I suspect they are listening. I also suspect that listening does not necessarily mean that they will do what the community wants them to.

They silenced my post about shields I agree with you 100% no they don’t listen or care it seems like there trolling us and they did try to get us off the subject with the summerset thing

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

My concern is that I have seen the community react strongly to proposed changes with valid concerns. Then, too often seen the changes go live with little or no apparent consideration of what the community thinks. I confess that I anticipate patches with dread now as each seems to make my game less fun.

I do think it would be lovely if the devs could provide some feedback about the community's concerns. For example, if an objective is to make healers more relevant and every healer will tell you that one shot mechanics are the source of the problem, then why not target one shot mechanics instead of shields?

Because developing difficulty in dungeons without the use of 1 shot kill mechanics is too hard a task apparently. Much easier to just ruin the game by nerfing useless shields.

Video games are not a democracy. (Not anymore, I know someone is going to bring up EVE, they always do)

They are a business and the illusion of community input is important to maintain a customer base.

Companies say, “Tell us about your visit today ”. They only use that to punish the front line workers who deal with the community, not because they’re going to change their mind on their projections and statistics.

As a customer one can complain to the cashier about store changes all day long, that doesn’t stop the higher ups from going ahead with the changes. One can write into the company headquarters with a complaint but unless it is a concerted effort done en masses then it won’t amount to much.

This is their playground and all I can do is hope that people who are better at math than me care about the thing I care about and have an ear to the powers that be. Example, Gilliamtherogue. Now I just need to find a GilliamtheWarden and especially a GilliamtheNonDKtank lol and support them so actual positive change will happen, even if it takes several months/updates to happen.

It’s still week one of the pts, everyone needs to calm down a notch. Grab your pitchforks and light your torches on the second to last week of the pts. They might listen, they might not. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. They changed curse when the community ended up hating the change, in the end it was buffed.

I understand that ZOS rarely listens but they are attempting to fix some problems that are pointed out, example shield stacking, now 2 of the 3 shields are bashable, adding in counterplay. Yes, I know sorcs rely heavily on shields for defensive purposes. They may have jumped the gun adding too much at once. They should have tried the crit changes to them first and saw if they are still an issue.

There are many ways they could approach shields, I’m not sure what would work and what wouldn’t.
1.) not letting them stack, which gives you decision making in gameplay. Do I boost my defenses highly with hardened ward or go with healing ward so I have a heal when it expires.
2.) make them a toggle that drains Magicka while they are active, while also lowering or negating Magicka recovery completely. Kind of like other TES games. The more shields you have active the faster your Magicka would drain. This would need to be adjusted in such a way that doesn’t allow infinite shields through some out-of-the-box Magicka regeneration build.
3.) give them a cost increase if they are spammed heavily over X amount of time, similar to streak
4.) if the shield is broken by an enemy *player* within X seconds of its activation, the shield user receives a small stun. I know this requires a balancing of PvE and PvP separately but I don’t think it would be hard. Such as blocking cast time attacks in PvE will off-balance the enemy but the same concept does not work in PvP.
5.) keep a cast time but add an additional bonus to the light armor passive that reduces the cast time of shields for 5 or more light pieces worn.

Would any of these changes be the silver bullet, I doubt it. These are just ones I could think of while I sit here with nothing better to do on the toilet. Obviously everything needs to be tested to see what works and what doesn’t. Such as the changes to dark deal. Sorc’s sustain was terrible and this could potentially make it worse if it goes live. Just offer your feedback in a constructive way and see what happens.

I’ve been with this game for a long time and I quickly learned that players might hate changes but they can adapt and make them work, then it doesn’t seem as terrible as it originally was. Think back to morrowind with the sustain nerfs that enraged the community yet the player base is still growing. PvP players still manage to create perma-block builds and PvE’s can still hit 50k+ on robust 6mil target dummies. I guarantee that ZOS hears what we say, they might not always apply what we want, but they hear it.

This is all coming from someone who was in your position before and quit the game when the sustain nerfs went live. I came back months later because I missed it and things weren’t as bad as I originally thought they would be. It’s all just a waiting game my friend.

I assume it's a biased poll, most are, but I don't intend to wade through that giant wall of text to find out what's behind it.

I don't really have any concerns for ZOS to listen to, beyond the trading system which they have responded to a number of times, nor do I have any problems with the soundness of their decisions. By general common consensus the game has improved steadily since launch, and for my playstyle the new skill changes will doubtless be as much of a non-event as the previous Morrowind and other ones that a few people got terribly excited about were.

GreenHere wrote: »

I think it's worth noting that even if they saw and agreed with any given concern they might see on the forums, changes can take time. It's unreasonable to expect an entire development team to change many things in a short timeframe. There's a lot of factors at play that we don't know about or consider. Maybe their corporate overlords have certain decisions on a leash, and they literally cannot make changes we and they both want without going through proper channels first. Maybe they are busy with other things we don't know about, and the manpower simply isn't available right now. Maybe this, maybe that, maybe something else. Point is, big companies aren't exactly nimble in all changes and decision making.

BUT, as a personal feeling, yeah... I get the impression that ZOS is pretty deeply out of touch with how I (and most of the community I interact with) feel about changes they tend to make. It really does seem like they don't have enough people who play their own game sometimes. And the lack of communication with community concerns is... well, concerning. Which, again trying to be fair to them, they're busy making the game and running the company, and might not have a lot of time to actually play it internally.

Upcoming patches give me more of a "ah crap, here we go again..." feeling than, "Right on, new and exciting content for my favorite game!". I wish that wasn't the case, but (right now, anyway) it is what it is.

Actually the dev team is pretty loosely constricted, the lead combat dev is pretty much whatever says goes. This is actually the problem, there isn't enough constriction on what and what not he's allowed to do or change.

Zos do whatever zos wants.

They always ignore feedback, make some bad stupid balancing decision which pretty much breaks pvp for a year yet refuse to go back and change it because would mean they were wrong. Then they finally do change it too what people suggested over a year later and make it sound like they're expert balancing knowledge was the reason.

E.g.

Cost poisons, 30% on pts, zos changed to 60% of live, 6 months later changed to 30%, year later changed to 10%.

Aoe caps, poll with thousands of responses on the forum and 80% said was decision, 2 years later they remove it.

Hidden snares on gap closers, 100% snare if gap closed originally, everyone said take it off, left it for 3 months of being rooted when gap closed, then changed to 70% if i remember right, then more months of it being stupid they 30%? Not sure if its still in.

Wardens - Stamdens came out, everyone said broken OP, has a stamden cyrodiil for few months, slight nerfs yet still OP. Zos for some reason decided to buff them quite significantly and those buffs will stay in despite everyone knowing that stamden is likely the strongest current overall class in pvp.

The worth part is that when they finally change things like a year later everyone acts like zos made some good decision and are all happy about the patch saying 'good changes etc..' When in reality all zos are doing is attempting to fix they're blatant bad decisions when they ignored feedback and it's not really a 'good job zos' moment.

srfrogg23 wrote: »

I think they're listening to the overall player base and making decisions that align with their vision for the game.

There's an awful lot threads out there claiming:

1. The game is too easy.
2. There is not enough build diversity.
3. Class x is too powerful.
4. Class y is too underpowered.

The changes they are making appear to be geared towards addressing those complaints.

Problem is they're listening to feedback from relatively new players who class bias towards the class they don't play, who haven't played the game to a high end level in both pvp and pve.

They're balancing the game on the opinions of bias players who haven't got enough experience to actually know how strong several classes are.

Smasherx74 wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

I suspect they are listening. I also suspect that listening does not necessarily mean that they will do what the community wants them to.

"healer dont feel necessary because of shields"

Guess who said that? The lead combat developer.

Apparently the lead combat developer spends so little time listening or playing the game, he isn't aware that healers can produce a 30k DPS difference for the DPS, and are in charge of helping maintain resources for tank/dps.

(ZOS this isn't an attack or wrobel, don't ban me, I'm simply stating the fact he said this, and it displays a complete lack of knowledge about the healer's viability or usefulness in game)

Maybe they have heard the following conversation:

Player one: we need one more for vet Fang Lair.

Player two: what do you need.

Player one: we have a tank and two DPS.

Player two: I can heal.

Player one: We are looking for another DPS it is easier.

The game in its current form can never be 'balanced'. Until PVE and PVP have their own separate skill lines and servers there will never be balance.

Smasherx74 wrote: »

So with the new update a lot of people are mad, especially at the dev team. Currently the mods are a bit overprotective of themselves and it appears absolutely nobody is going to respond or even engage the idea of criticism because this is their game and they(he) can do whatever they(he) wants. Class reps and what not, totally ignored. Community input, especially by veteran/top players, also ignored. With this line of development, building and changing things on a regular basis with little to no concern about how it effects the gameplay or players is the norm. We have a single person or two who ultimately makes these decisions that we all hate so much. Now, with this recent update I believe the community is about fed up with the seemingly incoherent decisions when trying to "balance" the game. The fact of the matter is no one person's opinion will help balance or make the game better, a collective input based on something like class reps can. So long as the class reps are listening and feeding ZOS input, then everything should be fine. However that's not what's happening, class reps have been ignored and changes have been forced down our throats whether we like it or not. We get no input or choice in the matter. I personally feel this has to change, the way ZOS handles this also needs to change. When I see a thread asking ZOS for a statement then I see a Z next to the thread indicating a mod posted in it, guess what they said? "cleaned the thread up please try to be more civil", they don't even care enough to give an opinion, in fact they're probably not even allowed to share their opinions with the community, or respond onbehalf of ZOS. We get literally no interaction or conversation with the devs on how we want or need the game to be. Apparently by raising the question should the lead combat dev be replaced or add a new person, you're automatically shaming or attacking someone just because you raise a very important issue. I'm not sure how to possibly go about criticizing or sharing my input when I'm not allowed to even mention the name of the person who's making these decisions. Instead ZOS chooses to dismiss this topic, they refuse to accept criticism, and in fact do their best to ignore or silence it. Just look at summerfall, a distraction the devs created to stop people from talking about the new changes in the upcoming update so everyone is focused on getting everyone else to go run around summerset. I find it absolutely absurd, and ZOS needs to look it's self in the mirror and question whether or not the current course we're taking is sustainable for the long run. If everytime they balance something they have to completely ruin or make something else impractical, then maybe they just don't know how to balance the game.

With that being said, my vote is No.

Dude, if you start a progress report give the reader a neutral opinion, they can decide by his own.
with this well writen text you allready sabotage the opinion.

The shield change are not perfect, but they are fine. they go the right direction. im happy they have the guts to try something different.

max_only wrote: »

Video games are not a democracy. (Not anymore, I know someone is going to bring up EVE, they always do)

They are a business and the illusion of community input is important to maintain a customer base.

Companies say, “Tell us about your visit today ”. They only use that to punish the front line workers who deal with the community, not because they’re going to change their mind on their projections and statistics.

As a customer one can complain to the cashier about store changes all day long, that doesn’t stop the higher ups from going ahead with the changes. One can write into the company headquarters with a complaint but unless it is a concerted effort done en masses then it won’t amount to much.

This is their playground and all I can do is hope that people who are better at math than me care about the thing I care about and have an ear to the powers that be. Example, Gilliamtherogue. Now I just need to find a GilliamtheWarden and especially a GilliamtheNonDKtank lol and support them so actual positive change will happen, even if it takes several months/updates to happen.

it might be their playground but nothing requires any of us to play there, does it?