Elvenheart wrote: »

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

MorallyBipolar wrote: »

SummersetCitizen wrote: »

lostineternity wrote: »

I hold a master degree in applied mathematics. My main specialization is mathematical statistics, with a particular focus on social mathematical statistics (everything related to societal trends, opinion polls, elections, etc.

I also hold an MS in the social sciences, with a particular focus on data analysis. The level of statistical illiteracy in these discussions is striking. Personal anecdotes and individual experiences may feel meaningful, but they do not constitute evidence and carry little weight in population-level analysis.

One contributing factor to population decline is the forum environment itself. Long-standing trolls—some of whom have posted thousands of borderline rage-bait messages over the years—appear to be effectively insulated from consequences, potentially due to inconsistent or legacy moderation practices. At the same time, many ordinary in-game players report being automatically banned through AI-driven moderation systems.

These trolls are widely disliked by the player base, yet their posts—often driven by emotion rather than evidence—tend to align with pro-ZOS narratives. As a result, dissenting voices are gradually removed or disengage out of frustration, leaving a shrinking, unrepresentative group that persists until the community itself is effectively shut down.

I don't think ZOS realizes that this favoritism has resulted in people leaving ESO forever. When a member of ZOS makes up a reason to take action against a player, at least sometimes that player just leaves and never returns. That's why this situation being allowed to continue unabated seems so strange to me.

Although posts like this present one way to look at what is being described, what I see is something completely different. I see a number of people who say and do things against the TOS and get banned, rightly so, and rather than accept responsibility for their own actions have to come up with some weird conspiracy theory that ZOS likes some forum posters more than others and protects them, and that somehow whatever the person getting banned said or did is somebody else’s fault instead of their own. Not a single player on this forum can control what I post or don’t post, so it boggles my mind that some people think something they post against the TOS is someone else’s fault.

Anyone who breaks the TOS should expect to get banned and I think everyone knows that.

The reason people are frustrated at this is because it's starting to feel like the application of the rules isn't being consistently applied across users - people have talked about the over-moderation of the forums for years, but everyone who's been on the forum for more than say a month, knows the same 2-3 accounts on the forum who are very clearly baiting other users, or downright trolling and being toxic, but those 2-3 accounts have been doing the same thing for years because apparently they have free reign to do so.

For apparently no real reason either, it is completely unexplainable other than they don't get banned because they tend to be heavily on the pro-ZOS side, because anyone who would be even slightly critical of the game, posting the same kinds of things as regularly as they do, would have been dealt with a long time ago.

Well, again, this just might be a different way of seeing things, but what some people may perceive as baiting and trolling others may see as just someone offering a counterpoint.

These forums come across so negative sometimes, and what I see is that many times if anyone dares to try to say anything positive in a topic that runs counter to the idea being discussed in the topic they are jumped on and what they say is belittled by some and ridiculed by others. The ones trying to blame two or three posters for people choosing to quit ESO should wonder what effect all the negativity readers are exposed to on the forums is having on player retention rather than worrying about the posts of two or three players.

Just because a player has an experience in the game that runs counter to the idea being discussed and they want to share that experience to try and balance out the negativity with a little bit of positivity does not mean they are baiting or trolling. And if anyone takes what someone says as “bait” and responds to these posts in a way that is against TOS and they get actioned against it does not mean that what they said or did was the other person’s fault - in the end, posters are 100% in control of and responsible for what they post and how they post it.

Elvenheart wrote: »

reazea wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

Rkindaleft wrote: »

Elvenheart wrote: »

MorallyBipolar wrote: »

SummersetCitizen wrote: »

lostineternity wrote: »

I hold a master degree in applied mathematics. My main specialization is mathematical statistics, with a particular focus on social mathematical statistics (everything related to societal trends, opinion polls, elections, etc.

I also hold an MS in the social sciences, with a particular focus on data analysis. The level of statistical illiteracy in these discussions is striking. Personal anecdotes and individual experiences may feel meaningful, but they do not constitute evidence and carry little weight in population-level analysis.

One contributing factor to population decline is the forum environment itself. Long-standing trolls—some of whom have posted thousands of borderline rage-bait messages over the years—appear to be effectively insulated from consequences, potentially due to inconsistent or legacy moderation practices. At the same time, many ordinary in-game players report being automatically banned through AI-driven moderation systems.

These trolls are widely disliked by the player base, yet their posts—often driven by emotion rather than evidence—tend to align with pro-ZOS narratives. As a result, dissenting voices are gradually removed or disengage out of frustration, leaving a shrinking, unrepresentative group that persists until the community itself is effectively shut down.

I don't think ZOS realizes that this favoritism has resulted in people leaving ESO forever. When a member of ZOS makes up a reason to take action against a player, at least sometimes that player just leaves and never returns. That's why this situation being allowed to continue unabated seems so strange to me.

Although posts like this present one way to look at what is being described, what I see is something completely different. I see a number of people who say and do things against the TOS and get banned, rightly so, and rather than accept responsibility for their own actions have to come up with some weird conspiracy theory that ZOS likes some forum posters more than others and protects them, and that somehow whatever the person getting banned said or did is somebody else’s fault instead of their own. Not a single player on this forum can control what I post or don’t post, so it boggles my mind that some people think something they post against the TOS is someone else’s fault.

Anyone who breaks the TOS should expect to get banned and I think everyone knows that.

The reason people are frustrated at this is because it's starting to feel like the application of the rules isn't being consistently applied across users - people have talked about the over-moderation of the forums for years, but everyone who's been on the forum for more than say a month, knows the same 2-3 accounts on the forum who are very clearly baiting other users, or downright trolling and being toxic, but those 2-3 accounts have been doing the same thing for years because apparently they have free reign to do so.

For apparently no real reason either, it is completely unexplainable other than they don't get banned because they tend to be heavily on the pro-ZOS side, because anyone who would be even slightly critical of the game, posting the same kinds of things as regularly as they do, would have been dealt with a long time ago.

Well, again, this just might be a different way of seeing things, but what some people may perceive as baiting and trolling others may see as just someone offering a counterpoint.

These forums come across so negative sometimes, and what I see is that many times if anyone dares to try to say anything positive in a topic that runs counter to the idea being discussed in the topic they are jumped on and what they say is belittled by some and ridiculed by others. The ones trying to blame two or three posters for people choosing to quit ESO should wonder what effect all the negativity readers are exposed to on the forums is having on player retention rather than worrying about the posts of two or three players.

Just because a player has an experience in the game that runs counter to the idea being discussed and they want to share that experience to try and balance out the negativity with a little bit of positivity does not mean they are baiting or trolling. And if anyone takes what someone says as “bait” and responds to these posts in a way that is against TOS and they get actioned against it does not mean that what they said or did was the other person’s fault - in the end, posters are 100% in control of and responsible for what they post and how they post it.

Do you believe people should be banned from the forum for stating that they will never play vengeance?

Of course not! That’s like me saying I don’t like Battlegrounds and won’t play them unless 3x3x3 comes back.

If anyone is claiming they’ve been banned because they say they won’t play Vengeance, I would want to know the entire story (but that can’t be discussed here on the forums due to TOS). There are two sides to every story and without knowing both sides, I would hesitate to jump to any conclusions.