ZOS, do you actually care anymore?

Ratzkifal

They are "killing it" over at ZOS. So much so that they are now making Commander Keen, a mobile game. You guys have phones, right?

Rohamad_Ali

It has been so bad that some people have left to go play games 16 years old on emulators . They would rather play SWG Beyond or WoW legends or Everquest 2 then deal with all the issues here . That is crazy to me !

Mr_Walker

MattT1988 wrote: »

If people still think ZOS care, go talk to an Oceanic player about their experiences. You’ll see pretty quickly they don’t give a damn.

LOL, you know when you guys over there post your videos of skills not firing and big lag spikes, we Aussies look at that and go "wait, that isn't how it's meant to be?"

TwinkleNoze

MattT1988 wrote: »

If people still think ZOS care, go talk to an Oceanic player about their experiences. You’ll see pretty quickly they don’t give a damn.

I am one of those

Jeremy

xMovingTarget wrote: »

Ever since elsweyr release, it seems that ZOS does not care about eso anymore.

Elsweyr got release with 90% of the bugs reported during the PTS cycle, 1 month later barely anything has been done to fix these bugs/issues.
The EU server is in the worst state since release. Necro still broken, Sunspire still broken(bosses hitboxes. skills not able to hit the boss).

What are you doing all day in the office ZOS? Paying customers expect you work on bugs, fixes, increase performance.
At this point it starts to feel like the money we all spend on eso is taken straight into this mobile game nobody cares about and whatever else you have going on. You sell things in the crownstore for ridiculous prices, which alot of people pay. Where is that money? Why is not being put back into ESO? Why dont you hire more people if your team is so "small".
There is probably alot more to add. But this is what I have on my mind. Discuss.

I am really upset at this point.

I noticed an improvement in performance today after the maintenance. So I'm glad to see that at least.

Lylith

Jeremy wrote: »

xMovingTarget wrote: »

Ever since elsweyr release, it seems that ZOS does not care about eso anymore.

Elsweyr got release with 90% of the bugs reported during the PTS cycle, 1 month later barely anything has been done to fix these bugs/issues.
The EU server is in the worst state since release. Necro still broken, Sunspire still broken(bosses hitboxes. skills not able to hit the boss).

What are you doing all day in the office ZOS? Paying customers expect you work on bugs, fixes, increase performance.
At this point it starts to feel like the money we all spend on eso is taken straight into this mobile game nobody cares about and whatever else you have going on. You sell things in the crownstore for ridiculous prices, which alot of people pay. Where is that money? Why is not being put back into ESO? Why dont you hire more people if your team is so "small".
There is probably alot more to add. But this is what I have on my mind. Discuss.

I am really upset at this point.

I noticed an improvement in performance today after the maintenance. So I'm glad to see that at least.

so did i, for a moment, then my framerate went to ***, dropped lower than usual.

Jeremy

Lylith wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

xMovingTarget wrote: »

Ever since elsweyr release, it seems that ZOS does not care about eso anymore.

Elsweyr got release with 90% of the bugs reported during the PTS cycle, 1 month later barely anything has been done to fix these bugs/issues.
The EU server is in the worst state since release. Necro still broken, Sunspire still broken(bosses hitboxes. skills not able to hit the boss).

What are you doing all day in the office ZOS? Paying customers expect you work on bugs, fixes, increase performance.
At this point it starts to feel like the money we all spend on eso is taken straight into this mobile game nobody cares about and whatever else you have going on. You sell things in the crownstore for ridiculous prices, which alot of people pay. Where is that money? Why is not being put back into ESO? Why dont you hire more people if your team is so "small".
There is probably alot more to add. But this is what I have on my mind. Discuss.

I am really upset at this point.

I noticed an improvement in performance today after the maintenance. So I'm glad to see that at least.

so did i, for a moment, then my framerate went to ***, dropped lower than usual.

Before this morning's maintenance the game was running abnormally awful for me with stuttering graphics and screen freezes. I usually don't have such issues - especially while I"m just running around doing quests.

MaxWipes

Old Player here, been gone over a year, and that wasn't my first absence from the game.

Knew people in Alpha, Beta and early game before I even played.

You are describing the way it really has been from the beginning in terms of reported bugs in PTS versus released product. Period. Saying 90% not fixed is generous, IMHO.

My 2 cents, for what they are worth.

Wolfpaw

Matt Firor June 2019

"It took a while to sink in that we’re killing it right now, because we went through the whole phase where we were responding to the PC-launch Elder Scrolls criticism, and then console was huge, but it was so huge that it broke a bunch of stuff at the beginning. Like, we weren’t expecting it to be so big, which is a great problem to have, but it was a problem. And then after that it was like, ‘We have this huge audience, how do we make enough content to keep everyone engaged?’ And that led to the realisation that you can’t, and that led to the One Tamriel [update] which opened up the world so anyone can play with anyone and can do anything at any time. And that led to, ‘Okay, now we have to do this chapter thing every year to kind of give out a message to the community that this is what to expect from us.’ Like every June, check out what we’re doing because it’s going to be big. Now it’s, ‘Check out what we’re doing, and, oh, by the way, the rest of the year is telling the same story.’ You know, we’re constantly evolving. I think it probably wasn’t until after the Morrowind launch that we were like, ‘Yeah, wow, we’ve had three good years,’ you know? Because we’re working on everything behind the scenes not getting out of the office a whole lot. And it takes a while to sink in some times."

Firor also confirmed that Zenimax Online is indeed working on a new game with a new engine, as some had surmised by looking at job applications on the studio’s official website. That said, they’ll support ESO for a long time still.

"Yeah. Not a lot of people have picked up on this, but if you look on our job site you’ll see that we are accepting applications for people to work on a new engine for a new triple-A game. So yes, we have ideas, but we’re committed to ESO for as long as it takes."

Matt is busy w/a new engine & game...& the ESO community has time & time again proven this standard is ok by continuing to spend in the CS, sub, & pre-order xpacs.

The consumer is at the wheel.

Kalle_Demos

Turelus wrote: »

xMovingTarget wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

xMovingTarget wrote: »

You sell things in the crownstore for ridiculous prices, which alot of people pay. Where is that money?

Board members, shareholders, investors.

If those are more important than your customers that actually keep the lights on, I dont know what to say. The world has became a sad place.
Remember when the games were made for gamers?

Welcome to Corporate America (and other participating countries).

Remember as well that it's only the corporate/publisher side which doesn't care about you. Generally most of the developer staff actually love the game and their community.

*Laughs in Bosmer Player*

eso_lags

no

Alienoutlaw

i found reading the 2017/18 accounts and tax returns online at companies house very interesting........just saying

Panomania

ZOS makes a lot of money in the crown store. They also have to SPEND a lot of money just keeping things going. I doubt many of you have a clue just how expensive it is to run something like this....its one hell of a lot more than payroll, the light bill, hardware replacement and rent for a building. WAAAAAAY more. Bottom line: we can either have ZOS pimping for plus and crown store sales, or we can have 15 bucks a month to play. One or the other, you pick which you like best.

In addition ZOS has to keep investors happy. If they dont, no more games. Its that simple. Games sometimes get made by plucky indie companies doing it all in the name of social brotherhood and their "art:....but they usually suck. Bigger games take money to make. Lots and lots of money. investors will put up that money, but they demand a return. Thats how it works. Dont like it? Start your own company, make a game, give it away free then explain to your landlord/mortgage holder that you work for the good of mankind and dont receive anything as mundane as MONEY for your work! Yeah, they should buy that.

That said, ZOS also has an obligation to customers. If they dont keep them happy, investors NEVER see a payout. Its a fine line they have to walk. Sometimes they wobble back and forth across it like a guy on a 5 day bender, sure, but we can always help they sober up. I think this is one of their less lucid strolls down that line. All we can do is remind them we're here, and that without us they have to get <shudders> real jobs....and keep giving them intelligent feedback. Preferably without too much vitriol, since often you tend to just ignore most of that.

MattT1988

Mr_Walker wrote: »

MattT1988 wrote: »

If people still think ZOS care, go talk to an Oceanic player about their experiences. You’ll see pretty quickly they don’t give a damn.

LOL, you know when you guys over there post your videos of skills not firing and big lag spikes, we Aussies look at that and go "wait, that isn't how it's meant to be?"

Pssst, I’m actually an Aussie
An Aussie that wants to enjoy vet trials but he can’t due to the constant crashing and performance issues.

TwinkleNoze wrote: »

MattT1988 wrote: »

If people still think ZOS care, go talk to an Oceanic player about their experiences. You’ll see pretty quickly they don’t give a damn.

I am one of those

Me too

Alienoutlaw

Panomania wrote: »

ZOS makes a lot of money in the crown store. They also have to SPEND a lot of money just keeping things going. I doubt many of you have a clue just how expensive it is to run something like this....its one hell of a lot more than payroll, the light bill, hardware replacement and rent for a building. WAAAAAAY more. Bottom line: we can either have ZOS pimping for plus and crown store sales, or we can have 15 bucks a month to play. One or the other, you pick which you like best.

In addition ZOS has to keep investors happy. If they dont, no more games. Its that simple. Games sometimes get made by plucky indie companies doing it all in the name of social brotherhood and their "art:....but they usually suck. Bigger games take money to make. Lots and lots of money. investors will put up that money, but they demand a return. Thats how it works. Dont like it? Start your own company, make a game, give it away free then explain to your landlord/mortgage holder that you work for the good of mankind and dont receive anything as mundane as MONEY for your work! Yeah, they should buy that.

That said, ZOS also has an obligation to customers. If they dont keep them happy, investors NEVER see a payout. Its a fine line they have to walk. Sometimes they wobble back and forth across it like a guy on a 5 day bender, sure, but we can always help they sober up. I think this is one of their less lucid strolls down that line. All we can do is remind them we're here, and that without us they have to get <shudders> real jobs....and keep giving them intelligent feedback. Preferably without too much vitriol, since often you tend to just ignore most of that.

i can tell you EXACTLY how much they spend

xMovingTarget

Even this. Its broken for 2 weeks now.. Telegraphs dont work.

https://gyazo.com/781befd800855d0fcc911727e4013cbd

^ 3 people getting killed by the Frost Atros cleave.

Tigerseye

Mady wrote: »

What do you mean? Crown store is working

It's not really - couldn't preview the latest Laurel as I had eyelashes equipped.

Turns out it either doesn't show, if you're wearing facial hair, or the facial hair disappears if it does.

Also, if you removed your eyelashes and looked at it from the side, it stuck out at the bottom, a bit, instead of following the line of the forehead properly.

I probably would have bought it (as it was pretty) if it wasn't for these issues, but of course it was on 3 day only release and there were no reassurances they would be fixed, so I had to leave it.

Not only that, but some of the Elsweyr furnishings (which you can choose to purchase with Crowns) have low res textures.

They say they're going to fix them and hopefully they will, but still.

Mayrael

xMovingTarget wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

xMovingTarget wrote: »

You sell things in the crownstore for ridiculous prices, which alot of people pay. Where is that money?

Board members, shareholders, investors.

If those are more important than your customers that actually keep the lights on, I dont know what to say. The world has became a sad place.
Remember when the games were made for gamers?

Yeah that's why I can't wait for Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldurs Gate III. Both CDPR and Larian proved they make amazing games. Maybe it's time to let ESO pass away, beautiful creature slaughtered by greedy and not very smart farmer (aka ZOS).

Tigerseye

solasub wrote: »

why are we complaining? everything is fine....

"HOUSING

Improved window lighting for homes in Elsweyr."

That means something to housing people.

I appreciate it doesn't fix the other issues, but still.

efster

I'm pretty sure every single update since time immemorial had 80%-90% of the bugs from the respective PTS cycle.

At this point, I'm pretty sure PTS is just a "how much of a PR nightmare will these changes be on live" test run for them. If people yell too much, they make some tweaks, just to the bits people are yelling about the most. Most of the painstakingly written and screenshotted/video-evidenced bug reports get shoved into a backlog queue, to be fixed in 5 patches, if we're lucky, or in the next update or three. They do get around to the bugs eventually. Most of them.

The crown store, though? That always works.

Uryel

StabbityDoom wrote: »

"we need to fix this because it's the right thing to do, not because it'll make us more money. And maybe it will make us more money with customer retention."

Actually, proper wording would be "we need to fix this because if we don't, we will lose customers and that's bad for the bottom line. Alos, customers can leave bad reviews, and taht's bad for future purchases. On the other hand, if we fix that and start communicating about it, they will keep paying".

albesca

yodased wrote: »

Also, the question I believe should be did ZOS ever care about you and the answer is a resounding, no.

Companies care about "people" not a person. They care about "gamers" as a perceived whole, but an individual gamer means nothing, a drop in the ocean.

Get into someone who can damage their credibility or profit margin and they will negotiate a settled price for that person to not do said damage, but beyond that it's all about capitalizing on each individual metric that each department needs to improve to keep their jobs.

It's great to have discourse with those who are summarily ignored along with you though, at least you have common ground to be sad about.

I feel ignored as an individual by ZOS as much as many others, for example I'm quite sad about the state of the Group Finder because I have a work and a family so I can only play between 22:30 and 23:30 (if I'm lucky) and I like running dungeons but my guildmates are usually online too late to join them on weekdays, and thus I can only resort to PUGs and then I'm forced to queue with my alt healer because the queue for DPS is longer than my whole playing time, and with Elsweyr things got worse so at the moment I just solo public dungeons with my main.

The thing is, I don't know if games in general were ever made for gamers, it could be, but I think that MMOs cost so much just to be kept up, let alone maintained and expanded, that they have to be run with money in mind, catering to casuals and putting as much effort on microtransactions as on proper content, as the sad truth is that in a given year thirteen people that subscribe for a single month and then leave are worth more than the yearly sub of someone that's been here since launch

gepe87

I dont even try Fallout 76. It will end like ESO.
You may earn money now but customers wont trust you anymore.

Kadoin

xMovingTarget wrote: »

Ever since elsweyr release, it seems that ZOS does not care about eso anymore.

Elsweyr got release with 90% of the bugs reported during the PTS cycle, 1 month later barely anything has been done to fix these bugs/issues.
The EU server is in the worst state since release. Necro still broken, Sunspire still broken(bosses hitboxes. skills not able to hit the boss).

What are you doing all day in the office ZOS? Paying customers expect you work on bugs, fixes, increase performance.
At this point it starts to feel like the money we all spend on eso is taken straight into this mobile game nobody cares about and whatever else you have going on. You sell things in the crownstore for ridiculous prices, which alot of people pay. Where is that money? Why is not being put back into ESO? Why dont you hire more people if your team is so "small".
There is probably alot more to add. But this is what I have on my mind. Discuss.

I am really upset at this point.

To be fair, the problem might have to do with how they manage their code for the game. The only excuse I could find for some of the delays and lack of bug fixes is that the code is not modular and/or the codebase can't be easily changed or revised without changing all of it at once.

That, and they've already moved to a newer patch to work on and won't revisit the old one because it means backtracking on the newer patch and/or breaking things that are unintended.

If its like that, it makes sense that they don't fix much besides critical bugs; it'd be a waste of dev time and money. But if its like that, then it also makes little sense that they would not decide to redesign parts of the game little by little.

Other plausible explanations, all or any combination of: interns do a lot of work on the code, revolving door @ ZOS, pressure from investors to make more expansions and generate PR + sales, etc.

Ri_Khan

I'll just put this here for relevance...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_attrition

They make more money off all the bright-eyed new-comers that just watched that totally awesome trailer with dragons than they do from those of us that've been around for years. You know the ones that haven't quite figured out yet that frown crates are a scam or that you can get vamp/ww bites for free.

Coatmagic

A lot of times feels like the code's been farmed out to people who don't even know what it's for -_-

KoultouraS

OP is asking a question that has been aswered by actions.
If someone cares he/she provides at least the necessairy, and by
necessairy I mean those legaly deemed such or personaly considered
necessairy when being on the receiving end,
not what the provider considers as such.

In other words you expect someone to care when he can not even uphold his promises
of improving the simplest for his action?
which is nothing less than proper...
Interaction/communication

Suddwrath

@ZOS_MattFiror

If you would take a minute to read through this thread, you would realize the only thing that you're "killing" is the last little bit of enjoyment that players have in this game.

solasub

Again, they just broke everything ; it is not only that new things are not working well (Necro.....) ; THEY-BROKE-EVERYTHING ; nothing is working fine atm, pvp, pve, abilities, guild, everything ; could someone tell me just 1 THING working perfectly fine? yah, except crown store (and even that ; it seems new costume is buggy lmao) ; so it is not little complains ; it is not people exaggerating ; I have seen a lot of issues since the beta ; none at this point ; when will they react? And that has nothing to do with big influx of new players ; because I am perhaps stupid, but I don't see the link between players increasing and the fact that they broke good old HelRa ; neither with the fact my ground abilities are totally f***ed up even WHEN I AM ALONE IN MY HOUSE. (yes, on that so expensive dummy, in that so expensive house)

rotaugen454

This thread has survived a LOT longer than I thought it would!