Survey Closed

Aka_ · November 2022

Why is the survey closed? It hasn't even been over 72 hours since it was opened. Is feedback not important to help steer the game in the right direction? Why close it so soon? This kind of action reduces already weakening player trust and communication further. I am very disappointed.

Edited to amend timeline, I still stand by it not being nearly enough time nor a reasonable survey. It's like they're barely trying anymore.

Freelancer_ESO · November 2022

I would assume that if ZOS meant for the survey link to be public they would have posted it themselves.

People posted the link on the forums and reddit because they wanted to get more responses to it from people likely to agree with them to influence ZOS.

Aka_ · November 2022

Perhaps. But you and many others know that a useful survey needs as much negative feedback, if not moreso, them positive if there's to be actual progress. I'm reminded once again that I should not put my trust in a company that won't even try to appear like they're looking to make meaningful changes based on their customers' desires.

Danikat · November 2022

I got emailed the survey 3 days ago (almost exactly 72 hours) and I don't think I was one of the first to get it so it's been running for more than 2 days.

But it could have been set to close after a certain number of responses, I know that's an option some survey software gives. Or they could have manually closed it early after the link got posted on the forum because the point might have been to get responses from an accurate cross-section of ESO players, not the minority that choose to use the forum which typically is skewed towards long-term and hardcore players (and is also a group they've got plenty of feedback from already).

They might be planning to run a whole series of surveys, iterating on the feedback each time, and in that case it's probably better to get a small but statistically significant sample quickly and then move on to the next step than spend days or weeks waiting for responses that will maybe shift the totals half a percent.

SeaGtGruff · November 2022

A lot of surveys that I've received from various companies have had personalized links. That might not stop anyone else who had a copy of the link from clicking on it and taking the survey, but once the survey had been completed using that specific link then any additional attempts to use the link would say that the survey had already been completed. This would prevent it from being abused by anyone who wanted to spam the survey with a particular type of response, be it overly positive or overly negative. I don't know how this survey was set up, but if it wasn't set up to track whether the survey had already been filled out from that link then whoever shared their link essentially opened up the survey to abuse, whether they meant to or not.

Luciferazazell · November 2022

So much for the Importance of player feed back

it Wasn't made really accessible to all so much for the focus on accessibility lol. if this was targeted on specific user then what's the point seems hypocritical we want to know what you think but we already know which way you lean but we want to put it down on paper.

Marto · November 2022

Luciferazazell wrote: »

So much for the Importance of player feed back it Wasn't made really accessible to all.

Not all surveys are intended for all groups. That doesn't mean ZOS doesn't care or doesn't want feedback from other groups.

It just means this specific survey had a specific target for specific feedback on specific topics.

SeaGtGruff · November 2022

There's nothing wrong with a company wanting to make sure that feedback is coming from actual customers who have actual experience with the product in question.

Finedaible · November 2022

I don't know why they bother with surveys seeing as they never improve or learn from them. From the line of questioning of that survey, it would seem they want to rethink the reward structure but don't have their own metrics or perhaps they do not know how to analyze them. If they were to ask me, I would say that what they are doing wrong is going 101% into monetization of every aspect of the game to the point there is not much gameplay or incentives left beyond the dungeons and trials which is Mike Finnigan's responsibility - thank god for him at least. The whole survey just made it that much more apparent that ZoS is so out of touch with their fans and customers that they don't know what to do anymore.

Marto · November 2022

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

There's nothing wrong with a company wanting to make sure that feedback is coming from actual customers who have actual experience with the product in question.

There is, if the specific survey is targeting less experienced users, casual users, returning users, innactive users, or people who are not-yet customers.

Kappachi · November 2022

Finedaible wrote: »

I don't know why they bother with surveys seeing as they never improve or learn from them. From the line of questioning of that survey, it would seem they want to rethink the reward structure but don't have their own metrics or perhaps they do not know how to analyze them. If they were to ask me, I would say that what they are doing wrong is going 101% into monetization of every aspect of the game to the point there is not much gameplay or incentives left beyond the dungeons and trials which is Mike Finnigan's responsibility - thank god for him at least. The whole survey just made it that much more apparent that ZoS is so out of touch with their fans and customers that they don't know what to do anymore.

The "other" field let you voice your thoughts. I believe they intended for the "Other" field to be used as many of us have written paragraphs of what we think needs to be reworked/changed.

Danikat · November 2022

That's a good point, it's possible they wanted to target a specific demographic rather than all players. I'm not sure what that could be, but considering I got it and given recent issues I could imagine it being something like "people who logged in for less than X hours over the past week" or maybe "people who bought High Isle and claimed/bought Firesong/have ESO+ and log in regularly but don't play much".

(I've not had any real issues because of the last update, I've just not had much free time lately.)

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

A lot of surveys that I've received from various companies have had personalized links. That might not stop anyone else who had a copy of the link from clicking on it and taking the survey, but once the survey had been completed using that specific link then any additional attempts to use the link would say that the survey had already been completed. This would prevent it from being abused by anyone who wanted to spam the survey with a particular type of response, be it overly positive or overly negative. I don't know how this survey was set up, but if it wasn't set up to track whether the survey had already been filled out from that link then whoever shared their link essentially opened up the survey to abuse, whether they meant to or not.

This one isn't a personalised link, I compared the one posted on the forum to the one in the email I got and the address is identical. But that could be an option for ZOS in future.

It's also possible to set it up so respondants can re-do it, but any new submissions using the same link overwrite the old ones. I've done that with surveys for my work because the respondants might need to change their answers later on but we want to make sure we only get 1 per person.

Kesstryl · November 2022

I never received the survey, and it would have been nice to leave my feedback. I watched Nefas fill it out in his video today, and I would have answered some things differently from him. I totally respect his answers and I'm glad he got to have his voice heard, but many of us who do not think or play like the mainstream content creators would also like to have our voices heard.

BahometZ · November 2022

I didn't realise a survey had gone out. Was it only accessible via a sent email to select people?

Kiralyn2000 · November 2022

BahometZ wrote: »

I didn't realise a survey had gone out. Was it only accessible via a sent email to select people?

Yeah, it was another of the random email surveys. I've never gotten one, far as I remember.
But that's fine. My usual reaction to most things is "eh, whatever." Probably not the best survey data point.

Alinhbo_Tyaka · November 2022

I would guess we all answered the questions correctly and they decided we didn't need to be tested anymore.

Luciferazazell · November 2022

Marto wrote: »

Luciferazazell wrote: »

So much for the Importance of player feed back it Wasn't made really accessible to all.

Not all surveys are intended for all groups. That doesn't mean ZOS doesn't care or doesn't want feedback from other groups.

It just means this specific survey had a specific target for specific feedback on specific

Do specific players play the game or do all players that play the game play the game. Seems a bit ridiculous to target a certain group. Especially when all players feedback I would think would be important. Seems more like picking and choosing what you want to hear for feedback. Which does nothing and doesn't get to the core of the issues with the game. Not to mention that it was a general questionaire survey it had questions regarding every aspect of the game. Pvp, pve, overland, sets, crafting and everything in between as well as age. Not sure what the specific were there but sure ok. The only thing that seems specific was the decision on who to send it to and the specifics on it being a whopping 72 hours to respond.
But hey your feedback matters right ? Lol I mean we hear this saying all the time. I guess those that got it specifically answered it for the rest of us.

SammyKhajit · November 2022

This one didn’t get the survey link in the mail, so it was very lucky that Sammy had seen it on this forum and responded to it.

Question is, what will they do with the results? Share the summary of responses?

Cadbury · November 2022

Hopefully those that did the survey link posted on the forums won't get in trouble.

_Zathras_ · November 2022

Cadbury wrote: »

Hopefully those that did the survey link posted on the forums won't get in trouble.

I followed the link someone put on the forums and did the survey, invite or not. Like others have mentioned, the more data the better.

I did think it was odd they put so much focus on loot, sets, and rewards. Maybe that's why the invite only went out to a select few. If it went out to everyone, they would have gotten a much more accurate read of their playerbase.

Northwold · November 2022

If you're doing a survey you either make it public and accessible to everyone who chooses to do it -- which is almost always useless in terms of information value because you then can't get a representative sample, only those who self selected to do it / got pushed to do it by other people on the internet -- or you target who you send it to and try to make the sample representative of the different types of person you want to reach.

If someone then circulates the link for the latter type of survey to all and sundry, the survey is rendered worthless. It has no hope of giving you the information you need.

It's for the same reason that political polling isn't conducted by just posting random polls on reddit but using a preselected group of voters whose characteristics you can then control for.

Elsonso · November 2022

SammyKhajit wrote: »

This one didn’t get the survey link in the mail, so it was very lucky that Sammy had seen it on this forum and responded to it.

Question is, what will they do with the results? Share the summary of responses?

They have never shared the results in the past, so I don't expect them to do it now. Also, given the viral nature of the response, I don't think that the survey results are going to be used in the manner they originally intended. For all we know, they could serve as a cozy blanket to keep the bottom of a waste bin warm.

redlink1979 · November 2022

BahometZ wrote: »

I didn't realise a survey had gone out. Was it only accessible via a sent email to select people?

Yes, surveys are sent randomly via email to selected accounts.

Amottica · November 2022

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

I would assume that if ZOS meant for the survey link to be public they would have posted it themselves.

People posted the link on the forums and reddit because they wanted to get more responses to it from people likely to agree with them to influence ZOS.

And if this did happen, it would make sense for Zenimax to close it since the survey would no longer be a random sampling.

Zodiarkslayer · November 2022

Closing the survey is likely the result of publicly sharing the link and thus creating a lot of unwanted data.

redlink1979 wrote: »

BahometZ wrote: »

I didn't realise a survey had gone out. Was it only accessible via a sent email to select people?

Yes, surveys are sent randomly via email to selected accounts.

Ahmm... No. Definitely not randomly chosen!

Typically you want to correlate Data from surveys to previously gathered information of your customers.
Most businesses would try to correlate data to metrics that express the value of the customer to the buisness. Frequency of use and of purchase, first and foremost. That just is what good buisnesses do.

I, for example, am not ESO+ and out of the last 90 days I have played on maybe 10. And the reasons are clear. Change fatigue and the controversies of U35 and U36, obviously. So any Data gathered from me is less valuable for analysis than from a ESO+ member that played on 60+ days out of the last 90.

spartaxoxo · November 2022

Northwold wrote: »

If you're doing a survey you either make it public and accessible to everyone who chooses to do it -- which is almost always useless in terms of information value because you then can't get a representative sample, only those who self selected to do it / got pushed to do it by other people on the internet -- or you target who you send it to and try to make the sample representative of the different types of person you want to reach.

If someone then circulates the link for the latter type of survey to all and sundry, the survey is rendered worthless. It has no hope of giving you the information you need.

It's for the same reason that political polling isn't conducted by just posting random polls on reddit but using a preselected group of voters whose characteristics you can then control for.

This. More data isn't always better, if that data ends up introducing a bias that significantly impacts results.

G0K4R · November 2022

ZOS should definitely consider using this kind of tool (survey) more frequently since the feedback from people was very positive - at least until they suddenly closed it, which is sad

SammyKhajit · November 2022

Elsonso wrote: »

SammyKhajit wrote: »

This one didn’t get the survey link in the mail, so it was very lucky that Sammy had seen it on this forum and responded to it.

Question is, what will they do with the results? Share the summary of responses?

They have never shared the results in the past, so I don't expect them to do it now. Also, given the viral nature of the response, I don't think that the survey results are going to be used in the manner they originally intended. For all we know, they could serve as a cozy blanket to keep the bottom of a waste bin warm.

:'(

Cazador · November 2022

Frankly, places like here on the forums and reddit are often echo chambers. The polls are sent out to random accounts regardless of their participation on forums and generally random polls are less biased and trends shown are usually more accurate.

When you have two separate locations with strong biases they will likely skew what would otherwise be an otherwise unbiased poll.

More data can be useful, but when you have an influx of data from sources with a specific motivation it kind of renders the data worthless.

LadyLethalla · November 2022

I found the link on Reddit and completed it. Would have like the Other option on several of the questions.
One question that bothered me a little was about the rewards. I chose Treasure Maps as one option, but I should have liked to add a comment that I like getting Treasure Maps now, especially for new zones - but once I have all of the antiquities leads from them I won't really want them as a reward.