I don't want compensation, I want communication.

Minyassa · June 2018

Just tossing a banner up and then leaving it at that for 11 hours...no. People were panicking. I was told that there's no one to monitor the forum on weekends. That's ridiculous. Hire someone. Communicating with your player base is not a frill, and I have seen a lot of resentment in the forum today from people who are demanding compensation, or worse, are just quitting the game and moving on. Sure, probably not every player who says they are deleting the game actually does it, but you could prevent the percentage who ARE by having someone keep the player base updated and soothed. Just touching base every couple of hours helps immensely. I've been a part of other gaming communities that suffered from a lack of communication, started to sour, and then improved dramatically when more effort was made to keep players updated. If you have nothing to update, you make the players feel like they are being updated. Customer relations are not a joke. It should not be difficult to find someone who knows how to do written crowd control...even among gamers, some people actually do have diplomacy skills. Please look seriously into this. It's a glaring problem.

idk · June 2018

No offense but it may not be in Zos' ballpark. If the issue is with Steam then further updates may not be available in between.

This was clearly a Steam issue so it make sense the issue likely was on the Steam side.

Stovahkiin · June 2018

Tsk, had to giggle at this typo. “Crown control” is the only thing that Zeni consistently manages well.

Cpt_Teemo · June 2018

Yeah I agree the banner is a bit to much

Minyassa · June 2018

Whoops!! Freudian slip, maybe? xD (I'm gonna correct it because I have to but the record of it shall live on in quotes!)

Minyassa · June 2018

I agree that it may have been Steam's fault, but nobody was here to tell us that and redirect our ire properly toward Steam, who now get to sail along not being yelled at. It might look unprofessional in some ways to blame the other guy but I know there are subtle and professional-looking ways to do it.

Either way they need to TELL us this stuff. And during an outage, they need to do it often!

mav1234 · June 2018

Whether a Steam issue or not, players deserved something more than "We're aware this issue is impacting some players." Even just a bit more sympathy in a forum thread an a desire to find a long term solution would have appeased some. Instead, there was basically silence. This isn't the first time this has occurred either.

duendology · June 2018

Well, due to whatever the hell happened I too couldn't play yesterday.

I couldn't care less whether it's on ZOS or Steam's side. ZOS/Bethesda made an agreement with Steam so Steam sells the game. I am sure both parties make profits from it. So, first and foremost they should cooperate with each other to make the game work smoothly for the CUSTOMERS base.

Also if you run a game platform DISTRIBUTION and MMO GAME PLATFORM there are NO WEEKENDS!

Everybody makes fun of Steam and what a crappy platform it is. I don't know. I am not a diehard gamer I joined steam BECAUSE my friends were there and received the game via steam as a gift.
Had had I choice to unlink it completely from steam and move it under my zos account I would have done it. But for some reason neither ZOS nor Steam let me do it... Priceless.. o_0

And let's not forget ZOS is not a saint here either.. the chronic problems with accessing store and account on the site..where I can't sometimes change my membership operations because I get an empty page or whatever. Yes, I've got the eso plus membership bought via eso page and not steam.

MrSensible · June 2018

Yeah but the fact that we don't know and it hasn't been communicated to us pretty much validates the OPs point. She's asking for more interface with the company.

Jaraal · June 2018

People were able to log into the PTS though Steam just fine, it's not a Steam issue. However, ZOS are the masters of vaguery and non-communication. They are all over trying to sell you something (which you probably already own), but when it comes to keeping the player base informed about actual game issues, there's nobody home. Maybe they should be looking for a new player liason instead of a monetization director. They might make more money being helpful and concerned than by trying to shove more expensive product down our throats.

idk · June 2018

Zos clearly stated the issue was being investigated. It would not serve anyone any benefit for Zos to state go bother Steam about this, leave us alone.

Seems that would be very unprofessional.

Essentially, we are entitled to know an issue is being looked into and that is really it. We have the benefit of getting some more detail when Zos is in control since they obviously get more details then.

Jameliel · June 2018

No, it's clearly a ZO$ issue. CS here gives no reply, while Steam support refers you back to ZO$. The white knighting isn't going to work. Enough is enough.

MagLi · June 2018

I agree with OP. A simple "This issue is taking longer than usual to resolve, but rest assure, we are actively looking into it" at the 5 to 6 hour point would have been better than just a banner and nothing else. There are constant replies from forum mods about deleting comments, just not about what the hell was going on.

MyKillv2.0 · June 2018

The forums had a topic a few days ago in which a poster was complaining about the difference in in the way the company treats the two separate console communities, as opposed to the way they treat the PC community.

My advice was look, "the game has been out for years. You need to understand things aren't changing. We are WAY past the alpha/beta phase and the company is basically what you are going to get until the game shuts its doors. You need to accept that's the way they are or find a different game."

Communication from Zo$ is the same way. They are going to turn into ghost when there is an issue and only appear when they have either resolved the issue or found out that they can point their finger.

At this point, a tiger is not changing their stripes. Take the game or leave it, is my best advice.

Mintaka5 · June 2018

Yes it is completely in ZoS's ballpark. If ZoS doesn't want to deal with Steam users, then ZoS should not make the game available through Steam. They are responsible by association. Besides ZoS could take the high road and offer their customers some form of meaningful communication.

Sergykid · June 2018

yes, i too don't need any compensation or rewards. Even those daily rewards feel too much. The game provides everything for everyone. Instead, i would like some communication, some transparency on why some things are like that and others not.

i've stopped playing not because i don't need anything else, i could still play for fun pve or pvp, but because it feels like a facebook game. I log in for hirelings and daily reward and log out. Nothing to care for in the game. PVP sucks and PVE is either too hard either too easy, while "difficulty" consists in damage sponges.

i would like to see some feedback replies, or "we did (or didn't do) that because ..." like some quality of life features
(example: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/413945/summerset-launched-but-quality-of-life-features-still-missing ), or some pvp balances. The "developer comments" that are present on natch potes only say "we did that because we wanted so".

gnarlyvandal · June 2018

If it helps in the future:
You can log directly into eso without steam by using the ‘eso64.exe’ file in your folders.
Servers go down so little (and I usually work during updates) that whenever I can’t log in I go straight to that file; never had a problem with it

Jaraal · June 2018

I don't have an eso64.exe file on my computer. Wish I did!

mav1234 · June 2018

This does not work for anyone that bought the game through Steam more recently.

Fikkan · June 2018

My opinion on that is that since Zos forced the link with Steam, then Zos also owns any problems resulting from that forced account linkage.

DaveMoeDee · June 2018

It seems unlikely that Steam is engineering a service to connect specially to ESO. It seems more likely that Steam has an API and tells game developers how to get the Steam client to launch their games. It is always possible that Steam's API has a bug or that there is some dependency on Steam's side that is causing an issue. It just seems more likely to me that ZOS is responsible for whatever is failing.

I would assume that the reason this isn't resolved is that they are still troubleshooting the issue. It has happened so much that it would also seem likely that many of the downtimes were due to the same issue, though that doesn't mean that the latest problem is due to the same issue.

gnarlyvandal · June 2018

... they purposefully removed it from the files of newer versions? What the hell. Seems to me they had a perfectly good fix already without doing anything, why take it away

Rain_Greyraven · June 2018

This is actually a really good point I play three other games through steam and have noticed them all lagging like crazy, GR Wildlands is the worst right now, the other two are really laggy but somewhat playable, I don't play ESO through steam and my connection is decent, I know it's popular to blame Zenimax for the worlds pain, but this may not be on them.

Could be DDOS attack on Steam.... Valve hasn't won any consumer awards lately with their attitudes