Living_Tribunal wrote: »

You're not "owed" anything. If you don't like the changes please move on.

RagedAvenger wrote: »

The Elder Scrolls: Online community is owed a massive apology for the way we have been treated over the past few weeks. Balance changes are one thing, but employee conduct, both in prepared releases and in personal capacities, is absolutely appalling, and has done more damage to the brand than any changes to the gameplay ever will.

Update 35 Combat Preview
Starting with the first communication regarding update 35, I feel that balance changes were misrepresented on several fronts. As if to rile up lower end players, blanket damage nerfs were marketed as changes designed to increase accessibility and improve damage at the low end, while decreasing it at the high end. I should point out that there is no "endgame gene," that most of the highly skilled players at this game are skilled because they have a genuine passion for the game and sunk tons of time into it. That should be celebrated, not scorned. And framing nerfs as targeting skilled players encourages a misguided, anti-endgame sentiment, which I have seen across the forum. Most highly skilled players would love it if more people got involved in endgame; we love the game and want to share our passion with as many people as possible. And if ZOS wants that too, encouraging them to dislike us certainly won't help. Backlash to these changes is not an endgame desire to do as much damage as possible; most of us favor damage nerfs.

I will grant that in very unoptimized settings, players that struggled to sustain their resources may have seen a damage increase from these changes, but players who could sustain saw only damage decreases, and "players who could sustain" is a much larger group than the "extreme high end" antagonized in this press release. I do not know how any of the U35 changes were originally tested, but "reduction of 6–11% to overall damage" predicted as a result of the changes ended up corresponding to 20-30% decreases, both on the dummy and in raid. In specific raid cases, damage went down even further. These changes were observed by players of all skill levels.

Other community members were told that they were being looked out for, only to face the same nerfs to gameplay as everyone else. "We’ve heard your cries, Heavy Attack build lovers, and we want better for you," you declared as heavy attack sets, abilities, and the damage of the heavy attacks themselves were gutted.

One of the largest goals was a reduction in the APM required for success, only to halve the tickrate of heals over time, requiring more spammables cast on the GCD to succeed. The changes had the opposite of the intended effect. It appears that raids and dungeons, in which damage ticks faster than these heals can compensate for, were not considered enough.

You recognized that you were throwing the game into an unprecedented period of chaos, but promised to fix it in future patches. It seemed fine to subject thecommunity to an entire patch of "initial turbulence" even though the implications of this were not clear. We deserve better, and deserve patches that are reflective of confidence in the state of the game.

Devs set out to reduce the importance weaving, but by nerfing damage over time effects as well, drastically increased weaving's importance as sets like Relequen, Kinras and Crushing Wall rose above everything else; Weapon damage is less meaningful when the skills it boosts do significantly less damage, and procs didn't get nerfed with everything else.

The release was silent about power-creep in set design and the releases of new buffs and debuffs, which exacerbate the damage delta further than anything an individual damage dealer could do. Coral Riptide should never have been released, and it was actually buffed during its PTS cycle. Endgame groups utilize buffs and debuffs that most of the community has never heard of. But I guess new, meta sets sell more copies than quality core gameplay does.

Some disagreement with balance changes can be attributed to differences in opinions between the players and the devs. But many of the justifications for U35 balance changes misrepresented facts and misunderstood how the game works. The community deserves better than that.

Knee-Jerk Reactions
Considering every point of feedback above, this was all identifiable from the press release before a single patch note was published. But critics were told they had a knee-jerk reaction, and did not understand what they were criticizing. This is an appalling display of arrogance from the developer that tweeted this.

I have no doubt that the devs are getting death threats on twitter, even today. But that should not have been used as an excuse to discount or hide from meaningful criticism. The U35 combat preview sparked criticism before notes came out. This is true, but this was not irrational of the community. There are several points of feedback above that should have been revealed in in-combat testing before changes were decided on, and were immediately identified by some of the community's most dedicated players. To your credit, you were reactive and responsive to feedback, especially after a vCR+3 a bunch of us did, but we had given all that feedback before we set foot in a raid, and it felt like it was being both ignored and actively unwelcomed until then. I get that you may want to see data with feedback just to ensure that it's good feedback, but your most dedicated community members would not lie to you, and, to quote Mr. Lambert himself, "a little trust would be much appreciated." That should go both ways. A press release is to me the same as a patch note, and to pretend that we had no right to immediately criticize the announcement of abrupt, undertested, sweeping changes to the game is unfair.

I feel like I was justified to criticize what I saw as a cheapening of a core combat system that sets your game apart from others in the genre. Reading dev tweets that this criticism was somehow unwelcome put me off more than the balance changes themselves did. The balance changes have actually ended up in a pretty okay state, but many of us have grown tired of experiencing sweeping combat changes, and having our feedback cast aside until it is nearly too late. For me to be comfortable continuing to play ESO, I think I would need some assurance that something like this wouldn't happen again. And I don't mean combat changes, but more this sweeping antagonization of community criticism. And I dont think that sweeping combat changes should be made without some sort of in-content testing. Correct me if I am wrong, but my experience in vCR+3 suggests that nobody tested at least healing changes in content, because if it went live like that only endgame groups would be able to clear that content.

ZOS should apologize for basing sweeping combat changes on bad information, and for attempting to ship combat changes that failed to even meet the stated goals of increasing accessibility and narrowing the delta, leading to a worse product for all players. They should apologize for the way that they communicated to and about their most passionate players, and promise to do right by them and not instinctively dismiss their feedback in the future.

RagedAvenger wrote: »

The Elder Scrolls: Online community is owed a massive apology for the way we have been treated over the past few weeks. Balance changes are one thing, but employee conduct, both in prepared releases and in personal capacities, is absolutely appalling, and has done more damage to the brand than any changes to the gameplay ever will.

Update 35 Combat Preview
Starting with the first communication regarding update 35, I feel that balance changes were misrepresented on several fronts. As if to rile up lower end players, blanket damage nerfs were marketed as changes designed to increase accessibility and improve damage at the low end, while decreasing it at the high end. I should point out that there is no "endgame gene," that most of the highly skilled players at this game are skilled because they have a genuine passion for the game and sunk tons of time into it. That should be celebrated, not scorned. And framing nerfs as targeting skilled players encourages a misguided, anti-endgame sentiment, which I have seen across the forum. Most highly skilled players would love it if more people got involved in endgame; we love the game and want to share our passion with as many people as possible. And if ZOS wants that too, encouraging them to dislike us certainly won't help. Backlash to these changes is not an endgame desire to do as much damage as possible; most of us favor damage nerfs.

I will grant that in very unoptimized settings, players that struggled to sustain their resources may have seen a damage increase from these changes, but players who could sustain saw only damage decreases, and "players who could sustain" is a much larger group than the "extreme high end" antagonized in this press release. I do not know how any of the U35 changes were originally tested, but "reduction of 6–11% to overall damage" predicted as a result of the changes ended up corresponding to 20-30% decreases, both on the dummy and in raid. In specific raid cases, damage went down even further. These changes were observed by players of all skill levels.

Other community members were told that they were being looked out for, only to face the same nerfs to gameplay as everyone else. "We’ve heard your cries, Heavy Attack build lovers, and we want better for you," you declared as heavy attack sets, abilities, and the damage of the heavy attacks themselves were gutted.

One of the largest goals was a reduction in the APM required for success, only to halve the tickrate of heals over time, requiring more spammables cast on the GCD to succeed. The changes had the opposite of the intended effect. It appears that raids and dungeons, in which damage ticks faster than these heals can compensate for, were not considered enough.

You recognized that you were throwing the game into an unprecedented period of chaos, but promised to fix it in future patches. It seemed fine to subject thecommunity to an entire patch of "initial turbulence" even though the implications of this were not clear. We deserve better, and deserve patches that are reflective of confidence in the state of the game.

Devs set out to reduce the importance of weaving, but by nerfing damage over time effects as well, drastically increased weaving's importance as sets like Relequen, Kinras and Crushing Wall rose above everything else; Weapon damage is less meaningful when the skills it boosts do significantly less damage, and procs didn't get nerfed with dots and LAs.

The release was silent about power-creep in set design and the releases of new buffs and debuffs, which exacerbate the damage delta further than anything an individual damage dealer could do. Coral Riptide should never have been released, and it was actually buffed during its PTS cycle. Endgame groups utilize buffs and debuffs that most of the community has never heard of. But I guess new, meta sets sell more copies than quality core gameplay does.

Some disagreement with balance changes can be attributed to differences in opinions between the players and the devs. But many of the justifications for U35 balance changes misrepresented facts and misunderstood how the game works. The community deserves better than that.

Knee-Jerk Reactions
Considering every point of feedback above, this was all identifiable from the press release before a single patch note was published. But critics were told they had a knee-jerk reaction, and did not understand what they were criticizing. This is an appalling display of arrogance from the developer that tweeted this.

I have no doubt that the devs are getting death threats on twitter, even today. But that should not have been used as an excuse to discount or hide from meaningful criticism. The U35 combat preview sparked criticism before notes came out. This is true, but this was not irrational of the community. There are several points of feedback above that should have been revealed in in-combat testing before changes were decided on, and were immediately identified by some of the community's most dedicated players. To your credit, you were reactive and responsive to feedback, especially after a vCR+3 a bunch of us did, but we had given all that feedback before we set foot in a raid, and it felt like it was being both ignored and actively unwelcomed until then. I get that you may want to see data with feedback just to ensure that it's good feedback, but your most dedicated community members would not lie to you, and, to quote Mr. Lambert himself, "a little trust would be much appreciated." That should go both ways. A press release is to me the same as a patch note, and to pretend that we had no right to immediately criticize the announcement of abrupt, undertested, sweeping changes to the game is unfair.

I feel like I was justified to criticize what I saw as a cheapening of a core combat system that sets your game apart from others in the genre. Reading dev tweets that this criticism was somehow unwelcome put me off more than the balance changes themselves did. The balance changes have actually ended up in a pretty okay state, but many of us have grown tired of experiencing sweeping combat changes, and having our feedback cast aside until it is nearly too late. For me to be comfortable continuing to play ESO, I think I would need some assurance that something like this wouldn't happen again. And I don't mean combat changes, but more this sweeping antagonization of community criticism. And I dont think that sweeping combat changes should be made without some sort of in-content testing. Correct me if I am wrong, but my experience in vCR+3 suggests that nobody tested at least healing changes in content, because if it went live like that only endgame groups would be able to clear that content.

ZOS should apologize for basing sweeping combat changes on bad information, and for attempting to ship combat changes that failed to even meet the stated goals of increasing accessibility and narrowing the delta, leading to a worse product for all players. They should apologize for the way that they communicated to and about their most passionate players, and promise to do right by them and not instinctively dismiss their feedback in the future.