Monthly Updates on Performance

mav1234

Hello all,

First, the last thread on this topic was closed because some players can't offer feedback without flames. Please avoid doing so - you'll get this thread closed, too. I think it is extremely important that players respectfully let Zenimax know of our desire for increased communication and disappointment that one of the few regularly updates communication posts is going away. Please keep your posts on topic, and respect the forum rules.

The original post of that thread was:

I was disappointed to read that Zenimax has decided to abandon the strategy of a monthly post on performance improvement plans (see https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/56681). I understand that this feedback format was often knocked, but as a player, I appreciated some level of transparency on what was being worked on, even if I personally didn't benefit from it much (e.g. non combat pets).

I get this strategy opened Zenimax to a lot of jokes/knocks, but it was one of the few cases in which we have received regular updates and insight into an area of the game's active development and improvement, and it will be missed - at least by me. This is made worse by the fact that this plan is being abandoned before an alternative communication format has been explained/established, making it unclear what, if anything, we can expect in the future.

I hope it is not too much to ask for additional transparency, especially regarding the crippling issues that have impacted servers the last week, and this seems to be a movement in the opposite direction.

This was in reference to the recent decision described briefly here.

To add, I would like to ask that future updates come in the form of public posts, much like these were, rather than the current way of communicating information about changes that seems to be done over private Discord messages or what not - it isn't just the Maelstrom weapons, this happened with group queue BGs as well, and other changes to sets and the like. Please, consider moving to more transparency, not less. Yes, as the last thread showed, some forum-goers are unable to express themselves without fits of rage, but a lot of us are more reasonable and just want insight into the game we care about so much and the actions that are being taken to continually improve it.

Aloha

They do not care about forums threads, their aim is high population with a good percentage who buy crowns/sub/expansion and follow the line : RPG solo online with grouplay stuffs.

ESO is full of artist devs (graphic art, narratives/Scripts/dialogs/story/lore), some dev programmer but they lack of engineer (server system, code, programers).

Look their job offers every 3 months... ZoS is not really dynamic with infrastructure/computing/code, they always looking for that type of job.

Kadoin

Either way, it does not matter.

When ZOS forced us to re-download the entire game, I had hopes that what they would introduce a client with more:

(a) parallelism
(b) better network management
(c) better management of graphical assets
(d) more modularity so they can provide more frequent and better updates to the client

So far it looks like only (a) occurred but because of the crashing and (d) not occurring they have moved to a buggy codebase to "fix" crashing. You only need to step in the game for 3 seconds to see a-c are invalid after the "fix" to crashing in the last patch.

(d) was the most important thing the devs should have accomplished because if they had, they could fix problems in a more flexible way instead of waiting 3-6+ months to do so. They could also update components on the fly when excess dev time would appear and test these updates on the PTS more frequently.

However, it appears they didn't do (d). Now we are all reaping the benefits of that decision, and ZOS will pay the cost eventually down the line for not thinking about scaling and modularity when building a system. Every company that does so, always does.

Thechuckage

I get the feeling, from the recent interview, that the management of the company (at whatever level) feels they have control of the situation and any issues are well in hand. I am one of those who disagrees.

They will pursue the game mechanics and performance deemed acceptable and IF those happen to line up with player expectations then BONUS.

Whether its been decided that there is insufficient outcry or that not communicating with no major updates is the better option, your guess is as good as mine.

LoneDrkWolf

I was away from the game for about 5 months. I was still paying, so they got free money, but I had to get away from some of what I felt was extreme lack of caring. Look, we know you like your graphics. Some of the stuff is good. But I want to have the right to bypass ALL cutscenes if I decide to. Dont force us to watch crap, just because it took someone 8 hours to do it. I dont care. I came to play, I pay to play, thats it.

Now, I have paid for the greymoor expansion. We'll see if they can actually deliver without all the glitches that normally come with updates. Also since I've been back, I've noticed, skills just stop working, can't loot kills, etc without logging out and back. Works for a good while then it happens the next time I log on.

Last but not least, whenever they have issues, they never make up for it. A couple of hours fine. But there have been days, that they kept losing servers, kept taking our money and never did anything. I dont care if it would be double coin drops for an hour or something. Nothing outrageous, but at least ACT like you care about the players and not just the money.

Lysette

Thechuckage wrote: »

I get the feeling, from the recent interview, that the management of the company (at whatever level) feels they have control of the situation and any issues are well in hand. I am one of those who disagrees.

They will pursue the game mechanics and performance deemed acceptable and IF those happen to line up with player expectations then BONUS.

Whether its been decided that there is insufficient outcry or that not communicating with no major updates is the better option, your guess is as good as mine.

It is eventually the realization that certain issues can't be fixed with reasonable efforts and so they have to settle on something what works for most even if it won't help much with high concurrency game play - i.e. pvp and trials. I personally see these areas as the sisyphus work space, where every progress would result in more players flooding in negating any progress being made - and the problem keeps persisting - this is endless work with no remarkable results.

And so they might focus on stuff which can reasonably be made more fluent - and that's it - I guess that is what it is like.

Iccotak

I think a reasonable question would be how many players can the mega servers handle? We are in the middle of a quarantine so maybe there is more people in the game than expected leading to performance issues.
Sure they boasted about having 13 million players but how many of them are active within a week at the same time?

https://altarofgaming.com/all-mmos-sorted-by-population-2018/

Dr_Sinister

Iccotak wrote: »

I think a reasonable question would be how many players can the mega servers handle? We are in the middle of a quarantine so maybe there is more people in the game than expected leading to performance issues.
Sure they boasted about having 13 million players but how many of them are active within a week at the same time?

https://altarofgaming.com/all-mmos-sorted-by-population-2018/

That's 13 millions across different platforms all on their own mega server

Firstmep

They updated the main article for may.
It's still May.

mav1234

Firstmep wrote: »

They updated the main article for may.
It's still May.

Did you look at what they updated it to say? It was updated to say - and I'm paraphrasing here - 'We won't be doing this anymore.'