In-Game Surveys: A Better Way for Player Feedback

imPDA · November 26

This is my suggestion on how to improve user feedback in ESO. From my point of view, the developers frequently don't hear users and often go perpendicular to the players' requests.

Since it seems ESO community management is starting to work more actively - providing more information more frequently and trying to be more transparent - I'm risking suggesting a new feature to help get more feedback. This feature works fine in other games, and I see no problem implementing it in ESO: in-game surveys. It's simple: you have 5-15 questions with multiple choices where a person chooses one or multiple options, plus an optional "big" question with a text field to type an answer.

Forum surveys exist and they are mostly bad and ineffective. From my experience, a lot of users don't even use the forums (like me myself), so it's questionable how much involvement you get with forum surveys. An in-game survey, on the other hand, would be seen by every (actively playing) user (a popup on character load or the character selection screen). You could also send a reward for completing the survey (but for the sake of God, not an experience scroll - even 200 Seals of Endeavor would be better). This would guarantee big involvement, and you could easily handle the received data - group by account age to know the opinion of old or new players; group by ESO+ users, purchased DLCs, or spent crowns to know the opinion of users who sponsor the game the most, etc.

(Everything said is valid only if devs are thinking about user opinion for real).

And I want to make my own survey to see if forum users would use this feature

So the question is, would you ever use it if it existed?

P.S. To clarify: the survey should also be short (a maximum of 5-10 minutes) and a rare event. It's acceptable imo to send one with every major update, about 4-5 times a year (or once every 2-3 months).

Alphawolf01A · November 26

I log into ESO to play the game, not fill out surveys.

whitecrow · November 26

I am always happy to give my opinion on anything.

MISTFORMBZZZ · November 26

Do you really think they want our feedback

spartaxoxo · November 26

I would take an in-game survey.

robwolf666 · November 26

Last thing I'd want while happily playing the game is a message - or worse, popup - saying "Please fill out this survey"!

Syldras · November 26

I'd be fine with it if it's in the menu somewhere and can be filled out when I have the spare time for it. So nothing that pops up upon login only once and can only be either declined or done immediately.

whitecrow · November 26

Syldras wrote: »

I'd be fine with it if it's in the menu somewhere and can be filled out when I have the spare time for it. So nothing that pops up upon login only once and can only be either declined or done immediately.

Hopefully it would go into alerts until dismissed like other notifications.

imPDA · November 26

Just to clarify: you already have a system for marketing announcements. I'm referring to the popup, as shown in the screenshot below. The survey could be placed there as a separate window with a "Take a Survey" button. It could also live separately in the main menu under an "Announcements" category.

Do you really think they want our feedback?
I want to believe they do. I'm not actively playing right now because I prefer RW (which has died off completely) and I'm less interested in PvE. Because of that, I'm skipping all events, including the Writing Wall. For now, I'm waiting for the best, keeping an eye on the news, and making addons - it's been great practice for learning LUA!

scrappy1342 · November 26

MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »

Do you really think they want our feedback

this. but if they did, it would be a good way to go about it. make it easy enough to opt out for the ppl who don't want to participate. but if you want to get the opinions of the ppl who are actually playing, that's who you need to ask

Marto · November 26

In-game surveys can only ever happen for features and changes that are plausible and able to be developed in a decent amount of time.

If they relate to content, they'll only happen when ZOS already knows what they want to make, and already knows how much time and resources they want to devote to it, and are simply trying to decide whether to do option A or option B.

They probably already evaluated options A through G internally, decided A and B were the most promising, and just want the players to make the final call.

If they relate to balance changes... well, they already did that recently. They sent out a survey asking players how they feel about the state of each of the 7 different classes in 5+ different scenarios and conditions. Which lead to over a hundred questions, and players not bothering to answer because it was too granular and boring.

Well, balance is a granular topic. And a boring topic.

It's easy to say "X thing weak, make it stronger". Every gamer does that all the time. It becomes a lot less easy (and a lot more boring) when you have to consider a bunch of different scenarios.

Pepegrillos · November 26

In-game surveys are fine, but alone are not sufficient. They would just reflect a sort of survivor bias. If they want feedback that might bring people back they should survey people who have left the game.

kargen27 · November 26

They have my Email address and can continue to send surveys there.

Danikat · November 26

I don't think it's a bad idea necessarily but your poll has exactly the same problem you say the others have: you're asking a self-selecting group of people who like responding to polls if they'd respond to a survey.

But also I'm sure ZOS are well aware of the avenues available to them to contact their players. They've sent out surveys by email before, and probably will do again and have put messages they want to be seen more widely both on the launcher and in-game. They've also got social media channels and sometimes respond to feedback there. They're already capable of contacting people who don't visit the forum regularly whenever they think it's necessary.

Mesite · November 26

I don't want to be bothered with surveys in-game as it'll remind me of real life and break the immersion. But I think it's pointless sending surveys to the emails of people who have moved on from playing. They could work out who is still playing and send them the emails.

AlienatedGoat · November 26

I would be okay with this. Some other games I play will do a player survey with every major patch, with multiple choice questions about the current content and whether players are satisfied or not with all the various elements, as well as giving open ended questions for input on future content. ZOS could definitely benefit from having direct player input and feedback. It's incredibly important these days for devs to have their fingers on the pulse of their playerbases.

AngryPenguin · November 26

imPDA wrote: »

This is my suggestion on how to improve user feedback in ESO. From my point of view, the developers frequently don't hear users and often go perpendicular to the players' requests.

Since it seems ESO community management is starting to work more actively - providing more information more frequently and trying to be more transparent - I'm risking suggesting a new feature to help get more feedback. This feature works fine in other games, and I see no problem implementing it in ESO: in-game surveys. It's simple: you have 5-15 questions with multiple choices where a person chooses one or multiple options, plus an optional "big" question with a text field to type an answer.

Forum surveys exist and they are mostly bad and ineffective. From my experience, a lot of users don't even use the forums (like me myself), so it's questionable how much involvement you get with forum surveys. An in-game survey, on the other hand, would be seen by every (actively playing) user (a popup on character load or the character selection screen). You could also send a reward for completing the survey (but for the sake of God, not an experience scroll - even 200 Seals of Endeavor would be better). This would guarantee big involvement, and you could easily handle the received data - group by account age to know the opinion of old or new players; group by ESO+ users, purchased DLCs, or spent crowns to know the opinion of users who sponsor the game the most, etc.

(Everything said is valid only if devs are thinking about user opinion for real).

And I want to make my own survey to see if forum users would use this feature So the question is, would you ever use it if it existed?

P.S. To clarify: the survey should also be short (a maximum of 5-10 minutes) and a rare event. It's acceptable imo to send one with every major update, about 4-5 times a year (or once every 2-3 months).

You seem to be under the impression ZOS wants our feedback.

After years of providing feedback I've become convinced ZOS doesn't really want to hear from us. They just want to give the impression they care while they do things like force vengeance mode on us rather than fixing the game we love.

Northwold · November 26

They do (or did I've no idea) send out surveys but they're curated in terms of who they're sent to. I'm guessing they work out a representative sample of players to send them to (forum surveys would be extremely unlikely to deliver results representative of the whole player base, for example).

I'd be more than happy to complete a survey in game but for it to be useful to them they'd probably have to do a lot of work going through data on what "type" of player is saying X, Y, Z. And like others I would want it to be completable at a time of my choosing, not "do it now or don't do it at all".

LunaFlora · November 27

no i would rather do Surveys on my phone like in the past.

i play ESO and most other games with Playstation 5,
some other games have surveys too and they take you to a browser which is not easy to use with a dualsense. (addition: not accessible would be more fitting word choice)

edited to add:
i do want to do surveys and totally believe we will receive more eso surveys in the future, but this idea does not seem useful to me.

katanagirl1 · November 28

kargen27 wrote: »

They have my Email address and can continue to send surveys there.

I don’t get e-mail surveys because I refuse to sign up to receive marketing materials.

kargen27 · November 28

katanagirl1 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

They have my Email address and can continue to send surveys there.

I don’t get e-mail surveys because I refuse to sign up to receive marketing materials.

that is a choice you have made. No need to interrupt game time and even if it were at the log in screen it is still an interruption of time that can be spent in game.

tincanman · November 28

There's plenty of user feedback but it doesn't help when it's mostly met with an obdurate wall of <remains silent>.

katanagirl1 · November 28

kargen27 wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

They have my Email address and can continue to send surveys there.

I don’t get e-mail surveys because I refuse to sign up to receive marketing materials.

that is a choice you have made. No need to interrupt game time and even if it were at the log in screen it is still an interruption of time that can be spent in game.

A choice I made and a lot of other players too. I don’t like marketing spam.

Shawn_PT · November 28

I've suggested this before. Got immediately shot down by people here as usual, because apparently the stupid BUY STUFF NOW full-screen window we get slapped with every single time we log in is less intrusive and annoying than a single page/square/line on said window asking for a quick opinion.

The problem with offering a reward for completion would be people would RND it. Yesyesyesyesyesyes don't care didn't read gimme the reward now.

Erickson9610 · November 28

I know other games which rarely ask you in-game your thoughts on things like the last match you played or certain features of the game. Generally, those survey questions only pop up when in the menu, and they always have the option to skip the survey to dismiss the popup.

Notably, those questions in-game are very similar to the questions asked in the surveys sent to people who opt-in to receive survey emails.

So, you can have both surveys sent by email (which generally have more questions that go in-depth into all aspects of the game) and very quick, very rare targeted surveys shown to people in-game after they've just finished some activity, such as completing a Battleground or Trial.

The email surveys gather a lot more information in bulk, while the in-game surveys capture time-sensitive feedback.

Gabriel_H · November 28

So many of you ignoring the possibilities ... class/role/environment quests with consequence choices that gives a reflection of player opinions.

NPC: "Are you sure you want to let Darien die?"
Player Choice:

"Absolutely Not"
"I don't"
"Not sure"
"I do"
"Oh definitely"

Devs then alter the game world to reflect the winning answer.

antihero_kazuma · November 28

The thing is, while it would be a good idea, I don't believe they would actually look at it. Looking at their track record on listening to what the community wants and decide to go the other direction which is what leads up to the frustration of the current state of the game.

imPDA · December 3

I think there will be no more comments and votes, so I would like to conclude everything that has been said.

There are currently 56 votes (41/5/1/9) and 550 views. These are not unique views, so let's compare this to other polls with more views to estimate if this post got enough involvement. Other polls I found have approximately 10 times fewer votes than answers on average, and this is understandable because the same people visit again and again to see new comments. The statistics of this post (56 votes out of 550 views) follow this observation.

The votes are mostly supportive, and people generally will share their opinion even if there is no reward - though a reward, by the way, would help get about 10% more answers, depending on its size. I would like to see more votes to be more precise, but this is just a small unofficial survey. I mainly wanted to draw attention to one small thing that, in my understanding, works well in other projects and could potentially work here, especially since ZOS says they want players' feedback.

The main concern, though, is whether they are really going to listen. But we will figure that out in the next updates. Thank you for your participation!

magnusthorek · December 4

If they're meaningful, don't take too long and actually results into something beneficial to the game, why not?

Attorneyatlawl · December 5

I don't see any issue at all with it, but it shouldn't grant rewards (you'll get false info from people spamming through it for them) and it should be dismissable into the notifications area for later completion.

The Elder Scrolls Online

In-Game Surveys: A Better Way for Player Feedback

In-Game Surveys: A Better Way for Player Feedback 67 votes