Dev presence on forums

KhajitFurTrader

Feelings of entitlement aside, it's a good thing that the Ghostcrawler experiment hasn't taken a large hold in the rest of the industry, imo. Developers should still be able to develop their vision of their game, undisturbed by the ebb and flow of the forums, which only ever represent a small percentage of the player base anyway.

Community Management Representatives are trained and paid for doing the job of communicating with players and filtering the opinions and bias of feedback. Developers usually aren't, and shouldn't. Better men have been burned out by being personally confronted with the hate and vitriol that is often spewed by people who don't even give a second thought to what they write anonymously, and how it may affect others.

rophez_ESO

So, it seems most people in this thread are perfectly happy with the level of communication out of ZOS. I hope it works out great for you folks! No need to feel threatened; I'm simply pointing out what it takes to keep me happy as a customer. ZOS can either work to improve or ignore me. Only they know how their customer retention is going and if they care enough to work on this issue.

nerevarine1138

rophez_ESO wrote: »

So, it seems most people in this thread are perfectly happy with the level of communication out of ZOS. I hope it works out great for you folks! No need to feel threatened; I'm simply pointing out what it takes to keep me happy as a customer. ZOS can either work to improve or ignore me. Only they know how their customer retention is going and if they care enough to work on this issue.

Just out of curiosity, why do you see your self-described "high-maintenance" personality as a positive aspect? Or rather, why do you see it as something that you don't need to work on but that Zenimax should be bending over backwards to appease?

rophez_ESO

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

rophez_ESO wrote: »

So, it seems most people in this thread are perfectly happy with the level of communication out of ZOS. I hope it works out great for you folks! No need to feel threatened; I'm simply pointing out what it takes to keep me happy as a customer. ZOS can either work to improve or ignore me. Only they know how their customer retention is going and if they care enough to work on this issue.

Just out of curiosity, why do you see your self-described "high-maintenance" personality as a positive aspect? Or rather, why do you see it as something that you don't need to work on but that Zenimax should be bending over backwards to appease?

Because, as a customer, I demand a certain level of service. I'm not of the mindset that every tidbit of info they give me is some kind of favor. I believe they should be selling me on why their game is improving and why I should stick around. A simple weekly development log would work perfectly, and those of you acting like I'm asking for something outrageous really aren't doing ZOS any favors.

nerevarine1138

rophez_ESO wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

rophez_ESO wrote: »

So, it seems most people in this thread are perfectly happy with the level of communication out of ZOS. I hope it works out great for you folks! No need to feel threatened; I'm simply pointing out what it takes to keep me happy as a customer. ZOS can either work to improve or ignore me. Only they know how their customer retention is going and if they care enough to work on this issue.

Just out of curiosity, why do you see your self-described "high-maintenance" personality as a positive aspect? Or rather, why do you see it as something that you don't need to work on but that Zenimax should be bending over backwards to appease?

Because, as a customer, I demand a certain level of service. I'm not of the mindset that every tidbit of info they give me is some kind of favor. I believe they should be selling me on why their game is improving and why I should stick around. A simple weekly development log would work perfectly, and those of you acting like I'm asking for something outrageous really aren't doing ZOS any favors.

Again, though, I have to ask why you think that being "high-maintenance" is a good thing. You aren't seeking to make the company better. You're deliberately being demanding, pushy, rude and generally a pain in order to get what you want. Most people see those things as character flaws, but for some reason, you're trying to spin them in to positive traits. Why?

rophez_ESO

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

rophez_ESO wrote: »

nerevarine1138 wrote: »

rophez_ESO wrote: »

So, it seems most people in this thread are perfectly happy with the level of communication out of ZOS. I hope it works out great for you folks! No need to feel threatened; I'm simply pointing out what it takes to keep me happy as a customer. ZOS can either work to improve or ignore me. Only they know how their customer retention is going and if they care enough to work on this issue.

Just out of curiosity, why do you see your self-described "high-maintenance" personality as a positive aspect? Or rather, why do you see it as something that you don't need to work on but that Zenimax should be bending over backwards to appease?

Because, as a customer, I demand a certain level of service. I'm not of the mindset that every tidbit of info they give me is some kind of favor. I believe they should be selling me on why their game is improving and why I should stick around. A simple weekly development log would work perfectly, and those of you acting like I'm asking for something outrageous really aren't doing ZOS any favors.

Again, though, I have to ask why you think that being "high-maintenance" is a good thing. You aren't seeking to make the company better. You're deliberately being demanding, pushy, rude and generally a pain in order to get what you want. Most people see those things as character flaws, but for some reason, you're trying to spin them in to positive traits. Why?

If you still don't understand, I can't help you.

LadyNerevar

rophez_ESO wrote: »

I believe they should be selling me on why their game is improving and why I should stick around.

You should stick around because you enjoy the game, and/or are interested by the features that they've announced for the future. If you don't enjoy the game, feel free to leave. Zenimax has no obligation to personally coddle you, just like a movie doesn't need to have the lead actor standing in the theatre persuading you to finish watching and a book doesn't need to ask you to please keep turning pages because something big is definitely about to happen.

A simple weekly development log would work perfectly, and those of you acting like I'm asking for something outrageous really aren't doing ZOS any favors.

It's not outrageous, but it's not a simple as it sounds either. ZOS is over 200 people (not including support staff, I believe). That means 200 people have to, on Thursday, submit a record of everything they did during the week to their supervisors, who then have to compile it into a neat newsletter style paragraph rather than 50 employee's personal logs, and then send it off to the community manager who again has to rewrite things to be nice and community presentable. This takes away from valuable development time.

ZOS might already have some of this structure in place by way of daily/weekly meetings. I'd be surprised if they don't. But what a developer presents during such a meeting to other developer's isn't what the developer should (or can) present to their community. Some of it might make absolutely no sense to the average user, either because it is too technical, or it is too small a part of something big, or because it's not something your average user will care about, or any number of other reasons. Some of it isn't cleared by marketing, or hasn't been fully decided on. Some (maybe even a lot) of it will undoubtedly elicit the reaction of "it took you a whole week to do that?!" from the player base. Players will definitely get mad if their personal bug or pet feature isn't on the week's schedule, or if the solutions in progress aren't the way they think the devs should go, or if they think more resources should be allocated to issue Y rather than issue X.

Game development is a convoluted machine with many, many, many moving parts. Sometimes, even the devs don't really understand it. Right now, people are mad about information not being more frequent. I can guarantee you that more transparency would just make people angrier at more things, rather than nebulously angry at one thing.

I'm a concept artist (not at ZOS). If I was to give you a rundown of what I did in the past 5 days, you'd be confused by why the hell I'm doing it and why it's taking so long. My coworkers, and my art director, are however more than happy with both the assignment and my performance on it. Rather than showing you what I've got, and letting people completely misinterpret it and get angry at me for no reason, developers keep quiet and let the final product (and the nice community relations people) speak for them.

bluesodafizz

Cool OP, I agree and I think what you're asking is completely reasonable. Good post.

Artemiisia

U actually lucky you dont see them as much as you want, if u did, and they had the same feeling towards repeatable threads, this forum would be much more cleaner.

Rest asure, if I had been like a forum mod, half the threads would had been closed, people are going around and around in the same stupid things every day.

DuelWieldingCheesyPoofs

rophez_ESO wrote: »

I don't see how so many MMO companies can make the mistake of not being extremely active and present on their own forums. ZOS is just as guilty. Devs RARELY post, and instead we get community reps who reply sporadically to posts, but usually just to pass information along. Don't get me wrong, Jessica and Gina are awesome, but I can only imagine they have their hands tied pretty tightly when it comes to talking about systems and progress, etc.

The lack of communication is really bad in this game. It's like they threw a bunch of cool ideas out at Quakecon and then decided that was good enough. They clearly don't realize how high maintenance MMO players are. I need weekly updates on that stuff, at least.

You can say I'm whining and making a fuss over nothing, but I'm just passing along what would help to keep me happy and subscribing. Take it for what it's worth.

More dev presence, and more status updates on systems.

Here's a sample:

Hey guys! It's Billy the dev here. Wanted to give you an update on how Spellcrafting is coming along. We've really nailed down a lot of the nuts and bolts, but there are a few balancing issues we're tweaking. I'm really hoping we can get this out to you by update 6. Here are a couple screenshots of some of the more interesting spell effects you can craft. <insert screenshots>

I'd be so happy to see a post or two like this on a weekly basis.

is that a real qoute from a dev about spell crafting? Post link please..

xaraan

Devs should be mainly working on the game, not reading the forums. It's cool they've taken time to do so here or there, or do AMAs, etc. but no. Especially since 90% of the posts on here are pretty horrible and would be a waste of their time. Most players seem to think b/c they don't like something, it's a fact that it's bad and nobody likes it - and god forbid ten people agree with them, then they think they are onto something. Trust me, many of the "big issues" some players think are in the game, many players aren't bothered by.

I do think ZoS could do a bit better in communication sometimes, but they aren't as bad as some make out. I definitely would not want a superficial "update" like what you have in your example above. And I can only imagine if someone said: we hope to have this by update 6, the sh-tstorm if it wasn't out by then b/c everyone would only remember it as a fact that it was coming update 6.

rophez_ESO

LadyNerevar wrote: »

Zenimax has no obligation to personally coddle you, just like a movie doesn't need to have the lead actor standing in the theatre persuading you to finish watching and a book doesn't need to ask you to please keep turning pages because something big is definitely about to happen.

LOL. Certainly no obligation at all! Just like we have no obligation to keep subscribing. I can see you've never been in a position to worry about sales. Good for you!

A simple weekly development log would work perfectly, and those of you acting like I'm asking for something outrageous really aren't doing ZOS any favors.

LadyNerevar wrote: »

It's not outrageous, but it's not a simple as it sounds either. ZOS is over 200 people (not including support staff, I believe). That means 200 people have to, on Thursday, submit a record of everything they did during the week to their supervisors, who then have to compile it into a neat newsletter style paragraph rather than 50 employee's personal logs, and then send it off to the community manager who again has to rewrite things to be nice and community presentable. This takes away from valuable development time.

If Paul or Matt or Brian or Nick, or any other number of senior staff aren't aware of roughly what each department is working on, at least to the point that they could write a paragraph summary on a weekly basis, then they have bigger problems than poor communication to us subscribers.

smeeprocketnub19_ESO

Actually communicating with us here would go a long way towards making everyone less angry and hostile towards the devs. And frankly, are they unable to ignore the people posting stupid stuff?

They refuse to communicate with us directly and I get more and more jaded with each update because of this.

This is not the hard part of running an mmo.

dcincali

Voodoo wrote: »

..1697 PAGES!! of posts. ...I dont want the Devs sitting down all day long reading the forums. ...Rather I want forums monitors reading the articles for them and telling them a consensus of what is being written with the odd "good" thread singled out for them to read personally.

Its called efficient time management. Not forum baby sitting and player petting.

They wouldn't have to read the forums if they made their own posts on hot topics.

LadyNerevar

rophez_ESO wrote: »

LadyNerevar wrote: »

Zenimax has no obligation to personally coddle you, just like a movie doesn't need to have the lead actor standing in the theatre persuading you to finish watching and a book doesn't need to ask you to please keep turning pages because something big is definitely about to happen.

LOL. Certainly no obligation at all! Just like we have no obligation to keep subscribing.

Yup, you don't. If the game isn't enough to keep you around, you're more than welcome to go and find one that does.

bluesodafizz

LadyNerevar wrote: »

rophez_ESO wrote: »

LadyNerevar wrote: »

Zenimax has no obligation to personally coddle you, just like a movie doesn't need to have the lead actor standing in the theatre persuading you to finish watching and a book doesn't need to ask you to please keep turning pages because something big is definitely about to happen.

LOL. Certainly no obligation at all! Just like we have no obligation to keep subscribing.

Yup, you don't. If the game isn't enough to keep you around, you're more than welcome to go and find one that does.

If someone doesn't like something about the company or the game it doesn't mean they don't want to play. They just want something changed, and using the fact that we pay for the game monthly as an example of why something should be changed is reasonable and normal for a product. Letting the company know that a behavior is unacceptable and it may cause you stop using their product or service is okay, and I applaud anyone who shares their opinions on this forum and asks for what they want out of their monthly purchase. It is sad to think that some people want those of us with complaints to just unsubscribe and never say why.

dale_forrestb16_ESO

If no one voices their opinion, things will never change (better/worse - who cares). The notion that it is best to say nothing does not lead to innovation or understanding - it leads to stagnation. Also: more communication would be a good thing because then there would be less speculation and griping.

I for one am tired of hearing people defend poor development decisions and lack of communication in this and in other games.

Slurg

I heard the devs are over on Reddit now. We're in the wrong forum.

Akula

Well because devs are paid to develop, not to babysit your emotions.

AngryNord

Slurg wrote: »

I heard the devs are over on Reddit now. We're in the wrong forum.

Funny, I thought this was the official forum for this product. How can it be "the wrong forum"?

Slurg

AngryNord wrote: »

Slurg wrote: »

I heard the devs are over on Reddit now. We're in the wrong forum.

Funny, I thought this was the official forum for this product. How can it be "the wrong forum"?

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/2fu4lj/zos_editorial_team_ama_2pm_eastern_on_wednesday/

You all can stay here and keep fighting and complaining and being nasty to each other, or you can go somewhere else and get your questions answered. Your choice.

Gillysan

I have no idea what ESO's devs do or don't or are supposed to be doing. oO

dcincali

Slurg wrote: »

AngryNord wrote: »

Slurg wrote: »

I heard the devs are over on Reddit now. We're in the wrong forum.

Funny, I thought this was the official forum for this product. How can it be "the wrong forum"?

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/2fu4lj/zos_editorial_team_ama_2pm_eastern_on_wednesday/

You all can stay here and keep fighting and complaining and being nasty to each other, or you can go somewhere else and get your questions answered. Your choice.

They should remember this when they are asking for help on the PTS. #whatgoesaroundcomesaround

Sighlynce

Voodoo wrote: »

..1697 PAGES!! of posts. ...I dont want the Devs sitting down all day long reading the forums. ...Rather I want forums monitors reading the articles for them and telling them a consensus of what is being written with the odd "good" thread singled out for them to read personally.

Its called efficient time management. Not forum baby sitting and player petting.

I agree, but then the Devs need to get with their monitors and at least address some of the more frequent complaints. Just give a short update on fixing stamina builds, where are we on that issue? When one of the monitors jumped in on a thread I was reading and gave us an update about the fixes etc for WW , it was appreciated. I'm not saying jump in on every issue , but giving us a little something goes a long way.

Shaun98ca2

letohatcheeub17_ESO wrote: »

Voodoo wrote: »

..1697 PAGES!! of posts. ...I dont want the Devs sitting down all day long reading the forums. ...Rather I want forums monitors reading the articles for them and telling them a consensus of what is being written with the odd "good" thread singled out for them to read personally.

Its called efficient time management. Not forum baby sitting and player petting.

I agree, but then the Devs need to get with their monitors and at least address some of the more frequent complaints. Just give a short update on fixing stamina builds, where are we on that issue? When one of the monitors jumped in on a thread I was reading and gave us an update about the fixes etc for WW , it was appreciated. I'm not saying jump in on every issue , but giving us a little something goes a long way.

But the devs HAVE said they are working on it im pretty certain it was a E3 thing they said they know there is an issue and they are working on.

Are you looking for daily updates? You cant watch over their shoulder or anything.

Its been noted already by devs they are working on the issue.

KariTR

What's your problem? You know the announcements get stickied at the top of these forums ahead of time, that isn't going to change just because a dev makes mention of it elsewhere.

Kos

yeah right. Devs should spend more time on forums and you should start programming ESO.

Shaun98ca2

Kos wrote: »

yeah right. Devs should spend more time on forums and you should start programming ESO.

I have seen what happens when players develop an MMO...I played WOW....it was terrible......it still is.

It was sad to see WOW win the war in EQ2 versus WOW.......poor EQ2 started getting changed to look more like WOW.

bosmern_ESO

There are actually quite a few devs that post on the forums, they choose not to get involved in most discussion because they can accidentally say something they shouldn't or miss-speak which would cause massive confusion.

Though they don't post, they are watching and taking notes.

Audigy

I think that Public Relations can be a very tricky business.

If you say too much people grow expectations that you might never be able to fulfill.

Lets assume the Devs would come here and tell us housing is coming and it will look like this and that. People would demand exactly that system and not less. Needles to say it would have to come today and not tomorrow and bug free.

Blizz made that mistake with WOD, they announced a lot of stuff and now they cant finish it until release. People are now angry and don't understand why.

Similar could be said about Craglorn or other features that were once announced for ESO like the questionnaire, quad core utilization etc.

In my opinion ZO could improve on their PR department but this isn't the fault of Gina or Jess, its more the companies fault of not being able to fix the issue that PR comes along with.

People who work in that position have a high responsibility while fully relying on others who can change a specific topic within the glimpse of an eye and not they get blamed for it but you in the PR department.

That said, ZO is still hiring so if you think you can change something in their company then why not write an application and offer your service