Is ZOS aware of the state of their game currently?

Tyrthax · May 2020

I’m just flabbergasted that they haven’t offered players ANY compensation for the downtime, the issues, or anything. Every other game I’ve played offers compensation for unscheduled downtime for the inconvenience and poor performance. It’s honestly the LEAST ZoS could do.

Give people some crates or something, or some crowns. Like holy crap.

Elsonso · May 2020

Tyrthax wrote: »

I’m just flabbergasted that they haven’t offered players ANY compensation for the downtime, the issues, or anything. Every other game I’ve played offers compensation for unscheduled downtime for the inconvenience and poor performance. It’s honestly the LEAST ZoS could do.

Give people some crates or something, or some crowns. Like holy crap.

1. The would be the Ouroboros crates, and people would complain.
2. They have traditionally not done any manner of compensation in the past.

Tyrthax · May 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Tyrthax wrote: »

I’m just flabbergasted that they haven’t offered players ANY compensation for the downtime, the issues, or anything. Every other game I’ve played offers compensation for unscheduled downtime for the inconvenience and poor performance. It’s honestly the LEAST ZoS could do.

Give people some crates or something, or some crowns. Like holy crap.

1. The would be the Ouroboros crates, and people would complain.
2. They have traditionally not done any manner of compensation in the past.

Oh I know. I’m saying they need to do better. They are well aware of the issues, the play problems, etc. And they can’t even offer some sort of placebo or anything to make it feel like they care or don’t want us to feel good about any of this.

Tandor · May 2020

furiouslog wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

There are a couple of vague statements about addressing the desyncs and lag in the recent update posts on the news page, but beyond that, it's hard to know if they really understand the extent of the problem or how profoundly it affects our experience in the game.

Because we keep playing and their numbers are higher than ever, it's probably telegraphing that the issues are acceptable to enough people that no matter what ZOS does it's unlikely to affect their bottom line.

It isn't that issues of the magnitude complained about here aren't acceptable to people - how could they be? - rather, it's that not all players experience them, not even on PC EU.

I'm sure that ZOS are concerned about performance, and that's reflected in the survey this week, but whether you get asked about performance depends on how you answer the trigger questions.

I see the point, but I was including the players that experience the same issues of lag, desyncs, skill misfires, and quest bugs, but it's not bad enough to affect their enjoyment of the game because of the way they play. I'd be the majority of players that fall in the casual bucket don't know about LA weaving, or even properly avoid AOEs (I often see pug "vets" stand firmly in bad who remain wonderfully ignorant of its effects). The overland content is easy enough to not have to deal with those complexities, so they could be experiencing these issues but not even be aware because the game's skill level is forgiving enough that these issues don't interfere with their experience.

That may be a valid argument for some of the issues such as skill misfires and desyncs etc, but is irrelevant in relation to things like general lag, low framerates, frequent disconnections and long loading screens etc. Everyone without exception can tell whether they are suffering from those sorts of problems, and not all players are. I'm not convinced that most players experience quest bugs on a significant scale, but if such bugs were significant they would certainly notice them. I think the last one I had was about 4 years ago (it was fixed in an incremental patch 2 weeks later), and I spend almost all my time in the game questing at all levels.

DigitalHype · May 2020

Lysette wrote: »

To me the game is too tedious with these long loading screens - instead of 2 or 2.5 hours to do my crafting writs with 14 characters it takes me now between 5-7 hours - which means I am waiting to be zoned in as long as i am actually playing. I don't have time to waste 2-5 hours on waiting on loading screens and putting up with failing teleports and having to login quite often again this is crap and it could be fixed, because it was fine 2.5 weeks ago. ZOS just doesn't care enough. well, if this continues I will have a break of about a year - not playing ESO to not have to see this mess all the time - and just get back to it in a year to see if it has changed to the better.

The more time you spend in the loading screen, the longer it takes you to complete routine tasks. The longer it takes you to complete those tasks, the more time you spend playing the game (and possibly sub'd). Now multiply that by thousands of users. More opportunity for crown store hits and subscription revenue. Take a look at what the client side threads are doing when the "loading" is happening.

Lumsdenml · May 2020

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Eh, it's AV weekend on WoW Classic, I'm all set.

What's WoW?

Lumsdenml · May 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Atherakhia wrote: »

The problem is the longer this goes on the more I'm convinced it's not a hardware issue and is instead the fault of poor coding. No company with such enormous public exposure would let these types of issues continue unfixed and ignored for so long.

Coding (aka the "server software") has been the odds-on favorite for the culprit for a long time now. Hardware is an easy fix, and a lot cheaper than a software fix, if you ask me.

Agreed. They are building on code that is what, 8 years old now? As complicated as this game is, it really must be a nightmare to try to fix.

TineaCruris · May 2020

Elsonso wrote: »

Atherakhia wrote: »

The problem is the longer this goes on the more I'm convinced it's not a hardware issue and is instead the fault of poor coding. No company with such enormous public exposure would let these types of issues continue unfixed and ignored for so long.

Coding (aka the "server software") has been the odds-on favorite for the culprit for a long time now. Hardware is an easy fix, and a lot cheaper than a software fix, if you ask me.

Is it though? The cost for a huge, high quality server farm is quite high, and a recurring cost.

Perhaps we are getting the $500/month studio apartment in a college town instead of the $5,000/month condo in Manhattan we are paying for. Sure, we got a roof over our head and a toilet that flushes, but it's not exactly what we are paying for.

The longer this goes on, the more the issues look like decisions made in the accounting department rather than on the development team to me. I don't think the problem is the ZOS devs and coders. But there is an undeniable, recurring problem coming from somewhere in Zenimax, that is undeniable. More and more, this situation seems like the result of marketing decisions.

Until some of these issues are actually fixed, there is no reason for anyone to have confidence we are being told the truth about these issues even being worked on.

Alucardo · May 2020

Lumsdenml wrote: »

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Eh, it's AV weekend on WoW Classic, I'm all set.

What's WoW?

World of Warcraft

Lumsdenml · May 2020

Alucardo wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Eh, it's AV weekend on WoW Classic, I'm all set.

What's WoW?

World of Warcraft

What's World of Warcraft?

Raammzzaa · May 2020

Do they know - it appears to be clear from what they have said that they know the performance of their product is terrible. Do they care - when I have watched their steams I have gotten that impression that at least individual devs probably do. Are they capable of fixing the problem - maybe not... I would like to hope so, but the continual degradation of performance, and the fact that they finally released a so-called "performance improvement patch" only to have game performance actually get worse doesn't impart a lot of confidence.

Elsonso · May 2020

TineaCruris wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Atherakhia wrote: »

The problem is the longer this goes on the more I'm convinced it's not a hardware issue and is instead the fault of poor coding. No company with such enormous public exposure would let these types of issues continue unfixed and ignored for so long.

Coding (aka the "server software") has been the odds-on favorite for the culprit for a long time now. Hardware is an easy fix, and a lot cheaper than a software fix, if you ask me.

Is it though? The cost for a huge, high quality server farm is quite high, and a recurring cost.

Obviously, I am not on the inside and do not know what they are paying to rent a single server blade or the total cost of an employee for a year. My thinking is that the employee time is more expensive than the hardware.

Alucardo · May 2020

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Eh, it's AV weekend on WoW Classic, I'm all set.

What's WoW?

World of Warcraft

What's World of Warcraft?

Now I know you're trolling. Even hermits that live in caves with no access to technology have heard of World of Warcraft.

Lumsdenml · May 2020

Raammzzaa wrote: »

Do they know - it appears to be clear from what they have said that they know the performance of their product is terrible. Do they care - when I have watched their steams I have gotten that impression that at least individual devs probably do. Are they capable of fixing the problem - maybe not... I would like to hope so, but the continual degradation of performance, and the fact that they finally released a so-called "performance improvement patch" only to have game performance actually get worse doesn't impart a lot of confidence.

I believe that, for the most part, communication from the dev team has been pretty transparent. Way more transparent that they have to be. What they have said is that it is a complicated. Not just a single issue. This game must have Billions of lines of code. It it realistic that they can find and optimize that much code in a few months? Of course not. Not to mention changes that are made every three months creates an environment where more issues could crop up. So I think they have made a decision that not releasing new content is worse than focusing all energy on ironing out code and stopping all new content for however long it takes... A year?

Lumsdenml · May 2020

Alucardo wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Eh, it's AV weekend on WoW Classic, I'm all set.

What's WoW?

World of Warcraft

What's World of Warcraft?

Now I know you're trolling. Even hermits that live in caves with no access to technology have heard of World of Warcraft.

Ha! Caught me...

Lysette · May 2020

DigitalHype wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

To me the game is too tedious with these long loading screens - instead of 2 or 2.5 hours to do my crafting writs with 14 characters it takes me now between 5-7 hours - which means I am waiting to be zoned in as long as i am actually playing. I don't have time to waste 2-5 hours on waiting on loading screens and putting up with failing teleports and having to login quite often again this is crap and it could be fixed, because it was fine 2.5 weeks ago. ZOS just doesn't care enough. well, if this continues I will have a break of about a year - not playing ESO to not have to see this mess all the time - and just get back to it in a year to see if it has changed to the better.

The more time you spend in the loading screen, the longer it takes you to complete routine tasks. The longer it takes you to complete those tasks, the more time you spend playing the game (and possibly sub'd). Now multiply that by thousands of users. More opportunity for crown store hits and subscription revenue. Take a look at what the client side threads are doing when the "loading" is happening.

Well, I'm a subscriber - but if this isn't changing i will just let my ESO+ laps and be gone for a year - -I'm not addicted and my steam library is full of other interesting games - including Skyrim, which is with the requiem mod a new experience to me.

Alucardo · May 2020

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Eh, it's AV weekend on WoW Classic, I'm all set.

What's WoW?

World of Warcraft

What's World of Warcraft?

Now I know you're trolling. Even hermits that live in caves with no access to technology have heard of World of Warcraft.

Ha! Caught me...

dotme · May 2020

HairyFairy wrote: »

Does anyone know if they've posted about it, had any open communications at all about the state of the game?

Yes they know. I'm just not getting a real sense of urgency on their part, but that's because I'm on PS4 (where PvP has been broken one way or another since November of 2019).

I'm sure the solution is complicated, and I appreciate that they've acknowledged the issue. I'm just disappointed that we're pushing 5 months now with no end in sight. It's very sad.

Lumsdenml · May 2020

Alucardo wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Alucardo wrote: »

Lumsdenml wrote: »

JamuThatsWho wrote: »

Eh, it's AV weekend on WoW Classic, I'm all set.

What's WoW?

World of Warcraft

What's World of Warcraft?

Now I know you're trolling. Even hermits that live in caves with no access to technology have heard of World of Warcraft.

Ha! Caught me...

ha ha!

worrallj · May 2020

Tandor wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

There are a couple of vague statements about addressing the desyncs and lag in the recent update posts on the news page, but beyond that, it's hard to know if they really understand the extent of the problem or how profoundly it affects our experience in the game.

Because we keep playing and their numbers are higher than ever, it's probably telegraphing that the issues are acceptable to enough people that no matter what ZOS does it's unlikely to affect their bottom line.

It isn't that issues of the magnitude complained about here aren't acceptable to people - how could they be? - rather, it's that not all players experience them, not even on PC EU.

I'm sure that ZOS are concerned about performance, and that's reflected in the survey this week, but whether you get asked about performance depends on how you answer the trigger questions.

I see the point, but I was including the players that experience the same issues of lag, desyncs, skill misfires, and quest bugs, but it's not bad enough to affect their enjoyment of the game because of the way they play. I'd be the majority of players that fall in the casual bucket don't know about LA weaving, or even properly avoid AOEs (I often see pug "vets" stand firmly in bad who remain wonderfully ignorant of its effects). The overland content is easy enough to not have to deal with those complexities, so they could be experiencing these issues but not even be aware because the game's skill level is forgiving enough that these issues don't interfere with their experience.

That may be a valid argument for some of the issues such as skill misfires and desyncs etc, but is irrelevant in relation to things like general lag, low framerates, frequent disconnections and long loading screens etc. Everyone without exception can tell whether they are suffering from those sorts of problems, and not all players are. I'm not convinced that most players experience quest bugs on a significant scale, but if such bugs were significant they would certainly notice them. I think the last one I had was about 4 years ago (it was fixed in an incremental patch 2 weeks later), and I spend almost all my time in the game questing at all levels.

Abnar tharn is very good at all forms of magick, but he seems especially skilled in the illusion school. He disappears on a regular basis.

karekiz · May 2020

ZoS is 100% aware.
ZoS is also 100% on fixing these issues.
.....
.....
.....
Just as soon as the previous request finishes.

twev · May 2020

Tyrthax wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Tyrthax wrote: »

I’m just flabbergasted that they haven’t offered players ANY compensation for the downtime, the issues, or anything. Every other game I’ve played offers compensation for unscheduled downtime for the inconvenience and poor performance. It’s honestly the LEAST ZoS could do.

Give people some crates or something, or some crowns. Like holy crap.

1. The would be the Ouroboros crates, and people would complain.
2. They have traditionally not done any manner of compensation in the past.

Oh I know. I’m saying they need to do better. They are well aware of the issues, the play problems, etc. And they can’t even offer some sort of placebo or anything to make it feel like they care or don’t want us to feel good about any of this.

Actually - the least they could do is the nothing they do now XD...
As far as compensation over and above the daily reward for just showing up? From their perspective - Why? Players play anyway, they don't have to spend the extra electrons putting fake stuff into your account since the servers are generally full anyway.

twev · May 2020

TineaCruris wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Atherakhia wrote: »

The problem is the longer this goes on the more I'm convinced it's not a hardware issue and is instead the fault of poor coding. No company with such enormous public exposure would let these types of issues continue unfixed and ignored for so long.

Coding (aka the "server software") has been the odds-on favorite for the culprit for a long time now. Hardware is an easy fix, and a lot cheaper than a software fix, if you ask me.

Is it though? The cost for a huge, high quality server farm is quite high, and a recurring cost.

Perhaps we are getting the $500/month studio apartment in a college town instead of the $5,000/month condo in Manhattan we are paying for. Sure, we got a roof over our head and a toilet that flushes, but it's not exactly what we are paying for.

The longer this goes on, the more the issues look like decisions made in the accounting department rather than on the development team to me. I don't think the problem is the ZOS devs and coders. But there is an undeniable, recurring problem coming from somewhere in Zenimax, that is undeniable. More and more, this situation seems like the result of marketing decisions.

Until some of these issues are actually fixed, there is no reason for anyone to have confidence we are being told the truth about these issues even being worked on.

They don't own the server farm. They're renting a small amount of space and access on a "huge, high quality server farm", and we're assuming the 'high quality' part. XD

Elsonso · May 2020

karekiz wrote: »

ZoS is 100% aware.
ZoS is also 100% on fixing these issues.
.....
.....
.....
Just as soon as the previous request finishes.

I updated my forum signature a couple weeks ago...

twev · May 2020

Lysette wrote: »

DigitalHype wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

To me the game is too tedious with these long loading screens - instead of 2 or 2.5 hours to do my crafting writs with 14 characters it takes me now between 5-7 hours - which means I am waiting to be zoned in as long as i am actually playing. I don't have time to waste 2-5 hours on waiting on loading screens and putting up with failing teleports and having to login quite often again this is crap and it could be fixed, because it was fine 2.5 weeks ago. ZOS just doesn't care enough. well, if this continues I will have a break of about a year - not playing ESO to not have to see this mess all the time - and just get back to it in a year to see if it has changed to the better.

The more time you spend in the loading screen, the longer it takes you to complete routine tasks. The longer it takes you to complete those tasks, the more time you spend playing the game (and possibly sub'd). Now multiply that by thousands of users. More opportunity for crown store hits and subscription revenue. Take a look at what the client side threads are doing when the "loading" is happening.

Well, I'm a subscriber - but if this isn't changing i will just let my ESO+ laps and be gone for a year - -I'm not addicted and my steam library is full of other interesting games - including Skyrim, which is with the requiem mod a new experience to me.

You don't actually have to be a satisfied customer as a fact, just a regular log-in statistic they can point to.
That way they can point to a huge list of 'active players'. Actively playing is a different matter when it comes to statistics.
The sub is a bonus to them.

Tandor · May 2020

worrallj wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

There are a couple of vague statements about addressing the desyncs and lag in the recent update posts on the news page, but beyond that, it's hard to know if they really understand the extent of the problem or how profoundly it affects our experience in the game.

Because we keep playing and their numbers are higher than ever, it's probably telegraphing that the issues are acceptable to enough people that no matter what ZOS does it's unlikely to affect their bottom line.

It isn't that issues of the magnitude complained about here aren't acceptable to people - how could they be? - rather, it's that not all players experience them, not even on PC EU.

I'm sure that ZOS are concerned about performance, and that's reflected in the survey this week, but whether you get asked about performance depends on how you answer the trigger questions.

I see the point, but I was including the players that experience the same issues of lag, desyncs, skill misfires, and quest bugs, but it's not bad enough to affect their enjoyment of the game because of the way they play. I'd be the majority of players that fall in the casual bucket don't know about LA weaving, or even properly avoid AOEs (I often see pug "vets" stand firmly in bad who remain wonderfully ignorant of its effects). The overland content is easy enough to not have to deal with those complexities, so they could be experiencing these issues but not even be aware because the game's skill level is forgiving enough that these issues don't interfere with their experience.

That may be a valid argument for some of the issues such as skill misfires and desyncs etc, but is irrelevant in relation to things like general lag, low framerates, frequent disconnections and long loading screens etc. Everyone without exception can tell whether they are suffering from those sorts of problems, and not all players are. I'm not convinced that most players experience quest bugs on a significant scale, but if such bugs were significant they would certainly notice them. I think the last one I had was about 4 years ago (it was fixed in an incremental patch 2 weeks later), and I spend almost all my time in the game questing at all levels.

Abnar tharn is very good at all forms of magick, but he seems especially skilled in the illusion school. He disappears on a regular basis.

He's never disappeared in my presence. Perhaps it's something personal

!

Destai · May 2020

Tyrthax wrote: »

I’m just flabbergasted that they haven’t offered players ANY compensation for the downtime, the issues, or anything. Every other game I’ve played offers compensation for unscheduled downtime for the inconvenience and poor performance. It’s honestly the LEAST ZoS could do.

Give people some crates or something, or some crowns. Like holy crap.

Hey now, we got that cute little pet for having to redownload the game. That's something, right? You'd buy that right? No?

ArcVelarian · May 2020

They should probably consider shifting more things back to Client-side rather Server-side. Their server architecture is outdated and simply wasn't designed to handle ESO in its current form. At this rate I'd be willing to put up with the rampant cheating that PvP used to have rather than the ungodly server lag we're stuck with now.

clocksstoppe · May 2020

ArcVelarian wrote: »

I'd be willing to put up with the rampant cheating that PvP

Good for you, most people don't.

Lysette · May 2020

twev wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

DigitalHype wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

To me the game is too tedious with these long loading screens - instead of 2 or 2.5 hours to do my crafting writs with 14 characters it takes me now between 5-7 hours - which means I am waiting to be zoned in as long as i am actually playing. I don't have time to waste 2-5 hours on waiting on loading screens and putting up with failing teleports and having to login quite often again this is crap and it could be fixed, because it was fine 2.5 weeks ago. ZOS just doesn't care enough. well, if this continues I will have a break of about a year - not playing ESO to not have to see this mess all the time - and just get back to it in a year to see if it has changed to the better.

The more time you spend in the loading screen, the longer it takes you to complete routine tasks. The longer it takes you to complete those tasks, the more time you spend playing the game (and possibly sub'd). Now multiply that by thousands of users. More opportunity for crown store hits and subscription revenue. Take a look at what the client side threads are doing when the "loading" is happening.

Well, I'm a subscriber - but if this isn't changing i will just let my ESO+ laps and be gone for a year - -I'm not addicted and my steam library is full of other interesting games - including Skyrim, which is with the requiem mod a new experience to me.

You don't actually have to be a satisfied customer as a fact, just a regular log-in statistic they can point to.
That way they can point to a huge list of 'active players'. Actively playing is a different matter when it comes to statistics.
The sub is a bonus to them.

This statement wasn't meant as a threat nor do I expect that it has any effect on ZOS at all. it is just what I will be doing if I don't have fun to play the game anymore, because I'm longer waiting on loading screens than actually playing. In this case it is a waste of time to play ESO and I better put that into other games and come back a year later and see what has changed.