EnerG wrote: »

[snip]

Ok, but you can do that now. There is literally nothing stopping you from making a pug trial and only taking people that haven't cleared or have never parsed or whatever. You can already do that.

[edited to remove quote]

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

I see so many under 800 cp players. So I suspect that if some veterans quit, then they will just be replaced.

The issue with that is the "brain drain" where the raiding knowledge base and practical expertise to train new raiders is severely reduced so people have to learn all over again via trial and error (no pun intended). This happened with Morrowind, and took several years to recover from and the current situation looks like a repeat of Morrowind. But hey at least we can choose the Morrowind theme music on the title screen to get the full nostalgia effect.

God forbid people have to learn something on their own. How have we as humans managed to evolve in all aspects of life from the year dot.

The mechanics are static, they rarely if ever change. You're giving this game waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much credit. As i said in the post above, there are way more complex games than ESO. In the grand scheme of things, ESO is quite easy. It doesn't need hand holding. People require hand holding because it's available to them. Folk will always take the easy option. I do too.

When this game first released, who held your hand? My hand, the other guy's hand? No one. Absolutely no one. Yet here we all are clearing static mechanics left, right and centre.

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

I see so many under 800 cp players. So I suspect that if some veterans quit, then they will just be replaced.

The issue with that is the "brain drain" where the raiding knowledge base and practical expertise to train new raiders is severely reduced so people have to learn all over again via trial and error (no pun intended). This happened with Morrowind, and took several years to recover from and the current situation looks like a repeat of Morrowind. But hey at least we can choose the Morrowind theme music on the title screen to get the full nostalgia effect.

God forbid people have to learn something on their own. How have we as humans managed to evolve in all aspects of life from the year dot.

The mechanics are static, they rarely if ever change. You're giving this game waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much credit. As i said in the post above, there are way more complex games than ESO. In the grand scheme of things, ESO is quite easy. It doesn't need hand holding. People require hand holding because it's available to them. Folk will always take the easy option. I do too.

When this game first released, who held your hand? My hand, the other guy's hand? No one. Absolutely no one. Yet here we all are clearing static mechanics left, right and centre.

Most people have heard the saying “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” Groups will progress far more quickly and efficiently if they have veteran people that can teach new players what to do because they themselves have been there before rather than if new players need to relearn everything from scratch through their own trial and error which typically has an attrition rate where people get burned out and leave raiding because the task seems insurmountable if the group in its entirety is new. A progression cadence where small successes are earned at regular intervals while learning not only keeps new end game players engaged and prevented from becoming discouraged, but they learn better overall because they can see why something is bad by asking someone who came before.

Beating one's head against a wall repeatedly while learning a new trial from scratch is we do that every time a new trial comes out, but that task is best done once a player has been acclimated to raiding and sees the larger picture of general raiding mechanics so they are more likely to be able to adapt on the fly. If the vast majority of end game players left ESO, raiding will take a huge hit and would essentially have to rebuild from the ground up which won't make raiding more accessible for anyone because existing groups of raiders will get more exclusive to clear new and existing content instead of opening their doors to teach new people like they are doing right now. I can't overstate the importance of having a knowledgeable veteran raid leads who can teach new players in an understanding manner as the best way to assuage new players fears about being new to raiding and "messing up" in a trial. Not knowing what to do is perhaps the single most voiced fear from casual players here on the forums when it comes to exploring trials. Overall having a healthy population of veteran raiders is better overall for that portion of the game.

I completely understand what you're trying to say, but i disagree with the sentiment behind it.

1) You're basing your entire argument around anecdotal evidence

2) Placing too much importance on a very, very small fraction of players

Point one, I haven't heard many people at all saying they're going to jack the game in. So who is right, me or you? After all, my personal experience of there being a mass exodus of vet players does not align with yours at all. With each and every major update, we get the same story spouted on here ad nauseam, without fail. Yet the game goes on, and most folk remain.

Point two, this forum is rarely if ever indicative of the player base at large. Most folk simply don't care enough. Reddit, here and other forums related to ESO are simply populated by a very small vocal minority. This gives some people the impression that they aren't expendable. They're too important to lose. Because they assume, wrongly may i add, that the game only works because some like-minded folk on here tell them so. When they hear it enough, they begin to believe the hype. According to this forum, we all do vet trials, we all do it for scores. Nope, it's only within threads like this that people actually give a damn.

You just need to look at the leaderboards in-game to see my point. It's the same people week in, week out on those leaderboards.The groups rarely change. So where are all these new players you're mentioning? I don't see them. Using your logic, and because you deem it a very significant part of the game, surely we'd be seeing new players commonly being rotated in and out of these groups? It borders on a closed community. I'm not knocking them, but you're on here arguing it's quite the opposite when anyone that can be bothered checking it out for themselves can see it's anything but what you're attempting to make it out to be. Some leaderboards aren't even full. And the ones that are, it's not uncommon to see a grp that just ran the content just because, and unwittingly ended up on that leaderboard.

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

I see so many under 800 cp players. So I suspect that if some veterans quit, then they will just be replaced.

The issue with that is the "brain drain" where the raiding knowledge base and practical expertise to train new raiders is severely reduced so people have to learn all over again via trial and error (no pun intended). This happened with Morrowind, and took several years to recover from and the current situation looks like a repeat of Morrowind. But hey at least we can choose the Morrowind theme music on the title screen to get the full nostalgia effect.

God forbid people have to learn something on their own. How have we as humans managed to evolve in all aspects of life from the year dot.

The mechanics are static, they rarely if ever change. You're giving this game waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much credit. As i said in the post above, there are way more complex games than ESO. In the grand scheme of things, ESO is quite easy. It doesn't need hand holding. People require hand holding because it's available to them. Folk will always take the easy option. I do too.

When this game first released, who held your hand? My hand, the other guy's hand? No one. Absolutely no one. Yet here we all are clearing static mechanics left, right and centre.

Most people have heard the saying “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” Groups will progress far more quickly and efficiently if they have veteran people that can teach new players what to do because they themselves have been there before rather than if new players need to relearn everything from scratch through their own trial and error which typically has an attrition rate where people get burned out and leave raiding because the task seems insurmountable if the group in its entirety is new. A progression cadence where small successes are earned at regular intervals while learning not only keeps new end game players engaged and prevented from becoming discouraged, but they learn better overall because they can see why something is bad by asking someone who came before.

Beating one's head against a wall repeatedly while learning a new trial from scratch is we do that every time a new trial comes out, but that task is best done once a player has been acclimated to raiding and sees the larger picture of general raiding mechanics so they are more likely to be able to adapt on the fly. If the vast majority of end game players left ESO, raiding will take a huge hit and would essentially have to rebuild from the ground up which won't make raiding more accessible for anyone because existing groups of raiders will get more exclusive to clear new and existing content instead of opening their doors to teach new people like they are doing right now. I can't overstate the importance of having a knowledgeable veteran raid leads who can teach new players in an understanding manner as the best way to assuage new players fears about being new to raiding and "messing up" in a trial. Not knowing what to do is perhaps the single most voiced fear from casual players here on the forums when it comes to exploring trials. Overall having a healthy population of veteran raiders is better overall for that portion of the game.

I completely understand what you're trying to say, but i disagree with the sentiment behind it.

1) You're basing your entire argument around anecdotal evidence

2) Placing too much importance on a very, very small fraction of players

Point one, I haven't heard many people at all saying they're going to jack the game in. So who is right, me or you? After all, my personal experience of there being a mass exodus of vet players does not align with yours at all. With each and every major update, we get the same story spouted on here ad nauseam, without fail. Yet the game goes on, and most folk remain.

Point two, this forum is rarely if ever indicative of the player base at large. Most folk simply don't care enough. Reddit, here and other forums related to ESO are simply populated by a very small vocal minority. This gives some people the impression that they aren't expendable. They're too important to lose. Because they assume, wrongly may i add, that the game only works because some like-minded folk on here tell them so. When they hear it enough, they begin to believe the hype. According to this forum, we all do vet trials, we all do it for scores. Nope, it's only within threads like this that people actually give a damn.

You just need to look at the leaderboards in-game to see my point. It's the same people week in, week out on those leaderboards.The groups rarely change. So where are all these new players you're mentioning? I don't see them. Using your logic, and because you deem it a very significant part of the game, surely we'd be seeing new players commonly being rotated in and out of these groups? It borders on a closed community. I'm not knocking them, but you're on here arguing it's quite the opposite when anyone that can be bothered checking it out for themselves can see it's anything but what you're attempting to make it out to be. Some leaderboards aren't even full. And the ones that are, it's not uncommon to see a grp that just ran the content just because, and unwittingly ended up on that leaderboard.

Except most folks haven't remained. Most have moved on. Less than 1/4 of my friends list logs on anymore. And of those that still do log on most rarely play more than a few hours/week now. Most players that were here since the beginning have already moved on or just quit gaming until something worth playing comes along. ZOS keeps taking ESO in a direction that is company oriented, not player oriented and it's really starting to show.

maxjapank wrote: »

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

I see so many under 800 cp players. So I suspect that if some veterans quit, then they will just be replaced.

The issue with that is the "brain drain" where the raiding knowledge base and practical expertise to train new raiders is severely reduced so people have to learn all over again via trial and error (no pun intended). This happened with Morrowind, and took several years to recover from and the current situation looks like a repeat of Morrowind. But hey at least we can choose the Morrowind theme music on the title screen to get the full nostalgia effect.

God forbid people have to learn something on their own. How have we as humans managed to evolve in all aspects of life from the year dot.

The mechanics are static, they rarely if ever change. You're giving this game waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much credit. As i said in the post above, there are way more complex games than ESO. In the grand scheme of things, ESO is quite easy. It doesn't need hand holding. People require hand holding because it's available to them. Folk will always take the easy option. I do too.

When this game first released, who held your hand? My hand, the other guy's hand? No one. Absolutely no one. Yet here we all are clearing static mechanics left, right and centre.

Most people have heard the saying “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” Groups will progress far more quickly and efficiently if they have veteran people that can teach new players what to do because they themselves have been there before rather than if new players need to relearn everything from scratch through their own trial and error which typically has an attrition rate where people get burned out and leave raiding because the task seems insurmountable if the group in its entirety is new. A progression cadence where small successes are earned at regular intervals while learning not only keeps new end game players engaged and prevented from becoming discouraged, but they learn better overall because they can see why something is bad by asking someone who came before.

Beating one's head against a wall repeatedly while learning a new trial from scratch is we do that every time a new trial comes out, but that task is best done once a player has been acclimated to raiding and sees the larger picture of general raiding mechanics so they are more likely to be able to adapt on the fly. If the vast majority of end game players left ESO, raiding will take a huge hit and would essentially have to rebuild from the ground up which won't make raiding more accessible for anyone because existing groups of raiders will get more exclusive to clear new and existing content instead of opening their doors to teach new people like they are doing right now. I can't overstate the importance of having a knowledgeable veteran raid leads who can teach new players in an understanding manner as the best way to assuage new players fears about being new to raiding and "messing up" in a trial. Not knowing what to do is perhaps the single most voiced fear from casual players here on the forums when it comes to exploring trials. Overall having a healthy population of veteran raiders is better overall for that portion of the game.

I completely understand what you're trying to say, but i disagree with the sentiment behind it.

1) You're basing your entire argument around anecdotal evidence

2) Placing too much importance on a very, very small fraction of players

Point one, I haven't heard many people at all saying they're going to jack the game in. So who is right, me or you? After all, my personal experience of there being a mass exodus of vet players does not align with yours at all. With each and every major update, we get the same story spouted on here ad nauseam, without fail. Yet the game goes on, and most folk remain.

Point two, this forum is rarely if ever indicative of the player base at large. Most folk simply don't care enough. Reddit, here and other forums related to ESO are simply populated by a very small vocal minority. This gives some people the impression that they aren't expendable. They're too important to lose. Because they assume, wrongly may i add, that the game only works because some like-minded folk on here tell them so. When they hear it enough, they begin to believe the hype. According to this forum, we all do vet trials, we all do it for scores. Nope, it's only within threads like this that people actually give a damn.

You just need to look at the leaderboards in-game to see my point. It's the same people week in, week out on those leaderboards.The groups rarely change. So where are all these new players you're mentioning? I don't see them. Using your logic, and because you deem it a very significant part of the game, surely we'd be seeing new players commonly being rotated in and out of these groups? It borders on a closed community. I'm not knocking them, but you're on here arguing it's quite the opposite when anyone that can be bothered checking it out for themselves can see it's anything but what you're attempting to make it out to be. Some leaderboards aren't even full. And the ones that are, it's not uncommon to see a grp that just ran the content just because, and unwittingly ended up on that leaderboard.

Except most folks haven't remained. Most have moved on. Less than 1/4 of my friends list logs on anymore. And of those that still do log on most rarely play more than a few hours/week now. Most players that were here since the beginning have already moved on or just quit gaming until something worth playing comes along. ZOS keeps taking ESO in a direction that is company oriented, not player oriented and it's really starting to show.

I've had friends who've left, too. Some haven't been on in almost two years. And yet, nearly every time I pug a random normal dungeon, I keep meeting new players with under 800 cp. I even encounter under 50 players, but of course, it's hard to know if they are new or not. But even if they are veteran players, they are rolling a new character.

I find it very naive to think that ZOS would be making decisions in hopes that players move on. Don't you?

Nobody said ZOS is making decisions in hopes that players move on. You've created a straw man there. What ZOS is doing is making accounting decisions that is resulting in a game that only looks like it used to be, but plays very differently with a very different focus, so players are moving on.

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

I see so many under 800 cp players. So I suspect that if some veterans quit, then they will just be replaced.

The issue with that is the "brain drain" where the raiding knowledge base and practical expertise to train new raiders is severely reduced so people have to learn all over again via trial and error (no pun intended). This happened with Morrowind, and took several years to recover from and the current situation looks like a repeat of Morrowind. But hey at least we can choose the Morrowind theme music on the title screen to get the full nostalgia effect.

God forbid people have to learn something on their own. How have we as humans managed to evolve in all aspects of life from the year dot.

The mechanics are static, they rarely if ever change. You're giving this game waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much credit. As i said in the post above, there are way more complex games than ESO. In the grand scheme of things, ESO is quite easy. It doesn't need hand holding. People require hand holding because it's available to them. Folk will always take the easy option. I do too.

When this game first released, who held your hand? My hand, the other guy's hand? No one. Absolutely no one. Yet here we all are clearing static mechanics left, right and centre.

Most people have heard the saying “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” Groups will progress far more quickly and efficiently if they have veteran people that can teach new players what to do because they themselves have been there before rather than if new players need to relearn everything from scratch through their own trial and error which typically has an attrition rate where people get burned out and leave raiding because the task seems insurmountable if the group in its entirety is new. A progression cadence where small successes are earned at regular intervals while learning not only keeps new end game players engaged and prevented from becoming discouraged, but they learn better overall because they can see why something is bad by asking someone who came before.

Beating one's head against a wall repeatedly while learning a new trial from scratch is we do that every time a new trial comes out, but that task is best done once a player has been acclimated to raiding and sees the larger picture of general raiding mechanics so they are more likely to be able to adapt on the fly. If the vast majority of end game players left ESO, raiding will take a huge hit and would essentially have to rebuild from the ground up which won't make raiding more accessible for anyone because existing groups of raiders will get more exclusive to clear new and existing content instead of opening their doors to teach new people like they are doing right now. I can't overstate the importance of having a knowledgeable veteran raid leads who can teach new players in an understanding manner as the best way to assuage new players fears about being new to raiding and "messing up" in a trial. Not knowing what to do is perhaps the single most voiced fear from casual players here on the forums when it comes to exploring trials. Overall having a healthy population of veteran raiders is better overall for that portion of the game.

I completely understand what you're trying to say, but i disagree with the sentiment behind it.

1) You're basing your entire argument around anecdotal evidence

2) Placing too much importance on a very, very small fraction of players

Point one, I haven't heard many people at all saying they're going to jack the game in. So who is right, me or you? After all, my personal experience of there being a mass exodus of vet players does not align with yours at all. With each and every major update, we get the same story spouted on here ad nauseam, without fail. Yet the game goes on, and most folk remain.

Point two, this forum is rarely if ever indicative of the player base at large. Most folk simply don't care enough. Reddit, here and other forums related to ESO are simply populated by a very small vocal minority. This gives some people the impression that they aren't expendable. They're too important to lose. Because they assume, wrongly may i add, that the game only works because some like-minded folk on here tell them so. When they hear it enough, they begin to believe the hype. According to this forum, we all do vet trials, we all do it for scores. Nope, it's only within threads like this that people actually give a damn.

You just need to look at the leaderboards in-game to see my point. It's the same people week in, week out on those leaderboards.The groups rarely change. So where are all these new players you're mentioning? I don't see them. Using your logic, and because you deem it a very significant part of the game, surely we'd be seeing new players commonly being rotated in and out of these groups? It borders on a closed community. I'm not knocking them, but you're on here arguing it's quite the opposite when anyone that can be bothered checking it out for themselves can see it's anything but what you're attempting to make it out to be. Some leaderboards aren't even full. And the ones that are, it's not uncommon to see a grp that just ran the content just because, and unwittingly ended up on that leaderboard.

Except most folks haven't remained. Most have moved on. Less than 1/4 of my friends list logs on anymore. And of those that still do log on most rarely play more than a few hours/week now. Most players that were here since the beginning have already moved on or just quit gaming until something worth playing comes along. ZOS keeps taking ESO in a direction that is company oriented, not player oriented and it's really starting to show.

Again, it's just yet more anecdotal evidence.

Not many people stick around the same game for 7 years. I've left the game umpteen times. Once for around 2 years. Nothing to do with anything other than burnout. When reaching that point, things in game do become more irritating such as crashes, DC', changes etc etc so i'm not actually rubbishing their reasons for leaving. But the underlying problem is burn out. Aye, 7 years mate, I'd expect a number of folk to have left for horizons new. I'm actually more surprised at finding people who have stuck around for that entire 7 years. It does happen, but most folk do eventually take a break or just move on.

Sometimes games evolve and they do leave some players behind, but there's enough things to be getting on with. I experienced this with Football manager. I loved that game, but it became too time-consuming once they began making tactics etc more complicated and convoluted. So i moved on.

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

I see so many under 800 cp players. So I suspect that if some veterans quit, then they will just be replaced.

The issue with that is the "brain drain" where the raiding knowledge base and practical expertise to train new raiders is severely reduced so people have to learn all over again via trial and error (no pun intended). This happened with Morrowind, and took several years to recover from and the current situation looks like a repeat of Morrowind. But hey at least we can choose the Morrowind theme music on the title screen to get the full nostalgia effect.

God forbid people have to learn something on their own. How have we as humans managed to evolve in all aspects of life from the year dot.

The mechanics are static, they rarely if ever change. You're giving this game waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much credit. As i said in the post above, there are way more complex games than ESO. In the grand scheme of things, ESO is quite easy. It doesn't need hand holding. People require hand holding because it's available to them. Folk will always take the easy option. I do too.

When this game first released, who held your hand? My hand, the other guy's hand? No one. Absolutely no one. Yet here we all are clearing static mechanics left, right and centre.

Most people have heard the saying “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” Groups will progress far more quickly and efficiently if they have veteran people that can teach new players what to do because they themselves have been there before rather than if new players need to relearn everything from scratch through their own trial and error which typically has an attrition rate where people get burned out and leave raiding because the task seems insurmountable if the group in its entirety is new. A progression cadence where small successes are earned at regular intervals while learning not only keeps new end game players engaged and prevented from becoming discouraged, but they learn better overall because they can see why something is bad by asking someone who came before.

Beating one's head against a wall repeatedly while learning a new trial from scratch is we do that every time a new trial comes out, but that task is best done once a player has been acclimated to raiding and sees the larger picture of general raiding mechanics so they are more likely to be able to adapt on the fly. If the vast majority of end game players left ESO, raiding will take a huge hit and would essentially have to rebuild from the ground up which won't make raiding more accessible for anyone because existing groups of raiders will get more exclusive to clear new and existing content instead of opening their doors to teach new people like they are doing right now. I can't overstate the importance of having a knowledgeable veteran raid leads who can teach new players in an understanding manner as the best way to assuage new players fears about being new to raiding and "messing up" in a trial. Not knowing what to do is perhaps the single most voiced fear from casual players here on the forums when it comes to exploring trials. Overall having a healthy population of veteran raiders is better overall for that portion of the game.

I completely understand what you're trying to say, but i disagree with the sentiment behind it.

1) You're basing your entire argument around anecdotal evidence

2) Placing too much importance on a very, very small fraction of players

Point one, I haven't heard many people at all saying they're going to jack the game in. So who is right, me or you? After all, my personal experience of there being a mass exodus of vet players does not align with yours at all. With each and every major update, we get the same story spouted on here ad nauseam, without fail. Yet the game goes on, and most folk remain.

Point two, this forum is rarely if ever indicative of the player base at large. Most folk simply don't care enough. Reddit, here and other forums related to ESO are simply populated by a very small vocal minority. This gives some people the impression that they aren't expendable. They're too important to lose. Because they assume, wrongly may i add, that the game only works because some like-minded folk on here tell them so. When they hear it enough, they begin to believe the hype. According to this forum, we all do vet trials, we all do it for scores. Nope, it's only within threads like this that people actually give a damn.

You just need to look at the leaderboards in-game to see my point. It's the same people week in, week out on those leaderboards.The groups rarely change. So where are all these new players you're mentioning? I don't see them. Using your logic, and because you deem it a very significant part of the game, surely we'd be seeing new players commonly being rotated in and out of these groups? It borders on a closed community. I'm not knocking them, but you're on here arguing it's quite the opposite when anyone that can be bothered checking it out for themselves can see it's anything but what you're attempting to make it out to be. Some leaderboards aren't even full. And the ones that are, it's not uncommon to see a grp that just ran the content just because, and unwittingly ended up on that leaderboard.

Except most folks haven't remained. Most have moved on. Less than 1/4 of my friends list logs on anymore. And of those that still do log on most rarely play more than a few hours/week now. Most players that were here since the beginning have already moved on or just quit gaming until something worth playing comes along. ZOS keeps taking ESO in a direction that is company oriented, not player oriented and it's really starting to show.

Again, it's just yet more anecdotal evidence.

Not many people stick around the same game for 7 years. I've left the game umpteen times. Once for around 2 years. Nothing to do with anything other than burnout. When reaching that point, things in game do become more irritating such as crashes, DC', changes etc etc so i'm not actually rubbishing their reasons for leaving. But the underlying problem is burn out. Aye, 7 years mate, I'd expect a number of folk to have left for horizons new. I'm actually more surprised at finding people who have stuck around for that entire 7 years. It does happen, but most folk do eventually take a break or just move on.

Sometimes games evolve and they do leave some players behind, but there's enough things to be getting on with. I experienced this with Football manager. I loved that game, but it became too time-consuming once they began making tactics etc more complicated and convoluted. So i moved on.

Nothing anecdotal about it. My friends that don't log on anymore have all stated clearly why they don't play anymore. It's performance issues and a shift in focus to cater to the casuals. It's sets like Dark Convergence and Oakensoul that eliminate the skill gap and soon to be U35 which will reduce the skill gap even further....and the list of these types of changes keeps getting longer. Those of us that have spent years perfecting our builds and rotations are being nerfed into oblivion again and again.

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

Prof_Bawbag wrote: »

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

maxjapank wrote: »

I see so many under 800 cp players. So I suspect that if some veterans quit, then they will just be replaced.

The issue with that is the "brain drain" where the raiding knowledge base and practical expertise to train new raiders is severely reduced so people have to learn all over again via trial and error (no pun intended). This happened with Morrowind, and took several years to recover from and the current situation looks like a repeat of Morrowind. But hey at least we can choose the Morrowind theme music on the title screen to get the full nostalgia effect.

God forbid people have to learn something on their own. How have we as humans managed to evolve in all aspects of life from the year dot.

The mechanics are static, they rarely if ever change. You're giving this game waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much credit. As i said in the post above, there are way more complex games than ESO. In the grand scheme of things, ESO is quite easy. It doesn't need hand holding. People require hand holding because it's available to them. Folk will always take the easy option. I do too.

When this game first released, who held your hand? My hand, the other guy's hand? No one. Absolutely no one. Yet here we all are clearing static mechanics left, right and centre.

Most people have heard the saying “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” Groups will progress far more quickly and efficiently if they have veteran people that can teach new players what to do because they themselves have been there before rather than if new players need to relearn everything from scratch through their own trial and error which typically has an attrition rate where people get burned out and leave raiding because the task seems insurmountable if the group in its entirety is new. A progression cadence where small successes are earned at regular intervals while learning not only keeps new end game players engaged and prevented from becoming discouraged, but they learn better overall because they can see why something is bad by asking someone who came before.

Beating one's head against a wall repeatedly while learning a new trial from scratch is we do that every time a new trial comes out, but that task is best done once a player has been acclimated to raiding and sees the larger picture of general raiding mechanics so they are more likely to be able to adapt on the fly. If the vast majority of end game players left ESO, raiding will take a huge hit and would essentially have to rebuild from the ground up which won't make raiding more accessible for anyone because existing groups of raiders will get more exclusive to clear new and existing content instead of opening their doors to teach new people like they are doing right now. I can't overstate the importance of having a knowledgeable veteran raid leads who can teach new players in an understanding manner as the best way to assuage new players fears about being new to raiding and "messing up" in a trial. Not knowing what to do is perhaps the single most voiced fear from casual players here on the forums when it comes to exploring trials. Overall having a healthy population of veteran raiders is better overall for that portion of the game.

I completely understand what you're trying to say, but i disagree with the sentiment behind it.

1) You're basing your entire argument around anecdotal evidence

2) Placing too much importance on a very, very small fraction of players

Point one, I haven't heard many people at all saying they're going to jack the game in. So who is right, me or you? After all, my personal experience of there being a mass exodus of vet players does not align with yours at all. With each and every major update, we get the same story spouted on here ad nauseam, without fail. Yet the game goes on, and most folk remain.

Point two, this forum is rarely if ever indicative of the player base at large. Most folk simply don't care enough. Reddit, here and other forums related to ESO are simply populated by a very small vocal minority. This gives some people the impression that they aren't expendable. They're too important to lose. Because they assume, wrongly may i add, that the game only works because some like-minded folk on here tell them so. When they hear it enough, they begin to believe the hype. According to this forum, we all do vet trials, we all do it for scores. Nope, it's only within threads like this that people actually give a damn.

You just need to look at the leaderboards in-game to see my point. It's the same people week in, week out on those leaderboards.The groups rarely change. So where are all these new players you're mentioning? I don't see them. Using your logic, and because you deem it a very significant part of the game, surely we'd be seeing new players commonly being rotated in and out of these groups? It borders on a closed community. I'm not knocking them, but you're on here arguing it's quite the opposite when anyone that can be bothered checking it out for themselves can see it's anything but what you're attempting to make it out to be. Some leaderboards aren't even full. And the ones that are, it's not uncommon to see a grp that just ran the content just because, and unwittingly ended up on that leaderboard.

Except most folks haven't remained. Most have moved on. Less than 1/4 of my friends list logs on anymore. And of those that still do log on most rarely play more than a few hours/week now. Most players that were here since the beginning have already moved on or just quit gaming until something worth playing comes along. ZOS keeps taking ESO in a direction that is company oriented, not player oriented and it's really starting to show.

Again, it's just yet more anecdotal evidence.

Not many people stick around the same game for 7 years. I've left the game umpteen times. Once for around 2 years. Nothing to do with anything other than burnout. When reaching that point, things in game do become more irritating such as crashes, DC', changes etc etc so i'm not actually rubbishing their reasons for leaving. But the underlying problem is burn out. Aye, 7 years mate, I'd expect a number of folk to have left for horizons new. I'm actually more surprised at finding people who have stuck around for that entire 7 years. It does happen, but most folk do eventually take a break or just move on.

Sometimes games evolve and they do leave some players behind, but there's enough things to be getting on with. I experienced this with Football manager. I loved that game, but it became too time-consuming once they began making tactics etc more complicated and convoluted. So i moved on.

Nothing anecdotal about it. My friends that don't log on anymore have all stated clearly why they don't play anymore, and I'm repeating the reasons right here right now.

You are basing this on your own personal experience, so yes, it's the very definition of anecdotal. I'm in numerous large guilds on both NA and EU, and i've seen a grand total of 2 people even mention they're leaving. Most of these guilds have 400+ members. I have simply never seen what you're seeing. So it depends in which circles you socialise in.

If i was in a small guild that was solely focused on dps and meta, maybe i would be agreeing with you. These sort of guilds are nothing more than your standard echo chamber. I've been in enough of them to know. When surrounded by like-minded people it's easy to think the majority think that way, but it's usually quite the opposite.

So we're clear, i am not seeing what you are seeing. If i never ventured on here, I wouldn't even know it was a major issue for some people, and i'm in some very large and active guilds on both servers.