BUGGED: Zenimax Online Studios -- (Or: An open letter nobody asked for)

meilink18 · July 2021

Dear ZOS,

For many years and many days, I have played this game with a level of passion difficult to explain to friends living outside of Tamriel. As is an unavoidable charm of any MMORPG, ESO has never been free of bugs. I, and I do believe many players with me, however, rarely viewed any bug as a truly significant obstacle big enough to get in the way of enjoying the game.
Until quite recently, give or take a few seconds before/after Microsoft took over for Molag Bal as the new Royalty of Domination and Enslavement.

Since then, I haven’t received a single response to any ticket I submitted, regardless of the subject. The PS4/5-platform has recently had to endure severely compromised gameplay due to fully malfunctioning craft-bags/guild stores/trades, which took a solid 40 days to fix. During those 40 days, you communicated once with any actual information to your player-base -- Your customers, and the justification for your existence as game developers.

That is where you, as a company, have become unacceptably ‘bugged’. If you respond to posts at all, it sometimes simply isn't enough to copy-paste a reply stating awareness of the issue and that fixing it is definitely, for sure, very important to you. You systematically seem to either ignore or disregard your own gaming-community, or at the very least keep us in the dark far too often, for far too long. For example, not @ZOS_GinaBruno, nor @ZOS_Anyone, has given an ETA on a possible fix for the current issues regarding vanishing surveys. Despite players taking time out of their days to notify you, like they have done here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/576025/survey-map-check,
and also here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/580302/surveys-disappearing,
and also here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7289505,
and also here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/578022/survey-map-western-skyrim-bug-get-one-pay-two,
and also here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/578177/western-skyrim-survey-count-error,
and also here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/577971/survey-maps-bug,
and also here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/580030/disappearing-crafting-surveys,
and also here:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7295380.

No information has been given, no post has been responded to – the issue hasn’t even been acknowledged. This has been an ongoing problem for well over a month and a half now, and people are still collecting their ‘two for the gains of one’-surveys every day, while nobody can tell if you’re even aware of the problem.
The escalating tsunami of over-advertised yet insignificant events, may bring new players to ESO, but this will ultimately prove meaningless if your (previously) loyal existing players keep leaving.

My point (TL;DR): Bugs happen, they always will. Whether or not it has to take 40+ days to fix is debatable, but they’ll always be a part of this (type of) game. However:
- when a substantial part of the players is expected to just carry on without being informed/updated in any way;
- when -your- community brings these kinds of problems to your attention, and you fail to merely respond to any of the many threads, for nearly two months now;
- when you broadcast everyone’s private living-room conversations to area chats by default, and genuinely believe saying ‘use your mute button’, or the fully opaque time-frame for a fix being ‘in an upcoming patch’, is sufficient communication/action:

It’s not the game that is fatally bugged; it is you.

[snip]
[edited for goodbye/quitting content]

Destai · July 2021

@ZOS_Kevin Can you please speak to this content? I think this is a wonderful illustration of what needs improving here.

MrMazurski · July 2021

Force a response that will look like this. "We sorry about all that, we know about problems. We STILL thinking about it. We don't give up this idea entirely." bla bla bla close the topic.

unfortunately recently, lack of communication looks like this with ZOS.

Lol I still do not know what is happening with DK leap or other charge / jump skills that randomly did not work on the pvp zone. No answer, yet before MYM event. I don't know if they fixed it or not. Can I go back to the old skills choice? idk as the random skill offs were too annoying to play this class.

Pevey · July 2021

Patch notes for current pts release mention a fix for the western Skyrim survey issue.

coletas · July 2021

MrMazurski wrote: »

Force a response that will look like this. "We sorry about all that, we know about problems. We STILL thinking about it. We don't give up this idea entirely." bla bla bla close the topic.

unfortunately recently, lack of communication looks like this with ZOS.

Lol I still do not know what is happening with DK leap or other charge / jump skills that randomly did not work on the pvp zone. No answer, yet before MYM event. I don't know if they fixed it or not. Can I go back to the old skills choice? idk as the random skill offs were too annoying to play this class.

No, dk leap, fosilize range (altough it works at 1m) and maybe others are not working SOMETIMES

trackdemon5512 · July 2021

Pevey wrote: »

Patch notes for current pts release mention a fix for the western Skyrim survey issue.

The survey fix is endemic of a larger issue that’s become far more prevalent over the last two years: seriously buggy software being released, reported, and then the following:

1) Tickets being submitted without any seeming follow up

2) No acknowledgement of the issue to the community

3) A single acknowledgement of an issue and then nothing seemingly done

4) An issue addressed but another severe issues crops up immediately and the cycle of failure to communicate begins anew

The clearest recent example of this was the inventory issue at the introduction of Flames of Ambition in which selling, depositing, and managing inventory had the player encountering significant lag with every item. Very few updates regarding the issue until it was seemingly hastily addressed for PC and subsequently console. And then instantly console has severe issues with inventory management and craft bags for which they paid extra for (ESO+).

PVP is a long running form of this where things are constantly broken and no communication about addressing the issues. What that has led to is individuals taking advantage of exploits, reports being hidden as per forum rules, and players just leaving the mode all together.

It all comes together.

khyrkat · July 2021

Editing such post says it all. They're not ready to fix anything. They're not ready to communicate because what is there to communicate? New pixels in crown store? This gets old pretty fast. [snip] No communication, no apologies to customers that pay them money, like, we're not charity, we pay and we have the right (sorry) to demand. But since Microsoft is one hot mess of a buggy stuff, this ain't even a surprise.
Good try but... not with this company. Not with any company, to be honest.

meilink18 wrote: »

The escalating tsunami of over-advertised yet insignificant events, may bring new players to ESO, but this will ultimately prove meaningless if your (previously) loyal existing players keep leaving.

There is no need for loyalty in this business anymore. I left two games I've been playing for long years, precisely because they became buggy mess of money-grab and pure lies, absolutely unplayable and degrading in quality in a way I simply couldn't stand. If this is what game company thinks is good for their game, so be it (that is also one of reasons why I stopped working for big gaming companies. I just don't have the right attitude because I do care about quality of content I create). Loyalty means absolutely nothing these days, it's better to catch new, naive customer that has zero idea about how things really look like, make them spend thousands, let them find out how shady this all in fact is, let them leave, get new ones, rinse and repeat. Ethically this is beyond any acceptible human behavior but this is business[snip]. Once you get it and put away all expectations, you will be ready to enjoy this content they haven't managed to mess up yet.

[edited for bashing & conspiracy]

meilink18 · July 2021

trackdemon5512 wrote: »

Pevey wrote: »

Patch notes for current pts release mention a fix for the western Skyrim survey issue.

1) Tickets being submitted without any seeming follow up

2) No acknowledgement of the issue to the community

3) A single acknowledgement of an issue and then nothing seemingly done

4) An issue addressed but another severe issues crops up immediately and the cycle of failure to communicate begins anew

khyrkat wrote: »

Editing such post says it all. They're not ready to fix anything. They're not ready to communicate because what is there to communicate? New pixels in crown store? This gets old pretty fast. [snip] No communication, no apologies to customers that pay them money, like, we're not charity, we pay and we have the right (sorry) to demand. But since Microsoft is one hot mess of a buggy stuff, this ain't even a surprise.

The combination of this is precisely my point. Players have put up with countless bugs over the years, because it at least appeared staff was aware of the issue, providing idle hope something was consequently being done to fix it. Even this is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

ZOS seems to be heading toward the same black hole of money-grabbiness that led Konami to cancel Silent Hills in 2015, to start making Pachinko machines. Money speaks clearly, while the fans mumble white noise.

I'd love to urge Zenimax to consider which is ultimately more important; spending time and resources on a near continuous stream of events that matter to a fairly small group, or spend it ensuring the game actually works.