The big lesson Matt Firor learned

NadiusMaximus · September 2015

Yolokin_Swagonborn wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

“The big lesson though is that for games of this type, you can fix problems and people will come back,” he says. “You have to make sure you’re always telling people what you’re doing, that you’re open and honest..."

Open and Honest huh. So Mat,
did you reduce the drop rates of trophies after the first week of IC launch? If so, why wasn't this in the patch notes?

did you intentionally suppress every existing gear set that had jewelry other than Agility/Willpower/Endurance?

Do you intend leave Trials and DSA at v14 or will you allow those activities AND the gear they offer to occur at V16?

Let's have some openness and honesty. I'm waiting.

Cough. V16 warlock set. Cough. ***. Cough

Elsonso · September 2015

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

ca.ign.com/articles/2015/09/18/the-painstaking-redemption-of-the-elder-scrolls-online

“The big lesson though is that for games of this type, you can fix problems and people will come back,” he says. “You have to make sure you’re always telling people what you’re doing, that you’re open and honest, but it shows you can hit the right notes – even if it takes a little longer than you thought, you can be redeemed.”

I read this to mean that we can expect ZOS to start telling us what they are doing. That alone brings excitement and I cannot wait for it to start. Yeah, I know they have started, but seriously, I have been harping on this for over a year now and, while they are getting better, they are not quite there yet. I don't need The Road Ahead. A good conversation on the forum including topical comments from Lambert might be welcome.

Acrolas wrote: »

"We should have done a better job defining what it is and not let other people define it for us."

They still don't really know what it is.

To me it is clear that it is the other way around. We, the players, do not know what it is but we decided what it was. ZOS committed a marketing blunder by doing this whole NSA secrecy thing about what is coming in the game. The developer needs to set the game's expectations, not the players, and somewhere along the line they figured this out.

Now they need to act on what they learned. Set a direction and clearly state what they are doing. The ZOS opinion on forum discussions about various feature that are missing need to be disclosed.... either, no we are not going to do that, sorry, or yes, we are going to do that, what do you want to see? Presented clear as day, and repeated often.

They have already said they are not going to do an Auction House. I doubt many players know this, and for all we know, they have suddenly changed their mind. This uncertainty is because ZOS does not talk about it. They don't talk about whether they are secretly adding an Auction House. They don't talk about what they are doing to make the Guild Stores work better. They don't ask for comments and input directed towards the direction they are going. They simply sit and read and wait for someone to accidentally make a comment they can use.

The players also need to recognize that some decisions are intentional. Underwater is mentioned in this thread like it is some sort of gross omission, and it is not. It is an implementation decision, like Guild Stores and a hundred other decisions that they made, including Text Chat on console.

But wait... maybe they are working on Text Chat. They will not say so because while they say that they learned "telling people what you’re doing" but have not learned how to do it. We won't know until they are good and ready to tell us, so we are left to our own designs while they are off working in secrecy.

Maotti · September 2015

“The big lesson though is that for games of this type, you can fix problems and people will come back,” he says. “You have to make sure you’re always telling people what you’re doing, that you’re open and honest, but it shows you can hit the right notes – even if it takes a little longer than you thought, you can be redeemed.”

What about those collectibles then? Will anything be done to revert that maybe?

ADarklore · September 2015

What they COULD do is create a sticky thread that answers the plethora of questions and 'wants' that players have been talking about but ZOS has either failed to respond to or answered months ago but refuses to reiterate it each time the question comes up. Having a Q/A sticky thread at the top of the forum page would help alleviate a lot of problems and questions that players are constantly having... some things being beaten to death many times over.

Elijah_Crow · September 2015

I think a new "The Road Ahead" article is long overdue.

Tell Players what your upcoming focuses are. Not with tiny snip it's from ESO live or gaming conventions, but in an open letter to the community.

...long overdue.

Casdha · September 2015

If you are going to grab a quote, don't truncate it to suit your purpose. Post everything within the quotations.

Here let me help.

“Everyone knew it was like Skyrim, but it wasn’t – we simply needed to be clearer about saying exactly what it is. We started doing that later and saying don’t expect Skyrim, don’t expect EverQuest – this is its own thing and you can play it solo, which we definitely didn’t talk about enough. Everyone thought we were making this hardcore MMO and that’s simply not the case. It just has some MMO features. We should have done a better job defining what it is and not let other people define it for us.”

Edit: Source

Violynne · September 2015

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Please bear in mind the even bigger lesson that People's got limited patience. Do not abuse it.

[citation needed]

Not trying to be rude, but I'm not buying this one for a second. Delay IC to fix the issues: rage ensues because of lack of content. Release IC with issues: rage ensues because of broken content.

In fact, rage just seems to be the first damn response of gamers today, and frankly, I'm sick of it.

Go read the posts of how far too many people reply anymore. The cursing, the constant name calling, and the lack of maturity is overwhelming.

Does anyone here think ZoS deserves this kind of treatment? Imagine for a second if these people worked at ZoS and were on the receiving end. No, they can't do that, because they're the gamer.

Bugs happen. Bugs on a big scale project are almost a guarantee.

If patience were part of the equation, then half (or more!) the posts on this forum would disappear.

reklaw67 · September 2015

These guys are amateur hour... that they have not implemented a race change yet was so ridiculous I moved on to another game. Almost every mmo has this and in those mmo's racials arent near as important as they are in Eso.

Numerous threads have requested this. Nothing at player creation points to how important your initial racial pick is. Changes Zeni themselves made have affected what racials a player wish they had. It takes so long to level that the average gamer wont accept having to totally reroll to get the racials they want. Lots and lots of people are willing to pay real $ for a race change option.

There is plenty of reasons to offer a race change.. and the best part for Zeni is people will pay for it! But nope another thing they are dragging their feet on.. losing players every day.. and losing out on income.. while instead they spend dev time putting in barbershops. Something that players will most likely be totally bored with after the 1st or 2nd time using it if not before.

Best of luck to those playing. I'm having fun in swtor. No way was I rolling another character to get the "right" racials for what I wanted to play.

BalticBlues · September 2015

Violynne wrote: »

Bugs happen. Bugs on a big scale project are almost a guarantee.

If patience were part of the equation, then half (or more!) the posts on this forum would disappear.

Yes, bugs can happen.
But after Update 7, the console versions are ALMOST UNPLAYABLE, like ...
- completely broken guild stores (no prices)
- completely broken light animations (invisible beams, so you cannot evade them or repent)
- completely broken balance (some great dungeons now are impossible with nerfed V1-V9 stats)
- completely broken loading times so that groups can even fall apart in the IC

It is evident that the IC console versions have been released before being ready for market.

ZOS announced a release date and then just released, what they got.
No matter if ready or not. Many bugs are so obvious that ZOS MUST have seen them.
Console players were perfectly happy with Update 6. Update 7 ruined the game.

Junkogen · September 2015

Is it Matt Firor or other members of the design team who keep stumbling? Eric Wrobel strikes me as one who just doesn't get it.

Reverb · September 2015

The story about the decision to go B2P gets better with every iteration. The one quoted in that article is a good one, they should stick with it. It's so good,that if it had been presented like that to their existing, paying, customers at the time, many of us would have supported it. Instead, Zeni exposed a serious lack of integrity.

The game is still enjoyable, and I (and I believe many others) hope for its continued improvement and success, but will never extend confidence and trust to Zenimax. Their every public statement will be given the side-eye, remembering how comfortable they are spouting abject falsehoods, writ large in bold type

BalticBlues · September 2015

Writing this is so sad.

ZOS worked so hard for months to rebuild TESO for the console release.
TESO came up from the ashes like a phoenix, for me this was the best game on consoles.

But within just two months, they seemed to have gone crazy with the IC. For the IC, the entire game balance they finally reached after 1,5 years of fine tuning was dumped for a new PVP model that makes part of the game unplayable and unfun for lower levels in PVE because their gear and stats have been nerfed into the ground. On top of this comes a second currency nobody needed or wanted. On top of this comes an access system rewarding the worst kind of player behaviour. On top of this crafters now have to collect pieces of flyspeck and hundreds of materials for being able to craft the new gear. On top of this comes a set like the Shield Breaker that destroys rules people are relying to. On top of this comes an unfinished console version with incredible bugs ruining the experience and reputation reached before. I better stop here.

IMHO: The IC/Update7 was placed into the game like a bull in a china shop.
Years of hard developer's work shattered into peaces by only one DLC.

If I could buy a DLC to have the game back as it was with Update 6, I would.

Yolokin_Swagonborn · September 2015

BalticBlues wrote: »

Writing this is so sad.

ZOS worked so hard for months to rebuild TESO for the console release.
TESO came up from the ashes like a phoenix, for me this was the best game on consoles.

But within just two months, they seemed to have gone crazy with the IC. For the IC, the entire game balance they finally reached after 1,5 years of fine tuning was dumped for a new PVP model that makes part of the game unplayable and unfun for lower levels in PVE because their gear and stats have been nerfed into the ground. On top of this comes a second currency nobody needed or wanted. On top of this comes an access system rewarding the worst kind of player behaviour. On top of this crafters now have to collect pieces of flyspeck and hundreds of materials for being able to craft the new gear. On top of this comes a set like the Shield Breaker that destroys rules people are relying to. On top of this comes an unfinished console version with incredible bugs ruining the experience and reputation reached before. I better stop here.

IMHO: The IC/Update7 was placed into the game like a bull in a china shop.
Years of hard developer's work shattered into peaces by only one DLC.

If I could buy a DLC to have the game back as it was with Update 6, I would.

I know plenty of PvP'ers that would gladly purchase a DLC to take them back to 1.5. Just one PvP campaign with 1.5 rules, no imperial city and softcaps instead of this meaningless vertical grind that is the crapion system. It's slowly unbalancing the game and skills, game mechanics (dodge/block) and even gear is getting nerfed because the crapion system is so strong.

ZOS seems to only fix what isn't broken, breaking it in the process of course, while leaving broken mechanics in the game indefinitely.

nimander99 · September 2015

There is a belief in the mmo industry that there is a base line of core gamers that will stay with a game no matter what decisions and mistakes are made and I think it is this belief that leads to some of the more spot-lighteded gaffs we've have seen in mmo's lately.

FelixTheCatt · September 2015

Violynne wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Please bear in mind the even bigger lesson that People's got limited patience. Do not abuse it.

[citation needed]

Not trying to be rude, but I'm not buying this one for a second. Delay IC to fix the issues: rage ensues because of lack of content. Release IC with issues: rage ensues because of broken content.

It's the fact they release new content before fixing problems in this game they've been made aware of for ages. All they did was make even more problems. Now I doubt things will ever be fixed.

In fact, rage just seems to be the first damn response of gamers today, and frankly, I'm sick of it.

Go read the posts of how far too many people reply anymore. The cursing, the constant name calling, and the lack of maturity is overwhelming.

Does anyone here think ZoS deserves this kind of treatment? Imagine for a second if these people worked at ZoS and were on the receiving end. No, they can't do that, because they're the gamer.

Bugs happen. Bugs on a big scale project are almost a guarantee.

If patience were part of the equation, then half (or more!) the posts on this forum would disappear.

How many bugs are we to deal with before they're fixed which never seems to happen. You talk about patience? I think players have shown immense amounts of patience creating tickets , posting and STILL things aren't fixed. Not only not fixed but never given a clue when or if they will be ffs!

Mighty_oakk · September 2015

So it took the

DaveTheMinion wrote: »

I'm sorry if my post offends but over the last 15 years I have seen so many games wrecked by the community forcing developers to change this and that because they don't want to adapt they just want the game tailored to how they want to play it! trying to keep gamers happy is a thankless and unappreciated job and they are never going to please everyone.

The developers would probably stay in touch more if the community were more respectful and approachable, but all I see are un constructive abusive comments thrown at them on a daily basis!!!

Most of the changes in this game have been influenced by the community, if a developer wants to come on here and tell me I am wrong and that it was solely their idea then I will offer a sincere apology to all I have offended with my post.

Well its b2p so its just what will make themost money short term now. They will 'listen' to the community when the community has an idea that will make them money.

Things like player retention are low priority compared to things like low operating costs in a b2p model.

Stikato · September 2015

Article just confirms what everyone knows.

ESO has some very talented designers. It has some great gameplay elements. But it has been plagued by poor management from the start. This is evident in the shortcomings that Firor himself cites: poor marketing and messaging direction, and the larger design decisions that led to terrible phasing problems.

Furthermore, anyone who participated in the last beta knew that the game had very serious problems. The decision to allow such a disastrous beta test so close to launch crippled the game on PC. The decision to launch at that point doomed it to niche status on PC.

Company reviews on Glassdoor indicate that ZOS is a studio in which, for the most part, the different departments don't know what the other is doing, and management direction is sparse. How many times have we heard a lead developer say "oh that's so-and-so's department, I don't know the answer." How can lead dev's not know what each other is working on? How many are there? Five? Ten?

What's amazing is, most of the nuts and bolts of ESO are excellent. It is a themepark, which sucks, but they nailed the art, the combat, the character design and customization is good, and PVP is best in the business for a pure MMO. In other words, it took some really lousy management to screw up the work of many talented people.

It sucks writing this, but this is what the article basically says.

rootimus · September 2015

Mighty_oakk wrote: »

They will 'listen' to the community when the community has an idea that will make them money.

That's patently untrue. A finished product, crafted with care and professional pride will make a lot more money in the long term than an unfinished one. If you cut through the noise of the haters and trolls, that's what plenty of us want when we point out things that are broken, wrong or just the product of a shocking decision from a for-profit company. Sometimes we get ignored, other times we get our posts deleted.

I remember when this game launched, fanboys on this forum were arguing that the surfeit of bugs and issues were just the way it is with MMOs these days. When did consumers start accepting second best?* Sure, it's probable that there'll be some bugs in a new game, but that's not the same as glaring errors, nor is it the same thing as blatently obvious features that should have been included (reply button for mail, I'm looking at you), yet weren't. In the past week or so, Zenimax learned of a bug that's been in the game since the early access period. It's not something obscure, it's not something that would have been missed if staff had playtested the game thoroughly. There are other launch day bugs that they know of but still haven't fixed, such has having to roll the dice every time you want to look in the guild bank.

At this point, I suspect it's too late and that ESO is simply viewed as one of the sources from which Elder Scolls 6 will be funded. I'd be overjoyed to be proved wrong, though. Whilst not an Elder Scrolls fan (I don't know an oblivion gate from a banana), I can see how it could be a pretty awesome game with a pretty awesome community, but for that to happen Zenimax will need to invest time, effort and money. When the best answer you can get to a question like "when can we have proper guild tools?" is (paraphrasing) "We'd like to do it but we have no ETA" it's hard to be optimistic.

*Disclaimer: I'm an old fart who remembers buying games on floppy disk and CD, before most people had the internet, so they had to be working when they were released because patching a shoddy product after the fact really wasn't an option.

DaveTheMinion · September 2015

Mighty_oakk wrote: »

So it took the

DaveTheMinion wrote: »

I'm sorry if my post offends but over the last 15 years I have seen so many games wrecked by the community forcing developers to change this and that because they don't want to adapt they just want the game tailored to how they want to play it! trying to keep gamers happy is a thankless and unappreciated job and they are never going to please everyone.

The developers would probably stay in touch more if the community were more respectful and approachable, but all I see are un constructive abusive comments thrown at them on a daily basis!!!

Most of the changes in this game have been influenced by the community, if a developer wants to come on here and tell me I am wrong and that it was solely their idea then I will offer a sincere apology to all I have offended with my post.

Well its b2p so its just what will make themost money short term now. They will 'listen' to the community when the community has an idea that will make them money.

Things like player retention are low priority compared to things like low operating costs in a b2p model.

I get what your saying but for me and this is my opinion only, I speak for nobody else when I say I used to be a hard core gamer, I would grind a game down until I get everything I wanted from it, but age caught up with me along with family life work and medical issues, so I like the ability to buy gear rather than play hard and reap the rewards, I think it helps the casual or less talented gamer be it age of physical ability to still compete etc.
I know from reading most posts that many are against paying for extras or for content that can be obtained just by playing long enough, but ZOS and its associates need to keep the money flowing in, this allows them to pay for servers, staff, utility bills etc, this in turn keeps the light on for them and for us with continued support and content, obviously the money had to come from somewhere when they cut the subscription charge.

Belidos · September 2015

RSram wrote: »

for example, the DAOC had underwater exploration and ESO doesn't?

The underwater stuff in DAoC was not in the base game, it was part of the second expansion "Trials of Atlantis", it took a long time just to get that and it rocked.

DovresMalven · September 2015

Stikato wrote: »

Article just confirms what everyone knows.

ESO has some very talented designers. It has some great gameplay elements. But it has been plagued by poor management from the start. This is evident in the shortcomings that Firor himself cites: poor marketing and messaging direction, and the larger design decisions that led to terrible phasing problems.

Furthermore, anyone who participated in the last beta knew that the game had very serious problems. The decision to allow such a disastrous beta test so close to launch crippled the game on PC. The decision to launch at that point doomed it to niche status on PC.

Company reviews on Glassdoor indicate that ZOS is a studio in which, for the most part, the different departments don't know what the other is doing, and management direction is sparse. How many times have we heard a lead developer say "oh that's so-and-so's department, I don't know the answer." How can lead dev's not know what each other is working on? How many are there? Five? Ten?

What's amazing is, most of the nuts and bolts of ESO are excellent. It is a themepark, which sucks, but they nailed the art, the combat, the character design and customization is good, and PVP is best in the business for a pure MMO. In other words, it took some really lousy management to screw up the work of many talented people.

It sucks writing this, but this is what the article basically says.

My thoughts exactly, and I think that's why people are suddenly becoming a little more vocal about the big issues we're seeing. We know there is still a beautiful game in here despite it's flaws, and we want to see that realized.

Genomic · September 2015

DovresMalven wrote: »

Stikato wrote: »

Article just confirms what everyone knows.

ESO has some very talented designers. It has some great gameplay elements. But it has been plagued by poor management from the start. This is evident in the shortcomings that Firor himself cites: poor marketing and messaging direction, and the larger design decisions that led to terrible phasing problems.

Furthermore, anyone who participated in the last beta knew that the game had very serious problems. The decision to allow such a disastrous beta test so close to launch crippled the game on PC. The decision to launch at that point doomed it to niche status on PC.

Company reviews on Glassdoor indicate that ZOS is a studio in which, for the most part, the different departments don't know what the other is doing, and management direction is sparse. How many times have we heard a lead developer say "oh that's so-and-so's department, I don't know the answer." How can lead dev's not know what each other is working on? How many are there? Five? Ten?

What's amazing is, most of the nuts and bolts of ESO are excellent. It is a themepark, which sucks, but they nailed the art, the combat, the character design and customization is good, and PVP is best in the business for a pure MMO. In other words, it took some really lousy management to screw up the work of many talented people.

It sucks writing this, but this is what the article basically says.

My thoughts exactly, and I think that's why people are suddenly becoming a little more vocal about the big issues we're seeing. We know there is still a beautiful game in here despite it's flaws, and we want to see that realized.

Problem is, I've been hearing that exact same hopeful 'the game has potential' argument since beta. After 1.5 years it seems a pretty safe bet that we're waiting for Godot.

DovresMalven · September 2015

Genomic wrote: »

Problem is, I've been hearing that exact same hopeful 'the game has potential' argument since beta. After 1.5 years it seems a pretty safe bet that we're waiting for Godot.

Ugh I know.. I'm trying to be hopeful here

Rune_Relic · September 2015

DovresMalven wrote: »

Genomic wrote: »

Problem is, I've been hearing that exact same hopeful 'the game has potential' argument since beta. After 1.5 years it seems a pretty safe bet that we're waiting for Godot.

Ugh I know.. I'm trying to be hopeful here

Which comes back to how much patience ZOS actually thinks people have.

Elsonso · September 2015

.

Rune_Relic wrote: »

DovresMalven wrote: »

Genomic wrote: »

Problem is, I've been hearing that exact same hopeful 'the game has potential' argument since beta. After 1.5 years it seems a pretty safe bet that we're waiting for Godot.

Ugh I know.. I'm trying to be hopeful here

Which comes back to how much patience ZOS actually thinks people have.

Patience is not the whole issue. If you read what Firor said, you could come to the conclusion that he has learned that he can take his sweet time and make all the mistakes he wants, and at a certain level of cost, fixes, and features, people will come back to the game. That is nice, but I find myself hoping they are not building their business model and development schedule around "player vacations".

Darlgon · September 2015

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

ca.ign.com/articles/2015/09/18/the-painstaking-redemption-of-the-elder-scrolls-online

Thanks for the llnk.

ZoS_MattFiror wrote:

"We take feedback from the community very seriously,” he says. “That led us to some things like the world not feeling interactive enough, so that’s when we put in the ability to pick up armour and weapons you see lying around, or looting anything in any crate anywhere."

IT STILL amazes me when they point to the "white, useless, decon for no mats, and now stealable" items they allow players to pick up as a big game improvement. Dont they get that those items are meaningless vs say, the ones you can loot from containers and decon for mats or craft with?

BTW, personally, I found the author of the article pretty neutral to almost positive. I really have little interest in what the IGN forum dwellers had to say.

Armitas · September 2015

I miss the road ahead. I feel like ZOS has become so insular from it's player base.

Turelus · September 2015

Dev Blogs, we need Dev Blogs.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/

That is how you give you community/players information on a regular basis.

Stikato · September 2015

Turelus wrote: »

Dev Blogs, we need Dev Blogs.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/

That is how you give you community/players information on a regular basis.

Eve dev blogs are amazing! Good call.

nimander99 · September 2015

Armitas wrote: »

I miss the road ahead. I feel like ZOS has become so insular from it's player base.

The reason for this goes something like this...

Dev: "Hey guys check out this cool Spellcrafting system we're working on"

Player: "When! when! when!"

Dev: "We hope Soon(TM) but no promises"

*Time goes buy eventually becoming Soon(TM)

Player: "WHERE IS SPELL CRAFTING?!? YOU PROMISED!!! I'M SUING AND FLAMING SOCIAL MEDIA EVERYWHERE I QUIT!!!"

Dev: /stuck