or changing a few settings. The issues most of us want fixed get ignored or bombarded with casual players demanding lesser things are done. (I'm 100% going to get dragged for this lol) I'm not saying every casual player does this, but a good amount do.

You're mostly right on this, but I don't think the problem is related to "casual players", most of them aren't even on forums. It's a very small group of "veteran solo players", which are flooding every discussion with their personal opinion while pretending they are the majority. We are talking about approximately 10 to 15 people at most.

One could also says its a small group of “veteran group/end game players” that do the same……..🤔

Jaraal

Lumenn wrote: »

Anyone else wondering how long this thread will stay open? Anyone? Just me? Alrighty then.....😂

Soon to be moved to the Players Complaining About Players subforum, I'm sure.

SithisKhajitiiLamae

Jaraal wrote: »

Lumenn wrote: »

Anyone else wondering how long this thread will stay open? Anyone? Just me? Alrighty then.....😂

Soon to be moved to the Players Complaining About Players subforum, I'm sure.

Im surprised it lasted five seconds to be honest.

SithisKhajitiiLamae

Thanks for the discussion guys. I appreciate you taking the time out of your day/night to comment.

I_killed_Vivec

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Anyone who has ever provided feedback during a PTS cycle... or anyone who was here for u35... knows that ZoS is going to what ZoS is going to do. It's on them, not the players.

To be fair to ZoS, they do have the data. They know who plays the game and how they play it. They also know how they might want to make more money - whether it is appealing to new players, or convincing current players to pay more.

And they also know how people react to changes - did all those "U35 was the last straw" players really leave? Only ZoS will know if it was right to ignore them (beyond mere anecdote).

Soarora

Nope, still ZOS’ fault. You know why? They make the choice to listen who they want to listen to, if anyone. You cannot realistically make everyone happy, they have to choose. That said, anyone who complains about the complaining on the forums should also do their part in sharing their opinions as well, otherwise you’re not even trying to solve your own problem.

Ragnarok0130

Those are some bold statements about forum history and the community for someone that just joined the forums in 2023 OP.

Elsonso

Don't put more importance on what is said in the forums than the developers do.

Cazador

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Those are some bold statements about forum history and the community for someone that just joined the forums in 2023 OP.

Considering you can look at the forums without having an account this is kind of a moot point.

Jaimeh

OP, two clarifications: players have been asking for harder overland content that is not instanced, and it's optional via a toggle, not a group-centered and instanced-based kind of content, like the nymics are. If the devs were going for harder content, the implementation of it was really bad, especially considering what the majority of players wanted. After people finish with their daily grind the nymics are going to be pretty much empty. Secondly, players were complaining about the increasing class homogenization in recent years, which is a fact and it's also concerning, and most of the complains about arcanists are about their animations, visuals and color scheme feeling out of place in the game, not just different to the other classes per se. You wouldn't want to see the state of the game if it wasn't for the forums (especially the PTS forums), there's so many things that are released in a buggy state, despite all the feedback and testing players do and then report (for free! in their own time!), now imagine if that feedback didn't exist altogether.

Vandellia

Honestly, regardless of what any game developer/owner does it is impossible to please everyone. People tend to Post/argue/rage about their pet peeves. Everyone has an opinion and some are right, some are wrong and some are intentionally intended to stir a pot to see what crawls out. The comment about things getting released with bugs , programmers are not perfect and TBH finding and zapping bugs can be ultra time consuming how many lines of code and the branches have to be gleaned ? bug fixing is not an easy job some bugs are hard to find because they are nested in a a line of decisions or occurances. Bug zapping is a painful and tedious process. then consider hardware and drivers that are varied and it make some bugs even harder to run down look at your video card drivers know bug list for conformation. coding is not an easy thing to build and debug because of that difference..And Yea some posts get attention some get ignored some are investigated. In the end Rational and reasoned posts are going to get more attention from TPTB then less rational and clearly stated issues.

Lumenn

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Those are some bold statements about forum history and the community for someone that just joined the forums in 2023 OP.

You gotta remember quite a few people have several accounts. Those 5 people arguing against something vs another 5 people arguing FOR something MIGHT just be 2 people. And who knows? Maybe even a mods personal account. Or a new account due to lost access (forgot pw or banned previous account). New account doesn't always mean new player

MindOfTheSwarm

SithisKhajitiiLamae wrote: »

After I joined the eso forums I see now why the original dev team left and the current dev team don't listen to the fans.

The fans have been whining on the forums for years for a new class and that classes all feel the same.

Arcanist comes out: more negative posts than positive ones. Mainly centered around the class being so different from the others.



They complain for years about wanting harder overland content.

Nightmare Wb aka overland comes out and is hard: omg its to hard. You can't even kill it by yourself.




Its sad that the official site where zos gets all their feedback from is like this.

With all due respect, people have not been asking for a new class. They have been asking for more skill lines outside of classes to open up building options. I love Arcanist and I am having a blast with it, but options outside of classes have become stale. We need non class skill lines and/or the destruction staves splitting up into 3 distinct weapon skill lines. This would be a good start and really open things up for existing classes and the game in general.

Lumenn

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

SithisKhajitiiLamae wrote: »

After I joined the eso forums I see now why the original dev team left and the current dev team don't listen to the fans.

The fans have been whining on the forums for years for a new class and that classes all feel the same.

Arcanist comes out: more negative posts than positive ones. Mainly centered around the class being so different from the others.



They complain for years about wanting harder overland content.

Nightmare Wb aka overland comes out and is hard: omg its to hard. You can't even kill it by yourself.




Its sad that the official site where zos gets all their feedback from is like this.

With all due respect, people have not been asking for a new class. They have been asking for more skill lines outside of classes to open up building options. I love Arcanist and I am having a blast with it, but options outside of classes have become stale. We need non class skill lines and/or the destruction staves splitting up into 3 distinct weapon skill lines. This would be a good start and really open things up for existing classes and the game in general.

Actually you can do a quick search "new class" and you'd get several hits for every year(before and after the Necro). Now granted I've never once seen someone ask for an arcanist. It's usually monk or maybe bard. And yes, skill lines were asked for as well, but there were, in fact, people asking for a new class

Varana

People have been asking for a new class.
Maybe not you. Maybe you think it was a misguided request. Maybe you didn't happen to read these posts. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

Snamyap

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

SithisKhajitiiLamae wrote: »

After I joined the eso forums I see now why the original dev team left and the current dev team don't listen to the fans.

The fans have been whining on the forums for years for a new class and that classes all feel the same.

Arcanist comes out: more negative posts than positive ones. Mainly centered around the class being so different from the others.



They complain for years about wanting harder overland content.

Nightmare Wb aka overland comes out and is hard: omg its to hard. You can't even kill it by yourself.




Its sad that the official site where zos gets all their feedback from is like this.

With all due respect, people have not been asking for a new class. They have been asking for more skill lines outside of classes to open up building options. I love Arcanist and I am having a blast with it, but options outside of classes have become stale. We need non class skill lines and/or the destruction staves splitting up into 3 distinct weapon skill lines. This would be a good start and really open things up for existing classes and the game in general.

Adding new skill lines is a weird request imho, we only have so many skill slots. I'd rather they spend some time on redoing older skill lines, I'm sure there are a bunch of skills that are hardly ever used.