ESOCommunity

I saw in these threads:
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=16029
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=16020
that people were totally unaware about what was going on with the EP team. I have to admit that although I investigated about that matter, I am currently lost because of a total lack of transparency.
I wanted to write a post explaining what I knew about the "EP team" 2 weeks ago, but I didn't because Mitoe told me that the situation would get better, and that ESOC wasn't going to push Zoi's beta. The situation isn't getting better at all, and the next beta is going to be Zoi's patch

Well, some time ago GoodSpeed left ESOC and the EP team, and gave the EP team leadership to Zoi.
At first, I thought, "well, why not?". After all, the EP leader doesn't need to be a high level player, just someone who can listen to what top players say, and take decisions based on what's better for the balance, for the entertainment of the community, and for the competitiveness of the game. And well Zoi, although he had many weird ideas about how we should change the game, seemed to be that kind of guy, so where's the issue?

Then I saw the EP notes and I fell stunned: the EP looked even worse than the VanePatch. At first I thought that Zoi was trolling me, but apparently he wasn't.
The plan is to make almost 100 changes in the next EP version, to totally change the meta and ruin the balance of the game.

Of course I complained to GS, because he was the EP leader, and we worked a lot together to make the EP better. I really thought he'd agree with me and pick a new EP leader (#rougaforepleader), but it was him who picked Zoi because "he's the only guy who can do that".
I was warned by him "The list isn't public, if you leak it, expect to be cut out of the process, that won't help anyone".
Well, after complaining to n0eL and Mitoe a, I got cut out of the process anyway, so I guess I can leak a part of it now.

I/
Half of the changes are totally useless, and are goona keep new players (and the jap community) very far from the EP:
– Culverin ship multiplier decreased from 12.5 to 10.
– All warship broadside attack artillery multipliers decreased from 1 to 0.5.
– Frigate attack increased from 90 to 110 and hitpoints decreased from 2000 to 1600. Broadside attack ship multiplier increased from 2 to 3.
– All stealth speed multipliers set to 0.75 (an increase from 0.5 except for Shinobi-No-Mono).
– Trample stance speed multiplier increased from 0.5 to 1.
– "Apache Raiders" improvement decreased from +2 to +1 Apache Cavalry villager multiplier.
-Castle cost reduced from 250w, 100c to 250w, 50c (bounties recalculated accordingly).


And like 30 more, but as I said, I don't have access to the change list anymore.

II/
Extremly controversial changes are going to be made, and of course nobody has been asked, and it's going to change the way we're going to play the game
– "The Exiled Prince" politician and Fortress-Age "The Messenger" councils increased from 40 to 50 train-points.

I can understand why one would want that, we indeed want the semi ff builds to be nerfed slightly, however we'd need a huge amount of testing and the agreement of the community to go for such a change. It makes no sense to go for that in the middle of 100 other changes.

-Grenadier "Heavy Infantry" unit-tag removed; Ranged resistance decreased from 50% to 30%; Train-points decreased from 42 to 38.

Who's going to test that? And what's the point, let grens as they are lol.

– Halberdier hitpoints increased from 200 to 220 (Russian Halberdiers adjusted accordingly).

Same

– Priest cost reduced from 200c to 150c (bounties recalculated accordingly).
– Spy bounties both decreased from 20 to 13; Population cost reduced from 2 to 1.

Great!

– “The Shaman” council politician increased by 1 War Hut for all ages.

???

– “The Wise Woman” council politician increased by 1 Farm for all ages.

???

-10/9 maces changed to 9/8 maces
-5 coyotes changed to 6 coyotes

This is where I stopped reading the patch notes, and since I got kicked, I can't tell you the other changes. Aztec is my favourite civ, and I've always loved the civ design: you have great mace shipments and bad cav shipments, which is why you shouldn't train maces in early game, and spend your wood in coyotes instead. It's the way colonial Aztec works, has always worked, and should always work!
With that, you're going to see people sending an age 2 coyote shipment as Aztecs, which changes the way you should play vs Aztecs, because it means that you should be even more careful when you go out of your base, because 11 coyotes might be coming!

Anyway, the ESOC staff doesn't seem to care
-GoodSpeed doesn't care, he knows that "it seems likely it won't be balanced " but he doesn't play the game anymore, so it doesn't matter, because "in the long term" (what is the long term by the way? 1 year? 2 years?), the game will be balanced and more interesting.
We've spent 3 years trying to get a balanced patch, and now that we have it, we're going to throw everything and make a new patch from scratch, very far from the RE and what everybody knows.

-Then I contacted n0eL. He's the ESOC admin after all, he does have the power to fire Zoi and pick a relevant EP leader instead! At first, I understood that he agreed with me and shared my concerns, but he wants to go for this patch and let Zoi fail.
Same issue, we're going to "go for it", and have the Zoi shit patch instead of a decent well balanced patch, such as with the changes I suggested in the other topic.

So in the end, the EP team is one person: Zoi who makes all the changes and decides how the patch will evolve.
The EP leader probably doesn't have to be a top player, but he does have to listen to what the top players think.

sigh, frenchmen being frenchmen

Not sure if it's super useful to respond to the actual changes right now, what I think is most useful is to hear what other top level players think of their involvements in EP. Are they being involved, or do they feel excluded like Diarouga?

The changes you listed are really not up to date, a lot of the "useless" ones have been removed, and a lot have been tweaked. They're reasonable now.
For the record, zoi discussed the changes a lot with several people (including myself and Mitoe), it's not like he's acting alone.

edeholland wrote:Not sure if it's super useful to respond to the actual changes right now, what I think is most useful is to hear what other top level players think of their involvements in EP. Are they being involved, or do they feel excluded like Diarouga?

Apparently kaiser is involved, but I'm excluded. I also know that Hazza and kynesie aren't aware of the changes.

Well, nice leak, but most of those changes aren't actually being done for the current beta.

@Diarouga Maybe he excluded you because you were rude and said his changes suck? Sincere question.
Cause personally, I disliked a lot, lot of changes at the start, and so did Mitoe, and when we just discussed it politely with zoi he changed his mind. And now it's imo a much better list of changes.

To get feedback from the community before changes are pushed to the main patch is the reason we have the Beta releases. Talking about changes is much more productive when you have the ability to playtest them.

Kaiserklein wrote:@Diarouga Maybe he excluded you because you were rude and said his changes suck? Sincere question.
Cause personally, I disliked a lot, lot of changes at the start, and so did Mitoe, and when we just discussed it politely with zoi he changed his mind. And now it's imo a much better list of changes.

At first I told him why his changes were bad, and he ignored me. After that I flamed him.

Anyway, Zoi is no authority, so I don't see why I'd have to try to convince him to remove 80 changes. It should rather be the opposite: he suggests the changes, and I give him my opinion.

Patience is a virtue young Padawan.

n0el wrote:Patience is a virtue young Padawan.

I got kicked out of the EP team, I don't see what patience will do.

Since like you've said, there is no EP team, how did you get kicked out? You most likely were not asked for your input anymore since you flamed Zoi.

I would imagine that your negative feedback was taken into consideration, and that perhaps it took multiple people disagreeing with the changes to get them changed.

After that I flamed him.

This sounds like a great way to ensure that your opinion is solicited next time.

he suggests the changes, and I give him my opinion.

...that sounds to me like exactly what happened.

n0el wrote:Since like you've said, there is no EP team, how did you get kicked out? You most likely were not asked for your input anymore since you flamed Zoi.

Yea, so that's what I said, there is one guy who doesn't know shit about the game who makes the changes, and we have to spend time and be nice with him if we want him to remove some bad changes. Great!

Poor Zoi must have had numerous nightmares after getting flamed by Diarouga.

musketeer925 wrote:...that sounds to me like exactly what happened.

No, he doesn't suggest changes, he imposes the changes, and listens to some opinions, which is different.

Being nice to people is generally how you get them to respect your opinion, yes.

It makes sense to me to have a mediator making decisions who isn't the highest level player, so that he can take feedback from other higher-level players without instituting his vision of the patch. Having a high-level player who is opinionated sounds like a way to get a patch that just represents that players' perspective of the game. A slightly lower level player can more neutrally mediate between a number of perspectives from other high level players.

musketeer925 wrote:It makes sense to me to have a mediator making decisions who isn't the highest level player, so that he can take feedback from other higher-level players without instituting his vision of the patch.

It does make sense. The issue is that he does have a vision of the patch, and instead of having high level players instituing their vision of the patch, we have a low level player instituing his vision on the patch, which is worse.
Furthermore Zoi is no authority regarding aoe3, so I don't care if he doesn't respect my opinion, I don't respect his.

We back then voted for having one EP leader who would contact top players to decide on balance. That's what is happening right now.
The only problem is that there is too much stuff to discuss/test at the same time and a lot of the changes probably don't come from the top players, but from the "creativity" of the leader.

As for Diarouga I think you just stopped playing for like months/years? That probably helps explaining the exclusion.

There was a poll from GS back then either on discord or on the forums and we voted for that option.

Just don't flame him, and he'll take your opinion into account, if you answer in a constructive way. He's not gonna make a patch representing his opinion if the top players disagree with him anyway. So what's the problem ?

You can be constructive and flame at the same time.

Garja wrote:There was a poll from GS back then either on discord or on the forums and we voted for that option.

Yes, for GS, not for Zoi.
It's not because we decided back then to pick a dictator because he was doing a good job, that we should pick a new dictator who doesn't do his job well.

Kaiserklein wrote:Just don't flame him, and he'll take your opinion into account, if you answer in a constructive way. He's not gonna make a patch representing his opinion if the top players disagree with him anyway. So what's the problem ?

The issue is that I don't want to spend time explaining why 80 of his 130 changes are bad.