Zos's internal communication could be better

BlueRaven

Hello,

A few months back I ran into an issue with the ESO client. What the issue is, is not important, what I want to discuss is how Zos handled it.

(But for those who are curious you can see the forum posts where a few people discuss it here;

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/497668/spontaneous-logging-out-of-computer-user-in-macos-catalina#latest
and here;
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/516848/new-exciting-crash-to-mac-login-screen#latest

But like I said the nature of the issue is not what is important for this discussion.)

After discussing it on the bug forums over the course of a few weeks, a moderator contacted me and said I should report it to customer service to solve the problem.

I was a bit surprised by this, wouldn't it have been better to have the moderator simply notify the customer service department about the thread? So they can see what was posted and what was tried out? And also to get a feel about how many people were having the same issue? I thought posting the issue on the forums should get some response from someone at ZOS to try and help us, or at least alert the people that there is a problem. And communicate to other players that are having similar issues, that they were not alone.

But I did what the moderator advised and I contacted the customer support team.

There was a lot of reposting about what was already conveyed on the forums. I won't post what was said in the communications, but suffice to say the issue was NOT resolved. So the final words they said caught me completely by surprise.

The customer service department wanted me to use the in game menu to post it as a bug.

Again, wouldn't it have been better for the customer service agent to report it as a bug? This way they can relate to the team what was done AND how they tried to fix it? There was many mails, a lot of probing to see what the cause could have been. And all of this could have been relayed to the "bug team(?)" to help them solve the issue. But for some reason the customer support team wanted me to contact Zos and report it as a bug myself.

So I did what the customer support team wanted me to do and I reported it as a bug.

This created multiple problems. In the incredibly small amount of space given using the in game messaging system I had to;

Convey what the problem was.
How I tried to fix it.
The specs of my computer.
The relevant forum posts.
And the relevant customer support numbers.

Suffice to say I had to skip over a lot.

AND submitting a bug report, a message makes it clear that they will NOT respond.

So I have no idea if it went through or that they understand the issue. Or that it's more than just me having the problem. To me it kind of felt like it was a bit of a black hole, a place to throw away problems they don't want to think about.

I am not convinced that anyone from the ZOS development team actually reads these forums, nor am I convinced that the forum moderators would pass this on. But I just had to get it off my chest about how perplexing the systems are of notifying ZOS about client issues. It really appears there is no intercommunication between the teams.

This really should be fixed.

AgaTheGreat

I think this is the reason why so few things get fixed. I lost hope in the development team at this point.

Thokri

I am starting to get suspicion that ZoS is on burn mode with actual intent on destroying ESO and its community so they can move to perhaps ESO2 with modern engine or some other cash grab.

I don't know if order is from bethesda or not because they are doing same thing. Doing their best to turn fans away on both ES and fallout series.

I just can't find any logical reason why they would do so yet I can't find any other reason for their current course of actions and it deeply saddens me.

Elo106

The most infuriating part is their "copy paste" answer style mostly saying stuff like "disable addons" even after multiple people say they tested stuff without any addons.

Clicking on the Z icon in the forums and hoping for a Zos response only to read that they removed some posts doesnt help either.

Vaoh

Yup. It’s an inefficient system at best. When you want to report an item as missing, one of the options even directs you to select it from your inventory lol.

On another note I’ve known a handful of people who 3+ years ago received rare BiS drops (sharpened vma inferno way back before trait change) by threatening to no longer spend hundreds of dollars on crowns and to unsub.

After going through the same circles you have, and providing feedback about it well over a year ago, I simply don’t report bugs or even bother with eso support unless it’s about crown store related topics. I’ve noticed that I am always ignored or have a really hard time unless it is about Crowns - in those cases they are helpful and can make unusual trades too.

Jaraal

I can't really imagine customer service reps reading the forums.... or even playing the game. Especially if cs is outsourced to another company, as is usually the case. Customer service reps telling players to destroy extra Indrik feathers "because they have no use" while ZOS advertising said otherwise made it very clear to me that their service people are in no way associated with the game itself.

idk

The system works off those tickets. Zos needs something to track it and the moderators can help if it hits a snag. That should have been your first action. The ticket system is how they track how many are affected. Not sure why OP finds this worthy of mentioning but whatever.

To the second point, I have also seen the same in other games; report an issue, and if they consider it a bug they ask to have a bug report submitted. It makes sense to change the original ticket to a bug report on their side but it seems to be more complicated than a CS rep can handle. Also, it is common that a company does not respond to bug tickets as it is generally something that needs to be fixed with a patch. So there is nothing to discuss with the person who submitted the ticket.

Lysette

this - and it is always a trade-off decision to be made. What percentage of the player base is effected, can this effectively be fixed with a "simple" patch, and if how efficiently can this be done. how many of the resources would have to be spend on it for how long and what priority to attach to it - eventually it is neither urgent nor important - which basically means after Eisenhower principle to just drop it into the trash bin.

Malmai

Money talks.