Events and guild planning

SantieClaws · July 2021

This one knows there will be an event involving pans and Elsweyr sometime this month.

It has been mentioned there will be a Year One event in August and something for Blackwood in September.

Just this one is wondering, with all events, not just these if you could let us know the dates at the start of the month or just sooner than a few days in advance?

This one understands things can be subject to change just it is quite hard to plan upcoming Caturday night guild mischief when the actual dates of events are often sprung on us only a few days before.

If there is an event on we usually do something involving it - but we do need to plan a bit. Otherwise we all just turn up at the village and wait for someone to come up with something. Then Shnurr throws a pie or two, someone takes a nap and we crochet a bit.

In planning we have to consider do all our guildies have that zone? Who is likely to be around on any particular week? Etc ...

So we understand yes thing can change but the more information you can give us to help our planning the better.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

AcadianPaladin · July 2021

Even for non guild considerations. I'll take my PC in to the shop for an annual tune up this month. It doesn't really matter when during the month but I do want to plan it in advance. Sure enough, I'll make plans for a certain week, then an event will pop up that I could have easily planned around with some notice. Just hoping for a few weeks instead of a couple days notice on dates.

Danikat · July 2021

I agree.

Based on the Crown Store Showcase (which is often the only thing which gives us advanced warning) I was expecting the Elseweyr event to start either today or on the 22nd, but because the actual announcements come so close to the events and because of time zone differences I couldn't be sure until I woke up today and saw that nothing had been posted yesterday that it wouldn't be starting this week.

It really would be helpful to have some advanced notice, even if it's not definite, so those of us who need to can make plans that factor in the events, instead of just having to take out chances.

For example my work days can be very variable, and while of course a video game is never going to be a top priority sometimes there aren't any other important factors in the decision and I'd like to schedule my days off for when I'll have more to do in a game, like when there's an event in ESO, so I can spend some more time online in between things like housework. But I can't do that if we only get told when an event is happening a few days before. Then it's likely to go the other way and I'll have said there's nothing happening that weekend so I can work and end up barely having time to log in.

tomofhyrule · July 2021

They never release the dates beforehand since they never know if something will come up.

It's much less of a headache for them to announce "We're getting an event this month!" and then "It's coming next week!" rather than running the risk or "It'll be here on the 27th!" followed by "Oops, there's a problem, so we have to delay this event! Hope nobody took time off of work!" People are much more resistant to the date suddenly changing rather than the date not being announced until it's ready.

However, the Showcase usually has some hints in it. The Pan-Elsweyr celebration is definitely going to be at the end of the month since they won't want events to run into each other. In the Showcase, the beginning of the month is mostly Dunmer themed so likely not, but there are a few Elsweyr things that do have dates - the music box from July 29-Aug 3, the motifs from July 19-Aug 3, etc. I also notice that there is nothing really releasing on the 22nd of the month, even though many releases happen on Thursdays, which is an indication that that's likely the date for much of the 'will release during the celebration' stuff.

Events like to start on Thursdays. They run for usually about a week and a half. All of that together suggests the event will likely run Thursday 22 July until Tuesday Aug 3.

SimonThesis · July 2021

Zos it is very disrespectful to your guilds to announce the dates of events the day before like Midyear mayhem. A lot of guilds plan their schedules months in advance and have to work around peoples rl schedules and members expect guilds to participate in events. This just causes emergency meetings and problems for the exec boards of your guilds.

@ZOS_GinaBruno

AcadianPaladin · July 2021

Well, what do you know? Thanks, @SantieClaws ! It is clear that your thread is responsible for this event giving a full week notice instead of just a day or two.

redspecter23 · July 2021

I would also love to know about upcoming event dates much further in advance. I'm not sure how easy that would be on ZOS to do that, but I've seen it in other games before. They might even go so far as to have an in game calendar marked with upcoming events, sales, promotions, stream team streams, etc.

I understand that things can change last minute, but that doesn't change when the event schedule is announced 1 week in advance either. We can still have a situation come up where the Elsweyr event gets postponed anyway. I suppose there may be a good reason to leave it to last minute other than a lack of knowledge. It may be a marketing dept. decision to force focus on certain things.

SantieClaws · July 2021

AcadianPaladin wrote: »

Well, what do you know? Thanks, @SantieClaws ! It is clear that your thread is responsible for this event giving a full week notice instead of just a day or two.

This one thinks you give her far too much credit xd

Khajiit is just an old cat who talks too much and naps exactly the right amount.

But it never hurts to say what you think as long as you do not call anyone skeeverpants while you do it.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

FluffWit · July 2021

They told us during the big reveal event for this year back in January that they'd put up an announce,ent at the start of each quarter letting us know what events to expect that quarter so we could plan accordingly. They did that in January, didnt bother in April and we're now 15 days into quarter 3 with no announcement.

Girl_Number8 · July 2021

SantieClaws wrote: »

This one knows there will be an event involving pans and Elsweyr sometime this month.

It has been mentioned there will be a Year One event in August and something for Blackwood in September.

Just this one is wondering, with all events, not just these if you could let us know the dates at the start of the month or just sooner than a few days in advance?

This one understands things can be subject to change just it is quite hard to plan upcoming Caturday night guild mischief when the actual dates of events are often sprung on us only a few days before.

If there is an event on we usually do something involving it - but we do need to plan a bit. Otherwise we all just turn up at the village and wait for someone to come up with something. Then Shnurr throws a pie or two, someone takes a nap and we crochet a bit.

In planning we have to consider do all our guildies have that zone? Who is likely to be around on any particular week? Etc ...

So we understand yes thing can change but the more information you can give us to help our planning the better.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

@SantieClaws always the most helpful Community Ambassador 🐈

You have a very lovely guild and ZOS certainly should be able to given some notice for events....

@ZOS_Kevin

Please see if you could make a new sticky for Events on the forums, giving players advanced notice. Thank you kindly 😊

ZOS_Kevin · July 2021

Hi everyone! Thank you all for your feedback around this topic. And thanks to @SantieClaws for starting the thread. We wanted to chime in with some thoughts and get additional feedback in this topic.

First, we're sorry for not posting the Q2 events graphic in more accessible places. While we did share the graphic on ESO Live, we didn't make the graphic more available via our other platforms and that was not intentional. We'll make sure to make those graphics more available in the future.

We understand the want to have event dates shared sooner with the community. Especially those of you who are planning guild activities around in-game events like the Pan-Elsweyr Celebration. Currently, we don't share event start dates until a week or two ahead of time to avoid disrupting player plans if a last-minute change were to occur. That said, we understand the challenges that creates for planning and will discuss ways we might be able to share event start dates a little earlier with everyone.

As we start those discussions, it would be great to get some additional information for everyone.

Would it be helpful if we post the quarterly upcoming in-game events graphic on the forums?
Ideally, how early would you prefer to have event start dates for guild planning? (We may not be able to share as early as everyone would like, but we will try to find a good middle ground.)

Thanks, everyone and looking forward to your feedback!

FluffWit · July 2021

@ZOS_Kevin

Just put something in your news wire.....

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news

It's easy to find and and easy to share.

StevieKingslayer · July 2021

@ZOS_Kevin

Heya,
In response to your questions (from my personal pov)...
- Yes, It would be extremely helpful to post the upcoming events graphics on the forums aswell, Alot of players dont even use social media so yeah, I think best solution is to just post it all over the place.
- I think something like "We are planning to implement the event around x week" about a month in advance. That way you're protected from the complainers, since it was "a plan", so if it shifts, we all knew it was subject to change, and it gives long enough advance for people to think of awesome stuff to do with their communities. (Not to mention the Pan Elswyer celebration, part of it requires you to have played through the main story in those lands to do some of the things to get the extra rewards, and some people need time ahead to do those things if they wish to complete the events on their alts, etc)

Have an awesome day and keep up this communication! I really like seeing you around here and interacting with us, You're doing a killer job!

Sylvermynx · July 2021

StevieKingslayer wrote: »

@ZOS_Kevin

Heya,
In response to your questions (from my personal pov)...
- Yes, It would be extremely helpful to post the upcoming events graphics on the forums aswell, Alot of players dont even use social media so yeah, I think best solution is to just post it all over the place.
- I think something like "We are planning to implement the event around x week" about a month in advance. That way you're protected from the complainers, since it was "a plan", so if it shifts, we all knew it was subject to change, and it gives long enough advance for people to think of awesome stuff to do with their communities. (Not to mention the Pan Elswyer celebration, part of it requires you to have played through the main story in those lands to do some of the things to get the extra rewards, and some people need time ahead to do those things if they wish to complete the events on their alts, etc)

Have an awesome day and keep up this communication! I really like seeing you around here and interacting with us, You're doing a killer job!

This. Would be a lot more helpful to those of us who never use social media (this forum and my own are as social as I ever get - I don't touch Twitter, FB etc).

And ditto @StevieKingslayer, @ZOS_Kevin! You're a breath of fresh air for sure!

Fennwitty · July 2021

At least a full week, preferably two.

Trials and things can be scheduled weeks in advance, a 'sudden' new event can shift plans from doing one trial to another.

Would also like a graphic tile put on the launcher for upcoming events. Currently the events are added to the scrolling text area, but so are most articles and it's not at all clear when a given article is game related or something like a twitch stream with some person nobody's heard of.

Danikat · July 2021

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As we start those discussions, it would be great to get some additional information for everyone.
Would it be helpful if we post the quarterly upcoming in-game events graphic on the forums?

Ideally, how early would you prefer to have event start dates for guild planning? (We may not be able to share as early as everyone would like, but we will try to find a good middle ground.)

Thanks, everyone and looking forward to your feedback!

Thanks for the slightly earlier notification on the Elseweyr event, that's a good start!

For me the most logical place to look for things like a quarterly event calendar is the news section of the main site, but if that's not possible then the forum would be a good substitute. I also follow ESO on both Twitter and Facebook but thanks to the way both websites restrict what you can see there's no guarentee any announcement there will actually reach me. (I have to admit I'm not sure what ESO Live is, other than presumably a video thing, meaning I never see it.)

For me a month's notice would be ideal but two weeks would be about the minimum needed to plan other things around it. Anything I'm organising more than a month out is almost certainly something which needs a lot of planning and can't be moved for an in-game event.

SantieClaws · July 2021

Thank you very much for responding @ZOS_Kevin

For this one personally it would be helpful to know exact dates about a month to three weeks in advance perhaps?

For events further in the future if you could even give us an indication of beginning, middle or end of the month for events that would be very helpful.

This one usually finds out about things via the tweety bird or here or on ESO Live. Somewhere we can look all the time though would be a good.

An overall events calendar perhaps?

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

fizl101 · July 2021

I agree that in the news area and event calendar would be a good place to go with publishing, although I won't say no to the forums too!

For me, I think a month would be ideal, at least 2 weeks preferably. It would be nice if for example you could say up to a year in advance you are planning x event in September, and then give actual dates as we get closer to it. As a product manager I'm aware of the reality of timescales slipping etc, so keeping it relatively vague to start with and then tightening the date as you get close to it would hopefully work

Dark_Lord_Kuro · July 2021

FluffWit wrote: »

They told us during the big reveal event for this year back in January that they'd put up an announce,ent at the start of each quarter letting us know what events to expect that quarter so we could plan accordingly. They did that in January, didnt bother in April and we're now 15 days into quarter 3 with no announcement.

Was announced durring the livestream if the waking flame dlc
https://mobile.twitter.com/TESOnline/status/1413621096318910464

Dark_Lord_Kuro · July 2021

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

.
Would it be helpful if we post the quarterly upcoming in-game events graphic on the forums?

Ideally, how early would you prefer to have event start dates for guild planning? (We may not be able to share as early as everyone would like, but we will try to find a good middle ground.)

1. Yes that would be nice, maybe as one of those announcmenrt tread that stat on the top of the first page of the forum. It would include start month like the announcement on twitter for the q3 event

2. 1 week ahead at the latest, earlier if possible. maybe 2 weeks would be reasonnable?

JKorr · July 2021

Yes, something in the site news would be good. There are still, myself included, semi-Luddites out there who believe Facebook is an abomination, and really despise Twitter. I'd rather find information on the official company website.

Rex-Umbra · July 2021

A in-game graphic at character select. Most people I know have never been the the forums.

waterfairy · July 2021

nevermind

we need an option to delete our posts

Destai · July 2021

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi everyone! Thank you all for your feedback around this topic. And thanks to @SantieClaws for starting the thread. We wanted to chime in with some thoughts and get additional feedback in this topic.

First, we're sorry for not posting the Q2 events graphic in more accessible places. While we did share the graphic on ESO Live, we didn't make the graphic more available via our other platforms and that was not intentional. We'll make sure to make those graphics more available in the future.

We understand the want to have event dates shared sooner with the community. Especially those of you who are planning guild activities around in-game events like the Pan-Elsweyr Celebration. Currently, we don't share event start dates until a week or two ahead of time to avoid disrupting player plans if a last-minute change were to occur. That said, we understand the challenges that creates for planning and will discuss ways we might be able to share event start dates a little earlier with everyone.

As we start those discussions, it would be great to get some additional information for everyone.
Would it be helpful if we post the quarterly upcoming in-game events graphic on the forums?

Ideally, how early would you prefer to have event start dates for guild planning? (We may not be able to share as early as everyone would like, but we will try to find a good middle ground.)

Thanks, everyone and looking forward to your feedback!

Thanks for the feedback. A couple of points:
1. It would be helpful to have some quarterly event graphic or calendar, especially in game. Fundamentally, not everyone's coming here, not everyone's going to Twitter or other social media. They are going in game. So while having things on the site is really what a lot of people are asking for, having some sort of improved Announcements pane is going to be beneficial for all of us.
2. 30 days out would be good. People in my guilds often have to plan for this, some even take time off. I would think at the minimum 2 weeks should be possible.
3. What's the hold-up internally that planning is so hard? Assuming you're an agile shop, you should have sprints planned for release and know sprint-begin what's in-scope and what's not. If waterfall, then knowing ahead of time should be even easier. I think this is what the community needs to better understand beyond boilerplate "we're looking into it." Details matter.
4. We like the Crown Sales Showcase and think the event calendars should be treated with the same emphasis. People'll buy your stuff, don't worry, especially if any crown item related to said event is discounted. The last event there were some odd choices where things were listed as "featured" in the crown store but not on sale.

Tevalaur · August 2021

@ZOS_Kevin Any update on this with how much time we might have to prepare?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We'll make sure to make those graphics more available in the future.

Also, any pointers to such a graphic on the current quarter's events?

ZOS_Kevin · August 2021

Thanks for checking in, @Tevalaur. We are still working out some of the details here. But it's on our radar to have a process soon.

(P.S.-You must be a mind reader. We were just looking at this thread again this morning to review feedback.)

cyberjanet · August 2021

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Would it be helpful if we post the quarterly upcoming in-game events graphic on the forums?

It would be very helpful indeed!

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Ideally, how early would you prefer to have event start dates for guild planning? (We may not be able to share as early as everyone would like, but we will try to find a good middle ground.)

This is trickier. If the quarterly upcoming events are available, we can start planning mini-events around that.
As for the actual dates, I would like about two weeks notice to start preparing material, though I would only release that to the guild with a week's notice.

Thanks!

Dalsinthus · August 2021

It would be really great if we could get more notice in advance about the timing of events. I'm likely to miss the year 1 celebration, but I would be able to plan a bit if I had some sense of when it was going to happen. Having a road map for the quarter and then lnowing 2 weeks or more about the exact timing would be great. Getting the news a week out is Ok. Hearing the day before an event starts absolutely stinks.

Dalsinthus · August 2021

And the article on the year 1 celebration is up several weeks earlier than usual! Thank you @ZOS_Kevin!

Gadget4 · August 2021

I’d like to see a sticky thread for event notifications at the top of this forum

I don’t do social media, so if ZoS uses the likes of twitter, Instagram, faceache etc. for any news or updates, then I myself, & possibly many others, miss out on that information

I get we’re in 2021 & the world has evolved, but I’m old school, the website/forum should be the primary place to release news/updates, with social nonsense media being secondary

Serenez · August 2021

While reading the forums I found out more details about the upcoming event in August, however this was literally buried in a comment by someone, and was only by chance I came across this information. There are many who do not use Twitter, so my suggestion is not to use this platform for the 'primary' source of communication, but rather a supportive source.

I just found an option for those that run a Discord Server to subscribe to the TESO Twitter feed via the The Dwemer Automaton BOT found at https://dwemerautomaton.com/ Once the Bot is added to your server with the instructions given on the website, there is a command that brings up all the subscribe options !subscribe

https://twitter.com/TESOnline/status/1423645035086635016