Oh there were answers.

Some just confuse ZoS not saying what they want to hear as ZoS not saying anything.

Sure communication could be better but it isn't nonexistent as you suggest.

The general area probably isn't the best place to look for communications from ZoS.

Communication would be good, but I'm not holding my breath.

Onomog wrote: »

You might as well be talking to a wall. There have been many threads, consisting of many many pages, asking and talking about the same thing. No satisfaction was gained, no answers were given - only deafening silence.

You forgot to mention many years.

From October 2021:

S_Kevin
admin
Hi All. Wanted to chime in here to provide some clarity. Thank you ( deleted) for tagging me in the thread!

First and foremost, thank you for raising this discussion. Having this discourse is vital to having an open dialogue and improving communication.

So the teams here at ZOS take feedback seriously both from outside and inside of the forum. Regarding forum feedback specifically, our teams share and have detailed conversations about forum threads regularly. Various teams have their own process when review and factoring in feedback from the forums. In addition, myself and other community team members share threads with relevant teams to make sure your thoughts and feedback, both positive and negative, are shared. The community team gives updates to that feedback when we can, but we also recognize there is more work to be done regarding communication across the board.

Several of you have noted ways that communication can be improved. We have seen those comments and actively working on making some of those suggestions a reality. We have a list of improvements we would like to make over the coming year here in the forum to not only improve communication, but to create a dialogue. My personal hope is to share some of these changes in the next few months. While we don't have specifics to share yet, when those changes come, we hope to get your feedback on how they can be improved.

We do know one of the community requested changes has been finding a way to note when a moderator is commenting on versus a ZOS employee. We are working on this as we know it is frustrating to enter a chat hoping for ZOS communication. This is pretty high up there regarding the communication upgrades. Again, no date yet, but we are working on it.

We'd like to round this out with asking what you would like to see as users of the forum for communication. We know several of you have noted what you would like to see (thank you), but we will be keeping this thread bookmarked for ways we can create a better forum experience and community. So additional feedback is welcome. So, what would you like to see in the forum to increase communication and dialogue?

Thank you all for taking your time to comment and expression your thoughts here. We greatly appreciate it.

---

I know I have tagged a few posts requesting clarifications recently but so far have had no responses.

There was to be a ZOS meeting to discuss ways to improve things but we haven't heard much since then unless it is a PR statement of sorts to put out " fires ". The whole ' circle back ' seems to be more of an euphemism for ' circular basket '.

Progress on this ?

I personally look at GGG (developers of Path of Exile) for the way things should be. Weeks prior to a new league (every calendar quarter) many people from the team post on Reddit constantly and answer questions. Up until launch and a few weeks later they are often highly active in discussions - answering anything from silly stupid questions to complex mechanical interactions. They do bug me at times because after those few weeks they go completely silent until just before the next quarter, but it is often enough that I know they are listening. I don't see the same thing from ZOS... prior to a major chapter release we should be at the height of communication, as a lot of us still don't know what to expect out of new content.

communication in this game is sorta like GM's in this game, non-existent

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Photosniper89 wrote: »

Dear ZOS Team,

Why is your communication so poor? What are your hesitations about being transparent with your community - for good and bad?

Believe it or not, it’s better than it used to be. By a lot.

Still really bad. It’s comical how many times over the years they’ve pledged to do better, and only recently-ish have we seen any actual effort to improve. There’s a long way to go to be good, but I have to acknowledge that they’ve improved.

The recent increase in communications seems to be directly tied to the recent increase in epic fails and the resulting damage control. Other than that, just the yearly promises that never seem to come to fruition. My favorite communication though, was them asking how they can communicate better, which they basically asked then ignored the answers. The fact that the community relations dept had to ask how to communicate in the first place, kind of makes you wonder.

My fave moment was this one in 2018:
'We agree we haven't been communicating as much as we should on this matter (among others) and for that, we apologize. There really is no excuse.' ~ @ZOS_GinaBruno , nov 2018

Good thing we notice a massive difference in communcation since that moment... Not...

Photosniper89 wrote: »

Dear ZOS Team,

Why is your communication so poor? What are your hesitations about being transparent with your community - for good and bad?

I think the forums are here just for that, many of their updates contain explanation for things. I think this is just the breakdown of communication when there aren’t better means to communicate them, which is sadly the entirety of the internet. I am even following them and Bethesda on Twitter and FB but I don’t always see their notifications even if I prioritize them. I subscribe to emails and even those get buried.

moleculardrugs wrote: »

Photosniper89 wrote: »

Dear ZOS Team,

Why is your communication so poor? What are your hesitations about being transparent with your community - for good and bad?

I think the forums are here just for that, many of their updates contain explanation for things. I think this is just the breakdown of communication when there aren’t better means to communicate them, which is sadly the entirety of the internet. I am even following them and Bethesda on Twitter and FB but I don’t always see their notifications even if I prioritize them. I subscribe to emails and even those get buried.

Although that is a problem of the time we live in, that's not what's going on here. I can give you two examples of topics opened by ZOS where people are literally begging for responses/updates on the last pages. I don't even have to search for it, it's all fairly recent:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/595442/eso-pvp-update-january-2022
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/512076/february-2020-furnishing-limit-status-update

So, this is a story I've been meaning to share from time to time, but always either forgot it or just decided not to share. Checking back when the conversation happened, this was back Q1 of 2016. There was a lot of promises of things going to happen and what not, in this particular case it was about stamina sorcerer's being given attention, and out of similar silence like we have now I made a crass and rude comment about 'maybe some day we'll know,' linking to multiple different post from ZOS about the matter.

Not long after Eric Wrobel, someone who was bound to get a bad reputation for being in charge of making changes, actually messaged me directly asking what questions I would like to make, since my post likely framed the question that way, and he endured a torrent of text as I wrote out so many of the pain points that I had. Shortly after that, during an ESO Live he highlighted some of these changes, hurricane and implosion. I even remember Gina asking him directly about the impact implosion had on gameplay, though I can't offhand remember his direct response to the question.

What matters, is for all the flack he took, he actually did listen and follow through on it. Now we have people who are too worried about drawing ire their way and would much prefer to sit back and let the players fight amongst themselves rather than be open and honest, with tangible follow through on what they say. I would love to be proven wrong, but when direct statements about 'wanting to improve communication' are made, followed by months of silence, the statement comes off as disingenuous at best.