How hard is it to be a Zenimax employee?

mbaker540 · July 2015

When I come on these forums there is so much negativity.

I'll be honest that I'm not very happy with the state of the game on the console. I feel like Xbox and Playstation got the short end of the stick and the only games I play on PC are Runescape and Eve Online.

I have made my point that that their customer service is generic and doesn't feel genuine. I work in business to business support and I thought I seen people be mean, but I want to know how hard it is for them to come on the forum.

I think if they were a little more genuine and up front with their problems it wouldn't be so bad, but their biggest shortcoming is that their answers are generic and they feel like they are putting a band aid on something that needs stitches. I've also noticed that place blame on other parties.

To be honest I wish the gaming industry would get past the you bought it and now you can't get refund because we sold you something that doesn't work, but you can trade it in for 25% of its value(Console games because I know you can't return of games).

What's your thoughts?

Nerouyn · July 2015

mbaker540 wrote: »

I have made my point that that their customer service is generic and doesn't feel genuine.

I don't question your experience but this is one dimension on which I'd rate Zenimax very highly. The few times I found bugs, I reported them. Their CS staff helped when they could and were at least sympathetic when they couldn't. And the bugs were always fixed in the next patch.

I've had some literally criminal experiences with other developers. I had a character in Star Trek Online who was badly bugged for almost a year. I submitted bug tickets. Months went by. I followed up with CS tickets. They told me it was a bug and to never bother them about this or other problems like it. I posted in their bug forum - along with a lot of other people with the same problem. Nothing. I eventually tried a complaint with BBB. PW's response to that was that I should have submitted a CS ticket - as if I hadn't and then ignored BBB until I threatened to lodge a US FTC complaint. Then finally they fixed the bug.

In the meantime their community manager had slagged off at me on their forums - where I'd never been anything but civil - and took to moderating away any post which shed an accurate light on the situation. Really made me regret buying that lifetime sub.

Mos-De-Atmo · July 2015

I have had the opposite experience. I have found the people at ZOS great and the service team are awesome!

Psychobunni · July 2015

I read on here once that a certain community manager was hired out of law school. Now, I'm not bashing said person at all for doing what they were hired to do or personally (attn: Mods, don't taze me bro, I'll happily edit) I'm just saying if that is in fact true, it speaks more to how ZOS wanted to communicate with their community than anything else. The generic answers, the open ended answers, etc...makes more sense

Steps appear to be being made to rectify that, even a small /lurk makes a difference. It might not be an answer, but it is a "hey, someone sees this". As for answering, imo (and I've said before) they could cover their rears with prefacing that something is subject to change, its still in development but this is what we are looking at, yada yada

The problem I think ZOS has found is that certain statements were made like about how this game would be sub because that is how you develop quality...and things changed. Those statements were held up to be used against ZOS (yes, I'm guilty too). But if they were a bit more honest when things like that happened and the sayer of whatever statements are in question at the time, offered something "hey, that was the plan, it couldn't work as intended and we had to switch to this direction....." even without really explaining why, is better than silence. Is more trustworthy than simply pretending it wasn't said or didn't happen. AND inspires a better relationship between the player base and the developers.

TLDR: Yes, communication could be better

Nerouyn · July 2015

Psychobunni wrote: »

The problem I think ZOS has found is that certain statements were made like about how this game would be sub because that is how you develop quality...and things changed. Those statements were held up to be used against ZOS (yes, I'm guilty too). But if they were a bit more honest when things like that happened and the sayer of whatever statements are in question at the time, offered something "hey, that was the plan, it couldn't work as intended and we had to switch to this direction....." even without really explaining why, is better than silence. Is more trustworthy than simply pretending it wasn't said or didn't happen. AND inspires a better relationship between the player base and the developers.

TLDR: Yes, communication could be better

If the OP is talking about communication then that I can understand. I found ZO to be occasionally a bit two-faced with their PR prior to release. It was dishonest enough to make me distrust all of their claims about the game so I didn't pre-order. Waited until it was heavily on sale.

And I completely agree with you that change is fine but being honest about it is vital. ANet, in the face of many years of criticism about how one-dimensional their PVE is, are now relaxing their anti-trinity stance. Or not. They seem to be trying to be trying to pass it off as no change at all. So sad.

SIXR_sCaR · July 2015

Zenimax employee be like:

Personofsecrets · July 2015

have a feeling it is like this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iiOEQOtBlQ