Does Entropy Rising Get Special Treatment?

Maverick827 · June 2014

While browsing the Tamriel Foundry forums, I noticed a few Entropy Rising members posting details about their discussions with developers regarding upcoming class changes not in the current 1.2 patch notes. These people also mentioned how they are able to communicate directly with developers about the nature of gameplay mechanics that are hidden to the rest of us. Obviously they were also frequently given restricted beta (alpha?) and test server access throughout the game's lifespan.

Every day hundreds of posters on these forums try to communicate with the developers only to receive silence in return. It's actually pretty infuriating and disheartening that a single guild is given preferential treatment and an apparent hotline to the developers while the rest of us - all paying customers - are essentially ignored.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ can only do so much. These forums desperately need the attention of developers - the attention of people who have the knowledge and authority to reply to topics regarding the design and philosophy of the game - but it seems like Tamriel Foundry, a fan site, is getting all of that while we are getting none on the game's official website.

To give an example, let's say that I wanted to know exactly how Ultimate generation works. I do a ton of testing but I'm noticing some inconsistencies between certain skills. So I come to these forums and make a post asking for a developer to confirm. I think we all know by this point that my thread would most likely die without ever getting any developer attention. Maybe if other people became interested in the topic, and it became large enough of a discussion, a community manager like @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ will forward the question to a developer, who will give her an answer, and then she'd come back here and let us know. This rarely happens. However, if you're a member of Entropy Rising, apparently you have some sort of access to the developers:

I can’t confirm atm if it is working ‘as intended’, but one of the Devs confirmed that each ability is only supposed to give 15 ultimate per cast regardless of duration, how many people hit, etc. Some abilities that have an initial hit and a dot currently are cheesemoding it and giving up to 15ultimate on the initial hit and up to 15ultimate on the dot.

Oh, okay. So that's how ultimate gain works, or at least how it is intended to work. What takes a giant thread and weeks of begging for a response here takes, what, an email for them? Or maybe it goes farther than that. This makes it sound like they have scheduled meetings with the developers:

When we talked to one of the Devs last week we suggested such mechanics with a hard cap on ultimate regen such as 15/3-5seconds or something like that. They confirmed that what I just said was the ‘intended’ affect for every skill. Some skills are still skirting by with needs to be fixed.

So they're close enough to casually offer suggestions, too? How influential are they?

Is this old news? Is this ZOS/Entropy Rising dynamic well known and I'm just late to the party? Is this a WoW/Fires of Heaven deal? Is Entropy Rising a developer guild?

Better yet, can we expect more transparency in the future and the same level of customer service and interaction that Entropy Rising receives?

I'm posting this here because I've heard that the Tamriel Foundry forums are pretty draconian, though now I'm starting to think this topic isn't very safe here, either, what with all of the dubious thread sinking going on.

hamon · June 2014

yes this worrying imo. it makes for a situation where a power gaming min/max guild can appear to speak for the community at large.. not a healthy place for the game to go imo

murklor007neb18_ESO · June 2014

Maverick827 wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ can only do so much. These forums desperately need the attention of developers - the attention of people who have the knowledge and authority to reply to topics regarding the design and philosophy of the game - but it seems like Tamriel Foundry, a fan site, is getting all of that while we are getting none on the game's official website.

Did you expect anything else considering the sorry state these forums are in while the Tamriel Foundry forums have everything we want such as critically important class forums? Not to mention far superior layout. You can actually find stuff without making your eyes bleed due to mixed languages. Hell, they even got a roleplaying forum!

I'm going to Tamriel Foundry instead. Not even the devs want to post here, that's how bad the forum is.

Gisgo · June 2014

The DEVs of every game are speaking directly with some players, usually the most active and organized and usually people that also plays on the test server.

Its the same on Planetside 2, for example.

I see nothing wrong with it, id rather have them speak with a few selected players than with the forum crowd.

Reykice · June 2014

Not affiliated in any way with them but its better they do it, i mean look at the forums...

Most things suggested here are not balanced in any way and are usually suggested by people who did not play the "other side" to know what is what...

If a power gaming guild doesn`t know more about the game compared to the casual people then who does and who should talk? They actually have good player that know what their class can and can`t do and as far as i could see form their posts/talks they are honest about it...

Just look at what people ask here like staffs using stamina or light armor losing its cost reduction and other junk...

Also, in the end, its ZENIMAX who does the actual changes... they take from here/other forums what they need.

It was ES(as far as i know) that found builds allowing you to always have an ultimate up... then told ZENIMAX so they could correct that as it was not intended.

Either way, it should be done in every game: get the guild(s) with a lot of experienced players to talk about what they like and don`t like... or do you want them to talk to the guys asking for staffs to use stamina?

Soloeus · June 2014

Or if you look at the "troll posts" that are always unpunished from their members or that if someone disagrees with one and a dev sees the disagreement they delete it. I suspect ER as being pet account, and dev cousins or whatever other equally corrupt role you can envision.

Either way, it is clear they have an advantage nobody else does.

crislevin · June 2014

I wouldn't be surprised. I am fine with somebody has more access to the devs.

Still, I see your point, to what extent should so called "dedicated players" overrule others, since nobody is 100% objective. I don't know the answer to that.

Mystborn · June 2014

My understanding is that the ZoS Community Management team (Jess/Gina) periodically reaches out to many guilds (ER included) and asks them for feedback and suggestions which they then collate and pass on to the various dev teams (in a similar but more organised way to how they collate and pass on feedback and suggestions from the forums).

Yes I guess it does give those guilds some minor "preferential treatment" but honestly I think it's just good community management. As hectic as these forums are, if they can get an entire guild's worth of opinions provided in an organised manner it probably helps. I would assume they have a spectrum of guilds from PvE focused to PvP focused to casual/rp guilds that they gather their data from.

As for Ultimate gen, the 3 per crit with a max of 15 per ability was something tested and learned through the game. I can't say for sure it was due to ER's feedback report but I *think* the recent change to siphon spirit was due to ER reporting that it seemed to skirt that cap of 15 and gave a lot of ultimate, very quickly, for a long time. From the patch notes it looks like they deactivated ultimate gen from that ability until they figure out how to fix it to conform so the feedback given isn't inherently a bad thing for the game.

Doctoruniverse · June 2014

Yes you see instead on focusing the balance in trials on the 99,5% they instead thought they would be entropy rising fanboys and just make the content for them.

Balance the run after a guild that gets access to it a million years before everyone else and then when they say its to easy there was a ultima nerf instantly which killed off the 99,5% other people doing trials.

Tired of these *** calling the shots in the game that should be designed for everyone.

eliisra · June 2014

Well, I rather they speak for me, than 99% of the irrational raging posters on this forum.

At least the core in Entropy Rising have in-depth knowledge about the game. I just don't find it very offensive that beta testers, active and devoted guilds, have more communication with developers than someone playing casually, mostly caring about his own class and gaming experience.

But no doubt, we need way more communication between us customers and ESO developers. The lack of responses and attention in regards of our concerns, is very disheartening. That's a completely different topic tho.

Gisgo · June 2014

Soloeus wrote: »

Or if you look at the "troll posts" that are always unpunished from their members or that if someone disagrees with one and a dev sees the disagreement they delete it. I suspect ER as being pet account, and dev cousins or whatever other equally corrupt role you can envision.

Either way, it is clear they have an advantage nobody else does.

Sounds like you have something against ER.

Whatever is your opinion about them, those "pro" "minmax" "elitist" whatever you call them guilds are testing the game much better than any beta tester could, and actually helping the DEVs at making the game a little more balanced.

Wifeaggro13 · June 2014

Maverick827 wrote: »

While browsing the Tamriel Foundry forums, I noticed a few Entropy Rising members posting details about their discussions with developers regarding upcoming class changes not in the current 1.2 patch notes. These people also mentioned how they are able to communicate directly with developers about the nature of gameplay mechanics that are hidden to the rest of us. Obviously they were also frequently given restricted beta (alpha?) and test server access throughout the game's lifespan.

Every day hundreds of posters on these forums try to communicate with the developers only to receive silence in return. It's actually pretty infuriating and disheartening that a single guild is given preferential treatment and an apparent hotline to the developers while the rest of us - all paying customers - are essentially ignored.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ can only do so much. These forums desperately need the attention of developers - the attention of people who have the knowledge and authority to reply to topics regarding the design and philosophy of the game - but it seems like Tamriel Foundry, a fan site, is getting all of that while we are getting none on the game's official website.

To give an example, let's say that I wanted to know exactly how Ultimate generation works. I do a ton of testing but I'm noticing some inconsistencies between certain skills. So I come to these forums and make a post asking for a developer to confirm. I think we all know by this point that my thread would most likely die without ever getting any developer attention. Maybe if other people became interested in the topic, and it became large enough of a discussion, a community manager like @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ will forward the question to a developer, who will give her an answer, and then she'd come back here and let us know. This rarely happens. However, if you're a member of Entropy Rising, apparently you have some sort of access to the developers:

I can’t confirm atm if it is working ‘as intended’, but one of the Devs confirmed that each ability is only supposed to give 15 ultimate per cast regardless of duration, how many people hit, etc. Some abilities that have an initial hit and a dot currently are cheesemoding it and giving up to 15ultimate on the initial hit and up to 15ultimate on the dot.

Oh, okay. So that's how ultimate gain works, or at least how it is intended to work. What takes a giant thread and weeks of begging for a response here takes, what, an email for them? Or maybe it goes farther than that. This makes it sound like they have scheduled meetings with the developers:

When we talked to one of the Devs last week we suggested such mechanics with a hard cap on ultimate regen such as 15/3-5seconds or something like that. They confirmed that what I just said was the ‘intended’ affect for every skill. Some skills are still skirting by with needs to be fixed.

So they're close enough to casually offer suggestions, too? How influential are they?

Is this old news? Is this ZOS/Entropy Rising dynamic well known and I'm just late to the party? Is this a WoW/Fires of Heaven deal? Is Entropy Rising a developer guild?

Better yet, can we expect more transparency in the future and the same level of customer service and interaction that Entropy Rising receives?

I'm posting this here because I've heard that the Tamriel Foundry forums are pretty draconian, though now I'm starting to think this topic isn't very safe here, either, what with all of the dubious thread sinking going on.

Then we can directly blame entropy for the State of end game and the Dress and stick spec for all classes lol (kidding). Never ever give a power gamer guild the reigns to dictate the scaling of end game and mechanics. power guilds find the shortest route from point A to point B and call it good.
What i don't understand is who they could have conveyed tot he developers that end game itemization was good to go.

Nazon_Katts · June 2014

Neglecting your forum crowd ultimately leads to a toxic community. This one here being a prime example. Favoritism, no matter how good the reasons, makes it worse, as it leads to segregation of your community and fosters elitism.

You can and should utilize players for more in-depth play testing and feedback. Giving a third party the right to essentially chose who those player might be and not offering a transparent and open way for everyone to get into this group, is a bad choice for exactly the same reasons.

In no way I wish to bash ER specifically or any other PTS guild generally, but this kind of testing and close communication, without offering at least something similar to the rest of your community, does hurt the community and the game eventually. It's not the guilds fault, that other than family & friends no groups were kept for testing and feedback.

To be fair, they seem to be aware of this and opening the PTS is a step in the right direction. If people are determined and dedicated enough, there's your way to reach the devs. But they still have to up the communications and interactions here in the boards with the 'normal' folks as well. Otherwise people will still feel like being kept out of known, unless they belong to some kind of special group.

So no, family and friends and certain guilds testing content and being in a closer relationship to the developers is not a bad thing. Favoring this so much, that you do not have any other meaningful interaction with your player base is.

Mystborn · June 2014

Doctoruniverse wrote: »

Yes you see instead on focusing the balance in trials on the 99,5% they instead thought they would be entropy rising fanboys and just make the content for them.

Balance the run after a guild that gets access to it a million years before everyone else and then when they say its to easy there was a ultima nerf instantly which killed off the 99,5% other people doing trials.

Tired of these *** calling the shots in the game that should be designed for everyone.

To be fair they got access to it at the same time as every other PTS tester, about 3 weeks before everyone got access. I don't believe the Ultimate nerf was the result of ER saying it was too easy, and more a result of it just being too easy. There were many videos out there of groups generating Ultimate so fast they were able to drop multiple ultimates at a time and I think that was really not what the Devs envisioned when they designed the game/trials so they made changes. There was a 9minute AA run prior to Ulti nerfs right?

Seems kind of harsh to be calling them "***" when you really don't know any of them.

Doctoruniverse · June 2014

The "general" public was just about through trials when this nerf hit. I heard about the Ulti nerf from a ER twitch way before it ever got posted.

Seems to me they had some hand in it or that they just have exclusive access to something that other "paying" customers just dosnt.

Not trying to be mean, but it just seems like they want to cater to the 0,5% PTS guilds and just let their game go down in flames.

crislevin · June 2014

hopefully they won't have only those Guild players left soon.

oh wait, Nybling quit already.... LOL

TBH, i have no clue how to manage this thing, I hope they would be at least doing similar things as other MMO is doing.

Jaxom · June 2014

This sort of thing is not uncommon in the MMO industry. In some of my previous MMO's, we have actually had developers in our Venrillo asking for feedback. I'm sure the list ZOS has chosen has some rhyme or reason and it comes to no surprise that Enropy Rising is one of those who has the ear of ZOS. They do have the most successful fan site for the game. I'm not sure what else you expected.

Go over to WildStar Central and see if they get similar treatment with the WildStar Devs. I can promise you they do. All games do it. I can certainly understand that some people would be upset over it due to some exclusivity, but as long as the suggestions given are taken with a grain of salt, I have faith that this sort of thing is a good thing for the game.

That's my opinion on this at least.

kitsinni · June 2014

I actually like thier forums and get good info there but for everyone who says "look at this forum" their forum has quite a bit of the same stuff and very negative and anti-ZOS troll posts.

Mortosk · June 2014

Maverick827 wrote: »

While browsing the Tamriel Foundry forums, I noticed a few Entropy Rising members posting details about their discussions with developers regarding upcoming class changes not in the current 1.2 patch notes. These people also mentioned how they are able to communicate directly with developers about the nature of gameplay mechanics that are hidden to the rest of us. Obviously they were also frequently given restricted beta (alpha?) and test server access throughout the game's lifespan.

Every day hundreds of posters on these forums try to communicate with the developers only to receive silence in return. It's actually pretty infuriating and disheartening that a single guild is given preferential treatment and an apparent hotline to the developers while the rest of us - all paying customers - are essentially ignored.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ can only do so much. These forums desperately need the attention of developers - the attention of people who have the knowledge and authority to reply to topics regarding the design and philosophy of the game - but it seems like Tamriel Foundry, a fan site, is getting all of that while we are getting none on the game's official website.

To give an example, let's say that I wanted to know exactly how Ultimate generation works. I do a ton of testing but I'm noticing some inconsistencies between certain skills. So I come to these forums and make a post asking for a developer to confirm. I think we all know by this point that my thread would most likely die without ever getting any developer attention. Maybe if other people became interested in the topic, and it became large enough of a discussion, a community manager like @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ will forward the question to a developer, who will give her an answer, and then she'd come back here and let us know. This rarely happens. However, if you're a member of Entropy Rising, apparently you have some sort of access to the developers:

I can’t confirm atm if it is working ‘as intended’, but one of the Devs confirmed that each ability is only supposed to give 15 ultimate per cast regardless of duration, how many people hit, etc. Some abilities that have an initial hit and a dot currently are cheesemoding it and giving up to 15ultimate on the initial hit and up to 15ultimate on the dot.

Oh, okay. So that's how ultimate gain works, or at least how it is intended to work. What takes a giant thread and weeks of begging for a response here takes, what, an email for them? Or maybe it goes farther than that. This makes it sound like they have scheduled meetings with the developers:

When we talked to one of the Devs last week we suggested such mechanics with a hard cap on ultimate regen such as 15/3-5seconds or something like that. They confirmed that what I just said was the ‘intended’ affect for every skill. Some skills are still skirting by with needs to be fixed.

So they're close enough to casually offer suggestions, too? How influential are they?

Is this old news? Is this ZOS/Entropy Rising dynamic well known and I'm just late to the party? Is this a WoW/Fires of Heaven deal? Is Entropy Rising a developer guild?

Better yet, can we expect more transparency in the future and the same level of customer service and interaction that Entropy Rising receives?

I'm posting this here because I've heard that the Tamriel Foundry forums are pretty draconian, though now I'm starting to think this topic isn't very safe here, either, what with all of the dubious thread sinking going on.

I'm guessing these Entropy Rising guys must think Templars are well balanced then.

Kingslayer · June 2014

Regardless of them talking to whatever the guild maybe. Those on TF aren't always listened to by the dev's there have been things done with this game that when mentioned by people to the devs especially by those from ER got blanked. Swings and roundabouts. The thing i hate here is simple. I paid a visit to Wildstars forums last night through boredom and while i will never purchase that nauseating looking game At least the dev team there offers full transparency just reading the dev tracker for 10 minutes and i noticed that. Here i have to spend half of my time translating and even then its nonsense most of the time.

Mystborn · June 2014

Wifeaggro13 wrote: »

What i don't understand is who they could have conveyed tot he developers that end game itemization was good to go.

I'm not sure I follow what you mean by this?

Nazon_Katts wrote: »

Neglecting your forum crowd ultimately leads to a toxic community. This one here being a prime example. Favoritism, no matter how good the reasons, makes it worse, as it leads to segregation of your community and fosters elitism.

You can and should utilize players for more in-depth play testing and feedback. Giving a third party the right to essentially chose who those player might be and not offering a transparent and open way for everyone to get into this group, is a bad choice for exactly the same reasons.

In no way I wish to bash ER specifically or any other PTS guild generally, but this kind of testing and close communication, without offering at least something similar to the rest of your community, does hurt the community and the game eventually. It's not the guilds fault, that other than family & friends no groups were kept for testing and feedback.

To be fair, they seem to be aware of this and opening the PTS is a step in the right direction. If people are determined and dedicated enough, there's your way to reach the devs. But they still have to up the communications and interactions here in the boards with the 'normal' folks as well. Otherwise people will still feel like being kept out of known, unless they belong to some kind of special group.

So no, family and friends and certain guilds testing content and being in a closer relationship to the developers is not a bad thing. Favoring this so much, that you do not have any other meaningful interaction with your player base is.

They had said prior to release their intention was to open up the PTS to everyone after the Craglorn patch. It wasn't the hundreds of forum topics and reddit posts that caused the opening of the PTS it was their own internal timeline on when they could get the infrastructure there to support an open PTS and have dev time to resolve all the issues that happen in the first month or so post release.

Also, I don't know exactly how many and which guilds they solicit for feedback/suggestions but I know they aren't all PTS guilds. Obviously some of them are which makes sense since they have 6-12 months history of working with those guilds so they probably know by now which ones gave productive feedback and which ones didn't.

Doctoruniverse · June 2014

Ofcourse they think templars are fine. I heard their guild leader saying he could heal and do 700+ dps at the same time.

But for all their "claims" I have never seen any evidence of it.

Mystborn · June 2014

Doctoruniverse wrote: »

Ofcourse they think templars are fine. I heard their guild leader saying he could heal and do 700+ dps at the same time.

But for all their "claims" I have never seen any evidence of it.

Well, the ER guild leader is a Sorc (Atropos), and the Templar I assume you're speaking about (Erlex) does not think Templars are fine one little bit. He does pull 700+ DPS on some fights though, as for evidence - just check his twitch stream previous broadcasts.

Mortosk · June 2014

Mystborn wrote: »

Doctoruniverse wrote: »

Ofcourse they think templars are fine. I heard their guild leader saying he could heal and do 700+ dps at the same time.

But for all their "claims" I have never seen any evidence of it.

Well, the ER guild leader is a Sorc (Atropos), and the Templar I assume you're speaking about (Erlex) does not think Templars are fine one little bit. He does pull 700+ DPS on some fights though, as for evidence - just check his twitch stream previous broadcasts.

Tell him he should post that on the other thread and collect the 25,000 gold then.

fambaab16_ESO · June 2014

Daoc started dieing the day Mythic listened to american wannabe elitists on the forum. However no realm can be treated differently in this game.

Now the main focus is between full control over everything regarding your character, and the complete "mystic" secrets how everything works.

Also there are class discussion. But you cannot compare. Every class plays differently has all weapons to choose from and guild skills. It is our job to find the set of skills we use.

Some are more powerful in a way. But the goal for every balancing is that there is no skill jumping out of line. Of course its hard to determine what that balance will be because skills have secondary abilities.

That at first.

Second.

Game development. I doubt Zenimax will completely use the ideas and "want to have" stuff from a single guild. I think Zenimax devs are clever enough that 1 person saying his class is weak has no objective point of view, not in the time passed.
To compare if a class is weak he has to play all other classes first with a big variety of skill combinations, in pve and pvp.
However the system of lobbyism is rooted in our society and everyone would like to implement his rules and ideas. Its how almost all democratic politics work. And game industry too. But Gamers are the lobbyists.

I cannot say if the players of that guild are good pve players or pve or that they are simply average gamers.

If Zenimax knows the type and they decided to listen to them more, the most likely want to move the game into that direction.

Overall its good because dedicated gamers adress bugs that are very annoying, and it gets to devs pretty quick.

When I remember that my forum account was closed over 2 weeks for no reason (right after renewal, forum account wasn't flagged as paid account I think) I recon fast information travel without the support in between is a good thing.

And the latest activity regarding bugfixes was pretty good. If Entropy Rising had a had in it reporting the majority of the bugs directly I welcome that.

Im not sad that I can't speak directly to a devs, but theres so many gamers. Im not that selfish, I rather let the devs work and not let thousands of gamers interrupt them.

Devs need to work *blinks at his whip* Talking to a small group is ok. If that group has terrible ideas we know who to blame.

Vuron · June 2014

I'm in ER.

Anyone that thinks ER gets special treatment or gets to dictate changes is free to read my post history. It will become quite obvious that myself and others in the guild have many of the same issues as anyone else. I have made it quite clear in the PTS forums and general forums what I think about some of the changes and the results of some of those changes. I even made a post shortly before launch stating that I thought every patch for the previous 9 months had made the game worse.

Do you honestly think that everyone in ER supports the game being a light armor and staff game? I'm a damn NB and have even posted builds on how to level using DW and medium armor. You can look at some of our old YouTube videos and streams and you will see people trying to make other builds work. Even Atropos has vids of his Sorc running around with DW. We've had to reroll and respec just like everyone else.

As stated above, certain guilds and play groups are sourced for input and testing in this game. Also stated above was that this is a common practice in many games and I have been in this situation before. Giving feedback, thoughts, bouncing ideas around, and making suggestions doesn't mean for one second that the developers are going to do anything with that information. It is a way for them to gather information in a calm, structured, and organized format. Having different groups of players that represent hardcore, casual, PvP, PvE, etc. ensures they have an appropriate sample.

Does that mean that some people may know of changes before the general population? Yes.

Does it mean that because something was suggested it will be implemented? No.

This new trend of blaming the PTS testers or blaming certain guilds for the faults of this game is ridiculous. The Program Directors, project managers, and developers have their own direction and vision for this game and they seem to be taking a hard line and sticking to it, whether we/I/you agree with it, or not.

I agree with many others that there needs to be more/better communication from the team. The patch notes need details, there should be some form of Dev tracker, perhaps a little feedback in some of the more popular threads, and maybe a state of the game post every now and then. This lack of communcation has been an issue for as long as I've been involved and was a complaint even during early beta and PTS.

Also, "Devs" is not an all-encompassing term. Gina and Jess are not Devs. They don't have the answers that you're looking for. They simply work with what they are given. You can't realistically expect them to go to the managers with every single post topic and reply to ever single thread with a detailed answer.

crislevin · June 2014

Mortosk wrote: »

Mystborn wrote: »

Doctoruniverse wrote: »

Ofcourse they think templars are fine. I heard their guild leader saying he could heal and do 700+ dps at the same time.

But for all their "claims" I have never seen any evidence of it.

Well, the ER guild leader is a Sorc (Atropos), and the Templar I assume you're speaking about (Erlex) does not think Templars are fine one little bit. He does pull 700+ DPS on some fights though, as for evidence - just check his twitch stream previous broadcasts.

Tell him he should post that on the other thread and collect the 25,000 gold then.

indeed, 25k can but two primal motif nowadays.

kieso · June 2014

Well if these uber elite guilds are the reason VR content and craglorn are the way they are now then they need to start listening to someone else.

Gisgo · June 2014

kieso wrote: »

Well if these uber elite guilds are the reason VR content and craglorn are the way they are now then they need to start listening to someone else.

The DEVs are. Stop looking for an easy target.

Mystborn · June 2014

Right before the game released Zenimax made changes to the API that many people, including all/most of ER were very much against. ER and others lobbied the devs hard to reverse some of the changes, the Devs did not budge on any of them.

ER does not have the devs in their pocket - if they did we'd all be playing a very different game right now lol!

xaraan · June 2014

Well, I wouldn't say ER alone gets special access, but many large serious guilds speak directly to the developers yes. This does suck for the handful of people that are not in those types guilds and might have good ideas, but tbh many of the suggestions random players make aren't very good. For example you still have players that seem to think stamina builds = nightblade builds and talking about how weak NB's still are. (There are still broken skills there, but the class overall is not weak) If you are looking for feedback, you have to focus on certain things, otherwise they would be running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to listen to conflicting advice from thousands of different sources.

My bigger concern is not knowing what feedback these guilds offer. I've spoken with some of their members and for example heard them talk about NBs being as powerful as DKs and Veil of Blades being more powerful, etc. and this is just horrible observation. I've dropped Veil on a DK and seen them stand in it and their health bar barely move (without the self heal) while I hit them (and I don't have a weak character) then they drop banner and it hits like a ton of bricks damage wise. Or they've talked about how bad the nerf to bolt escape was (b/c many of these players already play sorcs and dk's) when in reality the nerf wasn't big enough - we still encounter the exact same results fighting sorcs in PvP as before the nerf. I don't think they have bad intentions like keeping their classes played powerful, but I do think they may have unintended bias in views sometimes.