ESO Forum Improvement Survey

ZOS_Kevin

Hi Everyone! Earlier this year, we chatted about long-term improvements to forum usability. As a first-step toward these improvements, we’ve spent the summer working on a survey to start gathering feedback about your individual ESO forum usage habits.

The goal here is to better learn how you like to engage with our forum, from the sections you use to the kind of content you enjoy. With this information, we will work to make forum changes that fit in line with your preferences. The hope is this will yield an overall better environment for you to talk about ESO and eliminate pain points like moving topics to different sections.

To start the survey, click here or copy/paste this link: https://beth.games/3sXeuHX

The survey will be available for your feedback until Oct. 30, 2023. Once the survey is closed, we’ll review the feedback and get to work on the requested changes. Thanks again to everyone involved in getting this conversation started and to anyone who takes time to submit feedback.

TaSheen

Thanks for this Kevin. Now, I had to download Firefox to take the survey though - it refused to work on Chrome (wouldn't allow me to select any of the responses).

Katheriah

Can I already give some feedback about the survey?

Some of the stats about forum use should be pullable from the forum, like age, use of subfora/recent discussions et cetera.

I'm curious to see which changes this will bring though, please keep us posted.

Destai

Oh cool, excited to see this. Filled it out, happy to help better shape these forums.

ZOS_Kevin

@TaSheen That's odd. I used chrome to test out the survey before posting this...

I'll take a look and see what could have happened there. Thanks for letting me know.

Destai

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@TaSheen That's odd. I used chrome to test out the survey before posting this...

I'll take a look and see what could have happened there. Thanks for letting me know.

FWIW, I just completed on Chrome with no issues.

TaSheen

Well, that's really strange. I don't have a weird setup on Chrome or anything. Just went back and tried it again, still nothing.

Hmm. Wonder if it has something to do with extensions. Well, hmm.... Nope. Disabled the 4 I have, and still not working.

ZOS_Kevin

Katheriah wrote: »

Can I already give some feedback about the survey?

Some of the stats about forum use should be pullable from the forum, like age, use of subfora/recent discussions et cetera.

I'm curious to see which changes this will bring though, please keep us posted.

Thanks for the feedback! So we can pull some of that info for the survey in general. And we will when going through other metrics. But we are asking for the info in the the survey to have it in relation to everyone who fills out the survey. Giving us a better indicator of those actively engaging.

ZOS_Kevin

Thanks for the confirmation @Destai. And sorry you are running into this issue, @TaSheen. I'll follow up with our survey team to see if there is any reason this could be happening.

TaSheen

Well, it seems to be an issue only for me, and since I completed the survey using Firefox, unless a bunch of others have problems too, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

virtus753

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Thanks for the confirmation @Destai. And sorry you are running into this issue, @TaSheen. I'll follow up with our survey team to see if there is any reason this could be happening.

What's really odd on my end is that I see that the "here" link (when I hover over it) begins "denied:https://feedback.bethesda.net..." I don't know if that's because of my network or what. The second link works fine.

EF321

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@TaSheen That's odd. I used chrome to test out the survey before posting this...

I'll take a look and see what could have happened there. Thanks for letting me know.

Removing "denied:" from your link might help here.

TaSheen

EF321 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

@TaSheen That's odd. I used chrome to test out the survey before posting this...

I'll take a look and see what could have happened there. Thanks for letting me know.

Removing "denied:" from your link might help here.

I didn't use the "here" link - I used this one: https://beth.games/3sXeuHX - which does not include the "denied" part.

SimonThesis

Very glad to see a forum survey, I think its a great idea. I wish there was a survey for customer support and the bug fixers as well though...

DragonRacer

Just FYI, I think something with Vanilla (the forum host) is going on suddenly, @ZOS_Kevin . It's not just that first link with "denied" in the URL. I just went to the News Articles section to pull up the event blog article to check some things, and that now has "denied" in the URL code as well, so you cannot open it by simply clicking on it. You have to right-click, open in new tab, and then remove that "denied" part from the front of the URL in the browser bar. I'm doing this in Chrome on a laptop, so not sure how it might be affecting mobile (I can check later for you and report back)

Methinks ALL links in the forum may be getting this treatment, even retroactively, for whatever reason. At least as far as Chrome goes. I had the same issue with the first link provided in this thread, but I gave it the right-click, new tab, erase "denied" treatment to access the survey.

Which, by the way, impressed you're doing this, thank you.

TaSheen

DragonRacer wrote: »

Just FYI, I think something with Vanilla (the forum host) is going on suddenly, @ZOS_Kevin . It's not just that first link with "denied" in the URL. I just went to the News Articles section to pull up the event blog article to check some things, and that now has "denied" in the URL code as well, so you cannot open it by simply clicking on it. You have to right-click, open in new tab, and then remove that "denied" part from the front of the URL in the browser bar. I'm doing this in Chrome on a laptop, so not sure how it might be affecting mobile (I can check later for you and report back)

Methinks ALL links in the forum may be getting this treatment, even retroactively, for whatever reason. At least as far as Chrome goes. I had the same issue with the first link provided in this thread, but I gave it the right-click, new tab, erase "denied" treatment to access the survey.

Which, by the way, impressed you're doing this, thank you.

Wouldn't surprise me. Wish the forum software used here was much more robust. And that's about all I'm going to say.

DragonRacer

Can confirm on mobile (Apple using Safari browser) the first link (with “denied” in front of the URL) doesn’t work. Second link does, though.

First link gives you this:

wilykcat

This discussion is giving me tons of anxiety as it relates to unknown future changes happening to the forums which may end very badly. This is very upsetting and scary for me.

No changes to the forums please.

Tyrant_Tim

Forum Feedback? Great idea.

One thing I’ve noticed, personally. Is that whenever a post gets moved to another category, it’s akin to a death sentence of the topic.

One remedy to this, would be to remove some of the countless categories we have by bundling them. This would help to funnel traffic out of General, which I believe should be the first category to get axed, as it’s about the only place most people stop.

TaSheen

Without a single overarching forum to stop at, I simply wouldn't bother to use this site. General Discussion needs to stay. A bajillion other forums should get axed, but not this one.

There is a reason people stop here. It's where everything informative and important is discussed.

wilykcat

Tasheen,
It sounds like you all want the forums to be deleted. Not everything is General discussion. Not everything belongs there. If all people go onto general discussion and no other categories, then the company will delete the forums. I've seen it happen before to another online game's forum. 😢😭

The results of what could happen is worrying. If the forums go then I will leave the game. We don't need bad things to happen.

wilykcat

No changes for forums. Do not delete the forums. Every category is very valuable and important. The forums is where I get to interact with the community, share my suggestions, and to learn about the game. The forums are very important and valuable to me.

wilykcat

Big unknown changes is my worst fear and its happening here. This kind of stuff gives me severe anxiety and I have autism.

NeuroticPixels

wilykcat wrote: »

Big unknown changes is my worst fear and its happening here. This kind of stuff gives me severe anxiety because I have autism.

Nothing is happening. At least, not yet. No one knows what the future holds.

DragonRacer

And now all these poor event threads being moved are having their links utterly broken if you are on mobile. Clicking them goes to Page Not Found. I presume more of the “denied” URL issue…

TaSheen

DragonRacer wrote: »

And now all these poor event threads being moved are having their links utterly broken if you are on mobile. Clicking them goes to Page Not Found. I presume more of the “denied” URL issue…

No kidding. I am SO TIRED of this stupid moving of threads. There's NO REASON to do this. Period.

Oh, and yes - the thread links are broken on desktop as well. *SIGH* @ZOS_Kevin

Destai

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Katheriah wrote: »

Can I already give some feedback about the survey?

Some of the stats about forum use should be pullable from the forum, like age, use of subfora/recent discussions et cetera.

I'm curious to see which changes this will bring though, please keep us posted.

Thanks for the feedback! So we can pull some of that info for the survey in general. And we will when going through other metrics. But we are asking for the info in the the survey to have it in relation to everyone who fills out the survey. Giving us a better indicator of those actively engaging.

As part of this, I really do hope you are looking at how moderation impacts the experience here. Just take a look at how many people are asking for the the thread moving to stop. It’s causing more confusion than anything. Also, I suggest you search the forums for some of the historical threads on how the community is handled, I think there’s value in qualitative feedback and not relying solely on metrics.

nightstrike

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

To start the survey, click here or copy/paste this link: https://beth.games/3sXeuHX

If you choose "none of the above" for Age, because you don't want to provide age based information, you are blocked from the entire survey. If the only purpose of this is to make it 18+, then have that as an option. But forcing age classification to deny access to the entire survey is poorly designed. If you spent the entire summer on this, I'm surprised that's the only solution. Was this discussed during the three month development cycle? If so, what were the reasons that came up regarding forcibly categorizing responses by age?

LalMirchi

Just completed the survey on Chrome. My choices in the check-box/check-circle sections did not display but I could proceed after clicking on them so I hope my selections were registered.

Freilauftomate

wilykcat wrote: »

Big unknown changes is my worst fear and its happening here. This kind of stuff gives me severe anxiety...

You know what gives me anxiety? People who edit every single one of their posts multiple times. What big unknown changes happened here? I will never know! It makes me angry, annoyed and anxious at the same time.

Unknown (and unwanted) changes to the game are happening with almost every update, but i am pretty sure nothing is going to happen to the forums.

The survey is way too short and superficial. To get real information they would have to make a veteran hardmode survey for power users, but we all know that's not what they want. I have been playing ESO for over 5 years, and this was my second survey.

And i don't believe anyone will ever read what people are writing in the small little boxes. At least it's never going to reach anyone who could do anything about it.

Freilauftomate

first link doesn't work for me either by the way