Market Reseach

Arunei

pklemming wrote: »

But the thing is, just because that's what you used to do doesn't mean that's how it's done everywhere else and doesn't mean that's how everyone else does it. Thinking the way you did something is the only way to do it is just a little bit arrogant.

I am a tad arrogant, I get that. I do expect things like bugs to be fixed within a reasonable time. I don't expect code to be pushed live without fully testing. Humans are not specialised creatures, being skilled in multiple areas does not mean you are no longer proficient. That is, though, by-the-bye.

Why they don't have a persistent test server is beyond me. Going back to Everquest days, there was a server between QA and LIve, and it was a server where people actually lived. The expectations were that we would occasionally get buggy code, and due to the nature of the server and the populace that played it, we caught a lot of things before they went live due to the sheer number of people that could actually test the patch. There is no buffer here. Code > QA > Live, but the level of testing capable by the QA team means that only glaring game-breaking bugs will usually be found.

This is, again, somewhat of a digression. A lot of the content is currently broken in one form or the other. The gameplay, at times is not fun at all. It does not make me want me to go back and play it again.

If you are wondering why I am complaining, this is a snippet of vDC HM. This was taken after a few deaths, and I was basically just trying to avoid the invisible walls at this point.

https://youtu.be/4yZcV5Hn5bk

It is one of just many, many issues I come across every day in game. After 8 years, I honestly expect more, I have no real wish to change games, but I am tired of fighting the bugs and the unresponsive team. After a while, you just need to give up and move on.

No, being able to do multiple things doesn't necessarily mean you're less proficient, but the fact still remains most companies have different departments that handle different things for a reason. Beyond people focusing certain specialities, it prevents people from getting burned out by being expected to do everything the business handles.

As for persistent test servers, ZOS hardly acknowledges bugs and feedback brought up during PTS cycles, so I doubt a permanent server would do much in the long run. And trust me, I do get that the long-standing bugs can be frustrating, especially gamebreaking ones. But they can't divert a large amount of focus to just game fixes and offer next to no new content. Like I said, fixing the game and keeping new content coming are equally important because they affect a wide variety of activities and thus a wide variety of players. Focus too much on either or and the other will suffer.

That's one reason I think they should do away with the 4 DLCs a year model. Every new patch brings new bugs and issues on top of existing ones, so the pile is ever-growing. Cut it down to 3 releases a year, that's still new content every four months, and an extra three months to address bugs and other issues before they can hit live, which would help ease the work that needs to be done in that regard.

NettleCarrier

pklemming wrote: »

So, the idea of market research is to see if there is a need for the product before spending resources and time in to developing something.

I am curious at what point market research decided what ESO really needed was a card game. Personally, if I want a card game, there are a lot of good ones on the market already. The current feedback shows little to no interest in the game and I would rather you take the time to fix the plethora of issues the game currently has, rather than adding something very few people want.

You are losing people due to bugs and poor decision-making and this appears to continue that trend admirably. Please try listening to what people actually want.

I do... I've been with this game long enough to know that it's a slow growth but a growth nonetheless. This chapter's feature might not be what YOU want, but the next might be. I'm not at all interested in a new trial or arena, but I don't complain when those are features of a new DLC or Chapter.

Olauron

Polls like this (>50% participants have 10+ million gold) and this (>25% participants have 60+ mounts) are clear examples that forum population has nothing with the majority of the game population.

Marto

Arunei wrote: »

As for persistent test servers, ZOS hardly acknowledges bugs and feedback brought up during PTS cycles, so I doubt a permanent server would do much in the long run. And trust me, I do get that the long-standing bugs can be frustrating, especially gamebreaking ones. But they can't divert a large amount of focus to just game fixes and offer next to no new content. Like I said, fixing the game and keeping new content coming are equally important because they affect a wide variety of activities and thus a wide variety of players. Focus too much on either or and the other will suffer.

That's one reason I think they should do away with the 4 DLCs a year model. Every new patch brings new bugs and issues on top of existing ones, so the pile is ever-growing. Cut it down to 3 releases a year, that's still new content every four months, and an extra three months to address bugs and other issues before they can hit live, which would help ease the work that needs to be done in that regard.

A couple months ago Gina started a twitter thread asking the community what sort of communication and transparency they'd like in regards to bugs and similar issues.

Most people said they were interested in having a public bug tracker. When Gina replied to them and asked exactly which bugs, and how many of them should be displayed, of course, the players just replied with "All of them"

It shows you how little the playerbase understands game development.

There's thousands of items in that list. And not all of them will be fixed, because they aren't worth fixing, or because they aren't fixable. Deciding which bug gets fixed or not, and when those fixes are implemented, is the job of the producers, who have to account for a lot of things.

Server availability, scheduled maintenance, QA compliance, Stadia functioning, incremental patch timings, bandwidth, holidays, outages, etc. And half of that info is under NDA for security reasons. Every ounce of info ZOS gives about its internal workings can and will be used against them.

Mythgard1967

Marto wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

As for persistent test servers, ZOS hardly acknowledges bugs and feedback brought up during PTS cycles, so I doubt a permanent server would do much in the long run. And trust me, I do get that the long-standing bugs can be frustrating, especially gamebreaking ones. But they can't divert a large amount of focus to just game fixes and offer next to no new content. Like I said, fixing the game and keeping new content coming are equally important because they affect a wide variety of activities and thus a wide variety of players. Focus too much on either or and the other will suffer.

That's one reason I think they should do away with the 4 DLCs a year model. Every new patch brings new bugs and issues on top of existing ones, so the pile is ever-growing. Cut it down to 3 releases a year, that's still new content every four months, and an extra three months to address bugs and other issues before they can hit live, which would help ease the work that needs to be done in that regard.

A couple months ago Gina started a twitter thread asking the community what sort of communication and transparency they'd like in regards to bugs and similar issues.

Most people said they were interested in having a public bug tracker. When Gina replied to them and asked exactly which bugs, and how many of them should be displayed, of course, the players just replied with "All of them"

It shows you how little the playerbase understands game development.

There's thousands of items in that list. And not all of them will be fixed, because they aren't worth fixing, or because they aren't fixable. Deciding which bug gets fixed or not, and when those fixes are implemented, is the job of the producers, who have to account for a lot of things.

Server availability, scheduled maintenance, QA compliance, Stadia functioning, incremental patch timings, bandwidth, holidays, outages, etc. And half of that info is under NDA for security reasons. Every ounce of info ZOS gives about its internal workings can and will be used against them.

OMGERSH this is so true ....and applicable. I work on a product team that builds and supports "a thing". I am asking to notify the businesses with every change to "the thing". Thats all we do...change the thing. some weeks are light with maybe a couple thousand changes; some are heavy...with millions of changes.

At what level do you want notification of change within the thing. I give you epic level and full access to our backlog. It is too detailed.....so what specifically do you need to know????

Whenever you change the thing.

OK, here comes your reporting of all changes to thing. That is promptly ignored because its too much to wade through.

Be careful what you wish for and i can guarantee you don't want to know everything. You can't even put everything in to patch notes. Those are just summaries and highlights of the changes.

And i am dealing with INTERNAL customers. I can't imagine dealing with 100's of thousands of external customers. I think I am starting to shake.

Amottica

OP do a search to see if threads were created on the topic if mini games. You will find such requests going back for years. That’s information coming directly from the market.

And you don’t have to play the card game.

Tenthirty2

The card game is new content so I'll try it, might be cool and if not I'll move on to other things.
Several other more recent AAA titles have had mini-games (Horizon: FW, AC: Valhalla, etc) and seem to have been very well received by fans. So they may be basing ToT on that trend, we'll see.

I'm right there with wanting performance and bugs corrected.
But AFA them not saying anything, they have.
At least a couple of the pinned threads at the top of the forum, from Matt. IIRC Gina may have mentioned it in a post also.
But they mention a hardware refresh\upgrade coming and also a in-depth code rewriting to follow. NEITHER of those things come quickly or without huge cost.

I suspect that the majority of the issues we all experience will vanish when the server(s) are migrated to new hardware.
Server processing of the thousands of variables going back and forth each minute will massively improve.
So likely they are waiting to address any of the nagging bugs until AFTER the newer hardware eliminates all the ones that exist due to missed processing, etc. Either the server doesn't send data back fast enough (or at all) or gets overwhelmed with too much client data coming in and can only handle so much.

All (IT experience-based) speculation on my part, but it makes the most sense if you have a platform trying to run on very outdated hardware.

The card game is just new content, which they have to keep providing otherwise people cry that the game is going stale, nothing new, it's dYiNiG nOoOoO.
It's just unfortunate that they feel they must keep releasing new content, just more data for the tired old servers to crunch and choke on.
I'm one of the ones who would be entirely fine with them NOT releasing any new content and repurposing the manpower and resources into whatever is needed to expedite the performance improvements.

Be interesting to see how it all plays out.

Lady_Galadhiel

These kind of threads get old pretty fast...ZOS decided to do a card game so a card game we will get. Don't like it? Don't buy the chapter or don't play it.
It won't get forced on us like awa did and everyone got affected.
You can just ignore the card game if you don't like it.

There are people like me out there who are looking forward for it, even in the forum we might be the minority.

Jaraal

Olauron wrote: »

Polls like this (>50% participants have 10+ million gold) and this (>25% participants have 60+ mounts) are clear examples that forum population has nothing with the majority of the game population.

But forum population is more passionate about the game than somebody who downloaded the game because it was free to play. Those casuals are likely to log into U34 and go "Card game? Ain't nobody got time for that. Now why is my horse so dang slooowww!"

Mythgard1967

Jaraal wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

Polls like this (>50% participants have 10+ million gold) and this (>25% participants have 60+ mounts) are clear examples that forum population has nothing with the majority of the game population.

But forum population is more passionate about the game than somebody who downloaded the game because it was free to play. Those casuals are likely to log into U34 and go "Card game? Ain't nobody got time for that. Now why is my horse so dang slooowww!"

I wouldnt say they are all free to play or casual. They just arent willing to go through the hoops to get invited to say something to actually...say something.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Kisakee wrote: »

pklemming wrote: »

Playing(or not playing) the card game is not the issue. It is that resources were funnelled to something most of the play base did not want

Stop assuming, you don't know what most of the people want. Nobody knows.

We do when it comes to the card game.


https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/602720/how-interested-are-you-in-playing-tales-of-tribute-the-card-game/p1

Forum polls are meaningless. Not even the entirety of the forum community responds to forum polls, and the whole forum community itself is a tiny fraction of the entire game community.

Perhaps a small fraction of the playerbase, but this particular poll has 575 responses. As forum polls go, that is quite a lot. It does seem to be very unpopular pretty much everywhere you look. Easy to dismiss polls you dont agree with has just a forum poll, but I think this one is pretty accurate as to how the playerbase generally views the card game. Of course there are people that will love it, but I am fairly confident its a pretty small minority.

Olauron

Jaraal wrote: »

Olauron wrote: »

Polls like this (>50% participants have 10+ million gold) and this (>25% participants have 60+ mounts) are clear examples that forum population has nothing with the majority of the game population.

But forum population is more passionate about the game than somebody who downloaded the game because it was free to play. Those casuals are likely to log into U34 and go "Card game? Ain't nobody got time for that. Now why is my horse so dang slooowww!"

Being more passionate is not a positive characteristic. It is neutral. It also means that these people have goals and desires different from goals and desires of less passionate players.

It is very possible that card game will be not popular. It is also possible it will be popular. Implementation is the key. At first glance, it is something that will demand less time than other in-game activities and will need less preparation. It is also available as solo PVE activity. This makes it more suitable for a short play, expecially for those who are not into combat. Housing has collectible vibe, but it needs a lot of time (and gold). Fishing needs less time, but there is no collectible vibe there. Card game may find its niche as a "non-combat battleground", but it should be a) engaging and b) not that grindy as antiquities to get and keep an audience.

Grizzbeorn

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

Of course there are people that will love it, but I am fairly confident its a pretty small minority.

Speaking of being dismissive...

Brrrofski

I've frequented the forums for 5 years.

Don't recall seeing a card game mentioned.

Same with Reddit.

Same with everyone in all the guilds in. Nobody has ever mentioned that they'd like one.

Never seen a video on YouTube. Never seen anyone mention it on twitch.

Sure, some people will enjoy it. But if you didn't have mythics tied to new zones, I think sales would be down a LOT for this chapter, and Blackwood.

Isn't there already an Elder Scrolls card game??

How about we get some new, original pve content. Not a trial and some dungeons. How about some new PvP content? I know they're "rebuilding" PvP so don't want to give new content, but they only said that this year, what about the last 3?