I've wondered before just how much of the em-blandening of combat, especially pushing light attacks, is really about trying to improve performance without investing more money in it. And if communication from the devs would be as frustrating and awful as it is, if they weren't all the time trying to never mention the performance issues. That's all on the suits.

The Wheeler era isn't killing the game, just changing it. I don't love where it's going, but maybe they'll surprise me.

“Higher ups” ain’t got a clue...nor a care...
They just smile n nod at meetings when devs start talking their “technical lingo”...
Higher ups ask...
what will this cost? Will there be profits?
Oh okay...ya sure...do that thing you were talking about....

That depends on what you think constitutes “killing the game”. If you mean the monetization then yes.

But the finance and budget teams are not the ones making ridiculously huge changes every three months. Matt Firor isn’t forcing Brian amd Gilliam to scrap every build every quarter. The Board of Directors didn’t tell everyone to create mechanics that force groups to spread out while also restricting heals to be in one direction only. The Bethsoft mothership didn’t spend 4 years encouraging ever higher dps with every release only to radically change direction.

Actually they're all working together during Year of the Nerfs and Random Changes. They're all responsible. They definitely cranked up the crown store offerings for sure and included things like skill points and skill lines but ultimately they all decided to design the store that way instead of changing the way achievements work or making questing or finishing skill lines more enjoyable.

They also decided to randomly nerf and switch around racials which Gilliam says it's for balance but we all know there's still meta races and they created a problem where race change tokens from the store are the solution. The combat lead is fine changing things up and doing so chaotically without regard to midtier players "just doing their dailies" or endgame players with builds they've worked for. I bet they couldn't finish their own hm trials.

They also introduced the ridiculous daedric weapon in PvP that nobody asked for for more "chaos" as they say. Classes and proc sets and skills nerfed left and right constantly it's starting to feel like they're trying to justify keeping their job. It's not well designed if they take back what they just did.

And of course, there's the constant server issues and performance problems that Matt Firor promises us, still not here. And the promise of "better communication" from players, still not a thing after all the lip service the community manager has said. Probably because they don't know themselves what's getting nerfed next.

But whatever, as ZoS Rich Lambert has told people in this forum, "you don't have to be here you know?" - even if you've spent thousands of hours and dollars on the game, they simply don't care about players' opinion. They'll keep doing what they want whatever the class reps or forums say. This disconnect with the players and attitude why ESO is not known for its end game content and why it can't sustain a mandatory subscription model. It's great for exploring new zones and casual story / dailies but the devs do too much Nerfs constantly and not enough actual high end pve content like raids / trials or even new pvp.