“Improved Communication”: A Modest Proposal

sans-culottes

We’ve heard repeatedly from ZOS—most recently via @ZOS_Kevin—that improving communication with the community is a priority. And yet, a funny thing keeps happening: silence tends to follow the most pressing questions.

Questions about combat direction. About long-term system coherence. About whether core class kits like Necromancer will ever receive attention beyond cyclical nerfs. About crossplay. About console-specific bugs. About the design vision behind subclassing beyond “play how you want.” You know, the usual.

Instead of clarity, we often get curated responses to low-risk, low-impact questions (“Will the pumpkins return this October?”), while harder ones vanish into the ether like a recalled motif style. When responses do arrive, they’re often framed in the language of “we’re listening,” which has come to function more as ritual than reassurance.

So here’s a modest proposal.

Why not take a page from developers like Ghostcrawler (League/WoW) or Ion Hazzikostas (WoW), who—whatever their flaws—at least attempted periodic, structured communication that addressed thorny systems questions head-on? These weren’t always smooth, but they acknowledged the community’s capacity for complexity. Sometimes even candor.

A monthly systems Q&A. A short devblog explaining philosophical priorities. Even a regular “here’s what we’re working on, and here’s what we’re not” post. Anything that signals, even faintly, that player feedback is being heard, engaged, and integrated—not just politely acknowledged before being swept into a spreadsheet.

We know you can’t answer every question. But it’s increasingly hard to avoid the feeling that the questions being answered are selected for their safety, not their significance.

And that’s not communication. That’s containment.

SickleCider

Dang. I thought you were going to propose eating excess forum goers to facilitate more intimate communication with those that remain.

AtriaKhorist

I'll add to that:
Excessive moderative action, often decried just as much in here, in response to some of those tougher questions, is also not helping matters.

There are people banned from this forum over - justified - frustration with the very communication problem ZOS itself acknowledges.

Freelancer_ESO

I think you'd run into the issue that pushing a greater focus on communication could easily end up taking development time away from actually developing for little actual gains.

I've played games for over two decades now, and I cannot recall a single time a developer has posted something on a significant controversial choice a developer has made where I've disagreed with their choice that has actually persuaded me that their choice was good for me.

The reality is that in attempting to appeal to one group of players you are likely to end up annoying other groups of players especially when you have deadlines and need to make sure the approach can make $.

sans-culottes

SickleCider wrote: »

Dang. I thought you were going to propose eating excess forum goers to facilitate more intimate communication with those that remain.

I did consider that but feared even modest culinary solutions would be nerfed in the next balance pass.

The_Meathead

AtriaKhorist wrote: »

I'll add to that:
Excessive moderative action, often decried just as much in here, in response to some of those tougher questions, is also not helping matters.

There are people banned from this forum over - justified - frustration with the very communication problem ZOS itself acknowledges.

I'm a little stunned at times just how much stuff gets "mysteriously" removed from the Forums, too.

I haven't started a lot of posts and none of mine have been removed that I'm aware of, but I reply to many and come back to check on conversations with the "Participated" tab up top every so often. It's crazy how many of those threads just disappear! It really hit me lately with Subclassing, but I've noticed it before in waves.

Maybe the posters themselves request threads get clipped sometimes, and yes some of them are undoubtedly removed for the purpose of unifying topics or "clean up," but... c'mon now. There's some serious "There is no war in Ba Sing Se'' level of legitimate criticism removal, for sure. It's like there's a limit on disapproval at times, no matter how formally or well its voiced.

It's their game and their forum, so obviously they can do it if they wanna - but I think it's a real disservice to the Customers and to truthfully the betterment of the game how over the top the moderation actually is.

twisttop138

SickleCider wrote: »

Dang. I thought you were going to propose eating excess forum goers to facilitate more intimate communication with those that remain.

I mean I just read a whole huge post about sithis in another thread, maybe we could ask him for some help sacrificing some to Sithis for more communication.

In all seriousness though I've been back a few months after an extended break of a few years. Before that I played from the beginning of console. When I'm playing I like to read the forums. This has been a constant complaint. I've read posts from the community managers apologizing and promising better and more communication. I know they do their best and I really like @ZOS_Kevin. This isn't really their fault. They can only say what they're allowed to say. I found it especially disappointing though, reading through the pts forums. I will not give an opinion on the upcoming subclassing. This is not the place for that. But people are apprehensive, confused, and also trying to give feedback as unpaid testers who just wanna help the game. To see the cherry picked threads that have been commented on, like I said. Disappointing. Face the community head on and speak, let people know the reasoning behind some of these concerns. There's a saying at my work. Communication rules the nation. A monthly QnA is probably the least that could be done. I wasn't here for update 35, but people speak about it like it was the battle of Stalingrad. Let's try not to have that.

Thank you to the Op for their, as per usual, succinct and straightforward post. Cutting to the heart of the matter.

kevkj

The_Meathead wrote: »

I'm a little stunned at times just how much stuff gets "mysteriously" removed from the Forums, too.

I haven't started a lot of posts and none of mine have been removed that I'm aware of, but I reply to many and come back to check on conversations with the "Participated" tab up top every so often. It's crazy how many of those threads just disappear! It really hit me lately with Subclassing, but I've noticed it before in waves.

Maybe the posters themselves request threads get clipped sometimes, and yes some of them are undoubtedly removed for the purpose of unifying topics or "clean up," but... c'mon now. There's some serious "There is no war in Ba Sing Se'' level of legitimate criticism removal, for sure. It's like there's a limit on disapproval at times, no matter how formally or well its voiced.

They just want you to step out to smell some fresh air for a couple of days, what's the the problem komrade?

Erickson9610

ZOS has a lot on their plate right now. They're still working on the remaining questions for the PvP Q&A, for instance. They should be given the time to finish what they've started before they start more Q&As — to have a new Q&A every month is not sustainable.

Destai

I don't typically see follow up questions get answered all that often. If they do, they're typically low-risk, event related questions or something similar. It seems like the CMs have very limited bandwidth to pop into discussions and don't stick around for long. Using examples from experiences, many follow up questions like this get ignored. It's definitely frustrating that moderation can be so diligent, but just getting simple questions answered seems like a tall order.

I was really excited and happy when @ZOS_JessicaFolsom started weighing on communication threads a few months back. There was the PVP Q&A, some other streams, and then it all seemed to die down. Following the rash of moderation threads a few months ago, we were told they were going to find a better balance. No update where that currently is. In most other workplaces, not updating your clients on action items is frowned upon, to put it mildly.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_Kevin any insights?

Destai

Erickson9610 wrote: »

ZOS has a lot on their plate right now. They're still working on the remaining questions for the PvP Q&A, for instance. They should be given the time to finish what they've started before they start more Q&As — to have a new Q&A every month is not sustainable.

A year or two back, some forum members tried starting an open items thread. Of course it got shutdown, and I would've expected the CMs to turn around and create their own. That didn't happen. In my professional experience, it's pretty normal for clients (that'd be us in this situation) to maintain an open questions log and the developer to comply with that. They seem pretty hostile to that way of working.

licenturion

Clear answers and reasons for big questions like cross play etc seem a very good idea. I would also like more info about what the future holds for the game and it's systems. But probably the marketing department isn't a fan of revealing too much of their cards. There is also the problem that people weaponize answers so they must carefully what to say and what not. Once something is officially said, it becomes 'a promise'.

There are limits though. You can't expect a big team of developers explain every bug fix or buff/nerf in detail. The final patch notes sometimes have 'developer comment'. This is a good system and can be used more often for some items though.

But the developers are all hands on deck for the release of U46. They are probably in end sprint modus so they don't have time to react to every PTS question, concern or feedback. But I am pretty sure Kevin or someone else makes a weekly report of these things because we can see changes every week on the PTS and some are the reaction of given feedback.

More communication is always welcome, but they first should get the update out, let people react and then answer questions or even better, do a live AMA. They did that in the past and they answered a few of my questions. That is still better than a back and forth that takes a month or longer for answers and translations on here.

ZOS_Kevin

sans-culottes wrote: »

We’ve heard repeatedly from ZOS—most recently via @ZOS_Kevin—that improving communication with the community is a priority. And yet, a funny thing keeps happening: silence tends to follow the most pressing questions.

Questions about combat direction. About long-term system coherence. About whether core class kits like Necromancer will ever receive attention beyond cyclical nerfs. About crossplay. About console-specific bugs. About the design vision behind subclassing beyond “play how you want.” You know, the usual.

Instead of clarity, we often get curated responses to low-risk, low-impact questions (“Will the pumpkins return this October?”), while harder ones vanish into the ether like a recalled motif style. When responses do arrive, they’re often framed in the language of “we’re listening,” which has come to function more as ritual than reassurance.

So here’s a modest proposal.

Why not take a page from developers like Ghostcrawler (League/WoW) or Ion Hazzikostas (WoW), who—whatever their flaws—at least attempted periodic, structured communication that addressed thorny systems questions head-on? These weren’t always smooth, but they acknowledged the community’s capacity for complexity. Sometimes even candor.

A monthly systems Q&A. A short devblog explaining philosophical priorities. Even a regular “here’s what we’re working on, and here’s what we’re not” post. Anything that signals, even faintly, that player feedback is being heard, engaged, and integrated—not just politely acknowledged before being swept into a spreadsheet.

We know you can’t answer every question. But it’s increasingly hard to avoid the feeling that the questions being answered are selected for their safety, not their significance.

And that’s not communication. That’s containment.

Hi all, just wanted to follow up on this thread. Appreciate the overall conversation here. Sorry in advance, this is going to be a long one.

So to start, we have been making strides in communication on a few fronts. So we have worked on a few community Q&As already this year and working on finishing up our remaining PvP centered ones, where we have directedly answered player questions. We also have AMA's planned for this year as well, so stay tuned to those. We just had our ESO Direct (less than a month ago), which has a good chunk of info on what we are currently working on and soon to release items. We had several communication fronts through out the Vengeance Campaign Test and during the PTS cycle portion of the test where we directly answered user questions. Additionally, we opened a few pipelines for the community to voice bugs and pain points they would like addressed so that we can get the teams on those tasks during our year of transition. Also pipelines to help with ongoing lag issues, which our engineers have been able to make some strides and implement new tech to help better identify issue points (noted in past patch notes). And we can't forget the Guild Summit we held with guild leaders in March to get their thoughts on guild improvements and overall game pain points. Things we are targeting in future updates and were asked by players and answered directly. These are on top of working on getting better messaging for maintenance windows and other smaller items that impact the day to day experience.

While this isn't direct communication, we also have the Kinda Funny Podcast Series where we are discussing the dev process from the early days to now. So that should give some general development insight from Rich and Matt.

That doesn't mean things are perfect. I was just in some meetings earlier this week about more ways we can improve communication over the next several months. But we believe are headed in the right direction. And these changes were based on player feedback from the end of the year.

We know there are more things you want us to talk about. Things like Overland difficulty and other wide systems changes like that. There are some things that are too early to share and can (most likely will) go through quite a bit of change before they are ready to be talked about. Not talking about final product here, just generally. However, the community team is talking to dev teams to see what we can talk about and when, because we do know you want info earlier.

As for dev blogs on systems, we have done those and continue to do them. We had one in the last 30 days focusing on the new Player Response Systems that you can check out here. We have definitely also done many of these in the past around Trials encounters, Item Set philosophy, etc. If you would like more deep dives and philosophy talks, we can flag that for the web team to take a look at how they can prioritize that.

We also try to inject some of that commentary in Dev Comments in the patch notes. I recently got feedback that folks would like more of those outside the confines of combat, so this is something we are working to incorporate that in the U47 Patch Note cycle.

On a personal note, I was wanted to acknowledge the taking a page from other devs book comment. We constantly are looking at what fellow teams in the space are doing. But we also have to scale expectations accordingly. The teams mentioned are awesome and do great work. They are also pretty different in size compared to us. So we have to scale the work we can do accordingly. @Freelancer_ESO gets to the heart of the matter, and it plays into the overall point here.

Freelancer_ESO wrote: »

I think you'd run into the issue that pushing a greater focus on communication could easily end up taking development time away from actually developing for little actual gains.

Bar the "little actual gains" line because communication is always important and holds everything together, the overall point is this is a balancing act. Let's take PTS for example. We have teams that reading your feedback and implementing what they can during the PTS cycle. Doing all of that is a tight turn around and then getting those all prepped for patch notes is a lot. It's why we try to provide what we can in the dev commentary. Having said all of that, we understand that you want more conversations. It is a process we are working through (and have started with the PvP Q&As) to make sure we can hit an appropriate balance, but we are talking about this and working on ways to support it. So we are looking at what other teams are doing and seeing how they can work for us and ultimately work for you.

I said it would be a long one, right! We know this isn't the immediate fix to your concerns, be we are taking the steps to get to where you want us to be. We hope some of the communications from the first 4 months have shown our commitment here, but fully understand more needs to be done to get to a great place. So with that, my action items for you are this: share with us communication methods you have resonated with from other games you play. Obviously we cannot do everything, but being able to identify what is working for you can better narrow our focus in giving you the comms you desire. Happy to read any additional feedback and relay what is needed to the correct teams.

(Also sorry for any typos. Wrote this over the course of a few hours between meetings, so if anything doesn't make sense, I can edit. )

Erickson9610

sans-culottes wrote: »

Anything that signals, even faintly, that player feedback is being heard, engaged, and integrated—not just politely acknowledged before being swept into a spreadsheet.

We've already seen examples of player feedback being heard, engaged, and integrated. There are several examples in the past year of long-running requests finally being implemented, so I won't get into specific examples. The important thing to note is that it may not be the feedback that you or I want to see acted on.

We can give feedback, but ultimately it's not up to us how ESO changes. To say that ZOS doesn't listen to feedback is disingenuous, and what we may consider to be dire, pressing feedback may not actually be in line with the direction ZOS wants to take their game.

We may say a feature — like Subclassing or AwA — would ruin the game, but ZOS isn't going to suddenly cancel something they spent so long planning and working on, and we're not going to get to see their internal roadmap of planned features to veto them before they're started.


We can keep asking ZOS for specific changes or to not make other changes, but ZOS isn't always going to act on our feedback, even if they see it! Sometimes the best response is an explanation of why they're going through with the changes they're making — that's the purpose of Developer Comments. Sometimes I disagree with certain changes, but I can at least count on ZOS having heard my feedback, even if they won't implement it.

Asdara

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Thanks for the detailed follow-up, Kevin. I appreciate the time and effort it takes to write a post like this across meetings and shifting priorities. It's clear that communication is being worked on, but I think many of us still feel that the most structural or vision-level questions remain unanswered, even as more channels open up.

You mentioned AMA plans, dev comments, PvP Q&As, the Kinda Funny series, and the Guild Summit feedback. These are good steps. But the core issue isn’t just about how often we hear from the team or what format it's in. It’s about depth and clarity.

Players aren’t only asking about upcoming patch changes. We're asking about the direction of the game itself. What is the long-term vision for combat and subclassing? Will underdeveloped class kits like Sorcerer or Necromancer be revisited in meaningful ways? How will hybridization and cross-skill line synergy be supported or reined in? These are the kinds of questions that shape the whole experience, and they keep being pushed aside or vaguely acknowledged without real engagement.

That’s why posts like @sans-culottes resonate. Because even when we hear “we’re listening,” it doesn’t always feel like we’re having a real conversation about the game’s future. A regular blog post addressing high-level design philosophy, even if the answers are tentative, would go a long way in building trust and transparency.

We don't expect flawless execution. We just want a clear voice explaining where things are headed. Otherwise, big updates like subclassing start to feel more like reaction than evolution.

Thanks again for the response. Looking forward to continued progress.

RaidingTraiding

Something about all of this seems really familiar... Yes I'm sure I've seen all of this before just worded differently...

MJallday

Sorry Kevin but this isn’t our first rodeo

We’ve been here before and nothing has changed - so these words mean nothing

The team do good work and we all appreciate the efforts - but Actions are required not vague promises of what could be,

Jestir

I'm still waiting on whatever the follow up for "Grave Lords sacrifice" is

I know people can list a bunch of other things that have been "started" and abandoned, like hybridization, but that one still hits the hardest

ESO_Nightingale

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

We’ve heard repeatedly from ZOS—most recently via @ZOS_Kevin—that improving communication with the community is a priority. And yet, a funny thing keeps happening: silence tends to follow the most pressing questions.

Questions about combat direction. About long-term system coherence. About whether core class kits like Necromancer will ever receive attention beyond cyclical nerfs. About crossplay. About console-specific bugs. About the design vision behind subclassing beyond “play how you want.” You know, the usual.

Instead of clarity, we often get curated responses to low-risk, low-impact questions (“Will the pumpkins return this October?”), while harder ones vanish into the ether like a recalled motif style. When responses do arrive, they’re often framed in the language of “we’re listening,” which has come to function more as ritual than reassurance.

So here’s a modest proposal.

Why not take a page from developers like Ghostcrawler (League/WoW) or Ion Hazzikostas (WoW), who—whatever their flaws—at least attempted periodic, structured communication that addressed thorny systems questions head-on? These weren’t always smooth, but they acknowledged the community’s capacity for complexity. Sometimes even candor.

A monthly systems Q&A. A short devblog explaining philosophical priorities. Even a regular “here’s what we’re working on, and here’s what we’re not” post. Anything that signals, even faintly, that player feedback is being heard, engaged, and integrated—not just politely acknowledged before being swept into a spreadsheet.

We know you can’t answer every question. But it’s increasingly hard to avoid the feeling that the questions being answered are selected for their safety, not their significance.

And that’s not communication. That’s containment.

Hi all, just wanted to follow up on this thread. Appreciate the overall conversation here. Sorry in advance, this is going to be a long one.

So to start, we have been making strides in communication on a few fronts. So we have worked on a few community Q&As already this year and working on finishing up our remaining PvP centered ones, where we have directedly answered player questions. We also have AMA's planned for this year as well, so stay tuned to those. We just had our ESO Direct (less than a month ago), which has a good chunk of info on what we are currently working on and soon to release items. We had several communication fronts through out the Vengeance Campaign Test and during the PTS cycle portion of the test where we directly answered user questions. Additionally, we opened a few pipelines for the community to voice bugs and pain points they would like addressed so that we can get the teams on those tasks during our year of transition. Also pipelines to help with ongoing lag issues, which our engineers have been able to make some strides and implement new tech to help better identify issue points (noted in past patch notes). And we can't forget the Guild Summit we held with guild leaders in March to get their thoughts on guild improvements and overall game pain points. Things we are targeting in future updates and were asked by players and answered directly. These are on top of working on getting better messaging for maintenance windows and other smaller items that impact the day to day experience.

While this isn't direct communication, we also have the Kinda Funny Podcast Series where we are discussing the dev process from the early days to now. So that should give some general development insight from Rich and Matt.

That doesn't mean things are perfect. I was just in some meetings earlier this week about more ways we can improve communication over the next several months. But we believe are headed in the right direction. And these changes were based on player feedback from the end of the year.

We know there are more things you want us to talk about. Things like Overland difficulty and other wide systems changes like that. There are some things that are too early to share and can (most likely will) go through quite a bit of change before they are ready to be talked about. Not talking about final product here, just generally. However, the community team is talking to dev teams to see what we can talk about and when, because we do know you want info earlier.

As for dev blogs on systems, we have done those and continue to do them. We had one in the last 30 days focusing on the new Player Response Systems that you can check out here. We have definitely also done many of these in the past around Trials encounters, Item Set philosophy, etc. If you would like more deep dives and philosophy talks, we can flag that for the web team to take a look at how they can prioritize that.

We also try to inject some of that commentary in Dev Comments in the patch notes. I recently got feedback that folks would like more of those outside the confines of combat, so this is something we are working to incorporate that in the U47 Patch Note cycle.

On a personal note, I was wanted to acknowledge the taking a page from other devs book comment. We constantly are looking at what fellow teams in the space are doing. But we also have to scale expectations accordingly. The teams mentioned are awesome and do great work. They are also pretty different in size compared to us. So we have to scale the work we can do accordingly. @Freelancer_ESO gets to the heart of the matter, and it plays into the overall point here.

Freelancer_ESO wrote: »

I think you'd run into the issue that pushing a greater focus on communication could easily end up taking development time away from actually developing for little actual gains.

Bar the "little actual gains" line because communication is always important and holds everything together, the overall point is this is a balancing act. Let's take PTS for example. We have teams that reading your feedback and implementing what they can during the PTS cycle. Doing all of that is a tight turn around and then getting those all prepped for patch notes is a lot. It's why we try to provide what we can in the dev commentary. Having said all of that, we understand that you want more conversations. It is a process we are working through (and have started with the PvP Q&As) to make sure we can hit an appropriate balance, but we are talking about this and working on ways to support it. So we are looking at what other teams are doing and seeing how they can work for us and ultimately work for you.

I said it would be a long one, right! We know this isn't the immediate fix to your concerns, be we are taking the steps to get to where you want us to be. We hope some of the communications from the first 4 months have shown our commitment here, but fully understand more needs to be done to get to a great place. So with that, my action items for you are this: share with us communication methods you have resonated with from other games you play. Obviously we cannot do everything, but being able to identify what is working for you can better narrow our focus in giving you the comms you desire. Happy to read any additional feedback and relay what is needed to the correct teams.

(Also sorry for any typos. Wrote this over the course of a few hours between meetings, so if anything doesn't make sense, I can edit. )

The developer comment regarding piercing cold was really great to see in my opinion because it gives us something to (potentially) look forward to, and something we can hold the developers to. instead of wondering if issues will be fixed, it moves to WHEN issues will be fixed.

agelonestar

What frustrates me is the fact that you guys never answer the difficult stuff. You’ll push product (totally understandable) and I agree that more effort is being made to keep the community updated, but that’s about it.

@ZOS_Kevin you have had probably hundreds of comments about the cost of the new Season Pass versus the costs and benefits of ESO+. Has there been a response…..? Nope. Not even an acknowledgment that many of your loyal ESO+ subscribers feel short-changed, that they feel like they’re now paying twice.

Communication with your customers - you know, the folks that spend their money to keep the game going - is about answering difficult questions, not just fielding the easy wins.

Pixiepumpkin

@ZOS_Kevin I think part of the issue is that communication does not always feel like communication when its just in written form.

I can't speak for others, but for myself the communication is more real, more visceral, more tangible and more BELIEVABLE when its in a video format. And I don't mean video Q:A's with softball questions.

The current attitude is projected towards goofy/slapstick/everythign in ESO is perfect which gives the connontation that things are not taken seriously (even if they are and I assume they are)....I'd personally like to see an attitude of serious driven focus projected when answering questions, especially the tougher ones. Show us, make us believe you care (which I assume you do). Some fun and comedy is expected, but sometimes I feel there is too much joking going on. Of course, this can also be how I was raised in the work culture I experienced over 40 years.

I think at its core, what the player...or rather the customers want is to feel like their voice is heard. To actually feel that they are appreciated as customers. Unfortunately the games design itself flies contrary to this. Instead of "here is a cool reward for playing our game that you already paid for", its "if you want this cool mount, its going to cost you 1600 purple gems which will cost you about $280.00 USD to obtain). Constantly being in our wallet does not show appreciation, it invokes greed.

Couple that feeling with the hard moderation (traditioanlly), and you can soon see how we feel less like valued customers and instead walking wallets.

Which leads us back to why communication is so important. And I know you have a budget and I know that the people in charge of that have a singular focus onlyallowing for so much, but these are important topics that if left to fester and rot, only creats rot in the community, which leads to more more hours spent on policing, which leads to more community discontent and the cycle repeats over and over.

Show us, no..make is BELIEVE you care in the pit of your existance that we have value as customers.
(on a side note, I think you are pretty good at this myself, but some of your superiors...well not so much).

licenturion

Some of these comments are really out there.

For those saying that “nothing of value is ever answered,” I’d genuinely like to see examples of what you actually expect to be addressed. Are we talking about extremely niche personal issues like “Why hasn’t my specific set item XYZ been buffed?” or “Why is the texture on this one mount still broken?” What kind of answers are you realistically expecting? And in what timeframe do you realistically expect an answer?

Here’s my personal experience with ZOS over the past year:

• I reported a hybrid keyboard/controller UI bug and got a DM from Jessica asking for more details.
• I had a question about how this season’s story would replay after the community wall event — the answer was added to the FAQ.
• I asked about battleground matchmaking changes and their rationale — a FAQ post was created addressing that.
• When the Alienware free mount promo didn’t work for me, Kevin stepped in and helped resolve it.
• I posted concerns about the ESO+ exclusive dungeons (Fallen Banners), and Kevin joined the discussion. A clarification post from higher up followed shortly after.
• We received a studio letter laying out the long-term roadmap well in advance.
• After the Direct post-show, there was a breakdown of early findings regarding Vengeance and the areas they were working on.
• The post-show also addressed big concerns like overland difficulty and progress on the in-combat bug.
• During a Reddit AMA, I asked why the Necrom soundtrack hadn’t been released even a year after launch. Matt Firor himself responded and confirmed both Necrom and Gold Road soundtracks would be released in two weeks. He also acknowledged the request to have them on Steam — which they now are.
• I was part of the group locked out during the PTS debacle last year (two weeks access loss). ZOS compensated us with new accounts including all collector’s editions, Endeavors, and other items. It was frustrating, but they handled it as best they could.
• I criticized the updated rock textures in the starter zones during PTS. It wasn’t addressed when it went live, but I received an official reply with the reasoning behind it, when I expressed my disappointment.
• Kevin responded to this very thread with a thoughtful, insightful post that added to the discussion.

I know this is anecdotal, but I honestly don’t think this is bad support — not even average. It's above average for a studio of this size. I follow and play other live service games, and most don’t come close in terms of direct communication or transparency. That said, I also don’t ask highly technical or extremely niche questions. While those would be nice to know, I don’t think they always justify being highlighted as “must answer” questions.

That said, here are a few things I think could be improved:

1. Visibility of information
A lot of useful and interesting communication is buried in forum threads — a platform most players don’t actively check. There are tons of pinned threads and scattered nuggets of information, but if you’re not following closely, it’s almost impossible to find them.

2. More frequent studio updates
The “studio letter” should be quarterly, not yearly. It doesn’t need to be massive — just a light retrospective, key focus points, and a short-term look ahead. These updates should be posted everywhere: Steam, Reddit, launcher pop-ups, etc. Many live service games already do this, whether it’s through short video updates (e.g., Nightingale Dev Bites) or written formats (e.g., Overwatch Director’s Take). Personally, I prefer written updates with meaningful content. They're quick to read, easy to digest, and much simpler to produce. In contrast, videos, showcases, or livestreams require a lot of planning and resources — time and effort that could be better spent on actually improving the game. Now that they are moving away from the yearly format, it only makes sense to revise the yearly studio letter as well.

sans-culottes

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

We’ve heard repeatedly from ZOS—most recently via @ZOS_Kevin—that improving communication with the community is a priority. And yet, a funny thing keeps happening: silence tends to follow the most pressing questions.

Questions about combat direction. About long-term system coherence. About whether core class kits like Necromancer will ever receive attention beyond cyclical nerfs. About crossplay. About console-specific bugs. About the design vision behind subclassing beyond “play how you want.” You know, the usual.

Instead of clarity, we often get curated responses to low-risk, low-impact questions (“Will the pumpkins return this October?”), while harder ones vanish into the ether like a recalled motif style. When responses do arrive, they’re often framed in the language of “we’re listening,” which has come to function more as ritual than reassurance.

So here’s a modest proposal.

Why not take a page from developers like Ghostcrawler (League/WoW) or Ion Hazzikostas (WoW), who—whatever their flaws—at least attempted periodic, structured communication that addressed thorny systems questions head-on? These weren’t always smooth, but they acknowledged the community’s capacity for complexity. Sometimes even candor.

A monthly systems Q&A. A short devblog explaining philosophical priorities. Even a regular “here’s what we’re working on, and here’s what we’re not” post. Anything that signals, even faintly, that player feedback is being heard, engaged, and integrated—not just politely acknowledged before being swept into a spreadsheet.

We know you can’t answer every question. But it’s increasingly hard to avoid the feeling that the questions being answered are selected for their safety, not their significance.

And that’s not communication. That’s containment.

Hi all, just wanted to follow up on this thread. Appreciate the overall conversation here. Sorry in advance, this is going to be a long one.

So to start, we have been making strides in communication on a few fronts. So we have worked on a few community Q&As already this year and working on finishing up our remaining PvP centered ones, where we have directedly answered player questions. We also have AMA's planned for this year as well, so stay tuned to those. We just had our ESO Direct (less than a month ago), which has a good chunk of info on what we are currently working on and soon to release items. We had several communication fronts through out the Vengeance Campaign Test and during the PTS cycle portion of the test where we directly answered user questions. Additionally, we opened a few pipelines for the community to voice bugs and pain points they would like addressed so that we can get the teams on those tasks during our year of transition. Also pipelines to help with ongoing lag issues, which our engineers have been able to make some strides and implement new tech to help better identify issue points (noted in past patch notes). And we can't forget the Guild Summit we held with guild leaders in March to get their thoughts on guild improvements and overall game pain points. Things we are targeting in future updates and were asked by players and answered directly. These are on top of working on getting better messaging for maintenance windows and other smaller items that impact the day to day experience.

While this isn't direct communication, we also have the Kinda Funny Podcast Series where we are discussing the dev process from the early days to now. So that should give some general development insight from Rich and Matt.

That doesn't mean things are perfect. I was just in some meetings earlier this week about more ways we can improve communication over the next several months. But we believe are headed in the right direction. And these changes were based on player feedback from the end of the year.

We know there are more things you want us to talk about. Things like Overland difficulty and other wide systems changes like that. There are some things that are too early to share and can (most likely will) go through quite a bit of change before they are ready to be talked about. Not talking about final product here, just generally. However, the community team is talking to dev teams to see what we can talk about and when, because we do know you want info earlier.

As for dev blogs on systems, we have done those and continue to do them. We had one in the last 30 days focusing on the new Player Response Systems that you can check out here. We have definitely also done many of these in the past around Trials encounters, Item Set philosophy, etc. If you would like more deep dives and philosophy talks, we can flag that for the web team to take a look at how they can prioritize that.

We also try to inject some of that commentary in Dev Comments in the patch notes. I recently got feedback that folks would like more of those outside the confines of combat, so this is something we are working to incorporate that in the U47 Patch Note cycle.

On a personal note, I was wanted to acknowledge the taking a page from other devs book comment. We constantly are looking at what fellow teams in the space are doing. But we also have to scale expectations accordingly. The teams mentioned are awesome and do great work. They are also pretty different in size compared to us. So we have to scale the work we can do accordingly. @Freelancer_ESO gets to the heart of the matter, and it plays into the overall point here.

Freelancer_ESO wrote: »

I think you'd run into the issue that pushing a greater focus on communication could easily end up taking development time away from actually developing for little actual gains.

Bar the "little actual gains" line because communication is always important and holds everything together, the overall point is this is a balancing act. Let's take PTS for example. We have teams that reading your feedback and implementing what they can during the PTS cycle. Doing all of that is a tight turn around and then getting those all prepped for patch notes is a lot. It's why we try to provide what we can in the dev commentary. Having said all of that, we understand that you want more conversations. It is a process we are working through (and have started with the PvP Q&As) to make sure we can hit an appropriate balance, but we are talking about this and working on ways to support it. So we are looking at what other teams are doing and seeing how they can work for us and ultimately work for you.

I said it would be a long one, right! We know this isn't the immediate fix to your concerns, be we are taking the steps to get to where you want us to be. We hope some of the communications from the first 4 months have shown our commitment here, but fully understand more needs to be done to get to a great place. So with that, my action items for you are this: share with us communication methods you have resonated with from other games you play. Obviously we cannot do everything, but being able to identify what is working for you can better narrow our focus in giving you the comms you desire. Happy to read any additional feedback and relay what is needed to the correct teams.

(Also sorry for any typos. Wrote this over the course of a few hours between meetings, so if anything doesn't make sense, I can edit. )

Thank you for the follow-up, @ZOS_Kevin. I genuinely appreciate the effort and the time it takes to craft a detailed response like this across multiple meetings.

That said, I have to agree with commenters like @Asdara and even @licenturion. Communication isn’t just a matter of frequency. It’s about substance. Players aren’t only looking for reminders that bugs are being tracked or that maintenance times are posted. The concern voiced in this thread—and echoed repeatedly across the community—is that the most foundational questions continue to go unanswered. Or when they are addressed, it’s in ways that sidestep the real tension between design philosophy and lived experience.

We’re not asking for every internal discussion to be laid bare. But we are asking for signals that class design, difficulty scaling, monetization practices, and the integrity of the RPG experience are being treated as active, evolving concerns—not just collateral damage from expansion marketing cycles.

P.S. I want to acknowledge that much of this inevitably lands on the community team, particularly @ZOS_Kevin, who’s often the visible point of contact for decisions made far above his pay grade. That’s not lost on most of us. This post isn’t an attack on Kevin or the messenger role he plays. It’s a call for the kind of communication that supports—not just shields—those messengers, and that trusts the player base enough to speak plainly about the state and future of the game.

AtriaKhorist

licenturion wrote: »

Some of these comments are really out there.

For those saying that “nothing of value is ever answered,” I’d genuinely like to see examples of what you actually expect to be addressed. Are we talking about extremely niche personal issues like “Why hasn’t my specific set item XYZ been buffed?” or “Why is the texture on this one mount still broken?” What kind of answers are you realistically expecting? And in what timeframe do you realistically expect an answer?

Here’s my personal experience with ZOS over the past year:

• I reported a hybrid keyboard/controller UI bug and got a DM from Jessica asking for more details.
• I had a question about how this season’s story would replay after the community wall event — the answer was added to the FAQ.
• I asked about battleground matchmaking changes and their rationale — a FAQ post was created addressing that.
• When the Alienware free mount promo didn’t work for me, Kevin stepped in and helped resolve it.
• I posted concerns about the ESO+ exclusive dungeons (Fallen Banners), and Kevin joined the discussion. A clarification post from higher up followed shortly after.
• We received a studio letter laying out the long-term roadmap well in advance.
• After the Direct post-show, there was a breakdown of early findings regarding Vengeance and the areas they were working on.
• The post-show also addressed big concerns like overland difficulty and progress on the in-combat bug.
• During a Reddit AMA, I asked why the Necrom soundtrack hadn’t been released even a year after launch. Matt Firor himself responded and confirmed both Necrom and Gold Road soundtracks would be released in two weeks. He also acknowledged the request to have them on Steam — which they now are.
• I was part of the group locked out during the PTS debacle last year (two weeks access loss). ZOS compensated us with new accounts including all collector’s editions, Endeavors, and other items. It was frustrating, but they handled it as best they could.
• I criticized the updated rock textures in the starter zones during PTS. It wasn’t addressed when it went live, but I received an official reply with the reasoning behind it, when I expressed my disappointment.
• Kevin responded to this very thread with a thoughtful, insightful post that added to the discussion.

I know this is anecdotal, but I honestly don’t think this is bad support — not even average. It's above average for a studio of this size. I follow and play other live service games, and most don’t come close in terms of direct communication or transparency. That said, I also don’t ask highly technical or extremely niche questions. While those would be nice to know, I don’t think they always justify being highlighted as “must answer” questions.

That said, here are a few things I think could be improved:

1. Visibility of information
A lot of useful and interesting communication is buried in forum threads — a platform most players don’t actively check. There are tons of pinned threads and scattered nuggets of information, but if you’re not following closely, it’s almost impossible to find them.

2. More frequent studio updates
The “studio letter” should be quarterly, not yearly. It doesn’t need to be massive — just a light retrospective, key focus points, and a short-term look ahead. These updates should be posted everywhere: Steam, Reddit, launcher pop-ups, etc. Many live service games already do this, whether it’s through short video updates (e.g., Nightingale Dev Bites) or written formats (e.g., Overwatch Director’s Take). Personally, I prefer written updates with meaningful content. They're quick to read, easy to digest, and much simpler to produce. In contrast, videos, showcases, or livestreams require a lot of planning and resources — time and effort that could be better spent on actually improving the game. Now that they are moving away from the yearly format, it only makes sense to revise the yearly studio letter as well.

My personal experience with ZOS is basically summarized in my signature, sans the many parts that were removed.

It wasn't the only issue, not by far. But it's an absolutely perfect example of an issue that antagonized many players and of spectacularly poor communication all the way to its now likely resolution with the next patch.

And as an addendum - just because there are good examples doesn't negate all the rest. I've had excellent interactions with ZOS support as well. Sadly it has been the exception.

AtriaKhorist

Pixiepumpkin wrote: »

The attitude in current videos is projected errors towards goofy/slapstick/everythign in ESO is perfect which gives the connontation that things are not taken seriously (even if they are and I assume they are)....I'd personally like to see an attitude of serious driven focus projected when answering questions, especially the tougher ones. Show us, make us believe you care (which I assume you do). Some fun and comedy is expected, but sometimes I feel there is too much joking going on. Of course, this can also be how I was raised in the work culture I experienced over 40 years.

That, I fear, is American media culture. Everything is awesome, everything is amazing, things are great.

Basically it's those old MediaShop ads that ran over here at night 20 years ago already, applied to a game studio. It never jived with me. Maybe I'm too European for it.

Also, Matt Firor and Rich Lambert, if you're reading this - whoever coached you to move your hands like that, tell them no.

colossalvoids

After seeing Kevin's response there's some things still missing. There's a lot of things people want to hear about, sure, some want to watch podcasts etc. but the core fundamentals aren't being presented in deep and detailed enough manner if ever and boils down to a promo material rather than informative pieces that directly tackles most important current issues like for example subclassing. There was zero meaningful interaction and that the perfect recent example. When the answer would be provided if it ever will be it would probably be already with the release of a feature many consider game breaking or altering in a bad way, you can clearly see it on any platform of choice.

Timing is whole other issue apart from answers being more of a promotional piece. Add there slow reaction times and it paints not a pretty picture overall.

The language always used isn't helping either, sanitized "Microsoft talk" isn't a norm anymore, more of an atavism of an era where communication was less about presenting full possible information and more about accessibility where the lowest possible denominator would get it and be appreciative of the piece whilst more technically wired ones are left wondering. It's gone for most companies nowadays but still strong with Bethesda adjacent studios for some reason. That also brings folks to a conclusion that there's no real, meaningful conversation happens by the very nature/form of those informational pieces and how they're presented and structured. Hence the OP's remark for questions about pumpkins and no answers about stingy cut dry pain points of the day.

Destai

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So to start, we have been making strides in communication on a few fronts. So we have worked on a few community Q&As already this year and working on finishing up our remaining PvP centered ones, where we have directedly answered player questions. We also have AMA's planned for this year as well, so stay tuned to those. We just had our ESO Direct (less than a month ago), which has a good chunk of info on what we are currently working on and soon to release items. We had several communication fronts through out the Vengeance Campaign Test and during the PTS cycle portion of the test where we directly answered user questions. Additionally, we opened a few pipelines for the community to voice bugs and pain points they would like addressed so that we can get the teams on those tasks during our year of transition. Also pipelines to help with ongoing lag issues, which our engineers have been able to make some strides and implement new tech to help better identify issue points (noted in past patch notes). And we can't forget the Guild Summit we held with guild leaders in March to get their thoughts on guild improvements and overall game pain points. Things we are targeting in future updates and were asked by players and answered directly. These are on top of working on getting better messaging for maintenance windows and other smaller items that impact the day to day experience.

This paragraph is really good. You could do a monthly community management digest where you post something like this with key accomplishments and open endeavors. There's a lot of information for us to read and your team to prepare. Something to keep track of it all would be really appreciated.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

While this isn't direct communication, we also have the Kinda Funny Podcast Series where we are discussing the dev process from the early days to now. So that should give some general development insight from Rich and Matt.

Personally, I'm a little tired of hearing about the early days. It was 10+ years ago. There's more immediate issues now. People are asking for specific topics to be discussed, more so than general development insights. Rich and Matt's time is really valuable, so I would suggest focusing on the difficult, pressing issues. If you're releasing a big overhaul patch like U46, those are topics that should get attention and leadership insight.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

If you would like more deep dives and philosophy talks, we can flag that for the web team to take a look at how they can prioritize that.

Last time this came up, it was suggested that you do deep dives on performance and PVP. The latter's had some attention, so that's good. How about a deep dive into performance or where combat's going? How about sourcing the questions here and Reddit?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

That doesn't mean things are perfect. I was just in some meetings earlier this week about more ways we can improve communication over the next several months. But we believe are headed in the right direction. And these changes were based on player feedback from the end of the year.

Yes, you guys have definitely improved, aside from moderation. And the hard work you guys do with patch notes and the AMAs is greatly appreciated.

But nothing will be a substitute for the developers actually talking with people. I don't know what your brainstorming sessions are discussing, but I worry your collective team is overthinking this. Just take the big performance thread - it took Rich coming into the thread to get it moved along. Sadly, we've still had very little status updates since then.

And really, with U46 and how it's playing out, it feels like another U35 type situation. I would've thought that U35 had been an inflection point, because across the board, it could've been handled way more carefully. So, it's disappointing that the devs aren't on the forums discussing things now, with the biggest combat change the game's ever seen.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We also try to inject some of that commentary in Dev Comments in the patch notes. I recently got feedback that folks would like more of those outside the confines of combat, so this is something we are working to incorporate that in the U47 Patch Note cycle.

Those are ok, don't step doing them, but I see a lot of them get refuted pretty quickly. That's why conversations are needed. The devs are thinking about things from the system design perspective, we're thinking about it from a usability perspective. That gap needs to be bridged. If you start seeing a PTS cycle that's heavily contested, then I think it's important to start engaging people.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Let's take PTS for example. We have teams that reading your feedback and implementing what they can during the PTS cycle. Doing all of that is a tight turn around and then getting those all prepped for patch notes is a lot. It's why we try to provide what we can in the dev commentary. Having said all of that, we understand that you want more conversations. It is a process we are working through (and have started with the PvP Q&As) to make sure we can hit an appropriate balance, but we are talking about this and working on ways to support it. So we are looking at what other teams are doing and seeing how they can work for us and ultimately work for you.

How do you define "conversations" here? Do you mean Rich and team talking with each other on a stream? Do you mean people getting replies on threads?

Regardless, it’s not something that I think you need to research with other teams. Just have the developers active on their own forums. That’s all you have to do. Why can’t that be done? You've stated they're reading the forums, so they're clearly here.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We constantly are looking at what fellow teams in the space are doing. But we also have to scale expectations accordingly. The teams mentioned are awesome and do great work. They are also pretty different in size compared to us. So we have to scale the work we can do accordingly.

I think you guys should be more forthcoming about what you can actually do. Judging by your quote for example, sounds like you guys have a small or reduced team size. Is that what you're trying to convey? What kind of solutions would work for your teams?

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom tagging you for visibility

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So with that, my action items for you are this: share with us communication methods you have resonated with from other games you play.

It feels like this conversation keeps happening. Were you guys a newer studio or game, or new in your careers, it'd be fine to ask for suggestions. But a lot of conversations have already happened; you've been given a lot of suggestions over the years.

Just back in December, there was a big discussion about community management where many suggestions were already provided. Here was my post from that discussion. Even in November, following the stream with Brian, people poured in and provided comments.

Here's some relevant feedback previously provided:

• Provide topic/feedback recap lists.
• Using technical people's responses as status reporting frameworks.
• Using firmer language when describing technical work.

There should be a better effort to reply to the suggestions already provided. Just from a personal perspective, if you look at my posts, I've asked you many questions and provided many suggestions over the years and they largely don't get answered. Same goes for DMs. People don't want to provide these things in vain, and repeat themselves if they're not viable for you guys. That goes back to my point, that you should be more open about what's actually feasible for your teams.

DigiAngel

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

sans-culottes wrote: »

We’ve heard repeatedly from ZOS—most recently via @ZOS_Kevin—that improving communication with the community is a priority. And yet, a funny thing keeps happening: silence tends to follow the most pressing questions.

Questions about combat direction. About long-term system coherence. About whether core class kits like Necromancer will ever receive attention beyond cyclical nerfs. About crossplay. About console-specific bugs. About the design vision behind subclassing beyond “play how you want.” You know, the usual.

Instead of clarity, we often get curated responses to low-risk, low-impact questions (“Will the pumpkins return this October?”), while harder ones vanish into the ether like a recalled motif style. When responses do arrive, they’re often framed in the language of “we’re listening,” which has come to function more as ritual than reassurance.

So here’s a modest proposal.

Why not take a page from developers like Ghostcrawler (League/WoW) or Ion Hazzikostas (WoW), who—whatever their flaws—at least attempted periodic, structured communication that addressed thorny systems questions head-on? These weren’t always smooth, but they acknowledged the community’s capacity for complexity. Sometimes even candor.

A monthly systems Q&A. A short devblog explaining philosophical priorities. Even a regular “here’s what we’re working on, and here’s what we’re not” post. Anything that signals, even faintly, that player feedback is being heard, engaged, and integrated—not just politely acknowledged before being swept into a spreadsheet.

We know you can’t answer every question. But it’s increasingly hard to avoid the feeling that the questions being answered are selected for their safety, not their significance.

And that’s not communication. That’s containment.

Hi all, just wanted to follow up on this thread. Appreciate the overall conversation here. Sorry in advance, this is going to be a long one.

So to start, we have been making strides in communication on a few fronts.

So @ZOS_Kevin you had asked some time ago to report directly to you when over-moderation happened, which I did. I never got a response....so honestly, real communication may start with you.

SwimsWithMemes

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

So with that, my action items for you are this: share with us communication methods you have resonated with from other games you play. Obviously we cannot do everything, but being able to identify what is working for you can better narrow our focus in giving you the comms you desire. Happy to read any additional feedback and relay what is needed to the correct teams.

(Also sorry for any typos. Wrote this over the course of a few hours between meetings, so if anything doesn't make sense, I can edit. )

Hi Kevin,

The single best communicator I have ever seen for a game is Mark Rosewater, head designer for Magic: the Gathering.

He has an (almost weekly) article on the Magic: The Gathering website, he has a long term series on game design lessons, and runs a weekly podcast. He has a Tumblr that I think he operates in his own time, and fields questions almost daily (https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/?source=share). When he answers questions, he does it from the perspective of available knowledge - e.g., he doesn't communicate future decisions (as those can be in flux), only what has been locked in and the historic reasons for those decisions from internal design documents.


Stellaris have a dev diary that is published almost bi-weekly, which includes design decisions and discussions on future content (as well as patch notes as they happen).


Zero-K has a "Cold Take" series every 3 weeks to a month about different topics.

Creative Assembly (Total War) have an up-and-down communication schedule. They have the (to me) poor habit of ramping up communication only around patch time, which makes it feel like an extended advertisement. However, the patch cycle leading up to new content can be around 3 months in length, so we get a good time to digest each proposed change.


For ESO, one of the biggest problems I have seen here, is that it takes so long for communication to happen. You've said there's been meetings recently, and last year etc, but why does it feel no different than the last 10 years? Why has this not been a historic priority? E.g., the communication on overland feedback is being discussed and is a long term thing. Why is subclassing so spontaneous in comparison?

I guess for many enfranchised players, they want to communicate with developers or communicators who are "on their level", and want to feel heard, as an MMO for some is an entire life, which is quite common across MMOs.if it feels like the communication is an after thought, how can that communication convey the passion and time that people hope is reflected in the game?

There's real value in giving developers time to write up proper patch notes (or discuss them with someone who will write them up), and having a guaranteed schedule of communication with known topics.


Tl;dr: see how Mark Rosewater does blogatog


Edited to remove a negative example

React

Appreciate the detailed update here @ZOS_Kevin .

Those of us who have been here for years have seen the "we'll do better on communication" remarks every year for the better part of this game's life cycle, even more so in recent years as player dissatisfaction has grown, so I'm sure you can understand the skepticism when we hear it again. There certainly has been an uptick in communication this year which has been appreciated, but I want to echo the sentiment many others are expressing that it feels like the hard questions are purposefully avoided, and that the substance of the communication is still severely lacking.

The communication surrounding subclassing in particular has been worrisome for me, personally. This system changes the core of ESO so drastically that it will never look the same again. It completely obliterates class identity, which was stated by the combat team as something that was important to them. It introduces an enormous amount of powercreep and imbalance, the scope of which being so vast it could never be addressed in one short PTS cycle. The inbuilt drawbacks of the system (double skill points and re-leveling class skills) are poorly thought out anti-fun grinding mechanics which have no actual impact on it balance wise. The system is inarguably not ready to be released in it's current state, and yet there has been almost no communication surrounding why it's being pushed to live despite the studio stating earlier this year that the new patch cadence would allow their developers more time to deliver polished/completed content.

To me, this is an egregious misstep by the studio on par with update 35. The fact we've seen no comments from any of the developers or studio head regarding this system throughout this PTS just reinforces the sentiment that the studio is unwilling to communicate about the pressing, difficult topics the community actually cares about.

Deimus

Still waiting to see if we will get official acknowledgement on how the new 5 pet limitation in PvP counts corpses as pets and will negatively affect the Necromancer's corpse mechanic and how it prevents players from using multiple corpse consuming abilities to their full potential. Ranging from a 33%-80% reduction in effectiveness to multiple corpse consuming abilities. Rather if it was intentional or not those are huge changes that deserve developer comment.

Like many issues the Necromancer has faced we have brought it up week 1 of the PTS and we're on week 4 still with no official comment. We don't know if they're even aware that it will affect Necromancers to this extent as there have been past changes to the class that cripple necessary interactions that the development team was unaware of until players brought it to their attention.