Loc2262 wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

And finally, far too many people believe that PTS is for global design testing. PTS is for large-scale performance testing and bug finding.

That must be why for every major PTS phase, Gina creates numerous threads like "Nightblade class changes feedback here", "Dual Wield combat changes feedback here", etc. pp.

If they were only interested in "performance and bug reports", why create such threads explicitly?

Well, I for one am glad these threads exist because they channel the "don't-nerf-meeeee-feedback", so I know what NOT to read ;-)

Seriously, of course they will ask for it ! That's partly corporate communication (make us believe that we have a say...) , that's partly true feedback, because they could have made a real bad design decision, and that's also needed to explain qualitatively some behaviours they may notice quantitatively. In other words, they don't look at what we say, they look at what we do, but what we say may help them explain and understand what we do.

Those threads are there for all those reasons and beyond. But there's no way they'll change anything based on those threads ONLY.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

maboleth wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

That's no fact at all.
The only people who can possibly know what "the majority" thinks and if said majority is happy or not is ZOS. They are the only ones who know for sure if we, as a MAJORITY, play or quit, buy or don't buy, and what we do in the game.
You simply have no figures, no data to back up what is obviously a plain assumption from your side.

^ You are absolutely correct and that's something I used to say a lot. BUT, if you are asking a PTS community on your official forums to help and assist you in a process, then that PTS community is 100% of people that are helping you on this task, however small of your player base. And however small, those guys are doing their best to offer you various stats and shortcomings for free.

And most of the time ZOS completely ignores the feedback, rarely responds, never states anything except few "dev. comments". You never know that anyone at HQ even read them seriously. How could you when most of the changes are the opposite of the ones reported? And Cyrodiil performance at prime time has been ignored for at least 2 years. People complained and complained and for what? For silence on ZOS' end. You can't point finger at your angry PTS/PVP player base now. That's not the way it works.

You said it : FOR FREE.
PTS players accept to do it FOR FREE. That does not only mean that they do not get paid, it also means that they are not entitled to get their feedback taken into consideration. ZOS does not have to justify why they do - or don't do - things. If they did, they would probably have to pay 20 people to argue on this forum full time.

First off, people test on the PTS in hope to save their gaming experience from some awful decisions and bugs. To do so, they have no choice but doing it for free or - the only other option - don't do it at all.
The fact that there is a PTS at all, together with mentioned threads that very well state that they are looking for feedback on changed stuff ("This is the official feedback thread for Nightblades. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the changes on the Agony and Manifestation of Terror abilities." or "This is the official feedback thread for Dragonknights. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the changes on the Shifting Standard, Cauterize, and Petrify abilities.") makes the playerbase believe ZOS actually wants to utilize our feedback.

And if the reaction in those threads ZOS made to gather our feedback are utterly ignored, then it shouldn't be a surprise when people come to conclusion that they don't listen to the feedback.

Sure thing, a company only serves to make money. But you can make far more money from a happy costumer than from an unhappy costumer that is on the brink of leaving.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

maboleth wrote: »

^ Fair enough. So it's those pesky rude players ruining everything in PTS and elsewhere. Glad the game is doing great and PVP is thriving with many long term, cheerful players. Lag and loading screens are under control, bugs in Cyrodiil promptly fixed, Imperial City busy as ever, campaigns meaningful without horrendous queue lines, because everyone found variety somewhere in the thriving and vibrant campaign goals. Zergs are under control and most of the map is utilized, without everyone concentrating in a few spots and ignoring the rest.

But the game IS doing great ! I see players everywhere, new guilds being founded all the time, trading is busier than ever, people farm, buy, sell, try stuff and builds all the time !!!
Loading screens are getting better, lag has NOTHING to do with PTS or feedback, Imperial City isn't ghost town at all, it's what it was always meant to be : a small scale PvPvE zone, and is perfect as such, I never have to wait to join a campaign and in my experience those who do are the ones with "sheep-ish" behaviour who all want to join the super-busy campaign because they can't be bothered with doing some PvE-dooring to create fight, nor to spend a few minutes actually looking for opponents. Zergs do not need to be "controlled" because overland Cyrodiil has always been designed as a large-scale, group PvP zone.

You set a perfect example of a biased opinion which you hold for THE Truth, and how you consider the game to be in a bad place just because YOU are personally unhappy with it.

Funny, talking about selection bias... I guess you have insight on some of ZOS' statistics or are you doing the exact same thing you accuse him? You are just as well talking about your episodical empirical "evidence" when you say the game is healthy because you see other players. But in the same paragraph you write about empty pvp campaigns.... It should tell you something about the size and the state of the PvP population. Lump that together with big parts of streamers leaving and you could have an indicator for an unhealthy state.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Funny, talking about selection bias... I guess you have insight on some of ZOS' statistics or are you doing the exact same thing you accuse him? You are just as well talking about your episodical empirical "evidence" when you say the game is healthy because you see other players. But in the same paragraph you write about empty pvp campaigns.... It should tell you something about the size and the state of the PvP population. Lump that together with big parts of streamers leaving and you could have an indicator for an unhealthy state.

Yes, I was basically purposedly doing the same thing I was accusing him of, just from the opposite side, for the sake of the demonstration. While all the stated impressions (game's healthy, players everywhere, etc.) are actually sincere, that's what I witness in the game, from my point of view. But it's not more or less biased than his. Both are.

"Empty" PvP campaigns co-existing along overcrowded campaigns with long queuing times are in my humble opinion not a symptom of bad design, but rather a symptom of players' stupidity.

And please don't start with "streamers are leaving". Noone cares about streamers, really... I know they like to see themselves as prescribers, counsellors, and overall VIPs, but they're not. It's just some guys who like to share their gaming experience with others over a stream, and their audience is just a bunch of people who enjoy "playing by proxy". None of it makes for any kind of representative sample of any game's population.

Kinda funny how some ppl really experience the opposite. For me i see less players than there used to be in popular areas, also the zone chat got more silence, pvp campaign are also only pop locked during prime time and even then there is almost no queue anymore and the population limit seems to be really small compared what it used to be...

As for streamer you may not like or agree with them but they used to be hardcore players and what they are saying reflects what a lot of other long time players think and the fact that most of them are unhappy or quit the game should be kinda alarming.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Loc2262 wrote: »

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

And finally, far too many people believe that PTS is for global design testing. PTS is for large-scale performance testing and bug finding.

That must be why for every major PTS phase, Gina creates numerous threads like "Nightblade class changes feedback here", "Dual Wield combat changes feedback here", etc. pp.

If they were only interested in "performance and bug reports", why create such threads explicitly?

Well, I for one am glad these threads exist because they channel the "don't-nerf-meeeee-feedback", so I know what NOT to read ;-)

Seriously, of course they will ask for it ! That's partly corporate communication (make us believe that we have a say...) , that's partly true feedback, because they could have made a real bad design decision, and that's also needed to explain qualitatively some behaviours they may notice quantitatively. In other words, they don't look at what we say, they look at what we do, but what we say may help them explain and understand what we do.

Those threads are there for all those reasons and beyond. But there's no way they'll change anything based on those threads ONLY.

Youre full of it.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Funny, talking about selection bias... I guess you have insight on some of ZOS' statistics or are you doing the exact same thing you accuse him? You are just as well talking about your episodical empirical "evidence" when you say the game is healthy because you see other players. But in the same paragraph you write about empty pvp campaigns.... It should tell you something about the size and the state of the PvP population. Lump that together with big parts of streamers leaving and you could have an indicator for an unhealthy state.

Yes, I was basically purposedly doing the same thing I was accusing him of, just from the opposite side, for the sake of the demonstration. While all the stated impressions (game's healthy, players everywhere, etc.) are actually sincere, that's what I witness in the game, from my point of view. But it's not more or less biased than his. Both are.

"Empty" PvP campaigns co-existing along overcrowded campaigns with long queuing times are in my humble opinion not a symptom of bad design, but rather a symptom of players' stupidity.

And please don't start with "streamers are leaving". Noone cares about streamers, really... I know they like to see themselves as prescribers, counsellors, and overall VIPs, but they're not. It's just some guys who like to share their gaming experience with others over a stream, and their audience is just a bunch of people who enjoy "playing by proxy". None of it makes for any kind of representative sample of any game's population.

An full PvP campaign has lots of players so its more action. You want other players for PvP.
On the other hand population has huge spikes in weekends so you need overflow campaigns.

Idinuse wrote: »

It's voluntary and pretty much like any voluntary work IRL, the people that do it keep doing it as long as their free time, unpaid work gets some sort of acknowledgment, or that their hard free time voluntary work bears some kind of fruit . It's the only sort of reward a volunteer ever gets. The lack of such, results in people abandoning the cause with a feeling of being overlooked and unappreciated, or simply that their work results in absolutely nothing anyway, and perhaps their time is better put into something that they get paid for (like work from home) or something they have paid RL money for (like playing the Live game).

Players don't have to be on the PTS at all, so that "ZOS does not have to justify why they do - or don't do - things" is equaled to that no one has to be on PTS at all either.

I know I gave up after the 80 pages PTS Templar Feedback thread that was completely and utterly ignored, in acknowledgment, words and actions. But that's just my private opinion. Valid or not, it's mine.

If people see playing on PTS and writing feedback posts as *work*, maybe they shouldn't do it at all.
I play on PTS as an opportunity to discover new things ahead of time. That's rewarding enough for me.

Feedback in that context is opinion and advice, not orders. If I ask someone for advice, I'm still free to follow or not to follow that advice. Some people will take offense if the advice they've taken the time and effort to give is not followed. Some won't. It doesn't make giving advice generally pointless. Even if an advice is not actually followed, it will have helped the person receiving it in making an educated choice.

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

Youre full of it.

Less than the people who firmly believe they know what's good for the game or not and pretend to teach ZOS how to run their business.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

An full PvP campaign has lots of players so its more action. You want other players for PvP.

How about taking some sort of responsibility here, and if the main campaign is pop-locked and laggy, go to the empty campaign, start some fights there ? People will follow you. That would concretely help the community.

except for those of us that can only get on for an hour or two each time a week. Sometimes we just want to play and not have to worry about our game hobby feeling like its a second job.

why else do you think those campaigns are empty? It takes alot less time to find a fun fight in vivec than it does to ride to a place where you can start to create a fight on another camp, Lag or no lag. And it takes even less time to go into a BG to avoid lag and you are given a consistent zergless fight every time you que.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Ok, want to address a few things here.

First, we've thought about ways to incentivize participation on the PTS, but have always run into issues. For example:

• The more bugs you report, the more rewards you get! This won't work because players might simply report random things as bugs just so they can reach the threshold.
• Log in/complete a thing/get to this point and you get a reward! This isn't quite fair to our console players who don't have access to the PTS. We could just do rewards that already exist, but where's the incentive with that?

As for us "not caring" about PTS feedback, this couldn't be farther from the truth. Many of our devs stay late just to read your feedback, whether it be on new systems, areas, or yes, even combat balance and changes. We've mentioned this before, but just because we don't change something doesn't mean we aren't reading and taking it to heart. PTS is extremely valuable not just for feedback, but also bug reports. Look at each week's patch notes - you are a big part of why things get found!

Everyone, let's please stop bashing the team or making assumptions. This is your first and last warning.

A little bit rough for a generally open forum. Coffee first and then posting?

Turelus wrote: »

There are plenty of good forums posters capable of doing this, sadly however there are those who only know how to post attacks, rumours and Grrr ZOS without literally any helpful wording.

You can only do this for so long. After a while, you realize you can just keep a list of paragraphs in a text file and copy-paste every couple months. I am pretty sure I can go back into 2014-15 and find comments I wrote about ZOS communication and post them here today.

Mainly, I hope someone in the studio gets the mission to be The Person that facilitates the flow of information from ZOS to the players. I think they got the flow from the players to ZOS nailed down. Whenever Gina or Jessica makes a request to development to get an answer, it sounds like they are headed out on safari and we should not expect to see them for a day or two.

anitajoneb17_ESO wrote: »

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

Now it finally dawns on me. Of course you don't care about wasting time on the PTS forum giving feedback because you're in the PTS only for yourself, to gain an edge over those who aren't there. Yet you have the audacity to belittle those who spend effort on doing what ZOS "seems" to want - testing, reporting, advising, spending hours just to be left ignored.

I didn't belittle anyone who politely and constructively provided testing and feedback. I do though disagree strongly with people who feel that they're entitled to ZOS following their personal views and bashing the dev' team personally.
And I don't see anything wrong with playing PTS for reasons that suit me rather than on expectations that were never promised by ZOS.
People who "help" with the expectation of having some sort of power because they've "helped" are not actually helping, they're manipulating.

Chilly-McFreeze wrote: »

And for your last statement, who knows better what makes a costumer happy then the costumer themselves?

There's no such thing as "the customer" or "the customers". There's a whole variety of people playing a game for different reasons, at different paces and with different objectives and motivations. All those factors determine "market segments" and your opinion is only valid for your market segment and might hurt another market segment. So no, you as a single customer do NOT know what's good for the majority, or for the market segments that are prioritized by ZOS.

Also, don't forget that "the customer's happiness" is not ZOS' ultimate goal. Our happiness is just a mean to a higher end for ZOS, which is to make money.

maboleth wrote: »

Streamers that left you called unimportant, yet ZOS invited them to the HQ to promote Morrowind. Now they don't have anyone to call. Unimportant, right?

Yes, totally unimportant. Streamers come and go, just like players. ZOS will always find competent, active players to take advice from in order to fine tune the game.
And as far as I know, Alcast, Paul and many others who were invited there are still around.

maboleth wrote: »

You even were arrogant enough to call people stupid and responsible for playing full campaigns and not empty ones, completely avoiding any responsibility of ZOS for that state. For being unable to address the biggest Cyrodiil issues for years and their sole responsibility for the current state of the PVP in this game.

It's not arrogant, it's just common sense.
What can ZOS do if people don't want to spread out ? Have them spread out with authority, by dispatching them on different maps upon logging into Cyrodiil ? They give us the freedom to choose our campaigns, if we don't use that freedom wisely that's on us.
Sorry but people who complain about full campaigns, but refuse to populate another campaign are just... stupid. That's what it is.

maboleth wrote: »

Tell you what smart guy, be that "change". Go to the empty campaigns and play alone for hours and have fun, wasting your precious time. Invite your thriving guilds and maybe everyone will come there. ZOS will then finally promote you to the community ambassador or whatever you are striving for.

Well, I am that guy actually. Well, that girl, better said.
And, for your information, I'm not striving for anything with regards to ESO. I'm just playing a game that I enjoy for what it is, and the day I don't enjoy it any more, I will simply leave, instead of complaining.

I agree that a certain civility has to be retained and usually I ignore or laugh about people ranting to get their voice heard on certain topics. But this isn't about an outrage about nerf X to class Y, this is about people being frustrated about ZOS giving them the feel of not being heared or listened to. And you can deny it but Zeni asks us to give feedback. They ask us by providing the PTS as server and forum + the respective threads. I even quoted what they wrote.

And yes, you might not make everyone happy at the same time. But who is going to voice what makes me happy if not me myself?

This is the strangest thread. Angry posters saying the PTS and fourm threads matter and the white knights saying they're just company PR ***. Apparently the dev team is staying up late to read threads they have no interest in regardless if they offer anything of value or not. And posters shouldn't offer their opinions because they only give their own personal viewpoint instead of something broader.

ZOS can easily remedy this. If you make a change or adjustment just say why you're doing so. No one knows what over-preforming means if we don't know what they're being measured against. A dummy? A player? A NPC? Rich's night in a battleground? There's absolutely no harm in explaining things to your players. Its kinda of a polite thing to do. And when someone yells you're killing a class, check your numbers and then tell them no, and here's why.

Of course the white knights will run the defense "but people will be mean to them". Well it seems Gina thinks people are already being mean to them. They're already getting it. And more people are joining in because they don't make an attempt. Perhaps they did when the game started and since I quit but I've not seen them communicate once beyond "we're doing this" then leave. Even then its usually one of the community managers passing it along because a dev participating in the forums? Oh how unseemly. What ever will the guys and gals say at the country club.

This thread is a perfect example of how they "communicate" with the community. Gina threatens everyone but doesn't engage with the posters. I read a thread about someone praising one of the zones in the game and instead of a dev offering thanks we got Gina (or Jessica, don't remember which) saying they'll pass it along. Well I guess they don't have posting privileges or something. Never occurred to them while staying up late at night that they can make comments too. Really too dependent on white knights to explain their position on the state of things. Way to much. I've seen games where devs have participated in the forums AND on Reddit of all things. Talk about some abuse but they're there because they want to show their fans they do care about their opinions. But this is ESO and keeping a distance from your players is the name of this game.