Woeler wrote: »

Honestly, if you are going to implement things here after polling the entire community we'll end up with hello-kitty difficulty pve content, a deletion of Cyrodiil and DLC's solely consisting of emote packs.

The whole video states poll BEFORE creation

Well, in theory this sounds like a good idea but I doubt it will work for several reasons:

1. Players usually do not know what is good for the game.
Sure, players can judge whether they want something or not. But every game, every piece of software follows a concept and philosophy. Laying this into the judgement of the community may result in quite some chaotic product at the end.

2. Players will not be able to judge the full scope of an idea.
I want to pickup your example poll about roleplaying enhancements. Sure it will not have any obvious negative impact on gameplay. But it will have a negative impact on development as the development consumes resources and blocks those resources from doing other stuff like necessary fixes etc.
So you "manipulated" your community by building an opinion which is (of course) purely subjective and so the "lemmings" follow you without even knowing what they are voting about.
Neither you, nor any other usual player will be able to fully judge on every polled idea's impact on the game, the development, performance etc.

3. Who manages to mobilize most people wins.
So we've got several streamers with ESO and I would say most of them (including you) are PvP players who mostly do PvE to get needed equipment and not because they are equally interested in PvE.

Simple example: ZOS launches a poll like "What's next? Should we work on new battlegrounds (assuming they already introduced some) or on new trials?".

Now I assume most of ESO's streamers will build an opinion to vote for BGs as a priority and so will their viewers. Now ESO does definitely not have as many PvE streamers/Youtubers as for PvP so there won't be as many "manipulation" for the trials part of this polling. I think you can see where I am getting at...

4. It is not only about the "if" but more about the "how" are things done.
Now we all know ZOS and we also know they come up with some great ideas but the final concept often lacks some thought and final polishing. For example if they would have made a poll like "Should we introduce riding skills to improve the capacity, durability and speed of your horse?" more than 95% of the community would have voted "Yes" for sure.
But would as many have voted "Yes" if they knew the concept behind this is to make you feed your horse for like 180 days to get to the maximum level? I guess not.
So no matter what they ask the community to decide about, without having a concept behind the task it will still be like buying something blinded.

5. Something like a council would be more beneficial to the game and the community.
I guess some here also know how CCP manages the development of the MMO EVE Online. The introduced a "Council of Stellar Management" several years back.

This CSM is a council of 14 EVE players being elected by the community every year and the candidates are bound to quite some strict NDA and have nearly full insight on CCP's development plan for the next couple of updates/months (at least) including their concepts.
Now CCP (as every game company) comes up with tons of ideas every day and whatever gets approved by their internal game design team and game producers gets discussed with the CSM first. As the CSM members are representing several fields of the game it is made sure that some areas do not get thrown under the bus.
CCP also organizes two CSM summits every year where this council comes together in CCP's HQ in Iceland to go through plans and concepts for the next couple of updates.

I've seen this working great for years now and in this way the developer is able to discuss their plans (even in detail) with representatives of their community without having too many judges not knowing the full scope of something they plan for the game.

The thought of player moderators on forums or in the game scares me to be honest. I pay ZOS for ESO to be able to feel free and relax, and I want all actions toward me to be made by a payed professional and not another player like myself.

As for polls, many players have multiple accounts and can vote multiple times on a poll. It is in their right to do so, they have payed for the game x2 and should be entitled that amount of votes - however, it is not good for the community over all.

For instance lets take a look at the trading community on PC/EU. Many trading-guild owners have multiple accounts, and the majority of them are heavy pvp players. So they are in no way a majority.

In polls about economy or gear/ skill changes, they would probably all line up to vote - with all their accounts and their friends + access to influence 500 guildmembers (assuming they only advertise in own guild) - they are a minority with access to more votes and could change the appearance of certain votes to their own favor. All fair game, if it gets implemented - but the overall community will be left unsatisfied by these polls, and feel that the outcome does not reflect them.

Will the polls discriminate, or will players of all levels be able to vote in all polls?
I sure as hell don't want a new low level player to have any affect on what skill, gear and group content changes I will get as a veteran in ESO ...I'm not going to blame the low level player to set his vote, but I will hold it against ZOS and drop both my subscriptions.