The Rise and Fall of Destiny that is, you could do a case study on that game.
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Regardless of personal opinions, Destiny 1 was wildly popular with a massive population. At any given moment you would see forums filled with things like Shotgun builds are trash, Shoulder Charge is skilless, Quick Scoping is too OP, nerf the handcannons, heavy ammo is going to kill the game- endless complaining and debating about what classes were too OP. You also had weapons that (with some accuracy) were considerably better than others from time to time.... Suros Regime, Vox Mythoclast, Thorn, etc..... and again, and endless forum debate about the quest for balance.
Bungie made an effort to listen with Destiny 2, and give the forums what they wanted.. they took away "the cheese", they have several balanced very similar guns, none too much better than the others, those most complained about shotgun, magnetic grenade spam, etc builds are gone

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and now so is the population. So you have Bungie scratching their heads, in a panic trying to reboot their franchise game and figure out why no one feels like playing it anymore..

ESO is on that cliff, I have played since launch, my build options are less and less, I have piles of nerfed golded out gear that are now garbage. there are less way to compete, effective options are fewer and your population is lower too......
I was a game tester for Microsoft a long time ago, like back when you actually had to live near Redmond and drive to their campus to test games. One thing I hope Zenimax knows is that Forums are Mostly Cookie Cutter Meta Players Complaining Because their Cookie Cutter Meta Build isn't Meta Enough. You hear it here constantly, if your a DK you "have to wear this", Sorcs "have to be this race", sometimes the difference in what you "have to do" and reality is so insanely small it's doesn't even register as a realistic statistic probablity over 1000 hours of game play.... Like a 3% damage boost, a few points of magika, a skill that hits for 100 more (who cares), if I hit you 5 times and you hit me 6, you win--- (even if I have that 3 or 4% or whatever) it's almost silly.

So what we have is the majority of our population all playing similar builds, which are supposed to be OP because it was essentially declared by the majority population to be OP, and anything that counters that trend, finds a niche or provides a superior counter ..... must be broken!
- Sheild Breaker is an example. Here was a set around for 2 1/2 years and no one really cared. Then Destro Ult's were introduced, the Sheild Stack Meta came into effect and all of sudden (after no one caring for 2 1/2 years) sheild breaker on lightning staff was this broken, cheating tactic. Never mind that your a magic build using a stamina set, and you utterly worthless against anything but sheild stacking characters. Think about that, your only good against one type of character in the game and all the rest will crush you, but the forum cry goes out and that set gets a nerf. Then sun sheilds, then stam proc builds, ... etc, etc. Your essentially doing what Destiny did to a degree, your taking feedback, thinking your giving the population what it wants, but like a child with candy, a child is going to make itself sick when it gets too much of what it thinks it wants.
- -- Weapon Ults are the same thought process. Two years ago, magic builds complained about Wrecking Blow Spammers, and Snipe Spammers, stam builds complained about Crystal Frag Spammers, (like Destiny Year 1) pretty much every build was in the forums complaining about a different build (which is actually good). Today in Cyrodil, the ever growing combat tactic is to stay alive, stay alive, stay alive..... then everyone stacks a bunch of Ultimates, (probably Eye of Flame). Yes, and I get how there is some individual who will say how they still play an amazing build, and something about zergs, but their is no denying a population change in the past two years, and it is a result of changes I think ESO thought were good... but in fact have pigeon holed players into less and less effective options.

You want the game to not be too harsh for new players, but when you make it so balanced that older players don't have anything to work for, then you lose your core.
THE PROPOSED CHANGE TO UNBALANCED- plenty of builds already use this tactic effectively and are in jeopardy because of a change where it is now the result of a heavy attack spam that is so easily done that you need to add an immunity? The real answer would simply to allow status effects to work on sheilded individuals, (since about 80% of PvP is always under a sheild).- but the outcry from the majority would be negative, so it is not seen as an option.

I guess the point is, do look at Destiny....
Do not give the people exactly what they want, when you see your forum population complaining about some weird build that tore them all up, embrace it and let a natural evolution save your game. You see it with Impen. For a while no one wore impen, then everyone is wearing impen, now again I'm noticing less and less) is the answer to say well since all these people who aren't wearing impen are dying maybe we should nerf critical attacks? No- I wish every case was looked at in this way, instead of what seems like a knee jerk reaction to appease the loudest voices in your ear.

As Game Designers you need to draw on the experience you have, you should know better than trying to appease all the lobbying in here, and remember when people stop complaining because some "trash player" managed to whoop whatever perfect Meta OP youtube "best in slot" build that is never supposed to lose- and it just lost, then it won't be long to people stop playing all together. because you've become Destiny 2.



sorry for the lengthy diatribe, it was therapeutic