A response on communications

Amottica · January 2022

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The reality is player interest is what keeps a thread alive and many of those threads die due to having a very limited number of people posting to them.

It's also important to note that a thread that has a lot of views and posts doesn't mean it has a lot of support. In fact it's generally the case that it's the topics the community is most divided on.

Ones that people overwhelming dislike tend to devolve quickly and fall away. Ones that people overwhelming support tend to get a few "good ideas, QFT, I support this" etc and then also fall away.

It's the ones where people have strong opinions on and clash that end up with the most views and posts. Both because sides form and people debate a lot, and because others enjoy the popcorn.

I completely agree. I have seen many of them have the same few people posting over and over. To be fair, it is usually both sides of the argument that ensues in the threads that have small numbers posting back and forth. Then again, I think it is a very small portion of the player base that frequents the forums.

Elsonso · January 2022

Amottica wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The reality is player interest is what keeps a thread alive and many of those threads die due to having a very limited number of people posting to them.

It's also important to note that a thread that has a lot of views and posts doesn't mean it has a lot of support. In fact it's generally the case that it's the topics the community is most divided on.

Ones that people overwhelming dislike tend to devolve quickly and fall away. Ones that people overwhelming support tend to get a few "good ideas, QFT, I support this" etc and then also fall away.

It's the ones where people have strong opinions on and clash that end up with the most views and posts. Both because sides form and people debate a lot, and because others enjoy the popcorn.

I completely agree. I have seen many of them have the same few people posting over and over. To be fair, it is usually both sides of the argument that ensues in the threads that have small numbers posting back and forth. Then again, I think it is a very small portion of the player base that frequents the forums.

Very small. My guess is that this is why ZOS does not promote their new content on the forum. Instead, it seems that they depend on promotion in other social media venues. Talk about the new content has virtually come to a stand still in here, but there is still hype in Twitter and Twitch land as various streamers and VIPs are getting their letter and coin and posting about it.

spartaxoxo · January 2022

Elsonso wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The reality is player interest is what keeps a thread alive and many of those threads die due to having a very limited number of people posting to them.

It's also important to note that a thread that has a lot of views and posts doesn't mean it has a lot of support. In fact it's generally the case that it's the topics the community is most divided on.

Ones that people overwhelming dislike tend to devolve quickly and fall away. Ones that people overwhelming support tend to get a few "good ideas, QFT, I support this" etc and then also fall away.

It's the ones where people have strong opinions on and clash that end up with the most views and posts. Both because sides form and people debate a lot, and because others enjoy the popcorn.

I completely agree. I have seen many of them have the same few people posting over and over. To be fair, it is usually both sides of the argument that ensues in the threads that have small numbers posting back and forth. Then again, I think it is a very small portion of the player base that frequents the forums.

Very small. My guess is that this is why ZOS does not promote their new content on the forum. Instead, it seems that they depend on promotion in other social media venues. Talk about the new content has virtually come to a stand still in here, but there is still hype in Twitter and Twitch land as various streamers and VIPs are getting their letter and coin and posting about it.

I think the forms are probably being used mostly to understand feedback because it is an easier place to view it. Apart from reddit, which they probably also use in the same manner, the forms is a good place to get a larger cross-section of players opinions on various things. It is not particularly good for promotion as only a small amount of people view it.
Eta:
Also a forum tends to be naturally inclined towards the hardcore crowd more so than the casual players as a general rule.

ive_wonder · January 2022

Amottica wrote: »

I completely agree. I have seen many of them have the same few people posting over and over. To be fair, it is usually both sides of the argument that ensues in the threads that have small numbers posting back and forth. Then again, I think it is a very small portion of the player base that frequents the forums.

Agree. I think community is mostly on Discord, Youtube, Reddit and *sigh* Twitter.

mickeyx · January 2022

Amottica wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

The reality is player interest is what keeps a thread alive and many of those threads die due to having a very limited number of people posting to them.

It's also important to note that a thread that has a lot of views and posts doesn't mean it has a lot of support. In fact it's generally the case that it's the topics the community is most divided on.

Ones that people overwhelming dislike tend to devolve quickly and fall away. Ones that people overwhelming support tend to get a few "good ideas, QFT, I support this" etc and then also fall away.

It's the ones where people have strong opinions on and clash that end up with the most views and posts. Both because sides form and people debate a lot, and because others enjoy the popcorn.

I completely agree. I have seen many of them have the same few people posting over and over. To be fair, it is usually both sides of the argument that ensues in the threads that have small numbers posting back and forth. Then again, I think it is a very small portion of the player base that frequents the forums.

Its the same two or three people every time going back and forth and then people think 'wow this topic is so popular' same with the 'overland content feedback' topic. Its always the same people over and over again. The majority of player base doesnt even care about forums. Players are more used to frequenting youtube than official game forums.

ive_wonder · January 2022

Also "views" counter on topics basically means nothing.
I just tried to see if freshly created topic will count my 3 subsequent visits as 1 or as 3, and it was counted as 3.
It doesn't count unique views.
So you can divide the number by 3 at least, i guess.
Soooo... yep.

Arunei · January 2022

Whether or not a large portion of players use the forums or not doesn't matter. When there are surveys and research studies irl, a small number of the target demographic is sampled to still get the average for the demographic overall. One could sort of liken that to the forums; a majority of people may not use them, but out of the ones who do, we could be be considered a survey group.

And regardless of how many people do and don't use the forums, if by their own admission they get more traffic to the ESO site (even if not necessarily the forums) than other 3rd party sites...why are they not making more use of it for communication? Why are they not using the game's own official forums or site to make updates and announcements and prompt discussion? If you claim you want to better communication, it doesn't look very good to not make efforts to engage the entire community.

Elsonso · January 2022

Arunei wrote: »

Whether or not a large portion of players use the forums or not doesn't matter. When there are surveys and research studies irl, a small number of the target demographic is sampled to still get the average for the demographic overall. One could sort of liken that to the forums; a majority of people may not use them, but out of the ones who do, we could be be considered a survey group.

Actually, it does matter, and this has been discussed quite a bit over the years, by people with varying degrees of apparent expertise.

The TL;DR is that the forum is good for collecting ideas and comments, when mixed with comments and ideas from other sources, but not for assigning weights and relative importance to those comments and ideas.

Ravensilver · January 2022

Elsonso wrote: »

The TL;DR is that the forum is good for collecting ideas and comments, when mixed with comments and ideas from other sources, but not for assigning weights and relative importance to those comments and ideas.

I don't quite agree. If you look at the Blizzard forums, there's a great deal of communication going on over there, complete with blue posts by the devs. Many of the bug fixes and game changes resulted from lively (pages and pages of...) discussions on the forums.

I'm quite sure that a lot more players would show up here, if they felt that they were actually being seen and heard. As it is now, when I mention the forums in my guilds, it's always 'oh, why would I go there, I never get a response from the devs, my opinion doesn't matter to ZOS'.

_Zathras_ · January 2022

Amottica wrote: »

Then again, I think it is a very small portion of the player base that frequents the forums.

Forums in any game represent a much smaller percentage than the actual players, not just here. And, as in any discussion in any other forum, you will see leaders and followers: the vocal few, and the people that echo their sentiments.

That is not a rationale for abandoning the Official Forums and taking relevant game-related communications elsewhere. If they wanted to completely ditch this venue, they should do what they did with the Suggestions forum a couple of years ago and quietly delete it.

Elsonso wrote: »

The TL;DR is that the forum is good for collecting ideas and comments, when mixed with comments and ideas from other sources, but not for assigning weights and relative importance to those comments and ideas.

I think this goes hand-in-hand with my previous quote.

Twitter still has the same dynamic as here. There is a vocal few, and a lot of followers. Their participation does not gain any more weight than the people who are contributing here.

The only difference is that Twitter is trendy.

Honestly, I find it discouraging that people are so willing to dismiss this forum community's effort to communicate. Again.

And, even though this is a direct answer and extension to Gina's collaborative to improve communication via her Twitter portal, it is disheartening that it hasn't gained acknowledgement outside of moderation.

Elsonso · January 2022

Ravensilver wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

The TL;DR is that the forum is good for collecting ideas and comments, when mixed with comments and ideas from other sources, but not for assigning weights and relative importance to those comments and ideas.

I don't quite agree. If you look at the Blizzard forums, there's a great deal of communication going on over there, complete with blue posts by the devs. Many of the bug fixes and game changes resulted from lively (pages and pages of...) discussions on the forums.

I'm quite sure that a lot more players would show up here, if they felt that they were actually being seen and heard. As it is now, when I mention the forums in my guilds, it's always 'oh, why would I go there, I never get a response from the devs, my opinion doesn't matter to ZOS'.

I certainly welcome more dev interaction in here, but I am somewhat dubious about a positive result from this happening. ZOS has added the dev comments in the patch note, and the quarterly combat team update, and other various articles, but these are deliberately one-way messages and all we can do is comment. There tends to always be people who lack a certain... maturity... to handle much more than this.

On another level... We are oddities among the faceless mass of players that don't give a [snip].

Even if it does attract more players, it is attracting a certain type of player, coming from a demographic that could end up being unique to the forums.

[edited for profanity bypass]

spartaxoxo · January 2022

The best games that are noted for positive change and listening to their community extremely often are the ones that listen to their community's feedback on their forums and then acting on the stuff they feel they should and refusing to budge on the things they feel they shouldn't.

Forums are one of the absolute best sources for feedback, both here and Reddit's because people talk to one another. They are extremely valuable because you get to understand the pain points of players in big detail and you can use that as actionable information on what a player is feeling while playing your game and why in more detail than any other social media platform. That's why many of these companies do so much on Reddit regardless of their individual forums state. It's why this game didn't close It's forum.

Players may enjoy the most polite threads and think people arguing doesn't contribute anything of value, because they don't enjoy reading it. But those threads are extremely valuable too at figuring out what your players are especially passionate about because often times it's those systems that need the most attention. Ones that largely just work and everyone is happy about them typically need less attention.

They don't need players to have everything figured out and specific suggestions are often not that helpful, but how the game makes you feel and why, the stuff you most want to see, the things you'd most spend your cash on, your personal feelings and interactions with the system are very valuable.

Kalik_Gold · January 2022

Don't they have an official forums for communication *shrugs*...

mickeyx · January 2022

Elsonso wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Whether or not a large portion of players use the forums or not doesn't matter. When there are surveys and research studies irl, a small number of the target demographic is sampled to still get the average for the demographic overall. One could sort of liken that to the forums; a majority of people may not use them, but out of the ones who do, we could be be considered a survey group.

Actually, it does matter, and this has been discussed quite a bit over the years, by people with varying degrees of apparent expertise.

The TL;DR is that the forum is good for collecting ideas and comments, when mixed with comments and ideas from other sources, but not for assigning weights and relative importance to those comments and ideas.

Eh Rich Lambert said that forums are so toxic that they usually avoid it. They gather much more feedback directly from other social media channels. I am pretty sure forum is like on the bottom of the list.

Elsonso · January 2022

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Players may enjoy the most polite threads and think people arguing doesn't contribute anything of value, because they don't enjoy reading it. But those threads are extremely valuable too at figuring out what your players are especially passionate about because often times it's those systems that need the most attention. Ones that largely just work and everyone is happy about them typically need less attention.

They don't need players to have everything figured out and specific suggestions are often not that helpful, but how the game makes you feel and why, the stuff you most want to see, the things you'd most spend your cash on, your personal feelings and interactions with the system are very valuable.

Speaking as a software developer, my feeling is that the most valuable information in the thread is going to come from the first few dozen comments, or first 48 hours, which even happens first. This is where people talk about the pain points and how they feel about things. After that, the value of the commentary drops rapidly and it gets harder to pull out good comments.

There is a quality issue with the comments that reduces the value that they have. I have found that "arguing" has little development value, since they are often arguing over things that don't matter. When it does matter, the emotional content distorts things and makes it harder to parse. The thought that "passionate" implies "good" is false. The passionate person may simply trying to give their ideas/frustrations/problems a weight that is not proportional to the value everyone else places on it.

More than that, eventually, the conversation migrates to "solutions" and various pro and con suggestions about different solutions. This phase of the discussion is for the benefit of the people participating in the conversation, for their own personal enjoyment. For what I was developing, it was often entertaining to read, but could largely be ignored. It was not common that a user would happen across a viable solution. Here, I enjoy the solution part, but I don't expect that ZOS cares.

I also suspect that the "things I would spend cash on" does not have the impact that a few people think it does. There seems to be a minority undercurrent that assumes that ZOS does nothing without counting their coin first, and they will only do stuff that nets them the most coin. I think that ZOS love-of-coin is exaggerated in the context of ESO features, and maybe even Crown Store ideas. Offering coin may get attention, as people do tend to say this about things they really want. However, this sort of thinking may make suggestions less useful, as then the player may be trying to bias the discussion by leading the developer to their solution with the promise of coin. In the end, the developer has to decide whether the suggestion stands as worthy after the financial bait is removed.

And...

mickeyx wrote: »

Eh Rich Lambert said that forums are so toxic that they usually avoid it. They gather much more feedback directly from other social media channels. I am pretty sure forum is like on the bottom of the list.

There have been some that treat the devs pretty poorly, and that comes out in social media, which includes here. One reason to get the devs posting here is so that the forum moderation team can weed out those people.

Sadly, they seem to be in endless supply.

That said, we do know that the devs quietly watch. We also know that the community team forwards information from here. This place is not ignored, not that you said it was, but people might draw that conclusion.

_Zathras_ · January 2022

mickeyx wrote: »

Eh Rich Lambert said that forums are so toxic that they usually avoid it.

Back in my days in GW2, this very thing happened on the forums.

"We don't want to engage anymore because the forums are toxic."

What they didn't take ownership of, was their very active role in communications falling apart. There was a culture of I Know Better, We Don't Feel We Should Respond, and such. The community put a lot of effort into supplying feedback, but the patronizing attitude created a lot of negative backlash.

So, along came the Great Communication Improvement Collaborative. It was literally a 2 year effort of player busywork. The first year was simply opening a thread to gather feedback. The second year was the song and dance of putting on appearances of listening..without action. I believe Colin Johanson spearheaded that sideshow, but poor Gaile (the CM at that time) had to field the fallout from the masses.

I was there for all of that. Not doing that again. The end is quite predictable.

So, while I would like to see a link to the source of Rich's quote, it really isn't needed. I've also been here since open beta, so I have watched how communications have desiccated.

spartaxoxo · January 2022

Elsonso wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Players may enjoy the most polite threads and think people arguing doesn't contribute anything of value, because they don't enjoy reading it. But those threads are extremely valuable too at figuring out what your players are especially passionate about because often times it's those systems that need the most attention. Ones that largely just work and everyone is happy about them typically need less attention.

They don't need players to have everything figured out and specific suggestions are often not that helpful, but how the game makes you feel and why, the stuff you most want to see, the things you'd most spend your cash on, your personal feelings and interactions with the system are very valuable.

Speaking as a software developer, my feeling is that the most valuable information in the thread is going to come from the first few dozen comments, or first 48 hours, which even happens first. This is where people talk about the pain points and how they feel about things. After that, the value of the commentary drops rapidly and it gets harder to pull out good comments.

Speaking as someone who used to work alongside community management for another MMO, the longer threads tended to be the most valuable although you are right that the first 48 hours was generally the easiest to find valuable comments. Mostly because there ends up being a lot of repetition. But some of the finer details that made things click and come together in a way that made communities feel more valued and produce better outcomes came from later in the thread.

I used to be tasked with reading through all those comments to find new and good information, and it quite often had a very positive impact on understanding feedback much better.

I guess it depends on what kind of product you're making but one of the things that a community team that is good knows best is that getting someone who can wade through that and pull out important details often missed in the early part of a thread is extremely valuable at improving communication.

Also IDK about your company or zos but the ones people cared to spend money on and said as much tended to be things that got through in the one I worked with lol. Not the ones that were talking about bribing per say, but just that knowing many people wanted it bad enough they'd pay usually indicates it was important to them and players would be happy to see it. They didn't always monetize the item just because people said they'd pay though.

Arunei · January 2022

mickeyx wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Whether or not a large portion of players use the forums or not doesn't matter. When there are surveys and research studies irl, a small number of the target demographic is sampled to still get the average for the demographic overall. One could sort of liken that to the forums; a majority of people may not use them, but out of the ones who do, we could be be considered a survey group.

Actually, it does matter, and this has been discussed quite a bit over the years, by people with varying degrees of apparent expertise.

The TL;DR is that the forum is good for collecting ideas and comments, when mixed with comments and ideas from other sources, but not for assigning weights and relative importance to those comments and ideas.

Eh Rich Lambert said that forums are so toxic that they usually avoid it. They gather much more feedback directly from other social media channels. I am pretty sure forum is like on the bottom of the list.

Maybe if they didn't constantly ignore feedback and various concerns up until things explode and they HAVE to make a statement, the forums wouldn't be "so toxic". Avoiding things doesn't make them better, it makes them worse. When you continually choose to ignore the people paying your paychecks, it makes things worse.

Maybe if they didn't rely on 3rd party sites and social media and treat the forum like it doesn't exist, and actually brought important information and updates and things here as well, there wouldn't be so much anger and vitriol. If we didn't have to rely on outside sources for information, there wouldn't be all these "he said she said" problems that can lead to conspiracy theories and rumors.

Maybe if they actually engaged us here and made it feel like they were paying attention to us, people wouldn't get so frustrated. The silence, as they say, can be deafening. And as I've said, it's hypocritical to ask for feedback on how to better communication on Twitter while not starting any conversation about it here on the game's actual forums/website.

Tl;dr people don't like being ignored, so Rich can't complain about the forums being toxic when it's largely like that because of being ignored continually over years.

ive_wonder · January 2022

mickeyx wrote: »

Eh Rich Lambert said that forums are so toxic that they usually avoid it. They gather much more feedback directly from other social media channels. I am pretty sure forum is like on the bottom of the list.

I don't know what toxic means in this context but imo any feedback is a good feedback.
People are toxic because they are not satisfied.
So goal is to fix the reason of that dissatistaction.
Also, from my experience on this forum, it's pretty tame in it's critisism of the game

wenchmore420b14_ESO · January 2022

Ghanima_Atreides wrote: »

Sylvermynx wrote: »

Kiralyn2000 wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Not on Twitter?

Don't watch Rich Lambert's personal stream?

Don't watch ESO Live?

etc

Yeah, I basically only read the forum. (99% of the time, just this section of it).
My bookmark goes here. If I want to check out a News post on the website (due to seeing something about it here), I use the links here to get there.

(Star Trek Online is another one where their 'communication' crew slowly switched to posting important news/etc to their Twitter and not on their "official forums." Which is just crazy.)

Makes two of us. I don't touch "social media" period. Unfortunately, with bethsoft going entirely to discord, it seems like ZOS has a bad example there.... They really should be posting on the official website - @_Zathras_'s DAoC example above, taking some questions to answer once a week, isn't a bad idea at all.

Same. I don't use Twitter, I am not interested in using it, ditto for Twitch etc. videos that are 90% someone being "funny" and 10% actual relevant information, but you have to sit through the whole thing to find it. I'd much rather just have a post or an article containing important news posted here or on the official site, which I can just access and read at my leisure.

Will throw my 2 drakes in and whole heartily agree with above comments.
I don't use twitter. I don't use Reddit, and that has become more informative than these forums. The ESO FB page is mostly not worth looking at. (Yes, I have FB, but not for my TES info).
Like many others, I had to find out about these communications from 2nd and 3rd parties.

Suggestion? Maybe start a pinned thread or area on the "Official" forums for social posts from other sources?
Or maybe just copy/paste their comments, vids (in Rich's case), and other relevant postings here also?
I have been here on forums since beta, love watching ESO Live, or used to. I miss the "Old" format of ESO Live where they actually had devs, loremaster segments, answer community questions and just TALK to us.

TL;DR I agree that forums should at LEAST be included in new info. Not on "Social Media" alone.
Huzzah!

SeaGtGruff · January 2022

I don't use Twitter or Facebook/Meta, either. However, I don't think the forums are the place for ZOS to be posting important announcements. The website? Sure. The launcher? That works, too. But the forums? Not so much.

As I see it, the forums are primarily a place for players to talk about the game amongst themselves, not a place where players should expect to get in touch with ZOS management whenever they want and get responses to their questions, complaints, and demands about the game.

Rohamad_Ali · January 2022

People still use Twitter? Terrible platform.

blktauna · January 2022

The issue is, they need to pick a source of truth for the players and post everything there. There is no source of truth and that makes people mental. Sure use whatever platform you like but that information also have to be linked to and fully documented on their official website (or here or some ZOS owned location) to be the Offocal Source of ZOS truth that people can go to.

Who has the time or energy to figure out where these people are posting info, give up details (I use false most of the time but hey), make another useless account and then try to figure out where they went to next when that is abandoned. My time is more valuable than that.

@ZOS_GinaBruno if you want effective communication, people need to know where to go to find it. Source of Truth is necessary. You could also list all the other places you (meaning ZOS) post info. Stop making the customers try to guess where you are giving info and just tell us where to go to read and understand what is happening. One source also makes it easier to serve the language needs of your various locales with one template.

Destai · January 2022

mickeyx wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Whether or not a large portion of players use the forums or not doesn't matter. When there are surveys and research studies irl, a small number of the target demographic is sampled to still get the average for the demographic overall. One could sort of liken that to the forums; a majority of people may not use them, but out of the ones who do, we could be be considered a survey group.

Actually, it does matter, and this has been discussed quite a bit over the years, by people with varying degrees of apparent expertise.

The TL;DR is that the forum is good for collecting ideas and comments, when mixed with comments and ideas from other sources, but not for assigning weights and relative importance to those comments and ideas.

Eh Rich Lambert said that forums are so toxic that they usually avoid it. They gather much more feedback directly from other social media channels. I am pretty sure forum is like on the bottom of the list.

I'm just baffled by that sentiment of his and I personally wouldn't be supportive of that decision were I in ZOS leadership. Fundamentally, they're paying to have these forums active and integrated with game accounts, so there has to be some value to it. People like Kevin are helping, but fully realizing that value won't happen without deeper management support. There has to be a visible change to practices not only to them but, ultimately, to us.

ive_wonder wrote: »

mickeyx wrote: »

Eh Rich Lambert said that forums are so toxic that they usually avoid it. They gather much more feedback directly from other social media channels. I am pretty sure forum is like on the bottom of the list.

I don't know what toxic means in this context but imo any feedback is a good feedback.
People are toxic because they are not satisfied.
So goal is to fix the reason of that dissatistaction.
Also, from my experience on this forum, it's pretty tame in it's critisism of the game

Great point. What does 'toxic' mean? Sure, the obvious example of blatant harassment and incivility, but is criticizing the game toxic to him and his team? I can understand how significant blowback to a change (perfected weapons, for instance) could be seen as toxic. But why not exercise some empathy and entertain the possibility you're not looking at it correctly? For all the talk of ESOFam and "they wouldn't be here without us", their actions don't really reflect that in my opinion.

_Zathras_ wrote: »

mickeyx wrote: »

Eh Rich Lambert said that forums are so toxic that they usually avoid it.

Back in my days in GW2, this very thing happened on the forums.

"We don't want to engage anymore because the forums are toxic."

What they didn't take ownership of, was their very active role in communications falling apart. There was a culture of I Know Better, We Don't Feel We Should Respond, and such. The community put a lot of effort into supplying feedback, but the patronizing attitude created a lot of negative backlash.

So, along came the Great Communication Improvement Collaborative. It was literally a 2 year effort of player busywork. The first year was simply opening a thread to gather feedback. The second year was the song and dance of putting on appearances of listening..without action. I believe Colin Johanson spearheaded that sideshow, but poor Gaile (the CM at that time) had to field the fallout from the masses.

I was there for all of that. Not doing that again. The end is quite predictable.

So, while I would like to see a link to the source of Rich's quote, it really isn't needed. I've also been here since open beta, so I have watched how communications have desiccated.

Spot on with what's bolded - it's definitely happened here too. They have come up with some good systems in the last few years like antiquities, stickerbook, and the RNG fix. Each of those systems were requested for a while, so I know they hear us. I just feel like there's a bit confirmation bias in how they approach communication. They want it framed in a way that's comfortable and confirming of their vision. At least that's what I see, based on what happens here, on streams, and on social media.

I certainly do have some resentment towards certain practices and behavior. That sentiment is really easily cleared up - by talking with us.

Gaile was such a gem of a CM, though. I'm happy they enshrined her as an NPC in their games, she deserved it. I hope at some point this game can enjoy the same warmth and candor the GW2 community has. I have my qualms about GW2, but I still think their management was among the most personable I've seen in a game.

Looking at their forums even is a breathe of fresh air - the CMs there regularly organize feedback and QoL. Imagine! I'm sure given ZOS's size and presumably larger budget, they could do that, but it's yet to happen. Hopefully we'll get there one day.

Arunei · January 2022

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I don't use Twitter or Facebook/Meta, either. However, I don't think the forums are the place for ZOS to be posting important announcements. The website? Sure. The launcher? That works, too. But the forums? Not so much.

As I see it, the forums are primarily a place for players to talk about the game amongst themselves, not a place where players should expect to get in touch with ZOS management whenever they want and get responses to their questions, complaints, and demands about the game.

The website, the launcher, whatever it is they use, they need to start sharing official ESO-related news on one of the game's official somethings. It makes absolutely no sense for them to post game-related information on 3rd party sites when a lot of people don't use those platforms.

_Zathras_ · January 2022

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I don't use Twitter or Facebook/Meta, either. However, I don't think the forums are the place for ZOS to be posting important announcements. The website? Sure. The launcher? That works, too. But the forums? Not so much.

As I see it, the forums are primarily a place for players to talk about the game amongst themselves, not a place where players should expect to get in touch with ZOS management whenever they want and get responses to their questions, complaints, and demands about the game.

On the default Forum page, the very first bar's title is Official News and Updates.

So.. While you may think this isn't the place for important announcements, they do. ..Which is deeply ironic.

SilverBride · January 2022

I hate Twitter, Twitch, Facebook and all other forms of social media. A company should be using their own websites and forums to communicate with their customers.

wenchmore420b14_ESO · January 2022

_Zathras_ wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I don't use Twitter or Facebook/Meta, either. However, I don't think the forums are the place for ZOS to be posting important announcements. The website? Sure. The launcher? That works, too. But the forums? Not so much.

As I see it, the forums are primarily a place for players to talk about the game amongst themselves, not a place where players should expect to get in touch with ZOS management whenever they want and get responses to their questions, complaints, and demands about the game.

On the default Forum page, the very first bar's title is Official News and Updates.

So.. While you may think this isn't the place for important announcements, they do. ..Which is deeply ironic.

This is true, but they are all pinned threads about announcements and do not address any of the things discussed in this thread, i.e. Gina's Communication Tweet, Rich's stream with PvP info, etc.
I use that thread often, but still had to get the above info from 2nd and 3rd parties. That is what we would like them to address.

KaGaOri · January 2022

For company to be using primarily third party platforms to comunicate with their customers seems kinda bonkers to me. Can you imagine any other bussines doing this, like a bank, or airline? Info and news belongs if not on the official forums, the on the official ESO website.

Don't have and don't wish to have Twitter or Facebook. Don't need these toxic trash shoots of platforms, notorious for selling their customers data and getting the data stolen time to time, in my life. This shouldn't keep me out of loop about service I'm paying for and has nothing to do with either of those sites.

FlopsyPrince · January 2022

Elsonso wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Whether or not a large portion of players use the forums or not doesn't matter. When there are surveys and research studies irl, a small number of the target demographic is sampled to still get the average for the demographic overall. One could sort of liken that to the forums; a majority of people may not use them, but out of the ones who do, we could be be considered a survey group.

Actually, it does matter, and this has been discussed quite a bit over the years, by people with varying degrees of apparent expertise.

The TL;DR is that the forum is good for collecting ideas and comments, when mixed with comments and ideas from other sources, but not for assigning weights and relative importance to those comments and ideas.

That is only true to a point. Players of most perspectives are on the forums. That is why so many issues keep getting argued/discussed.

Also knowing it is discussed here means that it is of concerns to enough players that a subset end up here to push a view.

I also know however that any idea presented here will have someone argue against it! I could start a post saying the "sky is blue" and someone would argue, "no, it is azure". That is another aspect of these forums that gets be really annoying.