nimander99 wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

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

I liked and agreed with entirety of you remarks, well said as usual @yodased but I feel I must correct you on one thing, irl we see examples every single day of 'vocal minorities' high-jacking entire business', political movements, governments and laws, bureaucracies and especially sub reddits.

Just a small correction from a slightly sarcastic dunmer

Edit: I lied, I don't like lying it just doesn't sit well with me. I'm extremely sarcastic all the time. Gawd I feel better now that I corrected that, phew!

These are still worthwhile data. There's good and bad data and the only skill required is that of sifting the treasure from the junk using common sense.

A lot of trials, especially in medicine only apply to a fraction of the world, sometimes only applying to a certain country or institution. That has never stopped us from curing diseases and extending lifespans. Studies involving a thousand people are considered relatively large. Even case reports and case series are published.

Vocal minorities should have good intent when making suggestions. Our community is mostly adults so it helps a lot (comparing to other game forums)

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

I'll post this from the other thread, would be nice to see things like this - even on the PTS

That's actually something we've been talking about doing in the future (assuming we're both looking at the Developer Comments section).

Edit: By "the future", that just means we don't have time to do it for Thieves Guild release next week, but potentially starting in one of the incrementals.

We NEED these. I get that the combat team doesn't want to overload individual patches with changes, I get it. but with such delays between balance passes with no hint of work being done people get frustrated. With a finite number of changes being allowed in per patch people feel changes that would benefit them are being deliberately ignored. The longer the meta remains stagnant the more effective people will become at playing it and the more frustrated people will be. We need more incremental balance passes.

And to second what others have said we need more communication as well. Wrobel mentioned how the team has a vision of what the game should be like, bringing up his point about templars 'defending their house.' In the current state of the game, and with how the game is designed around movement, that doesn't work. And vague 'soon' post about getting around to defining these doesn't work. This isn't a holiday present you need to keep a secret, people are able to understand that not everything they can be told will happen; but as is the only time we have to give feedback for changes is during pts where the combat team doesn't have the time to implement major changes since the next patch is pretty much made.

And it doesn't have to be Wrobel, just someone on ZOS side that can communicate with the player base, someone who can make us feel like we aren't talking to a brick wall, someone that can directly share the thought process going behind changes. I'm still waiting for Wrobel's write-up about the future of the sorcerer class he was apparently starting last february, if that's anything to go by..

Heh you really have to be careful with including the player base... Most of the outspoken (and well known) aren't on the up and up.

If you look at the twitch crew (particularly the eso thing sypher does), I can only tell you that from personal experience the only ones that aren't insulting and/or just cheats are Sypher and King Richard. I've had interactions with all of them at some point... the only one I actually like and think is good guy is King Richard. I've gotten hate tells and laughable threats from most of them, usually when I kill them... and of all of them only Richard is a class act from what I've heard and seen.

Point being... guys who pose as helpful and only show their nice side and constructive side... aren't actually like that.

Turelus wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno Class representatives with class specific sub forums to discuss balancing would go a long way. There are a ton of qualified class representatives that would willingly accept this unpaid position. Give them some light forum powers over their class sub forum and focus all class balancing attention there.

That depends how we choose the representatives. If it's just going to be a popularity contest then it will just be players like Deltia, Sypher etc.

Also who's to say that the person who gets that job will have the same view of what x class should be like as me or any other.

I would rather just have a new dedicated thread at the start of each new expansion/update to focus all our gripes into and where ideas/updates can be posted by the devs. Sadly these threads are always packed with the kind of venom we have all discussed here.

ZOS should decide who is the representatives. It would be the class representatives role to manage the subforum and keep an up to date list well thought out and balanced suggestions. If we just have one thread, it quickly breaks down into just wishful thinking posts with zero hope of ever happening.

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Erock25 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno Class representatives with class specific sub forums to discuss balancing would go a long way. There are a ton of qualified class representatives that would willingly accept this unpaid position. Give them some light forum powers over their class sub forum and focus all class balancing attention there.

The problems are probably not on forum or player end. There were already countless feedbacks even before the 78 page official templar feedback thread. It turns out that they just heard but did not listen.

The problem with a feedback thread on PTS while a patch is going through testing is that too much is going on for the dev team at that time. They need a dedicated area to always have balance talks going and they need moderators or class representatives to have forum powers to sift through the piles of crappy feedback and pick out the good and reasonable feedback. I know that is subjective, but could easily be accomplished in many different ways. The stickied topic in each class subforum should list class issues, with potential ability/passive fixes below it which would address those issues.

Erock25 wrote: »

@ZOS_GinaBruno Class representatives with class specific sub forums to discuss balancing would go a long way. There are a ton of qualified class representatives that would willingly accept this unpaid position. Give them some light forum powers over their class sub forum and focus all class balancing attention there.

Well I'm sure Feng will happily put his hand up for stam sorcs, and they'd slap it back down but I believe @Nifty2g Would be a great representative for Templars. Not sure if I liked his idea on needing to cast an ultimate to gain major brutality but if there's anyone who knows the class better than the devs, its him.

Sallington wrote: »

Community representatives are all well and good, but ZOS needs LEAD CLASS DESIGNERS for each class.

I think ZOS should come out and define what the roles are supposed to be and then as themselves WHAT does that mean and how are the skills benefiting that description and how are they failing it. Define the core values of what it means to be your class, and ask how those skills work for or against it the goals of that class.

Zheg wrote: »

This thread doesn't need to be a debate about what's wrong and who's right or who lands on the rebel/fanboy side. The thread is an acknowledgement that there is a palpable dysphoria when it comes to the general feedback expressed by players in regards to the combat team, the changes they make, and their communication. Regardless of whether you agree with those players, denying the fact that they are not happy campers and that there is practically zero trust in the combat team is to be removed from reality. The volume of players unhappy is certainly debatable, though I don't see that being a fruitful debate. It is also undeniable that ZOS communication is and has been abysmal and does little to help the situation, even though they made promises a year ago to be better on that front and significantly ramp up their responsiveness.

Ultimately ZOS gonna ZOS. I have strong negative feelings about Wrobel's work, the combat team's work in general, and I've shared them freely on the forums. Whether he chooses to change course, or someone at ZOS chooses to make him is entirely up to them. I think it's a problem when using the tools available to me I see a significant population that looks at the combat team work and finds it more fitting for a meme than for praise or even apathy. I'm a pvper, and there is not a single person I talk to in game that is not anxiously awaiting CU and none have indicated any reservations about dropping ESO. Most don't even want to wait until launch to completely shift over, beta is sufficient. Sometimes people use hyperbole when making statements like that; what's more shocking is that there is no hyperbole whatsoever when I say that. It's hardly the entire population, but I know there's more out there, and in no way can that be indicative of a healthy player-dev relationship, balance, or a healthy game in general. Players can continue to argue among themselves about the scale of the problem, but the problem has been clearly (though bluntly) stated for ZOS, whether or not they want to choose to continue the path they've been criticized over for the past 2.5+ years is out of our hands.

Sage words @Zheg. When CU drops, ZOS can safely delete Cyrodiil and be free from the responsibility of balancing classes/skills and reading our incessant whining. The forums will likely go dark with the exception of an occasional thread about wanting moar crown store vanities. I honestly don't see many people who enjoy meaningful PvP sticking with ESO.

So I guess I'll #SeeYouWhenICU.

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

The thing I find curious is that so many of the races have passives that seem to encourage stamina builds. Half of the races (Orc, Redguard, Bosmer, Khajiit, Imperial) have racial passives that are most useful to stamina builds. Yet stamina skills and builds have, from day one, seemed to be of secondary concern to the developers. So it is like you are in a weird situation where stamina has lots of race options, but limited skill/build options. While magicka has limited race options (basically if DK then Dunmer, else Altmer), but lots of skill/build options.

I don't think that means you should take a bunch of stamina races and flip them to magicka races. That would just wreck a bunch of existing builds that actually work. But you really need to make stamina more versatile because so many of our favorite TES races are sporting stamina passives. MMOs are not one-and-done games where you "finish" and never play again. With so much time invested and the desire to invest more time, people get emotionally attached to their characters! They don't want to reroll to a different race.

I kind of want to chime in on that... I am not yet through with the thread, so maybe someone reacted to this already.

In any way: The "imbalances" of the Racial passives originate in the single player TES games. They were never intended as "balanced" but to provide a player with unique ways of how to play their character. They were usually a variety of boni and mali, that you had to compensate. Usually they were balanced against each other. Some had like 5 traits and other races only had one or two, varying in power and efficiency. Some things were nice to haves in early game, and some were totally disastrous at the beginning. But you were encouraged to find your way around it. And compensate through ingame means. Style of play, gear choices enchanting and alchemy... Or even training. And it was possible.

In my humble opinion, having classes and racial passives on top of each other, kind of opened a can of worms. SP Elder Scrolls games did not have classes. For obvious reasons of course. Since you didn't have to synergise with other players.

I feel that you make an excellent point in emphasizing the importance of emotional attachment to our Avatars. It shouldn't be necessary to have a FOTM or cookie cutter build to stay competitive. Of course you could see PVP as a means to fine tune your build so you can hone your character to perfection, in its combative environment. PVE and PVP shouldn't work that differently on the skills level.

It seems there is a conceptual problem in the game that creates a wedge between PVP and non PVP player styles. Ideally... it should not get out of hand like this...

I think they should add a whole seperate team dedicated to resolving pvp issues only. Whatever they have now is obviously not enough to handle all the bugs, let alone balance issues.

It's the lag, it's not class balancing. The thing in this game that makes you want to throw your controller is always the lag, and I am very sure it's why PvP forums are hella pissed. You guys have been dealing with this for a while and it isn't getting fixed. That frustration is poured into every further issue.

If your class was underpowered but you could be in a 50v50 battle with like 200-300 ping or whatever, would you be that bummed? It would still be awesome.

Prioritize dealing with server lag issues (remove aoe caps, remove aoe minor and major buffs, remove as many aoe calculations that will impact gameplay the least as possible). The abilities have been made too fancy over time causing too many calculations is what ZoS says is causing the lag, yet they are putting in more aoe minor and major buffs on abilities on the next patch. This is madness.

Fix the lag, quit adding more fancy pants multiple aoe buff effects on abilities that don't make the game any more fun and bog down servers.

The only screw up from the combat team I really care very much about is adding a DK spammable ability that will apply major sorcery and brutality on all allies in the area! It has to check every single allied player for buffs, then apply those buffs, then potentially apply the effect the buffs will have on abilities the allies are casting every single time it is spammed!

Don't do things like this, remove them and aoe caps, then look at class balance.

Zheg wrote: »

hrothbern wrote: »

Humatiel wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Humatiel wrote: »

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.

A more collegial attitude is indeed needed, but the developers explaining their way forward allows us to (through that explanation) provide feedback to help pursue that end. To remain utterly silent on almost all discussion points leads to the very chaos you see now and will not change until the "broad strokes" of their path forward is clarified.

The flip side of that however is every time they do speak up they get smacked down for making the choice opposite to what x player wants.

More threads like this (link to EVE Online Dev Post) would be welcome though. They're doing a good job with the specific forums for each class but better breakdowns of changes and then follow ups might help the growing pains.

Also ZOS should just forums ban people who don't know how to respect the Devs, start with a weeks ban, give them a life one if they don't learn. Nice and simple, you treat them nice but debate hard you stay, you insult and act like a ***, you get banned.

To be clear, If I ask a person one thousand questions (supervisor or peer) and he answers one of them then I won't respect him regardless of the answer.

on topic: It's entirely possible that they've provided the feedback you seem to think they have and I just missed it, where might I find "official" (not a we think maybe sometime before I retire) feedback on their 6 month / 1 year / 2 year plans for class and content based balances / changes / improvements and there plans for future expansions and the patches that are expected to hit pc and console? As well as clarification regarding their preferred (meaning they will provide feedback to our feedback) method of organizing complaints/suggestions?

To be clear, If I ask a person one thousand questions (supervisor or peer) and he answers one of them then I won't respect him regardless of the answer.

Not to be intended as disrespectful @Humatiel,

but there is an old Dutch saying
I quote
"one fool can ask more questions than 10 wise man can answer"

These guys cannot answer all questions asked,
They can, and they do, give us an outlook on their plans and thoughts
ESO live has that purpose

Very few would agree with you that they readily share their plans and thoughts, the super majority of ESO Lives I've managed to sit through are changes they've already implemented and coded, or damage control on the poorly received changes they've implemented and players saw in patch notes. I'm not saying that to be mean, I'm saying that because it's reality.

How many templars would have guessed that wrobel's vision for templar is to 'defend their house' after 2.5+ years of playing the class until he said so during ESO Live? Probably none. And yet you're trying to use that as an example of them giving us an outlook on their plans? In that one example it came 2.5+ years too late, so I don't think that really qualifies as a strong argument.

They don't have to answer all of the questions, but when a few are asked over, and over, and the playerbase is clearly being whipped into a frenzy over it, to hop into a thread where that question has been the focus for most of the thread and then answer some unrelated asinine question is insulting.

@Zheg ,

You say:
"Very few would agree with you that they readily share their plans and thoughts, the super majority of ESO Lives I've managed to sit through are changes they've already implemented and coded, or damage control on the poorly received changes they've implemented and players saw in patch notes. I'm not saying that to be mean, I'm saying that because it's reality".

smile
agree to some degree !
I am also of the opinion that ZOS does not readily share their plans and thoughts ! So far, when they make remarks, I have too often the feeling the direction is already written in stone, the coding has started, and by making the remark they expect to get our buy in.
But we do have ESO live in place, and it is the platform for sharing their plans, their thoughts, their considerations behind it.
What I would expect is that we are involved in an earlier phase !!!
I would expect that in ESO live a topic is mentioned high level, follow up by a thread on the forum, summarising the issue/plan and the thoughts, considerations and info to back it up. Including some defined questions to structure our feedback on that thread. Like the recent Official Tanking Feedback Thread.
I would recommend to ZOS, that the ZOS delegate that posts this thread gets enough mandate from the Combat team, to come in with posts during that discussion. At least on a once a week base. For clarifications if needed. To go into more depth on sub topics when needed. Just to say thank you, go on, when the feedback goes fine. Or to say thank you, we got what we wanted, we are going to move on in that and that direction. (in effect a soft closure of the thread).

@Ffastyl ,
you say:
"Rather than attempting to meet the demands of thousands of voices, find what you want and stick to it. The community can help you refine it. But never let them steer it. The masses seldom know what is best for them".
Very true
Especially in times of distress and uncertainty, Leadership has to give direction to the masses.
Especially in times of continuous changes, Leadership is to communicate all the time
To get and keep the initiative... otherwise the masses will take the initiative (happening now ?) and leading us to chaos.

I like the suggestion of @Turelus ,

Turelus wrote: »

So now I know we're being watched by the overlords I guess I better make posts with better structure.

This one is aimed a little more at ZOS but feel free to debate the points.

Earlier Information Releases.
Start the feedback topics before things hit PTS, right after the last update is posted. If the development period is going to be three months let's use those three months to debate about the changes and offer better solutions.

Monthly(Weekly) DevBlogs
Release a developer blog each week, one from Rich about general road ahead, one from Brian about PvP updates, one from Eric about skills/items updates and one from the lead PvE developer (I am really sorry I don't know your name! I am a dirty PvP player).
This gives everyone an update each month for each area of the game, not too much pressure on those division heads as it's a month write up and we as players get something nice to read each week.

More Internal Data
When ZOS came out and showed the internal data for AP made by players I was amazed to see just how low the average AP/Day was. Previously I had no idea just what others would earn in a casual gaming session and once I had that knowledge I could look at the 600+ days required to skill up and agree that the Alliance War skill line changes were good.
Far too often we just get told something and are given no information as to how you reached that conclusion, help us understand what you looked at to see the changes you're making. Also I really really like graph ***.

Explain the Company Structure.
Tell us who is on Eric's team, let them have names and faces! We see a few developers on ESO Live from time to time but these are more often the big names. Give us a tour of your offices so we can see where and how you work, let us in a little.
We as players know very little about how you work and what structures you have in place, the ESO Live Life at ZOS segments are already a great start on this.

Don't be Scared to Say No.
Be willing to say "No, we are not going to do that" sure there will be rage but this is your game and we would rather have an answer than check the forums every day to see a 54 page thread still without a Developer answer. I would rather know that you're not going to do something for sure than sit waiting and wondering.

This will contribute very well to a good working relationship between the vocal community here and ZOS.


There were a couple of posts suggesting to appoint player representatives
I advice against that.
A very good player and poster on this forum could very well burn away and got mixed up in his position.
And we will just lose by that a valuable member of our vocal community.

I would favor project groups based on Official Discussion Threads, headed up by a ZOS member with some freedom of movement.


My 2 cents.
Whereby the only important thing to me is that we really work together and share.
Let's make it happen !

My only problem is they are to slow to fix things, which tells me they are understaffed, or they have an engine that is not very flexible, and I think we might have a dev team that has not played a lot of mmo's over the years, Why is Matt not more hands on, he has the most experience in the office, he knows what was good about DAOC, and would work here has been around the block a few times.

I enjoy the game overall, imho there is nothing better on the market at this time for me, but what I am seeing is the faithful losing faith, some of the white night fans in my guild have started to be the biggest complainers about the game, this is not good.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

I'll post this from the other thread, would be nice to see things like this - even on the PTS

That's actually something we've been talking about doing in the future (assuming we're both looking at the Developer Comments section).

Edit: By "the future", that just means we don't have time to do it for Thieves Guild release next week, but potentially starting in one of the incrementals.

Another great and new example of the ideal transparency that players are talking about. It does not necessarily mean that GW2 team does a better job than ZOS at reflecting players' opinions but at least better at making people believe they care about the community.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Also if you're not going to bring constructive posts to this thread please don't post, so far it's been a pretty good back and forth debate with a lot of good feedback that I hope ZOS are reading. (WTB @ZOS_RichLambert /lurk)

We are reading and keeping an eye on this thread, and do appreciate the constructive discussion so far.

/lurk

being watched is creepy, how about some interaction instead?
and no /Lurk doesnt count

Well, from what some had said in posts I have read its because of the anti bot measures they put in place in the game. Thing is, we needed them and still do bots are a big problem that are worse then pvp lag, but in the other hand they need to reduce the anti bot measures in cyrodill only. But at a cost, they can't get profit from this. Meaning things like crafting nodes harvesting nodes need to give nothing as well as most locations only giving like npc clothing in drawers and other locations, this would be great for the rp community to find cloths, but also means you it would be harder for node farmers and bot farmers the bots can't benefit either also what would help is separating the dungeons from pvp and, meaning each faction gets there own instance of a dungeon this might improve performance. Also if you die in those dungeons or ruins you can respawn at the door.

So in essence would you sacrifice your ability to farm locations for good items as well as lose the ability to find any crafting material what so ever in cyrodill with looser bot restrictions, but making sure they know they are not welcome and make it impossible for them to gain. Or would you rather deal with the pvp lag. You would have to have one or the other but can't have both.