So many are furious with the combat team development, what's the path forward?

Zheg · March 2016

Take a quick browse through any of the forum sections and you'll find players vociferously demonstrating their lack of faith and/or disdain for the lead combat designer and the work that comes out of the combat team as a whole. While just a (large) subset, templars and stamina users tend to make up a significant percentage of those unhappy at this particular point in time. Templars because, well, go read the 75+ page feedback thread on the PTS section (someone should since ZOS won't), and stamina users because Wrobel thought it would be a good idea to only balance magicka for this patch, and wait until DB to begin balancing things likes stamina, heavy armor, world class lines, etc. Pvpers as a whole also fit into this subset mostly because of aoe caps. Let's also not forget how it's taken since beta to even begin a process (that should take all of a week of brainstorming and coding) to revamp the trait system that's resulted in a majority being utterly useless for gameplay.

To be fair, I'm sure there are some that are perfectly happy and/or supportive. But if we're being fair, it's impossible to ignore the percentage of the game population that do not feel that way. To chalk up the fury to it all being derived from mmo gamers 'being mmo gamers' and exaggerating everything would be disingenuous given some of the truly asinine things said from the combat team ("Wall of Elements melts players", aoe caps, templar houses xD) that demonstrate clear disconnect issues between the game they are balancing and the game that we all play. So the question is, how does ESO move forward? When the fruit of the combat team spends more time as the butt of jokes or memes than being enjoyed by that many players, how does ZOS recover? Do you keep chugging along ignoring the problem and hope that players stop talking about it, or that they don't all jump ship as soon as there are other options on the market? Want to take a shot at answering those difficult questions @ZOS_GinaBruno ?

Alabyn · March 2016

I hope part of the way forward is taking a more collegial attitude on the forums. Allegations that developers do not read the Forums, "hate" certain types of players, or classes conveyed by spiteful and provocative, insulting language just muddy the waters. The way forward begins not with Wrobel or anyone else explaining themselves, but with constructive feedback and behaving as gentleman and women. I hope your thread heads in that direction!

Once that culture has changed on these forums, we can begin the important work of improving the game.

Turelus · March 2016

Take a look at the game and you'll see even more players who simply don't care and keep playing.

I won't argue ZOS need better communication, but just because we (the vocal forums community) think something should be doesn't mean it should be or that it's best for the game.
If ZOS were to listen to the forums then we would see every single class have the ability to one shot each other because everyone demands their class should be buffed and anything that beats them should be nerfed.

There are some good posts now and then which give good structured feedback about how ZOS could make changes to the game, but most are just "rahhh rahhh X is horrible!" "waaa waaa Y killed me" "Booo hooo you nerfed Z so I can't win every fight any more".

Adapt or die, if you have a good idea post it in a way other that throwing personal insults at the lead developers and asking for them to be fired.

Zheg · March 2016

Alabyn wrote: »

I hope part of the way forward is taking a more collegial attitude on the forums. Allegations that developers do not read the Forums, "hate" certain types of players, or classes conveyed by spiteful and provocative, insulting language just muddy the waters. The way forward begins not with Wrobel or anyone else explaining themselves, but with constructive feedback and behaving as gentleman and women. I hope your thread heads in that direction!

Once that culture has changed on these forums, we can begin the important work of improving the game.

This isn't some 'new' issue, this has been consistent throughout the game's life. I myself was in the very boat you profess once upon a time, but 2 years later when the problem remains stagnant or worsens, well, blame placed on players at that point is silly. You say the way forward begins with constructive feedback, and I've seen that for pretty much every issue I can think of in the game at the moment. What happens when that constructive feedback is never acted upon is how we arrive at the point we're at now, and how the lead combat designer becomes running jokes in TS, guild chat, zone chat, forums - wherever players discuss.

A large part of the problem is and always has been ZOS' communication and approach. There's never any actual time to provide feedback and have the code fixed during the PTS cycles. Wrobel pushes out changes that players had zero idea about (because they don't actually have open dialogue about their intentions or direction), and then whatever is wrong or broken remains so for many months until the next patch, where it may or may not be prioritized or buried by some other high priority fix for a problem they introduced in the current or previous patch. It's bananas, and that's on ZOS, not players because they aren't being 'nice' enough.

Zheg · March 2016

Turelus wrote: »

Take a look at the game and you'll see even more players who simply don't care and keep playing.

I won't argue ZOS need better communication, but just because we (the vocal forums community) think something should be doesn't mean it should be or that it's best for the game.
If ZOS were to listen to the forums then we would see every single class have the ability to one shot each other because everyone demands their class should be buffed and anything that beats them should be nerfed.

There are some good posts now and then which give good structured feedback about how ZOS could make changes to the game, but most are just "rahhh rahhh X is horrible!" "waaa waaa Y killed me" "Booo hooo you nerfed Z so I can't win every fight any more".

Adapt or die, if you have a good idea post it in a way other that throwing personal insults at the lead developers and asking for them to be fired.

I'm not talking about any specific issue, I'm talking about how the collective has now resulted in the lead combat designer more or less being a meme for so many of the playerbase. How does a game remain healthy when so many have reached that point? Completely agreed on the nerf threads and the 'I just died' threads, but that's not what's brought about the disdain and elimination of any faith in the combat development.

I also made clear in the OP that "I'm sure there are some that are perfectly happy and/or supportive". The point is what does ZOS do when they've reached a point that those who don't fit into that bucket have reached the size that we're currently at?

yodased · March 2016

Let's make sure we are on the same page here

You are the third dot from the 7,000,000,000 from the left. I think I see me over there on the right.

None of us have any idea of the big picture. We all see these little frames and compartments and think we can extrapolate that out to scale of the playerbase.

Know what, the most you can actively be a part of is 2,499 players. This is your community. 5 guilds, 500 people, minus yourself.

You could then take a strawpoll of those people and try to take some info from that, but its such a small sample size your data will be completely broken.

Remember that not everyone is the same as yourself, even though it feels that way.

They have access to the data. We don't. 100% of these posts and ideas are just that, ideas, conjecture, speculation.

Not to say I don't agree with the concept and the ideals behind it, but don't think that we can affect change by being on the forums.

Last maths were done someone figured out it was less than 1% of all players that visit these forums, so uh how can a vocal minority of super low % mean anything?

Zheg · March 2016

@yodased I can't comment on console or EU, but PC NA zone chat is certainly outside of my 2500 member 'community'. There are a HUGE amount of players that quest, roll alts well before reaching v16, and are perfectly content and pay ZOS money. No one is forgetting that. But when the forums are plastered with the disdain I'm addressing, when /zone chat is plastered with it, when every single stream that ZOS does is plastered with it, at one point do you move beyond the generalized "can't make everybody happy" or "gamers just being gamers and exaggerating" straw-man arguments and realize there are inherent problems in the foundation?

Turelus · March 2016

The thing is they are being reasonably communicative now, more so than in the past. However every time they say an off hand comment like "AP caps" the forums explodes with threads saying they're idiots, fire them, they don't play the game etc.

I agree fully they could be more open with how they work on things, I have seen some of the best player/developer communication possible in the MMO genre whilst playing EVE Online. However the difference in the feedback given from that community and this one is very different.

I do agree their development cycles and deployment times for issues seem to be completely messed up. No bug should take three months to fix if it's addressed on a PTS (it shouldn't even make it to live) but the community can't keep looking at specific developers and saying "everything is this persons fault!"

However when we as a community start growing up and trying to engage these people with rational and polite threads we'll get better communication. This can be seen on the forums in some threads where the Developers or community team have taken the time to reply to a well structured and calm question.

Honestly though I don't think anything at this point will make this community happy.
They make threads asking for feedback, they give us reason as to why they did/didn't do something. Then they get raged at because they didn't go in the direction we wanted them to, even if they have actual rational and reasoned answers as to why.

Rich would make /lurk posts to show he had seen the thread or would be watching it, then people just attacked him for not replying to it in any way or giving more feedback.

From what I understand we seem to want developers who have a permanent presence on the forums replying to every individual issue and the only answer they can give is "yes, you're 100% right we'll do what you want".

In closing I again agree we do need better communication and ZOS need to step up with bug fixing releases, however as I and others have said we as a community need to step up on our manners constructive information offered.

yodased · March 2016

Zheg wrote: »

@yodased I can't comment on console or EU, but PC NA zone chat is certainly outside of my 2500 member 'community'. There are a HUGE amount of players that quest, roll alts well before reaching v16, and are perfectly content and pay ZOS money. No one is forgetting that. But when the forums are plastered with the disdain I'm addressing, when /zone chat is plastered with it, when every single stream that ZOS does is plastered with it, at one point do you move beyond the generalized "can't make everybody happy" or "gamers just being gamers and exaggerating" straw-man arguments and realize there are inherent problems in the foundation?

I am not debating whether there is a problem. In my opinion there are so many things broken I don't have the breath for it.

The point is though, zone chat, forums posts, streams etc are all conjecture and its the "squeaky" wheel. I'm not sure what zone chat you are reading since I haven't been on the P.C. in quite some time, but I don't remember people using it to complain about the game on a regular basis. More for sales and LFG spam, but w/e.

I am simply stating that we don't have the full picture and talking like we do makes us look immature and foolish.

DHale · March 2016

I think a large part of this could be solved through effective, honest, and open communication. Not ignoring us, from the perspective of the devs though it's a no win situation. They are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't. When I see fan art take up more time on ESO live than ask us anything (except hard questions) it does frustrate me. I do want iriterate that we need to take some of the responsibility for the state of the game. In my guild if you teabag someone it's a g kick. Guess what no one tea bags. If you whispers someone with profanity or sexist or racial things bye bye too. We don't run more than 16 ppl and actually stop actively recruiting at twelve which means invariably we get mowed down by thirty or forty ppl when we all know the game can't handle it. I get killed daily by ppl who hit me with lotus fan or ambush literally 5 times in a row. Ppl who have no business in Cyrodil until they can learn some simple combos or play thier class. I do think ESO senior leadership needs to get involved and assess this objectively. Angering even a vocal minority of the customer base cannot be a good business strategy.

Erock25 · March 2016

The path forward is dev turnover which happens in all MMO's. I'm not asking for anyone to be fired, but when a lead dev in charge has come out and said that these abilities in game are 'his children' and it is clear that he does not have a clue about SO MANY vital game mechanics, we will not see any meaningful progress until a change is made. The combat team has spent countless hours creating these systems (aoe caps, abilities in general, ideas of resource sustain and max dmg) and they can't see the forest for the trees. New blood will come in eventually as profits wane or key members ask for higher salary and only then will we get innovative ideas. But what do I know, maybe the higher ups have come out and said, "balance this game around solo PVE at all costs," and then I can understand some of the changes and lack of changes.

Cryhavoc · March 2016

If I had official forums in my business, and I ignored direct and realistic questions or concerns, there are a couple things going on (in my opinion):

1. I am ignorant about recommended customer service practices
2. I do not care about those customers

No matter what, if a large percentage of the player base has a common concern and it is ignored, the "big picture" is not adequate or it is incorrectly conveyed.

eliisra · March 2016

To be honest, I kinda expect this game to revert into a "Skyrim online" or simliar. As in a couple of new PvE DLC's every year with mostly solo content. There's still a market for that, due to being TES franchise. Also cheap to maintain even if you dont win any awards lol.

Just feel they wont be able to deliver the game they set out to make. This was suppose to be a kinda top 10 MMORPG with PvX content including AvAvA and endgame PvE. Competing with games like WoW, SWTOR, Lineage and Tera. But seems they lack the expertise, staff, finances and likely support and understanding from higher management to run that kind of machinery.

They're not even using the cash shop to full potential and missing out on so much revenue. Stuff like barber, race change and ofc good looking costumes, hair styles, alliance change, weapon skins and similar regenerates so much micro transactions in online games. It should have been in-game 1 year ago.

I personally think ESO will keep going for many years to come, but as a more modest game. I also doubt Wrobel will still be able to handle combat, itemization, classes, CP and skills in the future. That just nuts for one person, even there's more staff involved. He must be so burned out that guy, kinda understand why he's not getting PvP combat.

WalkingLegacy · March 2016

We don't have the bigger picture which OP clearly asks "what is the path forward".

Is this being missed or ignored?

dennissomb16_ESO · March 2016

The problem with forums is the "so many" concept. General conception in most MMOs is that a relatively small portion of the player base actually posts on the forums of any MMO. Of course we really have no idea on what the percent really is but we can make certain assumptions from personal experience. Right now in my main guild in ESO we have 294 members (not real as it keeps people forever) but on an active night about 40-50 are actually online.

Based on discussions in guild chat and TS only 2 other members are active on the forums. That is 3 out of 50 average. I am sure it is different from guild to guild.

Personally I think they handle the forums relatively poorly, you just need to go to the present test server forums to see the total lack of interaction. Having said that, the game is 2 years old, has a decent player base so despite the often hateful posts on the forums they seem to be making the actual player base happy.

Times can change. The older MMO players can remember the disaster that TOS was for DAOC or even the closure of Warhammer due to poor interaction between developers and players

bikerangelo · March 2016

They really don't owe us anything. We choose to submit opinions and feedback, and it's their choice to act on it. If they don't, we can fault them for not implementing fixes to benefit the game in the long run, but that's just about it.
This is coming from the same person who's been petitioning for months to get Toppling Charge fixed. After numerous in-game bug reports, forums posts, and responses from @ZOS_GinaBruno that it would be addressed in the TG update, it's still broken on the PTS and the TG update will go live with an eternally broken ability. That alone conveyed a feeling of futility in attempting to voice concerns.
If they still don't get it by now, it's best to just move on. CU later.

Jhunn · March 2016

People saying 'you have no clue about the big picture', mhm, but it's really not hard to tell from the forums. The AOE caps poll had +-4000 people voting. You'd never have half that vote nowadays.

Glory · March 2016

Is this just a venting thread? Did I miss the section with constructive feedback?

Sometimes I wonder why we don't see ZOS interacting more with us on the forums, then I come to these types of threads where people treat them like trash. It's a shame that some of our community think that raging is the best way to get things done.

NBrookus · March 2016

When it comes to communication, it's a catch-22. If the devs are posting on forums and writing blog posts, they aren't fixing the stuff we want them to fix. But we do need better communication about what's going on before we get hit with it.

Honestly, I'd like just once to see a ZOS employee playing their own game. If once a month there were a few ZOS employees running dungeons and sewers and taking keeps and playing with the regular user base, I think it would go a long way toward the ZOS employees seeing the customer PoV, and foster warmer relations so the customers remember that the employees are people too.

It's a lot harder to trash talk about people you've laughed on TS with.

Zheg · March 2016

ebethke_ESO wrote: »

Is this just a venting thread? Did I miss the section with constructive feedback?

Sometimes I wonder why we don't see ZOS interacting more with us on the forums, then I come to these types of threads where people treat them like trash. It's a shame that some of our community think that raging is the best way to get things done.

Yes, you did in fact miss the many many constructive sections on the forums over the past two years.I shouldn't need to coddle or hold someones hand to identify an issue. I spent about 9+ months being friendly and defending ZOS, there's zero need for fruitless mollycoddling at this point. This isn't a thread making the case for why there should be disdain, this is a thread identifying that it already exists and questioning what ZOS' intentions are for addressing it.

WalkingLegacy · March 2016

@NBrookus

I've been advocating some of the devs play with us as well. Could go hand in hand at strengthing community to dev relations.

If you watch the videos they did on ESO Live of them playing....it was unmotivating and personally left me wondering if they play MMOs, do they even play their own?

Shoot, I'd even group it up with Gina and Jessica - I bet they play better than Wrobel.

yodased · March 2016

Jhunn wrote: »

People saying 'you have no clue about the big picture', mhm, but it's really not hard to tell from the forums. The AOE caps poll had +-4000 people voting. You'd never have half that vote nowadays.

Extrapolated information that suits your needs doesn't do anything. 4,000 people voting? lol ok.

ESO sold millions of copies. Let's just say 1,000,000 people bought the game. It's more, but whatever.

so your .004% of the playerbase gives you an accurate sample size of data?

no, not it doesn't.

oibam · March 2016

I saw them playing xD

Spam of BoL and Wrecking Blow

))))))))

DKsUnite · March 2016

wtb Wrobel + Matt Firor for one day to pvp with kh.

david.haypreub18_ESO · March 2016

The true path forward is simple to say, though hard to do in practice: engage the community and fix the things that need fixing.

Heavy armor has been ignored. Templars have been ignored. You have to devote resources to trying to fix the things that are broken about them.

The good thing is that there are lots of ideas on how to fix them, many quite detailed and relatively easy to implement. But you have to take these problems seriously. I do not see any real seriousness in the current ZOS team's approach to either heavy armor or Templars. That is the real problem.

mistermutiny89 · March 2016

Right now it feels very: the people vs the DEVS. Every ESO live just enrages those who have the displeasure of watching it. The memes after ESO live shows are the only good thing to come out of them.

Game stability and functionality is terrible, some of us have to open a ticket each month just to get our ESO plus crowns, class balance is obsurdly flawed and freedom of speech is very limited on the forums. The months it took to fight for text chat on consoles was a JOKE with the DEVS pretty much saying "no, stop asking it's never going to happen" , but we finally succeeded. Unfortunately every issue with this game is just another battle with the devs.

However many of us are here because we love the Elder Scrolls franchise and that passion for the franchise means we pretty much have to deal with what they give us. It's our choice to stay. 2,500 hours in with about four game crashes a day, all my favourite abilities getting nerfed, farming spots being removed, ridiculous attempts at class balances and I'm still going to play another 2,500 hours. I'm masochistic, what can I say?

To answer your question: "what's the path forward?", well we just keep on keeping on. We've got another quarter of rubbish content and patches coming our way this month. Let's hope Dark Brotherhood saves the day. Wouldn't count on it though. My guess is the removal of veteran ranks is going to be a cluster f... Bomb and a half.

Solariken · March 2016

eliisra wrote: »

To be honest, I kinda expect this game to revert into a "Skyrim online" or simliar. As in a couple of new PvE DLC's every year with mostly solo content. There's still a market for that, due to being TES franchise. Also cheap to maintain even if you dont win any awards lol.

Just feel they wont be able to deliver the game they set out to make. This was suppose to be a kinda top 10 MMORPG with PvX content including AvAvA and endgame PvE. Competing with games like WoW, SWTOR, Lineage and Tera. But seems they lack the expertise, staff, finances and likely support and understanding from higher management to run that kind of machinery.

They're not even using the cash shop to full potential and missing out on so much revenue. Stuff like barber, race change and ofc good looking costumes, hair styles, alliance change, weapon skins and similar regenerates so much micro transactions in online games. It should have been in-game 1 year ago.

I personally think ESO will keep going for many years to come, but as a more modest game. I also doubt Wrobel will still be able to handle combat, itemization, classes, CP and skills in the future. That just nuts for one person, even there's more staff involved. He must be so burned out that guy, kinda understand why he's not getting PvP combat.

I think you nailed it here.

I often find myself so frustrated with them about design issues and think "this game is turning into nothing but a cash grab" but then I remember that they aren't even doing a good job at the cash generating aspect. It's so glaringly obvious at this point that they run a skeleton crew with key developers responsible for far too much to be diligent in any particular area. I've said it before but @ZOS_MattFiror is ultimately responsible for this failing and he needs to take a hard look at his leadership practices.

GrumpyDuckling · March 2016

I certainly wouldn't want to be a member of the team who is responsible for balance. It's just too difficult when I try to realistically think about the task of balancing everything as a whole.

However, because it's necessary to strive for balance, perhaps the combat team could implement a system that removes the 4 classes that we currently have (Templar, Dragonknight, Nightblade, Sorcerer) and instead allows us to choose 3 of the 12 skill lines for building our character.

Then, the issue is not about balancing classes, but instead, about balancing skill lines. This would drastically reduce the amount of work for the combat team and also give players more options. Then we wouldn't have whole groups of people complaining that their entire class feels useless to them (as we currently have with Templars).

Sureshawt · March 2016

Well to be honest it is a difficult position to be in for several reasons.

-Most players are not objective about balance or what is best for the game overall (class bias)
-The complexity of the combat system
-The build flexibility inherent to the game design (i.e any class can wear any armor, additional skill lines outside of class lines etc.) adds additional complexity
-Additional layer of complexity on top of already complex systems (Champion Point system)*
-Ingenuous players using build flexibility to create amazing synergistic builds that exceed expectations and force adjustments

*Love the idea of the system but it has some serious flaws and should have gone through a lengthy pilot run on pts to properly work out the issues before going live. The suits and their SOP probably forced this rollout before it was ready is my guess.

Quite frankly I'm overall extremely happy with the combat system in this game.

Do I think everything is perfect and dandy? No

However, at the end of the day I'm having fun playing PvP in this game and having some great entertainment after a hard days work which is what its all about for me.

timidobserver · March 2016

Erock25 wrote: »

The path forward is dev turnover which happens in all MMO's. I'm not asking for anyone to be fired, but when a lead dev in charge has come out and said that these abilities in game are 'his children' and it is clear that he does not have a clue about SO MANY vital game mechanics, we will not see any meaningful progress until a change is made. The combat team has spent countless hours creating these systems (aoe caps, abilities in general, ideas of resource sustain and max dmg) and they can't see the forest for the trees. New blood will come in eventually as profits wane or key members ask for higher salary and only then will we get innovative ideas. But what do I know, maybe the higher ups have come out and said, "balance this game around solo PVE at all costs," and then I can understand some of the changes and lack of changes.

They are his children. He is simply a dead beat dad that refuses to pay his child support.

WalkingLegacy · March 2016

GrumpyDuckling wrote: »

I certainly wouldn't want to be a member of the team who is responsible for balance. It's just too difficult when I try to realistically think about the task of balancing everything as a whole.

However, because it's necessary to strive for balance, perhaps the combat team could implement a system that removes the 4 classes that we currently have (Templar, Dragonknight, Nightblade, Sorcerer) and instead allows us to choose 3 of the 12 skill lines for building our character.

Then, the issue is not about balancing classes, but instead, about balancing skill lines. This would drastically reduce the amount of work for the combat team and also give players more options. Then we wouldn't have whole groups of people complaining that their entire class feels useless to them (as we currently have with Templars).

I don't think that solves an issue of balance because we would still have the same trees. Instead of classes, it would be skill lines. Same problem, different way the skills are presented to us.

They've convulated their own issue of balance with Vet ranks and Champion Points.

I like the point @eliisra conveys.

ZoS or Matt presenting to us what path they're going down in regards to the game direction would probably clarify things for us.