Preface
This is an open meeting to discuss how we can get better support out of ZOS regarding PvP issues such as bugs, imbalances, content, and mechanics. I will open with my own thoughts and if you have any ideas or disagreements post them below. This is about what we can do, support, or participate in to improve our response from ZOS. I have no special knowledge of ZOS's interworkings, my comments come from inference derived from ZOS posts, eso live episodes, and comments made by players who speak with them. As such all of my premises could be wrong, but I think my conclusion will still produce a positive result.
Structure of fixes.
There are two channels to request changes in this game.
- /feedback /bug
- forum posts
As we know from one of the eso live episodes they have employees that sort fixes and feedback based on a certain set of criteria. We don't know the full set of criteria but it is reasonable to conclude that this criteria includes how much a bug or issue impairs the players, and how many players are impaired. As far as forum posts go, visibility and well refined posts will be more likely to reach our audience while internal trolling will only obfuscate the good information we are trying to convey.
Improving the communication channels.
Brian Wheeler is in charge of pvp, not classes, or bugs. Eric Wrobel works on the classes, and a different department is involved with bug fixes. In a sense Brian Wheeler is our lobbyist to those other departments. We can sort our issues by priority here on the forums, then he can take our issues to the other departments and try to get them prioritized. Brian Wheeler is
our guy on the inside, so working well together is to our advantage even if we disagree.
How to get our pvp issues prioritized.
Most of us have played other MMOs and know that PvE tends to be prioritized over PvP. Typically the PvErs out number the PvPers, and if you recall one of the prioritization criteria I listed was "how many players are impaired". It is simply more likely that a PvE issue will impair more players and so it will take greater priority.
We can improve our prioritization simply by improving our population numbers. The more people we have in cyrodiil the more our issues will move up the prioritization list. It's better if Mr Wheeler can go into a meeting and say "This issue is affecting 35% of the player base" rather than 25%. B2P improved our total population by a lot, and if that population holds it will be good for us. There are other mechanics that we complain about as PvPers that are also helping our numbers because they are bringing in players that would not define themselves as PvPers. Without these mechanics our total population would be significantly lower. Some of these mechanics include...
- Alliance war skills
- Achievements
- Skill points per rank
- Sky shards
- XP in dolmens
- Repeatable quests
- Upcoming Cyrodiil City
- Daily quests
- PvP Item sets
- Cold Harbor siege (for those who want to make money selling them
- Most significantly PvE buffs
All these things are helping the weight of our issues by fluffing our total PvP numbers through the PvErs who enter Cyrodiil for these things. I'm asking for some out of the box thinking here but the more we allow these PvErs to enter Cyrodiil the better shot we have at getting our issues prioritized. This means helping them in zone, or simply allowing them to do dailies without being ganked. It also means sticking through the tough times rather than giving ultimatums. You can PvP for free now, saying you're leaving because of pvp isn't going to matter as much as staying, continuing the fight and keeping the population up. We can also maintain our population by not supporting buff servers, and refusing to use known exploits that lead to other players quitting or reducing their play time.
Summary and conclusion.
For the most part we are not fighting with Mr Wrobel or Mr Wheeler to be heard, we are fighting the prioritization list. That prioritization list is likely sorted based on how many players are affected and how deeply they are affected. How deeply we are affected is not in our control, but how many are affected is. As the size of the PvP community increases, so does the number of players affected by PvP bugs and issues. Which results in greater prioritization. The size of the PvP community can be inflated through PvErs, and maintained by fair play which will naturally place us higher on the list. In addition to that we can bump up our place on the list by producing clear communication in the forums.
I'm not expecting amazing things from this, maybe it bumps us up on the list from #20 to #19, but it's a start and it's something we have some control over. Even #1 on the list is going to take some time, #19 is going to take a lot longer, but it's better than waiting for #20 I think. If you can think of anything else or simply disagree leave it below.
Retired.
Nord mDK