Terrible communications from the devs

olepi

ESO is a fun game, I've been playing since closed beta. For a casual player, it works pretty well. For PvP and competitive raids, etc, however, it is getting more buggy and laggier with each release. The official forums are full of complaints about skills not firing, lag with insta-death from enemies you never saw, constant disconnects, long load times, etc.

And ESO devs never respond to any of these threads. As the posters get more and more frustrated, the threads end up being closed for not being "constructive". But the devs never respond in any meaningful way. The same thing happens on the test server. People test the new code and find all kinds of problems, and report them. The devs don't respond, and the bugs go into the live release anyway.

So just a word of warning. The game is fun as a casual player. But if you want competitive raiding, PvP, or just large teams, expect to have a lot of problems. And don't bother reporting them. ESO devs never respond or communicate.

goboygo

Wrong engine, just look how small all their zones are and all instanced, and the way they use geometry to block your view of the horizon.  The biggest zone is the PvP zone but there isn't much in it, and look what a laggy mess it is when you players together. 

Its not going to get any better without a rebuild of the engine which is never going to happen.

bcbully

The game was so smooth with hundreds of players on the screen in Cyrodil. Then cam the lighting change... lag as been something you’ve had to deal with since.

olepi

A sample comment after people started noticing that their furniture suddenly lost high-rez textures:

"The more time passes with no response from anyone from ZOS to this issue, the more I'm convinced this was indeed something that they did deliberately, and hoped it would just fly under the radar. Disheartening and disappointing to say the least."

People have been posting before and after pictures, showing their housing items now have a blurry, low-rez texture. As usual, no response at all from the ESO devs.

Suddwrath

The communication from the devs is absolutely inexcusable. One of the Community Managers apologized for the lack of communication back in November but basically nothing has changed since then.

Noobmaster_95

Why don't they understand that communication is important... That's the key, people, that's the key!

mmolou

damned if they do, damned if they dont.

Kyleran

SaltySudd said:

The communication from the devs is absolutely inexcusable. One of the Community Managers apologized for the lack of communication back in November but basically nothing has changed since then.

Another one pulls a white tag, welcome to the forums, keep coming back.

Octagon7711

I thought they mostly hung out on Reddit.  Most games it's either Reddit or Twitter, they seldom frequent their own official forums.

Kyleran

Noobmaster_95 said:

Why don't they understand that communication is important... That's the key, people, that's the key!

In general no response is the way to go if one has no ability to or intention of changing anything.

Alverant

I saw it's on Steam for $10 so it's cheap even to just check it out.

olepi

Kyleran said:

Noobmaster_95 said:

Why don't they understand that communication is important... That's the key, people, that's the key!

In general no response is the way to go if one has no ability to or intention of changing anything.

------

Yes, it appears there is a policy at ZOS to not comment at all on any posts complaining about lag, server instability, rendering issues, etc. I think it's because the core problem is in the engine code, and that is too complex and expensive to fix.

kitarad

olepi said:

Kyleran said:

Noobmaster_95 said:

Why don't they understand that communication is important... That's the key, people, that's the key!

In general no response is the way to go if one has no ability to or intention of changing anything.

------

Yes, it appears there is a policy at ZOS to not comment at all on any posts complaining about lag, server instability, rendering issues, etc. I think it's because the core problem is in the engine code, and that is too complex and expensive to fix.

@olepi ;     I cannot help but wonder whether you are aware of the private City of Heroes servers boasting close to 8 thousand players during the weekends when I saw you signature.

olepi

kitarad said:

olepi said:

Kyleran said:

Noobmaster_95 said:

Why don't they understand that communication is important... That's the key, people, that's the key!

In general no response is the way to go if one has no ability to or intention of changing anything.

------

Yes, it appears there is a policy at ZOS to not comment at all on any posts complaining about lag, server instability, rendering issues, etc. I think it's because the core problem is in the engine code, and that is too complex and expensive to fix.

@olepi ;     I cannot help but wonder whether you are aware of the private City of Heroes servers boasting close to 8 thousand players during the weekends when I saw you signature.

----

Yes, I am playing on them. However, they are still unofficial and could disappear at any moment. So I still miss the official and permanent game.

Iselin

ESO devs have always been silent but deadly

If you think getting a response from them about technical issue is bad just try to get feedback even on the PTS forum about ability, gear or crafting changes... crickets forever.

Sovrath

olepi said:

ESO is a fun game, I've been playing since closed beta. For a casual player, it works pretty well. For PvP and competitive raids, etc, however, it is getting more buggy and laggier with each release. The official forums are full of complaints about skills not firing, lag with insta-death from enemies you never saw, constant disconnects, long load times, etc.

And ESO devs never respond to any of these threads. As the posters get more and more frustrated, the threads end up being closed for not being "constructive". But the devs never respond in any meaningful way. The same thing happens on the test server. People test the new code and find all kinds of problems, and report them. The devs don't respond, and the bugs go into the live release anyway.

So just a word of warning. The game is fun as a casual player. But if you want competitive raiding, PvP, or just large teams, expect to have a lot of problems. And don't bother reporting them. ESO devs never respond or communicate.

Point of note, developers rarely respond to forum threads. "Sometimes" they do but even in an older game like Lord of the Rings online they don't just jump into threads all the time. 

That is the Job of the Community Manager. If they aren't replying then that's on them.

olepi

I was being very general, there is little or no communication from anyone at ZOS. Here's another snippet from the forums. In this case, the history of sales on the traders has disappeared, so nobody knows how much anything sells for. There's no universal auction house, so addons were written to track sales at the various guild traders. That's the only way to see what something sells for. But ZOS cut back how much you can track, and now seems to have cut it off completely.

And of course, no comment from ZOS.

Here's the snippet:

"That's basically what happened. And with the lack of communication from ZOS on this, and what they intend to do in the future, it could potentially look very bleak for trading addons."

Lack of communication from ZOS is basically a given now, for any kind of problem.

Gutlard

Maybe when companies get big enough they don't feel like they have to communicate.

That's how it feels at my job IRL.

In a lot of cases, the higher ups that get the positions do don't seem to deserve them really. They knew just enough tag words/examples to use to sound just competent enough to get the job and have no effing clue how things actually work or how best to fix them. I've seen that play out a dozen times right in front of me.

The Devs are never going to say, "We know about the problem, but we don't have any idea how to fix it, and we can't afford to create a new engine from scratch, but will you still please stick around and give us money?"

It's a shame though, and thankfully I haven't ran into any bugs yet and still enjoying my honeymoon time with ESO.

Gut Out!

olepi

The devs for ESO don't have to communicate, there are enough casual and new players that the financials are looking good.  And of course, forums tend to be weighted towards complainers.

Just a word of caution though, if you spend a lot of time building a character, prepare for it to be changed dramatically with little warning. And if you complain, don't expect a response.