babylon wrote: »

Thudunblundur wrote: »

I posted something similar to the above in another thread - that the problems are in the management. Don't know that it's the case of course, but interesting that others more closely acquainted with the industry are saying the same.

That's what the job review site said about this company as well.

Just checked it out and it seems like employee reviews are getting worse i.e. the newer ones are worse than the older ones.

Now I feel bad for the devs.

Rodario wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

Thudunblundur wrote: »

I posted something similar to the above in another thread - that the problems are in the management. Don't know that it's the case of course, but interesting that others more closely acquainted with the industry are saying the same.

That's what the job review site said about this company as well.

Just checked it out and it seems like employee reviews are getting worse i.e. the newer ones are worse than the older ones.

Now I feel bad for the devs.

I found that link super interesting. If accurate (and not written by a handful of disgruntled folks who are just taking a whack at their employer) it surely explains a lot of what we are seeing customer side.

Rodario wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

j.murro2ub17_ESO wrote: »

Just a thought, maybe they no longer have the experienced programmers they originally employed to create the game and are using less experienced people to "maintain" the game now. So these people in "training" are learning how to "fix" things by trial and error. That's what it feels like anyway.

I have full confidence in their coders, art designers, etc... since they're a dime a dozen these days. I'm sure they're all of suitable caliber. However, as someone who works in the same field (just not with gaming projects), I can state with relative confidence that all the symptoms we've experienced thus far are typically indicative of a problem at the Project Management level. Everything from project prioritization (which includes design decisions, team coordination, bug selection, etc), to softwared eployment leaves a bit to be desired. Project Management is a major factor in those areas.

@DenverRalphy‌ is a bugfix patch not fixing anything also a project management problem? I'm honestly asking, it just seems unlikely to a layman like me.

Absolutely. It shows a severe break down in management and communication. I seriously doubt coders wrote a bunch of code that did nothing then pushed it out. In a nutshell, there had to be a breakdown in communication, resulting in file revisions not making it into the bundle/package to be deployed. Many factors could contribute to this, however regardless the specifics, a lack of organization would be the root of allowing it to happen.

babylon wrote: »

Rodario wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

Thudunblundur wrote: »

I posted something similar to the above in another thread - that the problems are in the management. Don't know that it's the case of course, but interesting that others more closely acquainted with the industry are saying the same.

That's what the job review site said about this company as well.

Just checked it out and it seems like employee reviews are getting worse i.e. the newer ones are worse than the older ones.

Now I feel bad for the devs.

Wouldn't the devs be part of the "upper management" problem employees have to deal with?

I think devs, except the project managers, are not considered management. Then again, I have no idea about the command structure of a software company, so that's just what I've been assuming.

Rodario wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

Rodario wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

Thudunblundur wrote: »

I posted something similar to the above in another thread - that the problems are in the management. Don't know that it's the case of course, but interesting that others more closely acquainted with the industry are saying the same.

That's what the job review site said about this company as well.

Just checked it out and it seems like employee reviews are getting worse i.e. the newer ones are worse than the older ones.

Now I feel bad for the devs.

Wouldn't the devs be part of the "upper management" problem employees have to deal with?

I think devs, except the project managers, are not considered management. Then again, I have no idea about the command structure of a software company, so that's just what I've been assuming.

I don't know how it is at ZOS but it's likely organized much the same as many other engineering orgs with each tier in the strata having similar grades across different functions...

CTO
VP Eng
Eng Directors
Eng Managers
Team/Tech Leads
Senior Eng
Engineers
Junior Eng
Grad Eng

In other words it's highly likely that there will be people with Dev experience in the senior team (albeit that they may not have visited the code face for a while) and absolutely there will be Dev's in middle-management.

Garetth wrote: »

WOW! This employee review is quite revealing.


I worked at ZeniMax Online full-time (more than an year)

Pros
* Free snacks and drinks.
* Co-workers are generally nice, though some are Asbergerish and odd.
* Salaries are industry average, PTO and benefits are as well.

Cons
* Poorly run and managed.
* Large corporation, no concern for employees.
* Only one product, all eggs are in one basket.
* Product has been poorly received in marketplace, missed target audience.
* Company has had two layoffs since April 2014 game release, with more very likely to come.
* Income stream was vastly overestimated, company is being propped up by other divisions in corporation, not likely to continue much longer.
* Company has very poor reputation for quality control due to management's refusal to allow polish time of product, release and subsequent updates have been full of major and minor bugs, further alienating target audience.

Advice to Management
* Listen to your employees on design decisions; many of them have more experience than you (their managers) do and know a lot more about the game industry.
* Show some respect for your customers. They're not idiots and you should stop treating them as such.

Ok, I think the time has come to strap on our "The END is nigh" sandwich boards.

All kidding aside, I've arrived at a point where I'm wondering if I'm only still subbed because of a sunk cost fallacy.

Sigh. http://www.workplacedynamics.com/blog/uncategorized/how-accurate-are-job-review-sites/
Anonymous reviews tend to skewer any real information you might want.

Razour wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

Thudunblundur wrote: »

I posted something similar to the above in another thread - that the problems are in the management. Don't know that it's the case of course, but interesting that others more closely acquainted with the industry are saying the same.

That's what the job review site said about this company as well.

See also

This is startling.

I'm normally pretty laid back when it comes to overlooking/working-around bugs and such, and I love the game. However this week I have lost my eso mojo a bit.

I have some high level (but not maxed) characters that I don't want to play until the veteran XP issue is fully fixed.

I have some low level alts that I would like to play, but I have had them farming recipes instead, because one of my higher level characters keeps having to abandon provisioning writs because she keeps being given one for a lvl 10 recipe she does not have. After a week of farming suitable containers with a low level alt, the recipe drop rate for level 10 and 15 recipes is so low and I didn't find any of the ones that regularly come up on the writs (I do however have a ton of level 1 and level 5 recipes and ordinary racial motifs), and yesterday I went round and checked every single guild trader in the game (which took a good 2-3 hours, even I want an AH at this point!), and still do not have that recipe.

I know provisioning is going to be overhauled, but in the meantime the drop rate on those recipes needs to be increased so that at least I can do rank 1 provisioning writs without having to keep a character at a low level to incessantly farm cities (ie. if a quest requires me to find a normal low-level green recipe, it should NOT take me a week of boring container farming (on a lower level character than the one with the writ, due to stupid level cut-offs in being able to loot recipes and provisioning mats), checking traders, and making a pest of myself in zone and guild chats, and STILL not have one).

I just started a new character so that I have one I can actually play rather than shelve because of XP worries or keep at a low level to try to loot recipes I need for writs, but I am just not feeling the love atm. Even the at-first amusing waddling animation is starting to do my head in at this point!

I am sure my mojo will return, my point really is that if a firm fan like me can be this put off by so much broken stuff over the last week, they really need to get it fixed soon - even though I am not and will sit it out, I am sure others will be jumping ship over this sort of mess.

I'll tell you what's going on. A Blizzard troll-spy has infiltraded ZOS headquarters and has been sabotaging patches since release. And ZOS are scraching their heads thinking how did those bugs got past.

Lol but really I am not even mad anymore. If I'm in a bad mood I just come over to the forums and read a few threads. It makes me LOL how the game state is getting worse instead of better since release

To me, it was honestly getting better prior to this Xp f$%& up. But the damage inflicted by that alone has severely shaken the confidence and optimism of a lot of players, myself included. It will take a lot to rebuild that. This last collage of mistakes has moved me fully to the skeptical side. I'll be canceling my recurring subscription in favor of time card, most likely. Not sure how much more I'm going to invest in this game.

Chill pill needed. It is what it is. Whether you support them or not, they're going to keep operating the same. Maybe even worse if everyone keeps asking to be compensated.

Take a break. Unsub if you have to and come back later. It's still going to be there.

j.murro2ub17_ESO wrote: »

rophez_ESO wrote: »

Or, it's a very complicated piece of code and a little mistake cause some parts of the patch from applying. They've acknowledged it and are working on a fix. Meanwhile, many thousands of us are still enjoying the game and the vast majority of it's properly working parts.

The xp is a major deal. I have always defended the game too but this is too big to ignore because leveling and advancing or increasing your character is what its all about.

99.9% of the game works completely fine still, and most people have been VR14 at least on their mains for ages now, and VR12/VR10 before that as each step was released. It is a big issue to a very small number of people if I were to have to guess. Leveling's always been pretty simple in this game even in VR's pre-Craglorn back when the mobs could hit you for more than 5% of your health at a time and one missed power attack could stun you while you broke-free and died from the other caster-mob's flamebolt that was with him (at least it was a lot more fun!). This small XP issue will be fixed soon enough, I'm sure...

j.murro2ub17_ESO wrote: »

Just a thought, maybe they no longer have the experienced programmers they originally employed to create the game and are using less experienced people to "maintain" the game now. So these people in "training" are learning how to "fix" things by trial and error. That's what it feels like anyway.

They did have those layoffs a couple of months ago:

http://www.joystiq.com/2014/09/03/elder-scrolls-online-layoffs-bethesda-zenimax

diabeticDemon18 wrote: »

Rodario wrote: »

To whom it may concern

It is one thing for a major content patch to introduce some bugs of varying severity. That happens in every MMO. It is quite another for an incremental patch - whose sole purpose was to get rid of some of the recently introduced bugs - to not fix a single issue except a malfunctioning emote.

It seems like adding insult to injury to change the status of these issues to FIXED in the official "Update 5 known issues" thread.

Some of you might remember this, others are free to check my older comments to verify the following: I have been defending the state of ESO and ZOS for a long time. Mainly by reminding people that even the most successful MMO to date was in bad shape at the beginning.

But this has been a tough week.

XP gain in VR areas was nerfed to a point where it doesn't make sense to level VR characters until it has been fixed. This has been officially acknowledged to some extent and was supposed to have been fixed to a lesser extent in 1.5.3, but even that didn't happen. (I can't bring myself to level an alt through areas I've already completed with another character in such a story-centric game, so I've been playing something else after doing the writ dailies and collecting hireling mails.)

1.5.3 was accidentally released to EU clients while the server was still running 1.5.2, causing an invalid version error for all EU players that tried to log in after downloading the patch on Sunday. It took an entire day to revert clients to 1.5.2.

Now a bug-fix-patch that doesn't fix a single bug was released to NA and I will bet anyone dollars to donuts that the same do-nothing patch will be released to EU tomorrow.

If my subscription hadn't been renewed just a few days ago, I would probably cancel it right now and wait for at least the XP bug to get fixed.

I will leave you with the following words, originally commented in Sunday's invalid version error thread:

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

ZOS, I find your lack of competence disturbing.

Dude... they haven't rolled out update 1.5.3 yet... it failed when they tried to roll it out and are rolling it out tomorrow night... read this

Dude... They rolled it out, most of it just didn't take. Reread that thread you linked.