Communication... We Need More Of This.

LoneStar2911

New article today:
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/59387

Before I came back to ESO after WoW's Shadowlands came and flopped, I would brag about how the devs of ESO were really great at communicating and being a part of the community with their online streams, etc.

Understandably, that seems to have massively changed since the pandemic.

I have high hopes for 2021. The first half may still be rough, but I believe the game's performance will improve.
I also hope to see more communication with its playerbase in the future.

Thank you for the article, ZOS.

LalMirchi

"Each of our four Update launches were marred by errors and problems of various types. Patches to fix those issues sometimes led to more problems. Obviously, this is unacceptable, and we will be addressing this as a team throughout 2021."

This is the kind of transparency I really appreciate. Kudos team!

scorpius2k1

LoneStar2911 wrote: »

I have high hopes for 2021. The first half may still be rough, but I believe the game's performance will improve.
I also hope to see more communication with its playerbase in the future.

I used to feel this way as well but there has been plenty of the same things said in the past before this year, and were never delivered upon. I am tired of all the talk. Things go downhill and these things are said to lift spirits, and the wash/rinse/repeat roller coaster continues. Unfortunately, while I am always hopeful and want to believe in the developer, this just feels like more creative writing rhetoric which will ultimately let us all down again, as has been for almost 7 years now. It feels like a false hope. They also have been working on their Performance Improvements Plan which has been ongoing for almost two years without much change in a positive direction. Hopefully they will continue to update us there at the very least - last one was May 29, 2020 and I remember reading somewhere that they just decided to stop updating us there for whatever reason.

Will this be the year of change? Who knows really. Transparency and proper communication are critical. Only ZOS truly knows what direction they want to take this game and hopefully they will start listening to the community aka the paying customers that really are the ones who keep this game alive. I believe in the team. I really do feel ZOS wants to change things for the better, but will they pull it off is the bigger question? This game shouldn't only be alive, it should be thriving much more than it is. I hope ZOS really has some great new years resolutions in store. We shall see.

.

TineaCruris

They still haven't told us what they did during the Midyear Mayhem event that improved many of the performance issues, and why we can't just do that full time.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

I hope they focus on gameplay and improving it as well as making the game more and more fluid. There is a good base to ESO, but meta changes need to slow down as well as content releases (quest/storylines). Many of us have been expressing this for quite some time. Bring competitive gameplay back to ESO and find a balance for casual players and you'll see a return, I'm sure of it.

LalMirchi

TineaCruris wrote: »

They still haven't told us what they did during the Midyear Mayhem event that improved many of the performance issues, and why we can't just do that full time.

Yes, even I that does not focus on PVP noticed the improvement.

The_Old_Goat

While the statement made was nice to see, I can assure you that the majority of us are highly skeptical. Promises have been made and broken many times before.

idk

To a degree, I echo @The_Old_Goat sentiment. Remember the performance improvement plan that took a year or more to fully implement. Performance did not exactly improve and much got worse.

Yes, it is good to see the almighty leader of Zos acknowledge they released updates that what we experienced this year was "unacceptable". However, it is results that we want to see and it would be good to have greatly improved and consistent communication about fixing problems in the game. Too much is not acknowledged or is not listed in what is supposed to be the official tracker for problem resolution. What I am speaking to goes well beyond this past year.

markulrich1966

I have no good feelings reading the statement.

Reasons:

1.) I work for a large Internetprovider, we had to switch to homeoffice, too. We think that this led to *better* results concerning the quality of our projects.

2.) I was annoyed by bugs and lag, nevertheless could live with it, accepting that homeoffice made it more difficult for ZOS to solve issues. Despite the fact that servers are always "remote", weather you sit in an office chair or on the couch in your homeooffice. But those are details, will not put emphasis there.
What made me really angry, was the impact on gameplay by *intentional* decisions.
Examples:

- nerf of Iceheart
- nerf of Slimecraw
- removal of crystal blast as main spammable
- making it more difficult to obtain rapid maneuver
- crippling the "on foot" part of rapid maneuver down to 8 seconds
- ... etc pp

I do not see that this was caused by problems with homeoffice or increased amount of players

3.) On PTS, many, many bugs were reported. I do not see how QS issues could be the problem, if the playerbase has taken over the role of QS and given reports about the issues. It seems more, that someone who has the "power", insisted on a fixed release date, weather those bugs are fixed, or not. But this is just my personal guess, however the statement did not convince me that it was different.

Chrysa1is

I'll give you some communication with this comment.

Iluvrien

Communication is good.

Communication at the time, rather than retrospectively is better.

Will this result in future communication being better? I hope so, but I doubt it. We've seen similar things before.

Oh and with this comment...

And of course, in closing: please know that everything we do on ESO is for you, the community.

... I actually ended up inhaling my tea as I was actually snort-laughing.

If you want us to believe this, ZOS, then do something about it. Put players over profits. Remove loot boxes, put everything in them into either the crown store (much as I hate it) for direct purchase, and/or make it earnable in game (long grinds for items acceptable). If you manage that then I'll believe that you're in this for the community.

LalMirchi

Iluvrien wrote: »

Communication is good.

Communication at the time, rather than retrospectively is better.

Will this result in future communication being better? I hope so, but I doubt it. We've seen similar things before.

Oh and with this comment...

And of course, in closing: please know that everything we do on ESO is for you, the community.

... I actually ended up inhaling my tea as I was actually snort-laughing.

If you want us to believe this, ZOS, then do something about it. Put players over profits. Remove loot boxes, put everything in them into either the crown store (much as I hate it) for direct purchase, and/or make it earnable in game (long grinds for items acceptable). If you manage that then I'll believe that you're in this for the community.

I would be very satisfied if they would actually fix the performance issues before anything else.

DT-ARR

Long overdue but better late than never. Messages like this go a long way.

LarsS

Still miss an explanation of why they did a major change in cyro.

LalMirchi

LarsS wrote: »

Still miss an explanation of why they did a major change in cyro.

Yes this is a question still lingering in my mind. We did see a massive improvement in the MYM event only to have it dissipate?

gronoxvx

Ill believe your words zos when i see improvements.

LalMirchi

Remember, Truth is only ever accurate or relevant as the entity "speaking" it?

Faded

idk wrote: »

To a degree, I echo @The_Old_Goat sentiment. Remember the performance improvement plan that took a year or more to fully implement. Performance did not exactly improve and much got worse.

Yes, it is good to see the almighty leader of Zos acknowledge they released updates that what we experienced this year was "unacceptable". However, it is results that we want to see and it would be good to have greatly improved and consistent communication about fixing problems in the game. Too much is not acknowledged or is not listed in what is supposed to be the official tracker for problem resolution. What I am speaking to goes well beyond this past year.

Yeah. We've heard this song before. I'm sure they had a difficult year, everybody did. But the years before this one taught me not to expect much from anything Matt says.

I'll keep the rest of my cynical points to myself. It's only a game, in the end. I hope the people who are still happy playing it have some good surprises in 2021.

Iluvrien

LalMirchi wrote: »

Remember, Truth is only ever accurate or relevant as the entity "speaking" it?

I'd actually suggest the opposite.

A thing is true (or not) irrespective of who said it. For example, my worst enemy may say that the sky is blue, their statement is truthful even if they may not naturally be. On the other hand, the person I might trust most in the world may say 2 squared is 5. This statement is incorrect even though the person saying it is trusted by me.

That is why I am careful of what Mr Firor says. I want to weigh each pronouncement according to its own merit (including historical actions taken in response to similar posts) rather than on the positive/negative basis of him having said it.

Cynical I may be, but I always leave room for ZOS to prove themselves to be better now than they have been before.

Joy_Division

When I see Firor slog it out on Cyrodiil even on a semi regular basis, I'll take what he has to say about the state of ESO seriously.

LalMirchi

Joy_Division wrote: »

When I see Firor slog it out on Cyrodiil even on a semi regular basis, I'll take what he has to say about the state of ESO seriously.

This

crosstiger

I would bet money on this if I could. Nothing will chance for the better. They couldn't fix this game in almost 6 years, they wont fix it now. I trust zos as little as ea when it comes to promisses. Good thing cyberpunk got released. With all the bugs it's still better that eso.

Shantu

Joy_Division wrote: »

When I see Firor slog it out on Cyrodiil even on a semi regular basis, I'll take what he has to say about the state of ESO seriously.

BOOM!!

"And of course, in closing: please know that everything we do on ESO is for you, the community."

Oh please...

3+ weeks on the PTS of the community telling these guys their game had some serious, easily reproduced issues...only to be ignored and have the broken, buggy mess called Markarth released, says far more about their communication and why they do what they do. That and the joyless, tone deaf, cerebral force march of spreadsheet combat development that began long before the effects of the pandemic set in.

Faded

Joy_Division wrote: »

When I see Firor slog it out on Cyrodiil even on a semi regular basis, I'll take what he has to say about the state of ESO seriously.

I'd pay to watch that. I'd make popcorn.

Khajiitihaswares

It is something in form communication and admitting their wrongs. Next step now is to see action. Now you see issues. Work on them Communication still being biggest problem ZoS has as a whole.

LalMirchi

Shantu wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

When I see Firor slog it out on Cyrodiil even on a semi regular basis, I'll take what he has to say about the state of ESO seriously.

BOOM!!

"And of course, in closing: please know that everything we do on ESO is for you, the community."

Oh please...

3+ weeks on the PTS of the community telling these guys their game had some serious, easily reproduced issues...only to be ignored and have the broken, buggy mess called Markarth released, says far more about their communication and why they do what they do. That and the joyless, tone deaf, cerebral force march of spreadsheet combat development that began long before the effects of the pandemic set in.

These are to faults in the highest echelons of management, noway were these movers and shakers unaware of these as PTS is designed to report on issues? Or perhaps they did not use the reporting on their own system?

Khajiitihaswares

LalMirchi wrote: »

Shantu wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

When I see Firor slog it out on Cyrodiil even on a semi regular basis, I'll take what he has to say about the state of ESO seriously.

BOOM!!

"And of course, in closing: please know that everything we do on ESO is for you, the community."

Oh please...

3+ weeks on the PTS of the community telling these guys their game had some serious, easily reproduced issues...only to be ignored and have the broken, buggy mess called Markarth released, says far more about their communication and why they do what they do. That and the joyless, tone deaf, cerebral force march of spreadsheet combat development that began long before the effects of the pandemic set in.

These are to faults in the highest echelons of management, noway were these movers and shakers unaware of these as PTS is designed to report on issues? Or perhaps they did not use the reporting on their own system?

It is upper management that kinda makes Devs sock puppets and get pounded on. At end day their managers will say "Release it or hold it back for fixes." They just went Release it all this year and nearly broke the game entirely.

Wolfpaw

The reason to prioritize content schedule over performance the last couple years is transparent.

ZOS had a massive buyout (billions) & promises given to investors at the expense of a loyal community that has contributed to ZOS/ESO success, and game performance.

Now that Matt/investors has had their big payday I do hope they begin to value the hardworking customers that haven't had the luxury of working in the comfort & safety of their homes.

LalMirchi

The inability to own the problem is a disgrace.

eso_lags

LoneStar2911 wrote: »

New article today:
https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/59387

Before I came back to ESO after WoW's Shadowlands came and flopped, I would brag about how the devs of ESO were really great at communicating and being a part of the community with their online streams, etc.

Understandably, that seems to have massively changed since the pandemic.

I have high hopes for 2021. The first half may still be rough, but I believe the game's performance will improve.
I also hope to see more communication with its playerbase in the future.

Thank you for the article, ZOS.

What I gather from that letter is we will have one new system with the new chapter, probably not a cool game changing one, and most likely no new class this year. Which means another year with no new pvp zone, most likely, or pvp content at all. Which is to be expected since pvp players never get new content.

At the cost of putting more resources into performance. Great. Something many of us have been asking for them to do for years. The problem is it has been years, like since morrowind things started going downhill on xbox. And this performance roadmap has been around for what 1-2 years? Maybe 1 year? But everything has gotten worse. Like i dont even play anymore, because pvp is unplayable.

What im saying is while I hope 2021 is the year that you all at zos finally fix this broken ass game so that my friends and I can actually pvp again, I have no faith. I think it will just be a year with less stuff and worse performance, but i hope im wrong.

And btw OP, shadowlands flopped? Shadowlands is awesome, and pretty well regarded afaik. And I would also have to disagree about zos' communication. One eso live a month, when the game is in such a poor state, and has been for so long, is not enough. It has gotten better, like they mention performance every so often instead of pretending it doesn't exist, but when the game is in such a bad state they should be posting regular updates, about major issues, at least every couple weeks on the forums.

Keep in mind this is a company that acknowledged for a long time they had very bad communication, but they took years to even slightly change it. They ignored performance from before morrowind til elsweyr. Like completely ignored thousands and thousands of performance posts over that time, only to finally acknowledge things are bad in elseweyr. And they have, and still do, let bugs and issues stay in the game for years without acknowledging them (despite bug reports on the forums) or giving information about if they are aware of them, or if they will be fixed. I can think of many that got nothing but silence til they were fixed, or still exist today.

Im happy things are improving but I still dont think its worth bragging about. I hope things get better though, communication and especially performance. I just want to play.

twev

My opinion is that the post by Paul is the total extent of communication we'll get in the coming year.