PTS Participation & Experience Survey

StihlReign

A one player interview does nothing. There's 25M players per ZOS.

The community deserves a survey communication roadmap. Look at the forums (everyone on the forums has an account and a vested interest in providing feedback). The players deserve a clear plan that details how ZOS will move forward with the player's concerns after survey completion. Show the consensus. This would help build trust, boost participation, and ensure clear understanding of the survey's purpose and outcomes.

Key elements should include setting objectives, crafting clear key messages, selecting appropriate communication channels, establishing a timeline, and presenting a plan for how they'll act on the feedback received. Even if it's nothing more than "we hear you, but we're going to do nothing"...which is where we are now.

There are companies built to do this, reinvention of the wheel isn't necessary.

Varana

The PTS generally comes much too late in the process. When it arrives, and people find something to report right away, it'll be the third week of a five week cycle until there is any chance of seeing a reaction to that report. If something comes up later in the PTS cycle, the chances of fixes or corrections are even lower. That leads to the general impression that feedback is usually just ignored.

That even applies to simple bugs (not meaning they're simple to fix but that they're just obviously bugs, not new mechanics or combat changes). I get that the latter may be a matter of opinion, or that there is a different design goal behind them that are done for a reason even if I may not agree with them.
But there have been many, sometimes severe, bugs in the PTS that have been called out early in the cycle - and still went live. And if something's on the live servers, these issues will often persist for months or years. Or a decade.
Or the bug goes live but is then fixed in one of the next patches. That's especially frustrating because it creates the impression that PTS feedback is totally ignored and sent to the garbage bin but you're starting to listen to bug reports again once the PTS is over. That is most probably not how it works in the background, but that is how it feels on the other end.

Between the PTS and live, there should be several weeks that are just spent acting on feedback, especially bug fixes.

And that also is true for combat changes or other things like Accountwide Achievements (I'm still not over that one, especially how it was handled in terms of communication and feedback). In all of the more controversial changes in the last years, complete novels of constructive feedback were written that tried to keep the original intent in place but make it better.
Still, crickets. And tumbleweed. Dozens upon dozens of pages of feedback and bug reports and not a single reply.

Just telling the reason for something - that is possible. Do it while your marketing and PR overlords are on the toilet, or whatever.
If you don't have the manpower to do something - you can just say that.
If the game is too old and was written in a way that makes something impossible - you can just say that.
If something takes more time than it looks from the outside - you can just say that.

In the end, the PTS experience has become deeply frustrating. It's okayish to just get a sneak peek at a new thing. But that's not what I think it should be about.
If you do think that that's what the PTS is for - just as a PR tool to get some hype or whatever - you can just say that. And maybe get rid of the bug reporting and feedback thing so people use it as intended and don't get a false impression.

In the end, that's why I mostly stopped participating in the PTS. It's not worth my time and disk space. If I find a bug, it will go live anyway, so I might as well just not bother.

Punches_Below_Belt

Morvan wrote: »

Just sent mine, very glad to see more communication lately, thank you.

As I see it, this is not improved communication. Communication goes in two directions. All this feedback is just performative PR nonsense until ZOS actually is communicating back. We have flooded ZOS with feedback for twelve years.

PTS is just another facet of this. One way communication, content promotion pretending to be player involvement.

The last thing they need is more feedback. They need leadership that will make them actually engage and act.

Why are the servers so bad since the end of June update? <crickets>

What happened to the soul reapers?<crickets>

What is the release date of update 48? <crickets> but here’s a survey?

I don’t know what a “community manager” does but apparently it has more to do with party planning, repeating corporate sound bites designed to deflect issues and talk show hosting than getting meaningful answers from developers about game concerns.

No more feedback until you publicly address the feedback you already get on an hourly basis.

Finedaible

A little survey of my own for ZoS:

1. Is there anything worth testing after downloading the game for the PTS?
2. Is our feedback actually considered, or is only feedback with absolute, 100% validation and undying praise submitted for review?
3. What is being done about the bugs reported in week 1 yet did not receive a fix before launch?
4. Do you reject this reality and replace it with your own?

Thank you for participating in this valuable survey. We may or may not have answers in 10 years.