Also, even though it isn't really a communication issue, I think Perseas hit the nail on the head with the instance timers. Blizzard does that with instances (or at least they did, it's been quite a while since I farmed dungeons), where if you have entered an instance & killed at least 1 boss <x> number of times within a set time limit, you are put on a cooldown for that instance for a set length of time. As I stated, it's been probably 3 years since I last farmed a dungeon, but if I am remembering correctly it was 5 boss kills in 60 minutes & then there was a 2 or 4 hour cooldown period where you could not enter that dungeon again (on that character). Of course, this would not stop someone who's dead set on farming a specific boss, because they could just log over to an alt, but it probably WOULD slow down the bots & gold farmers because they'd not only have to log over to an alt, but then level said alt to whatever it needs to be to farm that boss. I doubt they'd be willing to go to all that work; the bots of course would simply just be slamming their faces into an instance entrance that they could not use. Because of the dungeon set-up in ESO, the timer would have to be engaged & then force-kick the player out of the dungeon I'd guess, or they would have to code in some sort of manual reset like WoW has for their dungeons.

@Klarick you say you work in the industry. Fine. I work in IT myself (banking software development rather than game software). Understand this: you are what's wrong with the software industry. Specifically, your attitude is widespread in the industry, and it results in angry customers, bad publicity for software vendors, and (at least in the banking software industry) financial penalties for the vendors.

In a product launch you expect that there will be bugs. No matter how much testing was done, there will always be bugs that weren't found, or that weren't considered to be bad enough to delay the launch to fix them. Sometimes the people making the decisions about what bugs to prioritize make the wrong decisions, and you end up with a product whose launch really should have been delayed. These things are expected (although when the latter happens it's OK to lambast the company for it).

Prior to any launch you need to have a strong communication strategy in place. This involves making sure the lines of communication are clear within the company. This means a clear and efficient process for identifying and appropriately escalating bugs for prioritization. This also means a clear and efficient process for communicating what is being done about bugs to the CS staff, along with clear and consistent messaging for the CS staff to communicate with the customers. This messaging needs to address what the company will be doing to correct the situation, what (if anything) the customer should do, when the customer should expect an update (and how: this could be as simple as saying that an update will be provided online in 3 days), and also answer any obvious questions related to the situation that the customer could be expected to have.

You think that Zenimax has communicated appropriately. You're wrong. You're dead wrong. It's obvious that they have not had a communication strategy that does any of what I've described.

Their process for identifying and prioritizing bugs is clearly flawed, as people have reported the duping bug to them since the beta, and they didn't do anything about it until just the other day. To all appearances, despite the reports that people made, the people making the decisions about prioritizing fixes didn't know about this exploit until a couple of days ago, and once they found out they (correctly) took quick action.

Their process for communicating with and providing messaging to their CS staff is clearly even more flawed. All you have to do is take a look through one of the many thread about the bank bug to see how all over the place and contradictory the responses to tickets were. Even some of the ZOS posts on the forums about it were contradictory or entirely unclear on several points. Most importantly, people kept having their tickets closed with a status of "solved" when absolutely nothing had been solved. I know when my ticket (the second one, that is, since I still to this day haven't had any acknowledgement of the first ticket that I submitted over a week ago) was closed as "solved" the patch that stopped the bug from recurring hadn't been deployed yet, and none of what I lost had been returned to me. When a problem is still being investigated, the one thing you do not do is tell the customer that their ticket is "solved". The only effect of that is to *** off the customer (oh, and pad your CS stats).

So you also say that Zenimax shouldn't be expected to answer every question that people have on the forums. In theory that's true. In practice, if you had bothered to read the ZOS posts and some of the questions that people had about them, you would see that most of the questions were obvious ones that were brought about by either ambiguous messaging in the ZOS posts, or by a failure to address a point that people would obviously have questions about. Anyone remotely familiar with the game who thought about the bank bug for 30 seconds would realize that people would want to know things as simple as whether buying new bank slots would interfere with their reimbursement, and yet that wasn't addressed until multiple people asked. Heck, even if all you say is "we don't know the answer to this, but will provide an update ASAP" people are usually satisfied with that.

So that's why this launch should be considered a failure. The game is good - I'm enjoying it very much. Sure, it's got bugs (some more serious than others), but I expect that at launch. Because of the utter failure of the communication and CS strategy, however, this launch cannot be considered anything but a debacle.

So you seem to think that all of these complete failures in the communication strategy are acceptable. You also condescendingly think that everyone should stop whining about their very legitimate concerns. Unfortunately, as I said, your attitude is far too prevalent in the software industry, and it's nothing but poisonous.

They're clearly lacking a community manager who's actually any good and/or who is allowed to do his job. The game being new you'll have to expect issues, omissions, problems, bugs, server outages and whatnot. What you DON'T have to expect is minimalistic/terrible communication with the customer base.

I can only speak for myself but I'm not pissed because of the issues (it annoys me but I'm realistic enough to realise that as the game is new *** will happen), I AM pissed by the launcher MOTD not giving me a brief explanation of the situation, same thing on this forum.

And while they can't put numbers on it it would help if there'd be some sort of "don't quote me on this but we're expecting to be up again soon" or "this is going to take quite a bit, sorry about that" sort of info. yes, there'll always be folks who will use anything stated against but tbh those can just *** off. It helps the reasonable people to determine whether they should continue to try and log in or go do something else the next few hours.

Even if it turned out to be mistaken info that'd be fine, again; *** happens. but at least there'd be communication beyond the launcher stating offline (maintenance, lol) or online.

Community management isn't rocket science, all you need is some basic people skills and the company realising that customer perception generally ends up being their reality.

Here is my 2 cents. This whole thread is about communication.

My issue is thus.

The mods have the time to go through this thread and edit the posts to be more to their liking, however when an unplanned downtime occurs, it takes an unacceptably long time to get any form of explanation.

The worst of this, is that the explanations are not explanations at all and have very little, if no viable information regarding the problem causing the downtime in the first place.

This in turn is the cause of the initial post.

Imagine it this way,

you are financing a car ( yes i know that financing leads to actual ownership, but hear me out).

Say its 7 am Monday morning and you go out to get in your car for work,
only your car isn't there.

Oh no! you think where is my car???

Well,an hour,maybe 2 hours later, after following the steps involved when your car disappears (police report). you get a phone call from your dealership telling you, We have taken your car for routine maintenance, and we do not at this time have any idea when we will be giving it back to you.

Come to find out later that they took your car for "routine maintenance" because they discovered something wrong that could cause serious harm.
However they never explained what the issue was. Only a vague hint that they were concerned for the safety of their customer.

So here is the icing that i really didn't need to add to this post, but i will any way.

You receive your car back at which point they tell you that they had to implement a new software update that will make the car safer and much better to drive, the problem is now however, every time you stop at a red light, ( this is a subtle nod to the infinite loading screens), your car completely shuts off and you cross your fingers and hope that it cranks again. Also (in regards to the bank space issues), While they had it in the shop they swapped your GPS Navi system with a tape deck,

Unfortunately for you cars are complicated and they will not be reimbursing you for the downtime, hassle or stress caused by them. Well that's what you assume as you can't get anyone from the manufacturer to acknowledge that you even contacted them about the problem in the first place.

My final point, after the 8th stoplight that the car shut off, The police arrest you and take you to jail because the car dealer claimed that you had stolen the car.
You then sit in jail for 12 or so hours at which point you are released, and the car dealer claims no wrong was done.

Anyway i rambled. The wording of the OP some may disagree with, but the bones of the argument are valid.

A real informative explanation goes a LONG way to appease customers who paid their money for a product.


P.S. the argument of its only $0.50 a day approximately, is very conveniently omitting the $60.00 to $90.00 dollar investment made in the first place.
So no refund, and as of now we have only had possession of the product for 2 weeks or so.

The monthly payment is for maintenance and future content, the product has been purchased

Edited: by me,

To bring it all around full circle to the beginning of my post. The CS team has the time to edit their customers posts because it doesn't fit with their, (Zeni's) desired image, but cant be bothered with providing any substantial relevant information about outages, down time or their causes in a reasonable timely manner. Presumably because admitting there is a problem may hurt the initial return on the corporate investment due to the admittance that, currently the game, however enjoyable it may be when you can get it to work, it is not working as it should. And as stated before in previous posts and the known market that is the gaming industry, and MMO's in general that are not a F2P platform, the initial investment is recouped in the first months of release. Anything after that is the reason they made it in the first place. Not because they, (the investors) want to make us happy. They want to make their bank accounts happy.

Unfortunately, sometimes i cant help but think that the logic used today in AAA game titles by the people who produce them, is a cut your nose off despite your face mentality. Yes we are always disappointed by release day push backs but no where near as disappointed as by a broken product that came on time.

cheeser123 wrote: »

@ZOS_ShannonM what gives? You've edited 1/3 of the posts in this thread. Since we can't see the history on an edited post (at least, I don't see that option), do you want to explain what kinds of changes are going on here? In a serious discussion about the deep-seeded bugs in the game, a huge string of unexplained moderator edits is a bit troubling.

Since I saw this thread very early on I can tell you that pretty much every post that shows as edited has had a quoted post removed. I won't go into further detail, except to say that those posts were not productive to the thread & broke forum rules. It doesn't look like any of the text written by the people affected by the new moderator bug has been changed in any way.

Edit: for clarification of "new moderator bug", I'm speaking about the green box that indicates the post is now a staff post rather than a player post. I'm not referring to the edits as a bug lol.

TY Zenimax for firing Klarick. He was a terrible representative for your company. Now we can move on and begin the healing process.

Vlas wrote: »

mcconnell2_ESO wrote: »

TY Zenimax for firing Klarick. He was a terrible representative for your company. Now we can move on and begin the healing process.

What?

He was a staff member of some type but they banned his forum account for being rude to customers.

I love all the swift action they take on editing someones post, but not worrying about all the game breaking bugs in the game....

Sorcerious wrote: »

True, I don't mind the issues but some more forum posts about what's going would surely be appreciated.

Then again, why bother if you know that you're going to be jumped on by anger-filled, raging werewolves that are 'rightfully entitled' to play the game for a year because they endured the issues that are to be expected?

It's not like Skyrim was bug free (hell it was even worse than ESO and still they sold 20 million copies).

It's just that forum-goers are usually the biggest complainers, and they go to a forum to do just that, complain, complain and then complain some more. Even if everything would be working smoothly people would still complain about things that would be better 'in their opinion'.

Go have a look over at the Blizzard forums and it's just that: if they announce an unexpected maintenance or there are bugs or whatnot, the thread is immediately filled with people complaining that this shouldn't happen, or people start asking questions that have nothing to do with the problem described in said thread...

Normally, for these reasons, I avoid forums like the plague, it's always always always the very vocal minority of a community that is disillusioned.

/rant

TLDR: I do agree with the OP, but I also understand why they don't.

I don't think you've known Blizzard for very long. Their CS is light years ahead of what Zenimax can even hope to accomplish. Blizzard always makes a post on the launcher and they've always let you know what maintenance they're doing and when they're doing it. Unless you've played Blizzard games for the past 10 years....please don't even start to compare unless you know the straight facts.

little_kitty_feetub17_ESO wrote: »

Since I saw this thread very early on I can tell you that pretty much every post that shows as edited has had a quoted post removed. I won't go into further detail, except to say that those posts were not productive to the thread & broke forum rules.

Ah ha, that explains it. I was really confused, but it didn't occur to me that they'd expunge all quotations of a bad post.

gordonbennett wrote: »

Hello everyone

I'm an old windbag who used to play and run large multi-player games before the internet was invented <lights pipe and reclines in old rocking chair by a roaring fire>.

( ... )

So the problem with TESO? In all aspects, communication, both between players and different divisions within the inter-organisation. No individual bug or exploit is more significant than this. I love Elder Scrolls games and I love ESO. Please don't let ignoring the ringing telephone be the death of it.

Wonderfully put, I couldn't have said it much better myself (old windbag from pre-internet here too).

It does seem publishers are reluctant to learn the simplest lesson of all from some of the most successful enterprises (not just businesses) in the world - that the battle for hearts and minds is half the struggle, yet ironically it can be the easiest element of the fight to get right if you have the strength to trust your customers, the foresight to understand what they need, and don't ****-block the people you hire to serve them.

There's no end to "committee" jokes for good reason.

fiachsidhe wrote: »

Read Zenimax's Glassdoor reviews. Incompetent upper management, giant egos, cliques, nepotism. It doesn't surprise me, that they have no respect or pathos for their paying customers. They can't even treat their own employees properly.

Zenimax's customer relations is bordering on Nexon level apathy and unprofessionalism.

Wow! I had to check for myself and just wow, you are totally right, the reviews are awful, I love this game but seriously, treat your employees better and by extension your customers or it doesn't take someone particularly intelligent to understand you won't have those big salaries for much longer...love the game seriously do but..really nepotism, cliques,(really are you 14 yrs old?) and egos? really? somehow I imagined that people working in the game industry would be intelligent...my mistake I see.

I really would love for this game to succeed it is amazing so far (if annoyingly and understandably buggy at times) seeing this kind of sickness in my game makes me nerd rage, as a customer all i can say is.. ... ... FIX IT!! SERIOUSLY?! FIX IT NOW! BEFORE YOU RUIN MY GAME AND WASTE MY MONEY!!! lol...nerd rage over.

grymmjow69b14_ESO wrote: »

I love all the swift action they take on editing someones post, but not worrying about all the game breaking bugs in the game....

I feel ya here, i am angry too about all damn bugs (the major ones i mean) but CS moderator have nothing to do with actually fixing bugs ... of course, if they properly send/communicate with their coleagues in order to resolve issues, that i have no ideea...

stryderzz wrote: »

fiachsidhe wrote: »

Read Zenimax's Glassdoor reviews. Incompetent upper management, giant egos, cliques, nepotism. It doesn't surprise me, that they have no respect or pathos for their paying customers. They can't even treat their own employees properly.

Zenimax's customer relations is bordering on Nexon level apathy and unprofessionalism.

Wow! I had to check for myself and just wow, you are totally right, the reviews are awful, I love this game but seriously, treat your employees better and by extension your customers or it doesn't take someone particularly intelligent to understand you won't have those big salaries for much longer...love the game seriously do but..really nepotism, cliques,(really are you 14 yrs old?) and egos? really? somehow I imagined that people working in the game industry would be intelligent...my mistake I see.

I really would love for this game to succeed it is amazing so far (if annoyingly and understandably buggy at times) seeing this kind of sickness in my game makes me nerd rage, as a customer all i can say is.. ... ... FIX IT!! SERIOUSLY?! FIX IT NOW! BEFORE YOU RUIN MY GAME AND WASTE MY MONEY!!! lol...nerd rage over.

You get all sorts, but having worked in games since the 80's, with a spell in advertising, I can say that in big companies with bonus-driven management, it's often the least appropriate people that wind up holding the steering wheel - advertising/marketing and games share a lot in this regard, along with a reputation for driving workers to the brink of exhaustion to meet deadlines.

The people who actually do the physical developing are typically bright and intelligent - you have to be, to actually make a game in the first place... they're very rarely the issue: When the sky appears to be falling, you always look up.

fiachsidhe wrote: »

Read Zenimax's Glassdoor reviews. Incompetent upper management, giant egos, cliques, nepotism. It doesn't surprise me, that they have no respect or pathos for their paying customers. They can't even treat their own employees properly.

Zenimax's customer relations is bordering on Nexon level apathy and unprofessionalism.

That did confirm some of what the OP feels really.