Too much negativity in the forums.

jad11mumbler · September 2023

Not even an hour after the crown gifting change and there were hundreds flocking to the sub reddit and forums with negativity, doom and gloom posts.

I don't like that gifting is disabled, and it's the main reason I grind gold / spend hours playing.
But at least give them some time to get a fix out before spelling out the end of the world.

Though ZoS needs a lot of internal improvements too.
A lot of the negativity is earned, some of it is over reactive anger like we have currently.

Daoin · September 2023

please just dont fix it by enabling it again

Elsonso · September 2023

jad11mumbler wrote: »

Though ZoS needs a lot of internal improvements too.
A lot of the negativity is earned, some of it is over reactive anger like we have currently.

My view is that over the years ZOS has helped to foster the environment. ZOS seems to take the stance of just letting things play out. The fire will burn itself out, in time. However, in my observation, the fire never goes out, even if the flames can't be seen any more. It smoulders, waiting to flare up the next time. Each time this happens, the community is destroyed a little bit more.

Some player is always going to over react. Such is the way of the internet. They should not be allowed to set the tone. Others need to step in and temper the reaction rather than amplify it. ZOS included. Politely of course, and with minimal banning.

Veinblood1965 · September 2023

exoib wrote: »

I mean it's all valid the way this game is going, everyone seems to abandon it at this point. Imagine a brand new player who wants to be a part of a community, learn, discuss stuff etc they join the forums and just see negative posts in the General Discussions page then they try to find good guilds or vet players/teachers to teach them stuff, which are mostly absent, very hard to find them all in all. It's really sad to witness this after spending 6 years of my life with ESO.

How dare you come on to these forums and complain about negativity! The gall!

Joke btw, I agree. When I first started on these forums it was the same way and still is. I guess I've become immune to it's proc.

Tandor · September 2023

I don't mind negativity on the forum when it's both justified and well informed. That isn't always the case, however, and the numerous threads on Crown gifting are an example of that. Most if not all of those threads describe it as the ending of Crown gifting and blame ZOS for it, when it is very clear that Crown gifting has only been suspended due to fraud on the part of players. What else does anyone seriously expect a company to do when it is being defrauded?

To be clear, however, I do take the view that ZOS have made a number of other decisions in the last year or two that were misguided and poorly explained with little if any engagement with the community over them. The introduction of AwA was a classic example of that. Sadly, I'm also one of those who consequently considers participating in the PTS and providing feedback on the PTS forum to be a complete waste of time nowadays. I also agree with those who suggest that there is no sign of ZOS having recognised let alone learned from such mistakes, and so the worry that they will continue to make them is a genuine one - although I don't personally believe the current action on Crown gifting falls into that category.

exoib · September 2023

Tandor wrote: »

I don't mind negativity on the forum when it's both justified and well informed. That isn't always the case, however, and the numerous threads on Crown gifting are an example of that. Most if not all of those threads describe it as the ending of Crown gifting and blame ZOS for it, when it is very clear that Crown gifting has only been suspended due to fraud on the part of players. What else does anyone seriously expect a company to do when it is being defrauded?

To be clear, however, I do take the view that ZOS have made a number of other decisions in the last year or two that were misguided and poorly explained with little if any engagement with the community over them. The introduction of AwA was a classic example of that. Sadly, I'm also one of those who consequently considers participating in the PTS and providing feedback on the PTS forum to be a complete waste of time nowadays. I also agree with those who suggest that there is no sign of ZOS having recognised let alone learned from such mistakes, and so the worry that they will continue to make them is a genuine one - although I don't personally believe the current action on Crown gifting falls into that category.

Most constructive review so far

baltic1284 · September 2023

exoib wrote: »

I mean it's all valid the way this game is going, everyone seems to abandon it at this point. Imagine a brand new player who wants to be a part of a community, learn, discuss stuff etc they join the forums and just see negative posts in the General Discussions page then they try to find good guilds or vet players/teachers to teach them stuff, which are mostly absent, very hard to find them all in all. It's really sad to witness this after spending 6 years of my life with ESO.

I feel yeah been playing ESO since Beta test and I have seen negativity rise over the years of playing the game. Issue is some of it is the Community and frustration of issues bugs problems not being handled properly or in a timely manner. For a very long time PvP was ignored and full of issues and all the community got for a long while was We are working on it, or we are looking into it, and such things said.
Thing is toxic posts have gotten more and more common don't get me wrong but as I see it this is on both sides fault the company and such for not addressing realizing and fixing issues bugs and problems in a timely manner, and the community for expecting things over night or attacking one another over their views of the product. Do fixes take time yes of course they do but it doesn't need to take well over years to fix a PvP problem or PvE problem or a damage problem or release updates that break the game more than fix it, Gremoor being a prime example of things mis handled and many other updates since Morrowind.
All in all, not trying to break any rules but I see it as a problem both the community and the company and all involved as to the cause of the problems, isn't any one part or person no but it is many parts and people that lead up to the state the game is currently in and the way the community is anymore.

muscle_witch · September 2023

Tandor wrote: »

I don't mind negativity on the forum when it's both justified and well informed. That isn't always the case, however, and the numerous threads on Crown gifting are an example of that. Most if not all of those threads describe it as the ending of Crown gifting and blame ZOS for it, when it is very clear that Crown gifting has only been suspended due to fraud on the part of players. What else does anyone seriously expect a company to do when it is being defrauded?

To be fair, most of the people who are describing it as the end of crown gifting are the ones who know that crown crate gifting was turned off at the beginning of March, who believed ZOS when we were told it was a bug, who waited for all of Kevin's updates on a fix, and who six months later have only watched as crown crate gifting functionality gets stripped from console players and then all crown gifting functionality gets turned off.

And it was never clear that crown gifting functionality was only suspended due to fraud on the part of the players. We were told it was a bug. For a long time, fraud was never part of the conversation because we were led to believe that this was a problem that needed to be coded away. The whole "fraudulent behavior" line is relatively new in the conversation about this loss of functionality. Of course, it's entirely possible that it's true and this has actually been the problem all along, but unfortunately ZOS just doesn't have the kind of credibility that the people who have been following this for months on end are likely to take them at their word.

katanagirl1 · September 2023

I take back what I said about not much negativity after reading the Nefas thread. Man that was horrible. Why rain on somebody’s parade like that?

SilverBride · September 2023

I'm just thankful that I don't see any of the negative doomsday stuff I see here in game.

DreamyLu · September 2023

Games forums (no matter what game) - more specifically the "General discussion" sections of it - are mostly negative because they're used by players who have a problem with the game and want to talk about. Therefore, a vast majority of posts are complains or request for changes. With that, the forum appears like nobody is happy with the game.

However, don't forget that only a little minority of players post here compared to how many players are in game. Most players don't even know that forum, or just don't feel the need to post.

Katheriah · September 2023

jad11mumbler wrote: »

But at least give them some time to get a fix out before spelling out the end of the world.

Like 6 months?

Jaraal · September 2023

ikzaa wrote: »

but the forum is like 5% of the game's population

72.1% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

jtm1018 · September 2023

The fruit does not fall far from the tree.
Eso is the tree, eso community is the fruit.
GIGO.

Lancer1602 · September 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HU6FkEMx7k

zaria · September 2023

SilverBride wrote: »

I'm just thankful that I don't see any of the negative doomsday stuff I see here in game.

Agree but look about this poor dog.

On the good side an undaunted event where the dungeon finder is working, that is new.

Lancer1602 · September 2023

jad11mumbler wrote: »

But at least give them some time to get a fix out before spelling out the end of the world.

The block bug was getting fixed for how long?

Aftermath of u35 is still not fixed and its been like almost a year

They had more than enough time and feedback to work on the issues, but they decided to invest into Crownstore.

Money > Player

Maitsukas · September 2023

I've seen quite a bit of overreactions over many things myself, and from the top my head, the list is quite extensive from 2021:

The Companion system, which was announced to be Blackwood's major feature
Tales of Tribute, which was announced to be High Isle's major feature
Account Wide Achievements with the U33 base game patch
Update 35 changes
Block bug that arrived with U36
Battleground Weekends
Arcanist announced as the new class for Necrom since Elsweyr's Necromancer
Change in the content release schedule for 2023 (Q1 Dungeons, Q2 Chapter, Q3 QoL and bug fixes, Q4 The Endless Archive)
Whitestrake's Mayhem moved a few months further from it's initial planned date
Crown Crate gifting disabled for PC
Login Queues during Zeal of Zenithar 2023
Crown Crate gifting disabled for consoles and getting moved to Customer Support
Update 39 reception
Crown Store Gifting system disabled for all platforms and servers

Lancer1602 · September 2023

Maitsukas wrote: »

I've seen quite a bit of overreactions over many things myself, and from the top my head, the list is quite extensive from 2021:
Update 35 changes

Block bug that arrived with U36

How those two are an overreaction?

Block bug completely stopped many static groups from raiding simply making a large aspect of the game unplayable. Considering the fact that this took months to fix - any negative reaction to that cannot be an overreaction.

U35 caused a lot of negative feedback during the PTS cycle, which was totally ignored. Many comments on YT videos, Forum topics, Discord chats - where people state that they`ve left after u35.

Katheriah · September 2023

Maitsukas wrote: »

Crown Crate gifting disabled for consoles and getting moved to Customer Support

I'm not sure if saying crate gifting was being moved to the customer support is a description that does the situation justice. The mess around that (and the difference between responses from Kevin and the support engineers) is a mix of funny and sad.

Muizer · September 2023

Well there's different kinds of negative posters:

There's people who just bring an issue to ZoS' attention, which is fine. There people who cope with disappointment by venting, which is understandable. There's people who believe that if you kick up enough of a [snip] storm by mobilizing the above, you can somehow force ZoS to take action, [snip]
[edited for baiting & profanity bypass]

markulrich1966 · September 2023

I mean, what do you expect?
On xbox, now U39 was rolled out, and I could check the trifocus changes on staves in Fungal Grotto 1 to get an undaunted event-ticket.
This change removed most AOE damage from ligthning staves. My cp1900 no longer burns through these formerly easy mobs of goblins, instead he has to attack each single one. I feel as if I'm back to cp200 suddenly, or lost all my CP.
What for a sick mess. I just got my eventtickets on all 4 logins, and immedeatly switched back to Fallout.

Elsonso · September 2023

Jaraal wrote: »

ikzaa wrote: »

but the forum is like 5% of the game's population

72.1% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

At least it is down from 90%.

Lancer1602 wrote: »

jad11mumbler wrote: »

But at least give them some time to get a fix out before spelling out the end of the world.

The block bug was getting fixed for how long?

Aftermath of u35 is still not fixed and its been like almost a year

They had more than enough time and feedback to work on the issues, but they decided to invest into Crownstore.

Money > Player

That is how we know that they will ultimately fix whatever is plaguing Crown Store gifting. This is serious stuff. Not like the in game stuff that may be broken and has no impact on anything in the real world.

Warhawke_80 · September 2023

I really think you guys should spend some time on the Wow forums before words like Negativity are bandied about....

Elsonso · September 2023

Warhawke_80 wrote: »

I really think you guys should spend some time on the Wow forums before words like Negativity are bandied about....

Maybe. Even if something is "not as bad as" something else, it can still be bad. Settling for the lesser of two evils still means accepting an evil.

I'm out of old cliches, but if I think of any more, I'll be back.

Jammy420 · September 2023

Cause and effect. The community has been disrespected indirectly and directly by the devs quite a few times now, and to boot, they flat out ignore most of the feedback in the PTS. It is only natural that the relationship and atmosphere sour with that kind of treatment.

Warhawke_80 · September 2023

Elsonso wrote: »

Warhawke_80 wrote: »

I really think you guys should spend some time on the Wow forums before words like Negativity are bandied about....

Maybe. Even if something is "not as bad as" something else, it can still be bad. Settling for the lesser of two evils still means accepting an evil.

I'm out of old cliches, but if I think of any more, I'll be back.

Maybe...the thing is the in game community and the forum community are diametric in the extreme...I have often wondered if ZoS has ever taken a look at how many forum users have even logged into the game once since you can spend five bucks and get a shiny new forum key I bet that number is high...I wonder how the forums would change if say you had to be a subscriber to post in the General Forum.

Just to be clear "I'M NOT ADVOCATING THIS" put the daggers away...it just thoughts that drift into my mind at times.

Anumaril · September 2023

Yeah this is unfortunately the reality with most games' forums, or anything where customers/consumers leave reviews/give feedback. Usually things are very skewed to the extremes, although more heavily negative.

Those of us who feel disenfranchised by the game will post on the forums to complain about something we don't like, or even to post the all-so-original "I'm quitting" thread. You'll get the occasional person posting something positive, but generally if your experience with the game is positive you don't have a huge reason to get onto the forums in the first place. But you do if the experience is negative.

Freilauftomate · September 2023

[snip]

The reality ingame, in discords and other social media, where people are allowed to say what they want to say, is way worse. Most players don't even know about this forum or care to join, because having to write a ticket to get an invitation is too complicated for them.

And there is no real communication here anyway. We get the patchnotes, yes, that's great. But other than that nobody talks to the players. Moderators only delete, ban and move. The community managers copy paste "we don't know" once a week. And 2-3 times a year we get some kind of announcement for something that will never happen. That's it. Famous players like @React and @Nefas are working hard to get real information, but all they get is ignored.

I was hoping for Microsoft to step in with their almost unlimited ressources and save this game, but it doesn't look like they want to. [snip]

Yes, it's sad. But there are plenty of good reasons why players are unhappy. The game could be great, and for a company this size it would be easy to fix the problems, but they don't. And nobody knows why.

[edited for bashing]

muscle_witch · September 2023

Muizer wrote: »

There's people who believe that if you kick up enough of a [snip] storm by mobilizing the above, you can somehow force ZoS to take action, [snip]

It's delusional and toxic to think that the game devs should listen to community feedback? That's uh, quite a take.

[edited to remove quote]