Very stark contrast between ESO reddit and ESO forum

Nemesis7884 · July 2

Its so interesting to me - 80% of the posts on the ESO subreddit are very positive uplifting whereas the opposite is true on the official forum; best example currently - vengeance campaign

On reddit all posts, how great the campaign is, how people are enjoying it - forum, opposite....very curious why this is; why the community is so different on the two platforms...

Erickson9610 · July 2

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

very curious why this is; why the community is so different on the two platforms...

If I had to guess, I'd wager that it's because the ESO Reddit is open to a much larger public than the ESO Forums are. We on the forums had to have been invited (and not removed) to be able to post here, whereas anyone who uses Reddit for anything else can also use it for ESO-related discussion.

Freelancer_ESO · July 2

Reddit uses a voting model and as a result has it's content dominated by the people that vote on rising/new.

The ESO forums runs on a posting model and it's content is dominated by the people that post the most.

Both systems have some flaws to them.

On Reddit, it is far easier to censor viewpoints that disagree.

On Forums, it is far easier for one person to be incredibly dominating in discussions just by posting a bunch.

Nemesis7884 · July 2

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

very curious why this is; why the community is so different on the two platforms...

If I had to guess, I'd wager that it's because the ESO Reddit is open to a much larger public than the ESO Forums are. We on the forums had to have been invited (and not removed) to be able to post here, whereas anyone who uses Reddit for anything else can also use it for ESO-related discussion.

but I would then assume that people that were "removed" from the forums are probably more critical one... the mood is so much more positive and uplifting on the reddit, here its always a bit doom and gloom.

BretonMage · July 2

In addition to previous points, I have seen people mentioning on Reddit that you can take your complaints to the devs on this forum, so there seems to be an understanding somewhere that this is where grievances are aired (my sympathies to the forum mods).

silky_soft · July 2

Simple, there's a paywall. You have to pay to be on here. Where as reddit you don't have to pay to have multiple accounts to up vote and post again under another name agreeing to yourself like reddit.

Also I wouldn't be able to post that statement on reddit.

KekwLord3000 · July 2

First of all I don't agree with the forums being all bright and pink, the reason for lack if criticism at least not as harsh criticism
as we see on reddit is cause on reddit as long as you aren't going over the line your post stays up since well the sub isn't run by zos and they have no relations to zos.
The forums are being ran with an iron fist, and there are people on the forums who's sole job is to derail any useful topics and when people reply to them they manage to bait OP or anyone else in the post which gets people banned/timeout/get warning and thread locked so most of the OG's just gave up.
As for vengeance it's quite boring zerg vs zerg simulator no skill no theory-crafting and tbh the people that praise it are the people that don't ever pvp and will probably drop pvp after a week or two if vengeance goes live so then actual pvpers will get to hold bag.
I mean I don't mind having the vengeance campaign as something like a unique event every few months for a week 10 days maybe 2 weeks, but not as a permanent feature.
Those are my 2 cents feel free to agree or disagree.

Urvoth · July 2

Reddit tends to be the more casual, newer/less experienced player platform as it's far more accessible and the first place a lot of people think to go to when playing a new game

ApoAlaia · July 2

I haven't used that subreddit for a long time - for reasons that will be self evident soon - but when I briefly did in the past my experience - including direct interaction with the mods at the time - was that they would be quite proactive in squashing contributions that could be deemed negative or controversial.

Therefore the 'upbeat' feeling was a consequence of 'survivorship bias' if you will, because the only contributions that would be 'allowed to thrive' were the ones that matched the accepted tone for the subreddit.

Danikat · July 2

BretonMage wrote: »

In addition to previous points, I have seen people mentioning on Reddit that you can take your complaints to the devs on this forum, so there seems to be an understanding somewhere that this is where grievances are aired (my sympathies to the forum mods).

That was going to be my question: Does anyone from ZOS post on reddit?

I've seen that a lot - official forums, especially ones where the studio's staff post, even just as moderators, tend to be a lot more negative and argumentative. I think it's partially because a lot of people will only post there to get their message to the developers and they're more likely to make that effort for things they don't like and want changed, and partially because even people who are just there to chat will still tend to see any discussion as a form of feedback so they're quicker to disagree with anything they don't like, just in case the developer see it and start thinking it's a good idea.

Once I even saw it happen in real time. A forum I was on suddenly started getting lots of new people, who shifted the tone of discussions about the future of the series from fun hypotheticals and speculating on lore we wanted to explore to very demanding and criticial, often including lists of demands with statements that "you" need to do this if you want anyone to buy "your" game. Eventually we found out a developer had mentioned the main fansite the forum was part of in an interview, and that lead to a bunch of people thinking it was the place to get their demands heard and acted on.

Once they found out what was going on the admins posted a notification that as far as they know no one from the studio had ever been to the forum and you would never get a reply from a developer there and it all died down.

Desiato · July 2

This is where players come to bring items they are concerned about to the dev's attention, so it is disproportionately negative. It is not at all reflective of what I see in-game or in Discord. This is where players come to express their frustrations and grievances. Contented players tend not to bother with forum accounts.

IMO, gaming forums haven't been relevant for years, probably for the entirety of the 2020s, at least. But even when the forums were relevant for the first few years, they skewed negative compared to Reddit.

Yes, devs occasionally post on Reddit.

colossalvoids · July 2

Funny that the biggest thing they both share is overmoderation, just for different things generally.

mrreow · July 2

Reddit is a strange site with strange individuals with pockets of reasonable not mentally exhausting civilisation such as some gaming and hobby subreddits. (Great chill mini painting community imo btw)

I am not sure if redditors (derogatory?) or this forum for that matter, can represent any kind of player consensus. Contrast doesn’t suprise me however.

If any platform paints good representation across playerbase it is steam and reviews there. When they aren’t bombed that is. Though that also conveys some information, on an occasion.

Major_Toughness · July 2

Most Reddit posts are "omg look how pretty this zone is".

Reddit as a social media platform is far more popular, especially among "casuals" where as those wanted to be more involved might seek out the official forums.

I can go in a majority of my ESO discords and the dialogue is different again, as that is a smaller group of most like-minded players. A lot of which get banned off the forums or downvoted on Reddit for disagreeing with the masses especially when it comes to endgame content.

Abelon · July 2

As another comment said, has to do with the different models. A fun experiment - go into the "Vengeance - THE WORST PVP EVER" discussion thread (since that one seems to have become the biggest thread for it) and count how many of the comments actually belong to unique individuals. And how many are just the same person either replying or even just reposting what they already said before. Here on the forums, that's a completely normal occurrence. Sometimes it gets a bit absurd, because some people really have the tendency to just outright repeat themselves every page, because they think themselves and their opinion so good and important. At first glance, if you don't carefully analyze who is posting what, you'll get a very skewed picture of the community's opinions. The repetitions can make it look like there are more users of the same opinion. When it's actually just one.

It doesn't really slide on Reddit, because you'll just get downvoted into the negatives for such behavior, so you and your spammy comments will disappear at the bottom. All of the initial comments you see will belong to unique individuals.

Aside from that, forums skew negative for pretty much all MMOs I know, with their subreddits being more positive. Forums are just a different medium. They are older and you need to register for them separately. This usually leads to most forum users being older players, who prefer forums in general and who registered for them a while back, often all the way back when the game released. This leads to there being people who have seen everything, people who lost trust in devs, people who are bitter, people who are gatekeepy, and sometimes all of that is understandable. But also when a new player walks in... it's not a super welcoming atmosphere. So why should they put in the effort and register on this thing, when they can just go and use Reddit?

But the casual vs endgame split isn't that pronounced imo. Many people are active on both platforms. And vets can be ultra casual too, we have at least a few of those on the forums. While some newer players with experience from other mmos can quickly get into the hardcore endgame grind or pvp.

Major_Mangle · July 2

ESO reddit is a casual echo chamber like nothing else I've seen in the MMO-sphere. Waste of time trying to get any meaningful information or have any decent discussion in that forum.

robpr · July 2

Reddit is vote based, the negativity is quickly buried or deleted.

Joy_Division · July 2

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Erickson9610 wrote: »

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

very curious why this is; why the community is so different on the two platforms...

If I had to guess, I'd wager that it's because the ESO Reddit is open to a much larger public than the ESO Forums are. We on the forums had to have been invited (and not removed) to be able to post here, whereas anyone who uses Reddit for anything else can also use it for ESO-related discussion.

but I would then assume that people that were "removed" from the forums are probably more critical one... the mood is so much more positive and uplifting on the reddit, here its always a bit doom and gloom.

Many of the players who were "removed" from these forums were because of what was interpreted as bad behavior, not necessarily because they were critical of the game.

As for these forums being the opposite of "very uplifting," well, they are the official forums so people who have critical feedback are going to more assured their voice is heard here than an unofficial platform such as Reddit.

Ingenon · July 2

I have a login on both this forum and the reddit for elder scrolls online. I agree that most of the posts on the reddit are positive compared to this forum.

Information about the game, such as the current event and the current golden pursuit, get posted on both. On this forum typically by Kevin or Gina. On the reddit usually by different folks, but I have sometimes seen ZOS employees post on the reddit.

When ZOS was collecting questions about Vengeance 1, I posted a question on the reddit and it was answered by ZOS in their consolidated response which was posted on both this forum and on the reddit.

AzuraFan · July 2

Erickson9610 wrote: »

We on the forums had to have been invited (and not removed) to be able to post here, ...

AFAIK, anyone with an ESO account can post on the forums. I wasn't invited. I just joined. You do need ZOS to enable your account, but you don't need an invite.

Danikat wrote: »

That was going to be my question: Does anyone from ZOS post on reddit?

I've seen the odd post from ZOS on reddit. Not as much as here, but they do post.

From what I've observed, reddit is a more casual place where people post lots of pics of their characters and such. Also, since ZOS doesn't post as much there, people might feel that their complaints have a better chance of being heard on the forum.

And as others have mentioned, on reddit, a lot of downvotes essentially hide a post. Though overall, I agree that posters on reddit tend to be more positive, but I've also seen a lot of posts that indicate that they're also a lot more casual. Stuff like, "Wow, I just discovered that you can fish!" Not that bad, but sometimes pretty close to that.

TheMajority · July 2

it's really easy for one person to make multiple reddit account, where as ESO forum you have to buy the game to access...just saying I don't trust reddit

Desiato · July 2

Joy_Division wrote: »

Many of the players who were "removed" from these forums were because of what was interpreted as bad behavior, not necessarily because they were critical of the game.

If someone was banned because of strong criticism of the devs that was technically within the rules and could prove it, they wouldn't be able to express it here. I mean, even if they could still post. Just saying.

Northwold · July 2

I think, because of the hoops required to participate on here, you tend to see a much wider spectrum of views on reddit from a much higher number of players. Here players seem on the whole much harder core (in some cases very, very hardcore), and more heavily invested in the game.

It's been a useful sanity check sometimes. The example that most sticks in the mind was account wide achievements (leaving aside for the purposes of just using the example the substance of people's views on that). At the time this was introduced, the bulk of comment on this forum was of "the sky is falling" variety. On reddit the bulk was more "why wasn't it like that already".

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · July 2

ESO reddit blocks negative posts whereas ESO forum allows them as long as they are within TOS.

Nemesis7884 · July 2

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ESO reddit blocks negative posts whereas ESO forum allows them as long as they are within TOS.

That is news to me as i have made critical posts on there myself

Northwold · July 2

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ESO reddit blocks negative posts whereas ESO forum allows them as long as they are within TOS.

That is news to me as i have made critical posts on there myself

Agreed.

sarahthes · July 2

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ESO reddit blocks negative posts whereas ESO forum allows them as long as they are within TOS.

But only after they've gotten enough momentum to be noticed do they get blocked on Reddit. I've seen some outright attacks against specific players last far too long on Reddit.

Toanis · July 2

Erickson9610 wrote: »

If I had to guess, I'd wager that it's because the ESO Reddit is open to a much larger public than the ESO Forums are. We on the forums had to have been invited (and not removed) to be able to post here, whereas anyone who uses Reddit for anything else can also use it for ESO-related discussion.

There sure is a divide, but usually the free for all semi-anonymous platform is the one with the more negative feedback

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ESO reddit blocks negative posts whereas ESO forum allows them as long as they are within TOS.

Edit: Well, THAT would make sense,

spartaxoxo · July 2

There's a mix of reasons. But, anyone on a game's forums tends to be a more invested user regardless of skill level. So, they are more likely to be more critical of the game since they tend to have more interaction with it.

AWA is a good example. Most users aren't making tons of characters with different paths and identities. They have 1 main character. They may have an alt or two but they don't get the same type of use. So, when they do something with that character, they like that it gets tracked for their main. This is why, outside the forums, AWA was a success with plenty of praise. Whereas someone who does play with multiple alts that they have invested significant time in were more likely to be here and voice their displeasure at their playstyle being so negatively impacted.

sarahthes · July 2

spartaxoxo wrote: »

There's a mix of reasons. But, anyone on a game's forums tends to be a more invested user regardless of skill level. So, they are more likely to be more critical of the game since they tend to have more interaction with it.

AWA is a good example. Most users aren't making tons of characters with different paths and identities. They have 1 main character. They may have an alt or two but they don't get the same type of use. So, when they do something with that character, they like that it gets tracked for their main. This is why outside the forums, AWA was a success with plenty of praise. Whereas someone who does play with multiple alts that they have invested significant time in were more likely to be here and voice their displeasure at their playstyle being so negatively impacted.

The endgame community was annoyed by AwA and we aren't that small! But we are certainly smaller now than we were back then.

SilverBride · July 2

sarahthes wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

ESO reddit blocks negative posts whereas ESO forum allows them as long as they are within TOS.

But only after they've gotten enough momentum to be noticed do they get blocked on Reddit. I've seen some outright attacks against specific players last far too long on Reddit.

I have seen that, too and many of these posts are still there.

(I have never posted on Reddit but have read many of these types of posts.)