What is wrong with Zenimax? Is the current situation out of their control?

eduardo_goncalveseb17_ESO

unsubbed too.. 16d left.

Other that Funcoms with Age of Conan, and SOE with SWG, have never seen a company screw a game so much like Zenimax one did here.

" how to turn a good product into crap with just one patch. " written by Zenimax.

My advice to the company board:
Fire whoever is leading and making decisions in this game as fast as possible, before theres nothign left.

fiachsidhe

Jim_McMasterub17_ESO wrote: »

Thank you for the link. the reviews were insightful.

You're welcome.

rynth

[Moderator Edit: Content removed per our rules on name calling and flaming.]

AngryNord

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Maybe Zenimax Media should get rid of Matt Firor and hire someone who can really make this game work?

I'm note sure Matt Firor is the one you should be shooting at - he was after all lead designer on Dark Age of Camelot, which has generally been well regarded among MMOs (and which have obviously influenced a lot of Things in ESO)

YstradClud

Why would management come under fire for technical issues. Seems more like something that needed to be directed to specific individual employees who have responsibility for them.

nikolaj.lemcheb16_ESO

This is a repeat in high speed of the decline of DAoC.

Matt Fiors team refused to balance the game for years and years while the sub numbers declined day by day. It wasn't until his team were pulled to warhammer that the new dev team in Daoc were able to turn the tables and fix the issues in the game that people had complained about for YEARS and they fixed them all within 3 months of taking over.

Look at what happened with warhammer and the balance in that game and how it never recovered from the insanely bad design decisions made by the team around mr. Fior.

It was also Matt Fior who were the brain behind Trials of Atlantis that for many years were rated as the worst expansion ever in any mmo and drove more than half the players away from DaoC.

It seems like he is so set in his personal ideas that no reality can change them and I really think that Zenimax should think about replacing that development team before they sink a third game.

Atrayo

Hi There,

Kudos fiachsidhe for that link. (*)

Some of these teething pains is from a young company running their first MMO. Although the link provided to glassdoor.com for the Zenimax employee reviews. Kinda reminded me of the scandal over at "Red 5 Studio's" when they fired their Ivory Tower CEO Mark Kern for the "Firefall" MMOFPS. Much of this incompetence is a lack of management experience where it De-evolves to petty power struggles.

Hopefully one day customers if not shareholders as gamers / consumers have more transparency on how a game studio is run. Since investing a couple hundred millions of dollars American is no hill of beans to sneeze at. To have it erupt with the board of directors playing triage when management can't get their act straight.

DragonMother

xCHEMISTx wrote: »

Why would management come under fire for technical issues. Seems more like something that needed to be directed to specific individual employees who have responsibility for them.

Because it's the management that makes the final call on when to release the patches, and the head developers are placed under a very tight schedule as it stands with testing with QA. Let's put it this way, if the company actually cared to see this game pull up it's boot straps and make headway up the mountains others have tromped ahead, they would have poured much more time on the testing than they would have in the game's development. (7+ years in development, and only 3 days per testing phase? No, sorry but that's poor development practice all the way around.)

b92303008rwb17_ESO

rynth wrote: »

lol all I see are a bunch of cry babies that want everything their way and for everything to go right the first time. Personally if you all don't like it leave, don't post anything, don't *** just leave. Christ the game is only two months old you all need to grow up suck it up and cowboy the f***up.

If you all think you can make a better MMO then by all means go out there and do it. If not, well then you all don't have any room to talk.

While the game is only two months old, ZOS just keep making rookie mistakes like this game is two days old.

AngryNord wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Maybe Zenimax Media should get rid of Matt Firor and hire someone who can really make this game work?

I'm note sure Matt Firor is the one you should be shooting at - he was after all lead designer on Dark Age of Camelot, which has generally been well regarded among MMOs (and which have obviously influenced a lot of Things in ESO)

As I said earlier, there are issues coming from all aspects of the game, even including the most non-gaming aspect, that is billing. I personally lost two credit card payments to ZOS and had to buy a 60 day game time card to be able to play. By the way, that two missing payments are still not refunded yet and I have not received any response from CS for 4 days. If technical issues are the only problems, I don't think there would be so much hate or negative comments on the forum. I honestly can't think of anyone else to shoot at.

DragonMother

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

rynth wrote: »

lol all I see are a bunch of cry babies that want everything their way and for everything to go right the first time. Personally if you all don't like it leave, don't post anything, don't *** just leave. Christ the game is only two months old you all need to grow up suck it up and cowboy the f***up.

If you all think you can make a better MMO then by all means go out there and do it. If not, well then you all don't have any room to talk.

While the game is only two months old, ZOS just keep making rookie mistakes like this game is two days old.

AngryNord wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Maybe Zenimax Media should get rid of Matt Firor and hire someone who can really make this game work?

I'm note sure Matt Firor is the one you should be shooting at - he was after all lead designer on Dark Age of Camelot, which has generally been well regarded among MMOs (and which have obviously influenced a lot of Things in ESO)

As I said earlier, there are issues coming from all aspects of the game, even including the most non-gaming aspect, that is billing. I personally lost two credit card payments to ZOS and had to buy a 60 day game time card to be able to play. By the way, that two missing payments are still not refunded yet and I have not received any response from CS for 4 days. If technical issues are the only problems, I don't think there would be so much hate or negative comments on the forum. I honestly can't think of anyone else to shoot at.

I would recommend finding the CS number to ZOS and contacting them directly rather than using their email support. They might be able to resolve that issue much faster with you on the phone.

etupa

All bugs should have been fixed BEFORE VR12 and Craglorn came out, even if it takes over 2 month...

And not resesting SP with all thoses change...omg.

Zenimax, you are killing your own game !

b92303008rwb17_ESO

DragonMother wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

rynth wrote: »

lol all I see are a bunch of cry babies that want everything their way and for everything to go right the first time. Personally if you all don't like it leave, don't post anything, don't *** just leave. Christ the game is only two months old you all need to grow up suck it up and cowboy the f***up.

If you all think you can make a better MMO then by all means go out there and do it. If not, well then you all don't have any room to talk.

While the game is only two months old, ZOS just keep making rookie mistakes like this game is two days old.

AngryNord wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Maybe Zenimax Media should get rid of Matt Firor and hire someone who can really make this game work?

I'm note sure Matt Firor is the one you should be shooting at - he was after all lead designer on Dark Age of Camelot, which has generally been well regarded among MMOs (and which have obviously influenced a lot of Things in ESO)

As I said earlier, there are issues coming from all aspects of the game, even including the most non-gaming aspect, that is billing. I personally lost two credit card payments to ZOS and had to buy a 60 day game time card to be able to play. By the way, that two missing payments are still not refunded yet and I have not received any response from CS for 4 days. If technical issues are the only problems, I don't think there would be so much hate or negative comments on the forum. I honestly can't think of anyone else to shoot at.

I would recommend finding the CS number to ZOS and contacting them directly rather than using their email support. They might be able to resolve that issue much faster with you on the phone.

To be honest, I fully understand how stressful the CS can be now with more important issues and I am not really in a bad need of that missing money at the moment. So in this case, I am willing to wait as long as they make real efforts to make this game work. I brought up the billing issue just to make it clear that this game has got way more serious problems than technical. It is ZOS not the customer that desperately needs the billing system to function properly for the subscription money and they somehow can't even make this work.

DragonMother

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

DragonMother wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

rynth wrote: »

lol all I see are a bunch of cry babies that want everything their way and for everything to go right the first time. Personally if you all don't like it leave, don't post anything, don't *** just leave. Christ the game is only two months old you all need to grow up suck it up and cowboy the f***up.

If you all think you can make a better MMO then by all means go out there and do it. If not, well then you all don't have any room to talk.

While the game is only two months old, ZOS just keep making rookie mistakes like this game is two days old.

AngryNord wrote: »

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

Maybe Zenimax Media should get rid of Matt Firor and hire someone who can really make this game work?

I'm note sure Matt Firor is the one you should be shooting at - he was after all lead designer on Dark Age of Camelot, which has generally been well regarded among MMOs (and which have obviously influenced a lot of Things in ESO)

As I said earlier, there are issues coming from all aspects of the game, even including the most non-gaming aspect, that is billing. I personally lost two credit card payments to ZOS and had to buy a 60 day game time card to be able to play. By the way, that two missing payments are still not refunded yet and I have not received any response from CS for 4 days. If technical issues are the only problems, I don't think there would be so much hate or negative comments on the forum. I honestly can't think of anyone else to shoot at.

I would recommend finding the CS number to ZOS and contacting them directly rather than using their email support. They might be able to resolve that issue much faster with you on the phone.

To be honest, I fully understand how stressful the CS can be now with more important issues and I am not really in a bad need of that missing money at the moment. So in this case, I am willing to wait as long as they make real efforts to make this game work. I brought up the billing issue just to make it clear that this game has got way more serious problems than technical. It is ZOS not the customer that desperately needs the billing system to function properly for the subscription money and they somehow can't even make this work.

Oh I agree completely. CS is not an easy job by any means.

Garetth

Gaudrath wrote: »

One question guys. Is this your first MMO?

I started with Asheron's Call and have played almost every MMO since, except that cartoon one called WOW.

DragonMother

My first mmo was EQ, before that I played MUDD's.

Phantax

DragonMother wrote: »

If there was some way to contact the parent company of the game-series that owns the copyright, I would recommend doing so. It feels like ZOS is fumbling with the ball, and are having trouble putting their helmets on properly at this point. ._.

There is. Go to Bethesda's own website, use the 'contact' option and send them a mail (not that I'd suggest that of course )
You could also try using their facebook and twitter pages !

DragonMother

Phantax wrote: »

DragonMother wrote: »

If there was some way to contact the parent company of the game-series that owns the copyright, I would recommend doing so. It feels like ZOS is fumbling with the ball, and are having trouble putting their helmets on properly at this point. ._.

There is. Go to Bethesda's own website, use the 'contact' option and send them a mail (not that I'd suggest that of course )
You could also try using their facebook and twitter pages !

God idea, I didn't think of that. I looked at bethsofts website but didn't see anything in relation to eso there besides a redirect from their community page.

Swampster

Except Bethesda are simply a subisidary or Zenimax Media, pretty much the same as Zenimax Online is a subsidiary of the same.. they're effectively sister companies, with ZOS being created specifically to concentrate on MMO's.

The people making the real decisions will be at Zenimax Media, Bethesda will have no sway over ZOS whatsoever...

Phantax

Swampster wrote: »

Except Bethesda are simply a subisidary or Zenimax Media, pretty much the same as Zenimax Online is a subsidiary of the same.. they're effectively sister companies, with ZOS being created specifically to concentrate on MMO's.

The people making the real decisions will be at Zenimax Media, Bethesda will have no sway over ZOS whatsoever...

I may be wrong on this (somebody please correct me if I am) but don't Bethesda hold copyright on Elder Scrolls? If that is the case and Elder Scrolls is their intellectual property do they not have the right to intervene?

fiachsidhe

rynth wrote: »

lol all I see are a bunch of cry babies that want everything their way and for everything to go right the first time. Personally if you all don't like it leave, don't post anything, don't *** just leave. Christ the game is only two months old you all need to grow up suck it up and cowboy the f***up.

If you all think you can make a better MMO then by all means go out there and do it. If not, well then you all don't have any room to talk.

....I really have to admire the dedication to sticking to pretty much every flimsy fanboy cliche/strawman/logical fallacy imaginable, this long after they've been completely annihilated by common sense and rudimentary logic. And to stick them all in a single post. A pretty bold choice.

xCHEMISTx wrote: »

Why would management come under fire for technical issues. Seems more like something that needed to be directed to specific individual employees who have responsibility for them.

Because they are the decision makers. They are the ones who delegate authority, Many of this game's issues are poor design decisions, misplaced priorities. Programmers, IT, all of these people can only do what management allows them to.

A problem can only be fixed if the management allows a team to work on it.

Atrayo wrote: »

Hi There,

Kudos fiachsidhe for that link. (*)

Some of these teething pains is from a young company running their first MMO. Although the link provided to glassdoor.com for the Zenimax employee reviews. Kinda reminded me of the scandal over at "Red 5 Studio's" when they fired their Ivory Tower CEO Mark Kern for the "Firefall" MMOFPS. Much of this incompetence is a lack of management experience where it De-evolves to petty power struggles.

Hopefully one day customers if not shareholders as gamers / consumers have more transparency on how a game studio is run. Since investing a couple hundred millions of dollars American is no hill of beans to sneeze at. To have it erupt with the board of directors playing triage when management can't get their act straight.

Thank you, and I agree.

Gaudrath

Ok so @DragonMother‌ and @Garetth‌

In your experience, and please let's be honest here, can you name an MMO which had a smooth launch and was bug free from the start (or even, ever)? Some MMOs crash their servers for a month after launch, others are full of bugs.

This MMO is a little more than a month old. What we have here is typical launch problems. Every single MMO out there had them. No exceptions. We're talking about incredibly complex systems here that are supposed to cater to a huge number of players and people wonder at the bugs and the crashes... you can't test for that kind of thing.

Six months down the road, if the game is still plagued with game breaking bugs like the VR difficulty scaling, then we can start talking about incompetence (although it looks to me like someone entered a wrong multiplier into a wrong field in the toolset, which just is bad, come on ZOS at least do your bugs professionally).

But right now it's just so much drama for something that is to be expected. And MMO veterans should know this.

Phantax

Gaudrath wrote: »

Ok so @DragonMother‌ and @Garetth‌

In your experience, and please let's be honest here, can you name an MMO which had a smooth launch and was bug free from the start (or even, ever)? Some MMOs crash their servers for a month after launch, others are full of bugs.

This MMO is a little more than a month old. What we have here is typical launch problems. Every single MMO out there had them. No exceptions. We're talking about incredibly complex systems here that are supposed to cater to a huge number of players and people wonder at the bugs and the crashes... you can't test for that kind of thing.

Six months down the road, if the game is still plagued with game breaking bugs like the VR difficulty scaling, then we can start talking about incompetence (although it looks to me like someone entered a wrong multiplier into a wrong field in the toolset, which just is bad, come on ZOS at least do your bugs professionally).

But right now it's just so much drama for something that is to be expected. And MMO veterans should know this.

Although I mainly agree with your points, most MMO companies haven't sunk nearly a quarter of a billion into developing their MMOs !

Garetth

Gaudrath wrote: »

Ok so @DragonMother‌ and @Garetth‌

In your experience, and please let's be honest here, can you name an MMO which had a smooth launch and was bug free from the start (or even, ever)? Some MMOs crash their servers for a month after launch, others are full of bugs.

This MMO is a little more than a month old. What we have here is typical launch problems. Every single MMO out there had them. No exceptions. We're talking about incredibly complex systems here that are supposed to cater to a huge number of players and people wonder at the bugs and the crashes... you can't test for that kind of thing.

Six months down the road, if the game is still plagued with game breaking bugs like the VR difficulty scaling, then we can start talking about incompetence (although it looks to me like someone entered a wrong multiplier into a wrong field in the toolset, which just is bad, come on ZOS at least do your bugs professionally).

But right now it's just so much drama for something that is to be expected. And MMO veterans should know this.

April 4th Launch to May 23rd is quite a bit more than a month old. And it's not just the bugs it's the stupidity behind ever decision they make that has the population on edge. They are just plain stupid, that is all you can say and as the comedian says "you can't fix stupid"

SantieClaws

It's not the current bugs and things that can be written off as teething problems that bother me. It's that they don't seem to have considered botting and goldfarming when designing some technical aspects of the game, it's that we may have to wait another 7 months for the thieves guild (3 would be the max timeframe most people would expect I imagine) and that they don't plan to add player housing for another two years! Gosh darn they better have some pretty amazing stuff for all players (not just those at level cap) within the next couple of updates (about which we know exactly nothing) or people are going to get fed up and start wandering off elsewhere.

NinjaApacHe

They should have learnt from Bioware, but they did not. If you are good in doing offline games continue your path and leave the online games to the experts.

Gaudrath

I don't see stupid decisions. I see poorly tested decisions, which may or may not be excusable. Right now it is excusable due to the newness of the game. It takes time for a complex system to throw up all the bad stuff under pressure. As I said, you can't properly test such complex systems. You can test basically that the game will run for majority of players and that it won't melt people's machines. Or servers.

I see plenty of bugs. Like the caltrops bug. Or the VR scaling issue. Or quest breaking bugs.

All of which are to be expected. They may look stupid to players, but it is always easy to say "duh you morons, how could you not see this coming" - of course, all we do is play the game; we don't have to juggle tens of thousands of lines of code, server banks, account for millions of different PC configurations, humongous databases and engines that drive them and so on.

One misplaced , instead of ; and the game doesn't work. A misplaced decimal on a single number out of hundreds and balance goes to hell.

And sometimes the IDE is not nice enough to tell you what you did wrong. We see the game and the results are obvious to us - they are not nearly as easy to see and predict when you are dealing with the actual code.

So you miss your typo, push it to live and people go berserk because "how could they be so stupid!".

fiachsidhe

Gaudrath wrote: »

Ok so @DragonMother‌ and @Garetth‌

In your experience, and please let's be honest here, can you name an MMO which had a smooth launch and was bug free from the start (or even, ever)? Some MMOs crash their servers for a month after launch, others are full of bugs.

This MMO is a little more than a month old. What we have here is typical launch problems. Every single MMO out there had them. No exceptions. We're talking about incredibly complex systems here that are supposed to cater to a huge number of players and people wonder at the bugs and the crashes... you can't test for that kind of thing.

Six months down the road, if the game is still plagued with game breaking bugs like the VR difficulty scaling, then we can start talking about incompetence (although it looks to me like someone entered a wrong multiplier into a wrong field in the toolset, which just is bad, come on ZOS at least do your bugs professionally).

But right now it's just so much drama for something that is to be expected. And MMO veterans should know this.

Rift, TERA, and Neverwinter, to name a few. GW2 had a pretty smooth launch.

Here's a question for you, in recent memory can you name an mmorpg that has had as bad of a launch?

Little more than a month old? What a weak excuse. The game was in beta for only a year. It was rushed out despite being unfinished. As a box price/sub. Its sad when most ftp Korean mmorpgs function properly at launch and this game which ZoS swore up and down that would be bringing quality gameplay for the money they charge can't even get the basics right.

We need a friggin' addon to search the guild stores by specific sub categories or names. Speaking of stupid designs...GUILD STORES. All the fun of an auction house, only with a max of 499 possible venders in each one (if you join an active trade guild. Genius!) How many mmorpgs have launched with a duplication glitch that was reported in beta? How many mmorpgs require an add on just to see what you pick up while auto-looting!?!

There are fifteen to twenty different locations and services in this town, why does the map have six icons?

Month old. Let me tell you. People like you work like this:

It's only just launched. Give it a month.
It's only the first month. Give it time.
Its only been three months, give it time.
It's been six months why are you still playing, it's not getting fixed any time soon so just leave.

You're right, its been an ENTIRE month. ZoS should be churning out daily hotfixes. Instead they are doing jack *** for weeks at a stretch only to break even more of the game.

stig.brannlundprb19_ESO

b92303008rwb17_ESO wrote: »

I have been playing MMORPG games for over 10 years and, except Funcom, I have never seen a company f*** up their game so bad like Zenimax did. The current situation is just like they are completely losing control of everything. It makes me wonder if there is something wrong with this company itself, like bad leadership or lack of experienced developers, etc. Maybe Zenimax Media should get rid of Matt Firor and hire someone who can really make this game work? I mean, it can't be worse, can it?

Don't get me wrong. I love this game. I love it so much that as a NB player without any alts I still have 50 days game time left and I will keep playing it. Now you can see how much I love this game.

Exactly what dont you like or like, your message is without facts.

Silverion

After i read a http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/ZeniMax-Media-Reviews-E134492.htm i fully understand what is going on here, i was suspecting a BAD MANAGEMENT i have seen similar situation in companies, management kill people wish to help company product/image and people working there just do minimum to get paycheck and not risk to lose a job by advancing ides that are against BAD decisions that someone higher in chain decided.

I'm really sad that game with so good potential finished in such hands, after reading all this i can only hope for some DRASTIC and DECISIVE change that will favor creativity and quality over nepotism and position safeguarding!

ForTheRealm

skarvika wrote: »

It seems that with every new patch, an even bigger problem is presented than the last. I'd say as it stands, yes, they've lost control of their product and are desperately trying to put together the pieces but are being very careless about doing so. In a way I sympathize and understand, but I also think that a company this successful really must be held to a higher standard than what they're providing.

I am totally with you.
I have also a feeling that ZoS tries to push new content just to override bad impressions coming from the game bugs, but in a consequence it just makes the game more buggy.
I would definitely prefer small patches making the game more enjoyable to play, then the huge changes introducing even more chaos.