Treating my Level 2 new Character as the Savior of Nirn By NPCs Removes the RPG from MMORPG

Ulvich wrote: »

In all honesty I really had to think a long time as to when things were as bad as they are now. Currently we have all sorts of issues which are causing even more problems.
I was asked today what the most memorable problems I have seen. I think they were talking about ESO, but the one biggest gaming problem was with WoW back in 2008. That being "The Great Zombie Plague of 2008".
Look at it this way, guys. Things could be worse. We could all be out questing for brains.

I remember hiding in Iron Forge. It was hilarious, one of the most fun things ever in a game.

shadyjane62 wrote: »

Ulvich wrote: »

In all honesty I really had to think a long time as to when things were as bad as they are now. Currently we have all sorts of issues which are causing even more problems.
I was asked today what the most memorable problems I have seen. I think they were talking about ESO, but the one biggest gaming problem was with WoW back in 2008. That being "The Great Zombie Plague of 2008".
Look at it this way, guys. Things could be worse. We could all be out questing for brains.

I remember hiding in Iron Forge. It was hilarious, one of the most fun things ever in a game.

I have to admit it was funny at first. After a few days of not being able to turn in quest it got old.

Ulvich wrote: »

In all honesty I really had to think a long time as to when things were as bad as they are now. Currently we have all sorts of issues which are causing even more problems.
I was asked today what the most memorable problems I have seen. I think they were talking about ESO, but the one biggest gaming problem was with WoW back in 2008. That being "The Great Zombie Plague of 2008".
Look at it this way, guys. Things could be worse. We could all be out questing for brains.

The plague was *fun*! That was emergent gameplay that came from WoW being slightly more complex than the designers intended. It's still not a great game but at least interesting things could happen.

Bad is, Final Fantasy XIV's launch, which made ESO's launch and AWA combined look like the best thing ever. They had to write a new game and replace the old one, it's basically Final Fantasy XIV-2.

Worse is Star Wars Galaxies' "New Game Experience" which destroyed the original complex game, turned it into a generic WoW clone.

It looks like asking for feedback in a sticky thread is a new policy to show you're attempting to improve communication. But if you (ZOS) in turn don't provide any feedback on that feedback and, by all appearances, just go ahead with what you were planning all along then it just serves to aggravate your playerbase even more.

Suggestion-
Use the announcements that appear on login to have a link to update changes.
Maybe add known bugs that affect the game, like Group Finder being broken, along with possible work arounds.
A update notice when group Finder is fixed in the announcements would also be nice.

Pros -
Nice new dungeons, that are fun. Really like the hidden bosses.

Cons -
AWA implementation is not so good. lots of confused players.
Group finder tool broken. For the first 2-4 days lots of players waiting long time in Q before asking in chat if its broke.
Why new dungeon are not add to the list Undaunted dailies for the first 2 days upon going live.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey All, wanted to clarify a few things here regarding why we are asking for feedback. First, thanks to everyone who has provided feedback so far. We started this feedback thread to encompass everything to come with U33 and Ascending Tide. While Account Wide Achievements are apart of that, they are not the only thing that released with U33 and Ascending Tide.

Surely, you must realize that account wide achievements are the single most impactful change ever made in terms of user reaction? What other thread generated that much negative reaction in that short of a time? You can't ignore that.

Imagine a government that just fired a nuclear missile at another country, and also during the same week, announced new target goals for paper reduction in the workplace. Which headline will get more coverage on CNN? The harsh reality is that there is little in the update that matters in comparison to the most massive downside of character data deletion. The music? Really? You deleted our data! Who cares about the music?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

However, we wanted to address Account Wide Achievements in relation to this thread. When we gather feedback, we share both positive and negative sentiment with the dev team. This is for the team to have player information in addition to the many other data metrics they have to make the best decision at the time. As noted in another thread, sometimes player expectation does not match what the dev team is able to do. And there are a myriad of reasons why this can happen. As we noted in the Q&A, the current implementation of Account Wide Achievements needed to happen to reduce the data footprint for achievements. This is ultimately for long term maintainable database stability and performance.

First, your Q&A was fundamentally flawed: it should have been done in reverse. You ask the questions, let us answer. Second, it was far too late in the game. You were already pushing the broken design through, and the Q&A as implemented served no purpose. Third, the questions you picked were the lowest possible hanging fruit imaginable, and ignored the real underlying problems with the changes. Finally, I doubt that anybody actually believes the database excuse, and this has been discussed at great length by many (including myself). Of course, many of those posts are no longer available. But to summarize:

• Probably most importantly, that's just not how databases work. You can have a database that is 200 PB and still access it quickly (that wasn't a random number, I do this). The only job of a database is to store data, so if you have to improve performance by removing data, then the problem is the database design, not its contents.
• The data was stored in an incredibly efficient manner as reverse engineered by the addon developer named code
• The data was minor compared to everything else we generate each second, making any possible gains vanishingly small
• If this really was the driving factor, it would not have been mentioned in passing at the 11th hour
• If you really do have a problem where you can't handle the achievement database, this is a symptom of a much more severe underlying problem, the likes of which character data deletion won't fix (API design, in-house talent, caching strategies, update methods, etc.)

Because of how difficult it is to believe the published excuse for the change, this has led many (again, myself included) to speculate as to the REAL reasons behind forcing the single most unpopular change in the history of the game. I have to believe that this kind of speculation isn't desirable, so I am baffled as to why nobody chooses to manage this information flow more effectively.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

That being said, we want to reiterate that the dev team will always try to meet player request and expectation whenever possible. So our job is to facilitate the communication to get us there. We know it can be frustrating to provide feedback, especially when some of you have expressed feeling ignored. However, we go through the threads and responses to provide an accurate reading of what players want and how they feel about anything related to ESO.

I don't think there are too many things that I can point to and say "hey, that design change met player requests and expectations." I'd be very curious to know what criteria you use to gauge how successful you are in that goal. It's well known that the forum represents a vocal minority of players, and streamers / influencers are a much louder and smaller minority. Do you run in-game chats against an AI engine to pull out sensitivities towards changes? Like, grep all chats for "AWA;achievements;account wide;etc.", set a threshold score for positive vs negative surrounding context, see what pops out. (This idea sucks, but I'm illustrating how hard it is to guess correctly.) I know there was a survey once a few years ago, but I mean, in general, it seems like that's something where you can easily think that you are succeeding while your metrics have sizable built-in bias. Clearly, Update 33 was a disaster, and it was well known that it was going to be a disaster before it launched. How often did you have honest discussions about that?

In any case, whatever you are doing internally isn't making its way externally to the player base. Maybe it would be useful to start highlighting where feedback is having any kind of player-driven positive effect. For instance, let's say in a given PTS, players highlight 200 problems. Let's say that you relay 100 of these to the dev team, down selected based on what you think is most important. The dev team then down selects to, say, 50 that they think they can reasonably address, and that winds up resulting in maybe 10 things that actually get changed based on feedback. Stating that clearly upfront would be useful, indicating the 10 issues that the dev team (1) didn't know of prior to the PTS, and (2) fixed because of feedback in a generally well-received way. Because currently, what I see is that there are hundreds of threads with thousands of messages, and I can't point to something where the feedback was useful. There are things that you were in the process of fixing anyway, but I mean something where you changed direction based on feedback, such that the end result would have been different had the feedback not been present.*

(*Battlegrounds are a possible example here, except that feedback appeared to have a very minor role; in the end, you just reverted back to the original state, effectively doing nothing. Yet, there were tons of feedback-based options that you could have tried or otherwise used and instead ignored. So while there was a formal statement somewhere that feedback played a role, in practice it was superfluous.)

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So to answer part of @Destai's question, we have noted positives like players enjoying the flexibility and challenge of the new dungeons and loving the music. We have also noted the player reaction to account wide achievements (as we did before with the PTS Account Wide Achievement thread and had the Q&A based on that). We are highlighting those who are upset with the current implementation and whose with detailed feedback about ways it could be improved.

What's missing here is a response. Get a developer to explain how deleting character data could possibly improve database performance when every industry expert calls that bunk. Ask someone to explain why it was pushed through now vs later when the idea was so universally hated. Find somebody who is willing to state why the issues were largely ignored for 95 pages (more with all the deleted comments) and several months. You are facing a situation where players are saying "Feedback is useless", and you are responding with, essentially, "No it isn't." It's hard to believe you when all empirical evidence suggests that feedback really is useless, and you've done little to address the core issues of why it appears to be useless.

On that last point, you've actually done little to even acknowledge the core issues of why feedback appears useless. Perhaps state upfront, maybe using a *genuine* "feel;felt;found": Look, I know how you feel. You feel like you spend countless hours of free, unpaid time providing feedback that goes nowhere. You see the same problems still present after years go by, and you are discouraged and voiceless. Honestly? I felt the same way as a player. I spent my hard-earned cash on the game, and I wanted it to be a relaxing escape of entertainment. Instead, I hit similar issues that you're hitting. But here's what I found once I started working on the other side of the screen. I take 1234 comments daily and combine them into a weekly Monday morning presentation, where I explain to the developer team what the biggest pain points are. I've spent the last 8 meetings hammering this AWA issue the hardest, unsuccessfully, but I also mentioned issues X, Y, and Z so that they don't get dropped. I've gotten harsh disagreement on X, and while they know that Y is a big problem, we just can't fix it right now. Z, however, is on the list, so stay tuned. As for AWA, I just can't convince people to stop and take 5 on this one, but please keep pushing, and I'll do the same. I'm in your corner. ....etc.

By clearly acknowledging the issues and pulling the thread through towards a solution, you'd be doing what's known as "pacing and leading". It allows you to better control the conversation, not in a dictatorial stance, but more in a focus group stance, so that you can elicit useful feedback and drive change that translates ultimately into more sales. Of course, this also goes against CorpSpeak2.0, where being open about stuff is not allowed and lawyers get antsy. I get that. But you know, you could try it and see. It can't be any worse than the current state of affairs, where most official messaging is hollow.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We hope this helps regarding why we are asking for feedback. It is not only asking for feedback on Account Wide Achievements, though those are welcome. We are looking for feedback overall on everything in U33 and Ascending Tide.

No, it doesn't really help, I'm afraid. It just kind of reinforces the fundamental issues that are already present. The feeling in general is that player feedback plays a virtually nonexistent role in effecting change in the game. Your post, and your attitude towards the negative AWA feedback, kind of amplifies that feeling. Refer back to my "launched a nuke" example. You're basically trivializing the importance of that change, and when you cite something like the music, it further highlights how poorly ZOS understands the magnitude of angst that I and others have towards character data deletion. "Yeah we know there's a nuke in the air. But come on, look at all that reduced paperwork!*" Honestly, I'm kind of curious... why do you want feedback on anything else EXCEPT for AWA? That's such a universally hated feature that it seems to me like it should be the only thing we're talking about.


As for my own feedback? This update was so bad that I decided to not purchase the DLC or the upcoming chapter, since my wallet is the only real voice that I have.


*EDIT: Futurama actually lampooned this in their first episode... "That's my intergalactic spaceship... and look at these lengths of wire!": https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wxu7z7hfVns

Console player so no real meaningful feedback on update 33.

Believe people would be more accepting of AWA and the mess it created if you gave use hard facts we could read and understand and not just the same old cliché in the name of “performance”. You have so overused “performance” as a buzz word it is become a sick joke. Just a way to get around really saying anything meaningful or giving a real honest answer. From the outside it just looks something you decided to do or felt you had to do and be “Damn the consequences”. Not sensing a lot of respect for your player base just the cop out of “performance” buzz word again.

Think the heavy handiness on closing threads and ignoring/oppressing any real feedback is one reason why the forums here are dying. Which is just sad.

Stay safe everyone and enjoy Springtime

....did the company really put character slots on sale after all this? Really? Does marketing know how bad that looks? I mean...*facepalm*

Dungeons are well designed in my opinion. They are challenging and environment is good but oblivion damage is used so much in the dungeons. I think it is a bit much and some player might think some bosses are designed as a bullet hell game.

But overall i liked the challenging dungeons and the changes to the skills since it brings a lot of flexibility. But the thing about weapon and spell damage, and weapon critical or spell critical renders some unique class bonusses useless. Since i have heard even critical chances are accounting the highest one for the skills.

Sylvermynx wrote: »

It was not fun. It was stupid and awful. I didn't log in until it was gone.

Yup, same here.

Second time I took my new alt into a beginner dungeon that I had done before, that showed completed, where the boss didn't appear for me. Had to wait for another player to trigger the boss.

@Aztrias Now that's interesting, thanks for looking into that- I honestly think visiting Abah's Landing should not automatically flag a character as a thief. Just because you walk into a place, doesn't mean you plan on participating in the activities there. Its silly for the game to flag a character as a thief just because they set foot in a city. I mean, from a roleplay perspective, a person could be bringing their character there because they want to pretend they are driving the thieves out. At this rate they've made it very difficult to NOT be flagged for illegal activities.

For me the Abah's Landing issue isn't a problem because all of my characters are thieves (although only one is an assassin, so I am really annoyed that all of them are being flagged as assassins) But I can see how it would be really, really disruptive to someone else's play style.

I also wish there was an npc that could purge membership to either guild in case a character accidentally gets the skill line, similar to the way werewolf and vampire can be purged.

Aztrias wrote: »

Taranmir had normal dialouge with my non-DB/TG alt





*note if you visit Abah's landing or steal from a treasure trove your character will automatically be flagged as a member of the Thieves guild and get the skill line

An alt with the thieves guild skill line unlocked:


In this case I think the dialouge check is tied to the skill lines.

My test was with the dark brotherhood, and it was confirmed by someone else besides me in another thread using live and PTS that the "I'm no saint" option shows up if you have the achievement for joining the dark brotherhood, and it won't show up on accounts without it.