Balamoor wrote: »

I don't have a problem with who Zenimax invites, but they do need to find a better way to receive feedback from a larger demographic of the game, if they don't they are going to make their customers feel alienated and that's never good, especially in this fickle market.

Just my two cents take it as you will.

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

I think too much focus is put on the streamers that were invited . We know many other people that don't stream are attending . No one knows for sure how much influence this test group will even have on what ever they are testing . This entire topic is almost all speculative ...

Balamoor wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

Balamoor wrote: »

I don't have a problem with who Zenimax invites, but they do need to find a better way to receive feedback from a larger demographic of the game, if they don't they are going to make their customers feel alienated and that's never good, especially in this fickle market.

Just my two cents take it as you will.

I would rather them take no feedback, you aren't going to get anything worthwhile out of streamers who are only invested in promoting themselves (and usually their faction).

ZOS needs to look at the data they have and make objective decisions.

You aren't going to get objective from the player base, and it's really a terrible decision to even pretend to want to.

On PC-NA the only "balanced" campaign is TF with a queue and poplocked all alliances and hence lag. Azura's is routinely night capped by DC, Haderus is routinely zerged by EP. I guess it's no different than when there were "buff" servers... but, the only place you are seeing a fair fight is TF.

If there is a solution, you aren't going to get it from 11 DC streamers that abuse the game and it's players and 1 guy who spreads it out. I don't really know or care who was "invited", objectivity is hard to come by in a faction based game and it's likely whoever it is that got the invites isn't going to give two craps about what really ails pvp at times. It's going to be "do I have the advantage on this server mentality"

With many, that think so highly of themselves and talk nonstop about their skill... you would figure they would look for the underdog. But, they don't... they look for home keep bonuses and emp.

Some day, maybe some of them will actually take a look at how it is to play on a server where you log on trying to establish a beachhead past your gate keeps with groups of defenders just waiting for a resource to light up. Many of these streamers are easy pickings types who want unfair fights under unfair circumstances.

You make some interesting points, but I can tell you from experience that going by the data alone never works, because you do need a human element in your feedback or you can get it horribly wrong despite the data. Factions seem to matter most to PVP players, there are a ton of people who will never PVP in the game, I honestly believe finding commonalities with a larger demographic as well as focused groups of end game and PVP players is the best answer here. I hope that Zenimax comes to that conclusion as well, all we can do is wait and see.

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

cheemers wrote: »

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that PC is no more than a third of the total population, if that.

Apparently it does.

Just because there are three platforms to access the game it does NOT mean that players are evenly split among those three platforms.

PC is the traditional home of MMORPGs and though huge advances in making MMORPGS workable on console have been made in recent years I very much doubt that either console version has as many players as PC.

All The Best

Balamoor wrote: »

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

They literally invited the guy who was saying that Stamina Sorcerers were under powered and enough wasn't done to address the issues a week before they patched them into overpowered.

This is what a lack of objectivity brings... and being very few of us can be objective (if any at all), all they have is data and that's a better route than listening to people that are biased.

Painting everyone with a broad brush, pretty much makes you biased against everyone else. The point is moot though, you have your opinion I have mine, I base my opinion on more decades than I wish to share of being a computer gamer, and a couple of decades as a paid consultant to developers. It was said earlier that all of this wouldn't be necessary if ZoS just used the feedback on the PST, I hope that if Matt is reading this thread whether that statement is true or not: it is the perception currently and that really needs to change and it's up to them to foster that change.

I personally believe they can.

willlienellson wrote: »

ZOS Focuses way too much on the feedback of elite "celebrity" gamers while they roundly ignore player consensus and feedback on the forums as a matter of course. It's a problem.
Original Post Below:
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Apparently, right now, a select elite of ESO youtubers like Sypher and Deltia, etc are meeting in person with Zenimax after being invited to the headquarters.

While these youtubers provide a service with their content, they hardly represent the ESO player base neither formally nor informally. They most often represent each other. They represent a micro-industry that operates along side ESO. If anything in-game, they represent a small minority of elite guilds that don't experience ESO like the rest of us and are not good representatives.

Please allow me to explain and provide examples.

PvP: I'm not suggesting any of the specific youtubers or "celebrity players" cheat (although some do and have been banned for it), but they also don't experience playing against cheating, or even against OP players, in the same way. Members of this class of ESO players avoid combat with each other. Many of the known cheaters in this game belong to the same guilds as these elite celebrity ESO players. That doesn't mean the celebrity youtubers are cheating, but it usually means the cheaters don't fight against them. This results in this group having an unrealistically casual viewpoint on cheating as something more benign than it is.

Exploits/Secrets: And exploiting game glitches is the cousin of cheating. Things that aren't working as intended, but are unlikely to get you banned, are passed around as open-secrets within the group and become staples of builds, but are not shared publicly because they don't want them fixed.

Here are two examples of fixed exploits that people weren't getting banned for, that I think I can provide since they no longer work.

1) You could double enchant Flanking Set jewelry with a total of 6 jewelry glyphs instead of 3.
2) You could glitch out Hist Bark set to give a dodge bonus even after you took the set off.

So while you were making the hard choices about how to enchant your jewelry, some players were not. When you were spending 3000 stamina to cast Shuffle, or wearing 5 pieces of Hist Bark, others were dodging with neither.

I'm not accusing anyone of doing these things, but I know the people who did do these things are embedded within that small community. So, at it's most benign, this colors the feedback and impressions of the players in that community which are passed on to Zos as apparently about the only feedback they are actually interested in.

Powercreep: Even if none of the youtube celebrity player cheat, or exploit, or take advantage of tricks....the higher ceiling of performance that is enjoyed on average in these communities is exacerbating the power creep problem in this game. Members of this sector of the community are always the first to say, "This game offers me no challenge. VMA is too easy. This is too easy. That is too easy".

Balancing: Their opinion of balance rarely reflects the community because they rarely face players utilizing abilities to their maximum effectiveness due to the fact that players within this class avoid fighting each other. This is the only game I've ever played where friends cannot play against each other. I've had several of the people I consider members of this niche group actually tell me point blank, "Friends don't kill each other in PvP. I'll give you a pass and you give me a pass. Stop fighting against me or I'm taking you off friends list".

Instead of two great players with great builds fighting each other and learning that certain abilities are indeed out of balance, they pass by each other, high-fiving one another as they farm the pugs from each others alliances and convince themselves that the game is perfectly balanced but THEY are individually "Gods of PvP".
These players don't have experiences in the game that would allow them to adequately represent the larger player base.

The resources were used to have this elite youtube gathering session at Zenimax would have been better spent reading the forums, selecting a few issues with broad community consensus, and then having an internal meeting on how to best address those concerns. But that's too much to hope for.

Yes, I'm painting with a broad brush. There are exceptions to every rule and I'm not trying to disparage anyone specifically. I don't blame anyone for accepting the invitation. This is a rebuke of how Zos operates.

I subscribe to Deltia's channel, I like his content, and his personality. But I don't like him as a representative of ESO players.

If you like their videos, that's fine. If you run their builds, that's great. If you think I'm full of crap, that's okay. And Zos can invite whoever they want on a sleepover.
But, if you've ever wondered why this game is balanced around the top 1% of players and the roleplayers being bought off with mount reskins with everyone in the middle ignored, THIS IS WHY.

[Edit to remove mention of moderator actions and political references]