My 2 cents PRO ZOS

HerrPulaRau · May 2017

After reading some of the last threads I got a bit sick and tired of everyone blaming zos for whatever issues they find / things they don't like / prices too big. So... maybe I will open some eyes with this thread (I doubt it but hey... worth a shot). I want you to understand this is my personal opinion, that I don't support in any way leaving problems unsolved, not fixing bugs, not listening to community, or raising prices for no reason. That being said (and pls. do excuse any mistakes in my English is not my )...

1. I keep seeing things like "I reported that bug N times and was still not solved. Zos is not giving a $#@% / not improving things / ignoring my reports / something similar". What people seem to not be able to understand (and as a dev myself - not triple A games, totally unrelated field - that bugs the %$#^ out of me) is that YOU are not the only one that reports things and every little tiny thing takes time. The fact that the thing that bugs you is not fixed doesn't mean things are not improving and devs are in holiday (well it could mean that also but don't think is the case). Do you guys remember how eso was on launch date? I got 9 or 10 crashes in 2 hours. Does that happen any more? Tight now my biggest issue is with the GF (YES, IT SHOULD BE FIXED); but I try to work around that; there was a time when mmos didn't have GF - but maybe most of you don't remember those. The thing that bugs you may:

- be set to be fixed later because some other things are more important (this is actually the usual case)
- take really, really long time to be fixed and doesn't fit in the time frames
- it may hold other mechanics together (I actually have an example here: I had a guy in guild that was complaining that snipe range - longest range in game - is bigger than some mobs walk zone; so basically he was sniping a mob, the mob was coming towards him and was stopping before hitting him -> while ok... is a glitch, his suggestion was "remove walk zones"; now imagine that the freaking guard that you hit by mistake in town would follow you the whole map; you do realize how that suggestion may impact the game - I'm not saying there is no other fix, I'm just pointing out that devs not just jump to the solution you proposed - in more cases than not that would be tragic)
- it may simply not be important; while bugging you personally, maybe 99.99% of other players just don't care about that specific thing so it just doesn't make sense to allocate resources to change that while other things may bug more ppl.
- other (pretty sure you can find other reasons)

2. I keep seeing things like "Zos is trying to get your money, micro transactions are evil, prices are to high etc.". Yes, zos IS trying to get your money. It may come as a surprise to you but companies are not created to make your life better, are created to make money. What you get of it is FUN. You pay for entertainment. If game is not fun for you, or you have better ways of spending your time nobody is forcing you to buy anything. Now... I don't know about you. But I have the game + morrowind (so that was about 150 EUR - I got the game when it was expensive :P). I've also been a sub for about 2 years (so about 300 EUR here). Total of around 450 EUR, let's say 500. For those 500 EUR I got over 1000h of fun (a total of about 1200-1300h, lets say 300 were boring). That is 0.5 EUR / hour of fun. That looks pretty good to me. If you go out, and you just stay 1h in a bar with a beer (personally that sounds like a sad hour for myself but hey... just an example), that still gets you to 1 EUR (I'm considering a hell of a cheap beer) per hour. I actually computed my average fun hour to 3.4 EUR / hour. For me eso is way under that. From the money you give zos must pay working ppl (designers, devs, testers, coffee guy, the cleanup lady, etc.), hold servers up, develop features (this basically means paying for water, electricity, equipment, office space, etc. for ppl. that work), fix current issues (same things that cost for developing) AND (and this is not most ppl get) make a profit. I suggest you all to compute your average cost / hour of fun (if you want you can also factor in fun quality) and then just make the right decision for you. Personally I don't find prices unfair at all.

Well... I could go on with a couple of more points but probably no1 read those fully so... good luck all and see you in game. And maybe cut the guys some slack. We have a good game, really fun, and the only thing that kills it in my opinion is focusing on $%^&@# parts. ALL THINGS HAVE BAD PARTS.

Turelus · May 2017

Whilst I support threads not blaming ZOS for everything (I myself wear shiny amour with white satin) some of it is warranted.

I don't condone abuse or smack against the Devs, I don't think tears and rage posts are helpful, but critic where it's due is fine and needed with ZOS. They've been bad at a lot of things.

MCBIZZLE300 · May 2017

The only thing that really annoys me is the broken trials. How many other games (especially on console) do you prepare for at least 3 people to crash and have to relog every time you run a group activity.

MarzAttakz · May 2017

HerrPulaRau wrote: »

1. I keep seeing things like "I reported that bug N times and was still not solved. Zos is not giving a $#@% / not improving things / ignoring my reports / something similar". What people seem to not be able to understand (and as a dev myself - not triple A games, totally unrelated field - that bugs the %$#^ out of me) is that YOU are not the only one that reports things and every little tiny thing takes time. The fact that the thing that bugs you is not fixed doesn't mean things are not improving and devs are in holiday (well it could mean that also but don't think is the case). Do you guys remember how eso was on launch date? I got 9 or 10 crashes in 2 hours. Does that happen any more? Tight now my biggest issue is with the GF (YES, IT SHOULD BE FIXED); but I try to work around that; there was a time when mmos didn't have GF - but maybe most of you don't remember those.

As a developer I understand what you're saying and agree to a certain point. However what distinguishes good development practise from bad is COMMUNICATION and ENGAGEMENT with your client/user/subscriber base and I feel that ZOS fail terribly at that. Furthermore, using said user base as beta testers is a practise that I deplore. Old-skool MMO's prior to the pre-order and free-for-all open-beta's generally delivered a substantially complete product.

I would love ZOS to be more transparent with their goals, decisions and development roadmap. I'm not demanding them to do so, I'm begging them, for the sake of their own product and our enjoyment to do so.

HerrPulaRau wrote: »

2. I keep seeing things like "Zos is trying to get your money, micro transactions are evil, prices are to high etc.". Yes, zos IS trying to get your money. It may come as a surprise to you but companies are not created to make your life better, are created to make money. What you get of it is FUN. You pay for entertainment. If game is not fun for you, or you have better ways of spending your time nobody is forcing you to buy anything.

Agree with you here too however it should be a mutually beneficial relationship, they want to make money, we want to have fun.

I feel frustrated by things like a broken group finder that prevent me from having accessible fun. I'm disillusioned by class changes that make no sense (templar), I'm disgruntled by patches that *fix* something only for it to still be broken.

Why? Not because I feel entitled or that it is my right as a consumer. No, not those things. It is because I want to feel some sense of contribution and involvement in something that I'm investing resources (valuable time, valuable money) into.

taiji2078 · May 2017

Well ... bad news are travelling faster than the good news.
When you post a flaw, people will jump on it.

I posted this and I didn't get not even a "you're welcome" from a ZOS staff member. I wasn't waiting for it ... but at least a "Like" or something

)))

You know, I'm always being nice to my customers, owning a business myself too. It is strange to see that ZOS isn't treating better their paying customers ... and yes, here everyone is a paying customer

idk · May 2017

A big part is many do not pay attention to what Zos communicates. Since they have not heard anything about it they assume Zos is not bothering themselves. They also get miffed when Zos does not reply to their thread on the matter even though they are the ones that do not pay attention and fail to bother to check simple areas like the Dev Tracker.

Zos tends to not repeat themselves, which we can see why since many threads are created on the same topic because some players find it necessary to create their own thread just because.

However, Zos is good at not bothering to continue with updating on progress of bugs that are more challenging to find the issue.

In the end it comes down to incomplete communication from Zos and players who consider themselves the center of the universe and that Zos should personally reply to any request they make.

Turelus · May 2017

MarzAttakz wrote: »

As a developer I understand what you're saying and agree to a certain point. However what distinguishes good development practise from bad is COMMUNICATION and ENGAGEMENT with your client/user/subscriber base and I feel that ZOS fail terribly at that. Furthermore, using said user base as beta testers is a practise that I deplore. Old-skool MMO's prior to the pre-order and free-for-all open-beta's generally delivered a substantially complete product.

I would love ZOS to be more transparent with their goals, decisions and development roadmap. I'm not demanding them to do so, I'm begging them, for the sake of their own product and our enjoyment to do so.

This is something which I used to bang on about a lot, and I actually had a conversation with Gina about it which afterwards kind of change my attitude towards it.
I sometimes forget that ZOS isn't from my understanding a huge studio and any time a developer devotes to writing a blog article means they're not actually working on the content or issues.

There is a post on the forums somewhere in which Gina explained how when asking for patch notes information the dev in question told her she had the choice of them doing the notes, or fixing more bugs. Which struck me with how pushed they all are for time to do everything.

taiji2078 · May 2017

Turelus wrote: »

There is a post on the forums somewhere in which Gina explained how when asking for patch notes information the dev in question told her she had the choice of them doing the notes, or fixing more bugs. Which struck me with how pushed they all are for time to do everything.

Not telling them what to do ... it's their business ... but ....

... maybe they should hire some low cost programmers from India / China / Russia and have also the time to reply. I write from Italy. Here, for about100 euro / month, you can hire a person that could actually answer your phone remotely all day long, take the appointments for you, etc. They could hire such service only for customer care.

I started playing ESO in 2014. I never seen a GM in zone chat, in a game zone, or anywhere in fact. I wrote some tickets in 2014 that are still sitting open ... I actually laughed when I returned to ESO last year and I've found those still not answered.

My solution to this without having to hire more people ? Use the 5+ stars people here. Make some of them forum moderators. Give some power to the players. It's free and for sure you could find dedicated players to guide and help the community.

Kali_Despoine · May 2017

since ZoS made the game I think it's safe to say they are to blame for every problem within the code.
Granted they did make a great game
works like 90% of the time on most things
10-20% on others
Not a bad average

Me? I'm Old School
If a game didn't work back in my day they had no way to fix it.
Now they release a non-functional game with the intent to fix it later.
The new model of game releases is bad. Yet people still buy them.
So you can't put the full blame on the company if people are just too carefree with their money

Don't even get me started on pre-orders

Peekachu99 · May 2017

How much more 'communicative' do people expect them to be while remaining true to some kind of personal vision and timelines? They regularly chime in with 1.5 hour videocasts outlining changes/ goals/ etc, and poor Gina throws herself into the Lion's Den on an almost daily basis. The problem with the internet is that the critics are endless, and as soon as you open up your game to absolute influence, the whole thing derails: see DCUO as the cautionary tale of all cautionary tales on how community influence kills a vision.

If devs answered every whine or QQ post here we wouldn't have had new content since 2014.

kalarro · May 2017

Like many others you are comparing the price to the amount of hours spent. That always comes out as a bargain in any MMO comparing it to hobbies outside videogames.
But comparing the expansion cost to other mmo expansions content and price, that is another thing. And Im likeing the expansion, just saying that the content is FAR from 40$. Again, compared to other mmos, not to going out at night.