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Can we get an honest post-mortem about why Markarth went live with so many serious bugs?
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Calm_Fury✭✭✭✭✭Kidgangster101 wrote: »First, I want to say I love this game. More than any other game I've ever played. I want it to succeed and I've been promoting it for friends since 2015. I want ESO to last for years and years.
Second, I know we are in the middle of a pandemic and I work in software, so I understand that, sometimes, there is a business case to justify launching software you know is buggy because the benefits justifies the downsides.
But this patch was just too much. Too many fundamental things broke. Animations, basics about combat, dozens of instance dungeon/arenas are basically or literally unplayable right now. What is more worrisome is that several of those very serious bugs were reported in the first weeks of PTS. They were known for a full month before launch date.
What is going on? Why did Markarth still went live with so many issues?
This was one of the patches that generated the most excitement from everyone I know in the recent years. The Set Collection is an awesome feature. My "ESO bubble" was tremendously excited about VH. Then they logged in and all excitement became disappointment.
Honestly, the last time I saw this much excitement turn into the other side of the spectrum to disappointment that quickly was when Morrowind patch notes dropped. Everyone was in awe of the Morrowind announcement, then all the nerfs came in the notes. The result was that the end game scene suffered such a big hit that I don't think it has ever recovered.
I get the same feeling with Markarth. So many people were, finally, so excited about a patch. A patch with awesome new features, great updates, very reasonable changes and a great new, interesting mythic set... Then we logged in.
I'm not saying we "demand" or even "deserve" an answer or explanation. I'm not entitled like that. At all. But we can all see of the most loyal players are totally disappointed at the current state of the game and the quality of this patch.
As I said in other posts, if the issue is resources, hire more or try to do less. I'm sure all the community would be completely understanding if we went to a 3-patch cycle to slow things down a little and increase the QA of new patches.
Please, ZOS, Rich... Tell us, honestly, what happened? What can you do so this doesn't happen again at this stage of the game's life?
Just so you know this has been happening for as long as I can remember with expansions/dlc. Literally the exact reason so many bugs exists in this game is because zo$ just pushes it out no matter what is broken or what it breaks in the process.
If the crown store was broken though it would be an emergency maintenance to fix it within the hour....... That's why I quit and went back to ff14 I barely ever lag and barely ever have glitches that stop me from playing.
I love the idea of this game and check back constantly to see if it changes in the right direction but everytime I check in I see more posts like this proving nothing has changed. Just cut your loses and move on zo$ clearly have.
As I said in another reply, I don't remember it ever being this bad. Granted, I did have a few breaks for a few months here and there, but I usually came back to check new patches and, for me, Markarth is the buggiest of them all.
We also said, this patch was so broken that even the Crown Store was out for what? A full day? It was broken for a long time as well.5 -
jm42✭✭✭✭ESO has awful support system, most of the time tickets go to some incompetent agent, idk how its even possible (for example when I reported ingame achievement that was broken I got a response from support that I must contact Steam about it and only after I posted that on forum I got capable agent on my case).
So I'm not surprised that bug reports are getting lost10 -
Gythral✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭We will never get an answer
as it would have to be [redacted] due to bashing
Edited by Gythral on November 9, 2020 8:16AM“Be as a tower, that, firmly set,
Shakes not its top for any blast that blows!”
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy6 -
Czekoludek✭✭✭✭✭
✭Sometimes a little transparency goes a long way.
If that wasn't the case, we would never see those post-mortems and public apologies.
Tbh what we got from that? How many times @ZOS_GinaBruno admitted that their communication were bad and they will do better? How many times we were patiently waiting to see expected increase in performance to actually see that performance patch broke the game even more? How many times devs were talking that they are playing the game and love it only to see stupid spreedsheet decisions that kill fun and see these live streams on which you can clearly see they don't play this game at all?
Everytime they say sorry, thanks us for our patience and return to the "ignore your playerbase" status.
Tbh i don't care anymore, I basically lost a other raiding build because 3 players in the team have enough of this joke called performance.
7th guild in last year.
This post will probably be deleted/edited heavily cuz the only active ZoS employees here are mods who can only censor and not giving us the answers we deserve
Edited by Czekoludek on November 9, 2020 8:58AM17 -
Sephyr✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭We will never get an answer
as it would have to be [redacted] due to bashing
Honestly, that whole team needs an audit on performance as well as how well we 'think' they're doing. I'd be fair. But pigs fly'll have to fly for that to actually happen.Edited by Sephyr on November 9, 2020 10:03AM6 -
Weesacs✭✭✭✭✭Lol OP bless you 🙂
Unless people couldn't gain access to the new DLC (which would obviously get fixed) the only bugs that fall under 'critical' relate to the crown store.
You should all know this by now.
This was proven in the following thread from last week:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7007605#Comment_7007605
You say you work in IT so should know this by now mate 👍
Bugs will get fixed later ... its better to release and get the money in.
Edited by Weesacs on November 9, 2020 11:19AMBreton Templar
PS5 - EU - DC3 -
twev✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭As I said before, I don't think the intention is to exclude players. The people involved in the game know that, without players, there is no game.
Feedback from the PTS is 90% or more ignored, even about serious bugs that are pushed to the live server. And I'm not speaking about the latest patch only. It's been that way for years. And I didn't even mention the increasingly aggressive push towards microtransaction revenue. How can players feel like they are taken seriously in such a climate? When they take away skills that you have enjoyed for years, and then introduce crown store solutions to help you get said skills back faster, what are we to think? Most players are intelligent, and perfectly capable of observing and evaluating trends. Look at the number of negative threads compared to positive threads here on the forums, and ask yourself why things are like that?
I don't disagree with you on that fact. At all.
I disagree on the motive. I don't think they ignore the feedback because they are malicious or don't care. At least the people that are actually, hands-on involved in the game. I think they "ignore" it because they simply do not have enough people to address it all in the time they have allotted before launch.
Then their business model is flawed and they're doing it wrong.
If you promise a 4 course meal and only have the time/people/resources to deliver a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - you have a problem.
If you do it repeatedly, and keep claiming you didn't have the time/people/resources to deliver the promise, again, you have a serious problem.
If it starts to look as if you never intended to make the promise coincide with the delivery, over and over, it looks like you're counting on customers to be either gullible, or replaceable by new customers who don't have experience with previous instances of lack of delivery.
There might be other explanations of course, but claiming the same reasons for lack of performance again and again starts to look like you have an issue with an understanding of the relationship with the customer base.The problem with society these days is that no one drinks from the skulls of their enemies anymore.19 -
Katheriah✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭Czekoludek wrote: »Sometimes a little transparency goes a long way.
If that wasn't the case, we would never see those post-mortems and public apologies.
Tbh what we got from that? How many times @ZOS_GinaBruno admitted that their communication were bad and they will do better? How many times we were patiently waiting to see expected increase in performance to actually see that performance patch broke the game even more? How many times devs were talking that they are playing the game and love it only to see stupid spreedsheet decisions that kill fun and see these live streams on which you can clearly see they don't play this game at all?
Everytime they say sorry, thanks us for our patience and return to the "ignore your playerbase" status.
Tbh i don't care anymore, I basically lost a other raiding build because 3 players in the team have enough of this joke called performance.
7th guild in last year.
This post will probably be deleted/edited heavily cuz the only active ZoS employees here are mods who can only censor and not giving us the answers we deserve
How many times? Not enough to actually care about the playerbase. Otherwise obviously the release of the new DLC would have been postponed. The community would have gotten answers in posts like this. The testers (that work for ZOS, never put all your faith in usertests) would have found the bugs on time. We wouldn't have gotten this junk. And so on and so on.
I really wonder when ZOS is going to reply to this #$^!-show.7 -
Raideen✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭From my experience its that: Alot of players give Feedback about gameplay changes, but most of them are just theory crafting and only a few ppl spend time on the PTS in the first place, so actual bug reports and testing are sparse to begin with. This leaves most of the testing to the internal test teams. The problem is that the live servers are much much bigger compared to the test servers and this can lead to bugs along the way that are the result of code not scalling that well when brought into bigger systems. A good example for this is the dungeon finder and its bug with heavy load that are hard to track and hard to simulate.
From my perspective this update is not much worse compared to other updates in the past. There is just the bad luck that the bugs effected more players this time compared to bugs in the past that only effected limited numbers of players.
This is the case. The PTS is never very populated so only a small number of players are giving actual feedback on the performance of the patch. Most have no direct idea of how things are working on the PTS.
All that free labor must be really hard for ZOS to come up with solutions to ESO's problems.
Like I mentioned in a previous post, unfortunately laws have yet to catch up to software & gaming.
I can't imagine providing my clients with such a poor product...& with the help of free labor.
Same Wolfpaw. If I treated my customers the way the software industry as a whole treats their customers, I would have been out of business a LONG time ago. I am amazed at how poorly software customers are often treated, especially in the game industry.13 -
Calm_Fury✭✭✭✭✭Czekoludek wrote: »Sometimes a little transparency goes a long way.
If that wasn't the case, we would never see those post-mortems and public apologies.
Tbh what we got from that? How many times @ZOS_GinaBruno admitted that their communication were bad and they will do better? How many times we were patiently waiting to see expected increase in performance to actually see that performance patch broke the game even more? How many times devs were talking that they are playing the game and love it only to see stupid spreedsheet decisions that kill fun and see these live streams on which you can clearly see they don't play this game at all?
Everytime they say sorry, thanks us for our patience and return to the "ignore your playerbase" status.
Tbh i don't care anymore, I basically lost a other raiding build because 3 players in the team have enough of this joke called performance.
7th guild in last year.
This post will probably be deleted/edited heavily cuz the only active ZoS employees here are mods who can only censor and not giving us the answers we deserve
We at least get some assurance that they don't think this is normal.
Because, right now, the general feeling of ESO players is that ZOS thinks it is normal to release patches with as many bugs as this one. We've been on a streak of patches that have very significant bugs on launch.
Some sort of communication from ZOS would go a long way to show that no, they are not happy with this either and will work to change that.
Honestly, if they keep releasing patches like this, instead of planning for some downtime from work when a new patch hits, I'm going to start planning to take 2-3 weeks breaks from ESO starting every new patch date.
This is what I'm doing with Markarth. Haven't logged on in a week now. Probably won't log back again until the patch on the 16th drops and people confirm that the more serious bugs are fixed.
At this point, ZOS should come here and explicitly say something like: "We dropped the ball in the quality of our latest patches and we're sorry. Here is what we intend to do for the next year".
The silence simply screams "this is normal, we don't care if the game is barely functioning and maybe every patch now will be like this".Edited by Calm_Fury on November 11, 2020 3:54PM8 -
omnidoh✭✭✭
ZOS doesn't need to do anything.At this point, ZOS needs to come here and explicitly say something like: "We dropped the ball in the quality of our latest patches and we're sorry. Here is what we intend to do for the next year".
We, as their paying customers, might "like" them to keep us informed, but they don't answer to us outside of their own Terms of Service.
Our only recourse is feedback (which is heavily moderated and questionably effective), and/or wallet-voting.4 -
Calm_Fury✭✭✭✭✭
ZOS doesn't need to do anything.At this point, ZOS needs to come here and explicitly say something like: "We dropped the ball in the quality of our latest patches and we're sorry. Here is what we intend to do for the next year".
We, as their paying customers, might "like" them to keep us informed, but they don't answer to us outside of their own Terms of Service.
Our only recourse is feedback (which is heavily moderated and questionably effective), and/or wallet-voting.
Of course they don't need. If you read my original post you will see I said exactly that.
Maybe I didn't use the best word here but let's not be that picky for something that is so irrelevant to the general topic.
But if it is better for you, I'll edit to should.Edited by Calm_Fury on November 11, 2020 3:54PM5 -
Elvenheart✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭I like the analogy that someone made about us being the trees in the forest that is this game. I just stepped into another “forest” (game) so to speak, to read their forums about a prepatch event which just started to see if I wanted to participate. It felt like I had never left this thread! The complaints about bugs, developers and the company not caring about the players, the lackluster content, etc. etc. all mirror the posts in this thread so closely that they could have been written by the same people! I promise, for almost every single complaint here you can find a complaint there that corresponds to it. Don’t take my word for it - go there and see it for yourself and have a good laugh. 🤣
Somehow, despite everything mentioned in this thread, I and many others are still logging into ESO everyday and are finding ways to enjoy the game while these things are on the pathway to being fixed. And I am sure people in that other forest and all the other forests out there are doing the same 😘Edited by Elvenheart on November 11, 2020 4:11PM4 -
Firstmep✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭As I said before, I don't think the intention is to exclude players. The people involved in the game know that, without players, there is no game.
Feedback from the PTS is 90% or more ignored, even about serious bugs that are pushed to the live server. And I'm not speaking about the latest patch only. It's been that way for years. And I didn't even mention the increasingly aggressive push towards microtransaction revenue. How can players feel like they are taken seriously in such a climate? When they take away skills that you have enjoyed for years, and then introduce crown store solutions to help you get said skills back faster, what are we to think? Most players are intelligent, and perfectly capable of observing and evaluating trends. Look at the number of negative threads compared to positive threads here on the forums, and ask yourself why things are like that?
I don't disagree with you on that fact. At all.
I disagree on the motive. I don't think they ignore the feedback because they are malicious or don't care. At least the people that are actually, hands-on involved in the game. I think they "ignore" it because they simply do not have enough people to address it all in the time they have allotted before launch.
Then their business model is flawed and they're doing it wrong.
If you promise a 4 course meal and only have the time/people/resources to deliver a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - you have a problem.
If you do it repeatedly, and keep claiming you didn't have the time/people/resources to deliver the promise, again, you have a serious problem.
If it starts to look as if you never intended to make the promise coincide with the delivery, over and over, it looks like you're counting on customers to be either gullible, or replaceable by new customers who don't have experience with previous instances of lack of delivery.
There might be other explanations of course, but claiming the same reasons for lack of performance again and again starts to look like you have an issue with an understanding of the relationship with the customer base.
Sorry but no.
Whatever else you may think, pushing content above all else is the de facto industry standard nowadays, nothing unique to eso.
Path of exile has been doing this forever, so have tons of other games/devs.
Games coming out with content cut, unfinished to meet deadlines is the standard nowadays.
I don't like it anymore than the next person, but it is what it is.
I don't blame the devs that much, once the initial Pts is out, it's likely that most of them have to move on to the next content update.0 -
Calm_Fury✭✭✭✭✭Recapitated wrote: »
That is why one of my suggestions is for them to do less.
Usually they start hyping the next update 1 or 2 weeks after the console gets the last patch. That is an inside pace. Except in the end of the year, when we have a little bit more quiet time.
Maybe that is the solution. How about instead of 4 big, huge, patches per year, they do 3. Bundle 1 dungeon with the chapter and 1 with the small zone, or just make 3 dungeons in the dungeon DLC.
They could even extend PTS if they decreased the update cadence. Then we would actually have time to have bugs fixed before going live.
1 -
Jaraal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭How about instead of 4 big, huge, patches per year, they do 3.
So you're saying more broken things and new bugs plus worsened performance only three times a year versus four? I could live with that. Only two steps backward instead of three for every step forward is still negative progress...... but less negative than before.
3 -
thegreat_one✭✭✭✭But all those streams and vids of the upcoming DLC was enough to get people to buy it.
I'd say the PTS was a great success. It's not for bug fixes. Its to promote the game.7 -
Calm_Fury✭✭✭✭✭How about instead of 4 big, huge, patches per year, they do 3.
So you're saying more broken things and new bugs plus worsened performance only three times a year versus four? I could live with that. Only two steps backward instead of three for every step forward is still negative progress...... but less negative than before.
Of course not. They only make big changes in big patches. Big changes is what breaks things.
Right now, they are probably already worried about the next patch. If they do one less, they can have more time to test on PTS and fix things after they go live.
I honestly have no idea how you interpret doing 3 patches instead of 4 as breaking more things.1 -
Suna_Ye_Sunnabe✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭I should be shocked and outraged that the patch came to console with crippling bugs, but I can't even be anymore. Not after the absurd patches that have been pumped out during this.. "year of performance".Angua Anyammis Ae Sunna6 -
rrimöykk✭✭✭✭✭Agree with many here. Playing on PS4 and this dlc has been one of the worst gaming experiences I've ever had, mostly because of the lack of communication.
We had the longest maintenance ever with next to zero warnings or communications. Few posts when the dlc was supposed to launch that it got postponed for another two hours. Then again... and again. Finally when the servers were up, it was Tuesday morning and everything was as broken as on pc even though they were reported multiple times.
Something needs to change or this game will lose a lot of players.
My first suggestion would be to stop this stupid year long stuff. 4 big patches a year where the meta is constantly changed around and the game breaks down for several weeks should not happen.
Fix the bugs and server issues first, then come up with a new patch. We can wait.Edited by rrimöykk on November 12, 2020 12:38AM10 -
etchedpixels✭✭✭✭✭
✭I don't want to see apologies, to some extent I don't want to know why it happened - it did, it's done. IMHO with both children and large software projects that sort of thing only takes you so far, and rarely helps much in public. Instead I want to know why it won't happen next time.
Instead I'd like to know:
- When they'll provide a good regular status page of acknowledged bugs and status (even if it's only 'investigating') for all the bugs repeat reported here 500 times by confused players. The one we have now was good baby step but it's already totally out of date and not being updated even with bugs ZOS are acknowledging on threads
- When they'll stop using covid19 as an excuse for the poor ticket processing times and the lousy ticket behaviour that kicks them back to the end of the queue. Hire more people, fix the process, stop causing so many things that need tickets filing, make the job easier/faster -whatever I don't care how.
- That they've made process changes so critical PTS and production bug reports are getting acted on. Right now even ones from leading stars are not even getting acknowledged.
At that point I'll think about turning my ESO+ subscription back to renew on this expiry. Right now I have insufficient faith to let it renew when I may want to take 3 or 6 months off while they make it playable again.
Too many toons not enough time10 -
Austinseph1✭✭✭✭✭It's really just a factor of how much they can get away with selling a partially finished product without seeing any real widespread backlash against them. That said the factor seems to get ever wider with every patch.8 -
colossalvoids✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭So much for communication issues @ZOS_GinaBruno has acknowledged each time, will do better next year, eh?
Don't think a HONEST reply from someone as @ZOS_RichLambert would require weeks of consulting with their marketing department etc. when backlash was not something surprising for anyone at that point, clearly seen from console release with same exact game breaking bugs, like it's completely normal thing.5 -
Calm_Fury✭✭✭✭✭
From your post:
"So you're saying more broken things and new bugs"
Maybe is not what you meant, but it read to me as if you are saying that it would have more broken things instead of less. But if we are on the same page, let's move on.0 -
Calm_Fury✭✭✭✭✭etchedpixels wrote: »I don't want to see apologies, to some extent I don't want to know why it happened - it did, it's done. IMHO with both children and large software projects that sort of thing only takes you so far, and rarely helps much in public. Instead I want to know why it won't happen next time.
Instead I'd like to know:
- When they'll provide a good regular status page of acknowledged bugs and status (even if it's only 'investigating') for all the bugs repeat reported here 500 times by confused players. The one we have now was good baby step but it's already totally out of date and not being updated even with bugs ZOS are acknowledging on threads
- When they'll stop using covid19 as an excuse for the poor ticket processing times and the lousy ticket behaviour that kicks them back to the end of the queue. Hire more people, fix the process, stop causing so many things that need tickets filing, make the job easier/faster -whatever I don't care how.
- That they've made process changes so critical PTS and production bug reports are getting acted on. Right now even ones from leading stars are not even getting acknowledged.
At that point I'll think about turning my ESO+ subscription back to renew on this expiry. Right now I have insufficient faith to let it renew when I may want to take 3 or 6 months off while they make it playable again.
Fair enough. The apology and acknowledgement would definetely be the less important part of what I was asking.
How that won't happen next time is the main thing.
And you brought a good point. This game could really use a more organized bug tracker. There are at least half a dozen threads here about the bugs in different dungeons.0
