That is from your experience. You cant assume to know this is the same about the IT guys you mention here.

Assumption is the fail of knowing.

You misunderstand.

There is a MAJOR difference between listening and communicating. Sure they listen and are solving the issues. That still does not negate the fact they fail to communicate.
The fail on the level of communication that is meant here, is that no readable respondses by anyone wise on the issues, are visible to these topics that are running like a wildfire through the fora.

The lack of,...is what is fueling other topics.

You really think that things would've been more calmed down?

I've seen it happen on games forums that what usually occurs is that everyone starts dogpiling in on making threads to get the company to read THEIR take on the problems, along with even more flaming and such. You have to realize that not every person posting on these kinds of forums is a fully reasonable advlt, and expecting reasonable, advlt behavior by and large is a fool's errand. For every one person you can have who is polite, respectful, and happy to help out, you have 100 others ready to flame, insult, and derail with arguments and complaining. It's easier to be a [censored] on the internet than it is to be an example of Mother Theresa.

You know that there are still people who argue vehemently at length about why having fast travel is wrong and ruins their game, even though it's entirely optional and completely up to the choice of the individual? And yet, many people still say it ruins their game somehow, just merely by existing as an option that is easily ignored and disregarded.

I totally disagree.

Sure you have to asses the issue, but you also have to communicate. By communicating you are not jumping the gun for the sake of saying something, what you are doing is talking to your customers and putting them at ease. It is other people's problem to solve the issues,... but there seems to be no-one at Bethasda communicating on the fora.

You say that by communicating they will incite flaming/trolling... actually if you bother to look through the posted topics in the last 24 hours, that is already happening,... and that is not caused because they are communicating,... that is caused because they are FAILING to communicate/talk to the customers. ... So it is actually the other way around.

Yes! I don't care if they are trying to fix the issues or something like that, all I care is that they don't say to me what they obviously are doing!
This "Communication" would, at best, have a placebo effect in the community and calm it while not really addressing or fixing anything.

I used to be sarcastic, then I took a arrow in the knee.

Maybe it's just the rose-colored glasses I've got on, but I remember Gstaff showing up a lot more during Oblivion than he does now. Yeah, I guess he got a promotion and probably tons of new responsibilities and issued a tweet today, but his presence on the Oblivion boards did a lot to make me feel better. I hope for him or someone taking his place can be part of this online community.

Yeah, I really wish they were here responding to every nitpick and wild rant about how omg the game is broken and all the other crap.

Why don't we just let them work?

But It really does seem obvious they didnt even play their game.

+1 OP, great post. I really want to see somebody in a position who just is on here all day to hand out the information people want to hear, and update us, etc. I don't see that.

If you think a 2 days silence is bad then stay FAR away from Ubisoft. Those guys held a 2 months silence over an extremely buggy game release, and still haven't produced a single patch for said game.

Well told but sadly you are not the only one complaining about the lack of communication. I haven't seen anyone of Bethesda reply to these people. I expect them to start talking to us as soon as the game gets GOTY somewhere. But even thats probably just the publisher side.
I've seen this kind of behavior with one of my favorite MMO's recently and it didn't end well for the company.

Sure, if I have a hung server, there's no need for me to send out a communique stating a server's hung. If I just hard boot it and it comes up in 5 mins it's way more efficient. Now, I have myself and a Sys Admin for 235 people with a WAN infrastructure of 16 offices in varying geographic regions, each with their own servers and workstations. Now, if I do something drastic, like the fact that I have to work on something over the weekend (as I actually have to do this weekend) that requires servers to go offline periodically... I communicate, communicate, communicate. It doesn't do me any good to reboot servers and have people lose work if they are working at those offices, or to have people coming to work, realizing they can't access the servers.

So, when you say LIE... I take offense to that.

This situation, with Bethesda, is an entirely different problem. They're trying to keep quiet, thereby keeping the issues the game has on a down-low. They don't want to advertise to the world they sent out an unfinished, barely tested game, and patched it into a worse state than it already was. This game sold how many copies already in 3 weeks? 2.5 million? This is a HUGE problem when compared to Oblivion's 1.7 million OVERALL sales throughout the years it's been out.

I can understand Bethesda is trying to save face, but they're treading down the same path as Ubishaft and EA's poor consumer relations. Look at CCP's response to the player's outrage in Eve Online. Complete and utter neglect of their user base. They addressed the public, stated clearly they had a problem and have done more in the following 2 months than they've done in the 2 years that I've played.

THAT is a company I respect. This non-communication stuff... I expect that from EA, Ubishaft, Activision, or Sega. Not a comparatively small developer such as Bethesda. They still have a customer relations department none-the-less. The fact that all we got was: "We're aware of problems, we're working on a new patch." is just not the way to address the situation. When you release a patch that requires people to not connect their consoles to the internet after the patch was released, just to be able to play the game... that's a MAJOR problem that needs to be addressed by someone... not just shoved under the rug with a quick slap to the nuts.




On that note you're entirely wrong. Developers play the game into the ground till they're puking Skyrim. Sometimes it is not feasible to add/remove features because of looming deadlines. I understand that games get released in bad states because of those deadlines. I can totally understand that. What I don't understand is the silence like everything is just hunky dory, when a patch, that addresses virtually NOTHING, manages to break just about everything the game was about and there's no sticky in ANY of the forums addressing the issue. THAT is not excusable.

Just that ONE thing, making a sticky and making people aware of the problems caused by the patch, can be spread across the entire INTERNET to alert users NOT to allow their game to be patched and to let them make their OWN decision on what they want to do. PSN and 360 = forced upgrades, Steam somewhat forced because it keeps resetting itself to update Skyrim. Because of this whole "non-control' issue it is evermore important for a developer to state there's a problem.

You do realize how hard it is to catch all the bugs in a game this big right?

Completely agree, OP.

Let's hope the issues get fixed soon.

You misunderstand me a little.

I didn't say that their communicating would cause it, re-read what I said. More often than not, I have seen it incite EVEN MORE than what is happening, because people suddenly want to get in on the moment they see someone from on high responding. The flaming is a given, which is especially sad, because it demonstrates immaturity and oftentimes an excess sense of self-entitlement. I find that if I have problems, I get a lot better results in fixing them if I'm polite, clear in what I say, and even helpful in tackling the problem. If I'm rude, insulting, and generally acting like a complete ass, I will be less likely to get things sorted out quickly and satisfactorily. Some people have to realize that they are saying such things to another human being, and human beings don't generally like being relentlessly insulted and belittled by the person expecting help from them. If a guy just wants to be rude and a complete [censored] to me because he thinks he's entitled to such behavior towards me on the basis of it being my product I sold him, I'd be much less inclined to help him much at all, because as much as he wants to think so, his purchase of my product does not entitle him to such behavior towards me while still expecting me to turn around with a smile and help him.

And I was wasting too much time yesterday trying to explain that the patch had only just been released and Bethesda was not likely going to just get on the horn to say something, until they'd actually had time to assess the situation in the wake of the patch being released, and I might as well have just typed "Frog blast the vent core!" There is little incentive to reason with an unreasonable mob, and expecting as much was folly as I stubbornly had to accept after trying last night. And I'm not even someone defending them, just simply pointing out that a little patience goes a long way.

And what is there to communicate when you haven't assessed the issue? All they can say is that "We're investigating." That's really it. Until they have sussed out all the details on their end and have a firmer grasp on how to proceed, what else can be said?

Oh, and I think it's "forums" that you're trying to say. I have no idea to what "fora" is supposed to refer, if not some made-up plural for referring to more than one forum.

It's not common usage as it's actually from the Latin, but it was still used correctly:

Noun

fora

Plural form of forum.

[edit] Usage notes

The English plural forums is preferred to the Latin plural fora in normal English usage.

Ref: Modern English Usage, 2nd Edition, ed. Sir Ernest Gowers, Oxford 1968 (article '-um', p.658).

Well, that explains it. I never took Latin, myself.

Learn something new every day, nice.

Despite what some modern media sites may say, forums is actually incorrect. If the word has a latin root, which FORUM is a latin word, then the correct plural use of forum is FORA. Propagating anything else is a discredit to language studies. Might as well start using txt speak to write. It's still correct right? No, as a matter of fact it isn't.

It's only been ONE day and we've already received word that Bethesda will be responding to concerns soon.

You don't just jump online and start blabbing because everyone online is apparently going to hold you to every possible interpretation of every word you say. Public announcements need to be handled very carefully, though you've probably never had PR as a factor in your communication decisions.

Good job on the attitude with your instruction, professor.

Fella who replied just before you explained it more clearly and without unnecessary snark.

Because we all study linguistics, especially where dead languages are concerned.

Forum points for you!

I've been in a number of customer facing positions, in much more time critical situations than this one. Managing your customers' perceptions of what action you are taking is every bit as critical as fixing the issue itself.

When I went to school they still taught this information. Guess it shows where education is heading these days. Everyone bust out your calculators...

Apologies for coming across a bit nasty... I'm in a terrible mood because of this whole Skyrim non-communication stuff. It just screams irresponsible when a sticky is all it takes to at least say "We're aware of XYZ problems, don't update your game if you haven't already, we are working on a new update."

I just want to offer a point about the replies that mention EA. Regardless of what any one of us thinks individually about EA, they are still the largest games publisher in the world, at least based on volume and revenue. Since financial health is what was mentioned in the replies (i.e., I won't buy an EA product waas mentioned), it doesn't seem that there poor service and any individual resulting rejection of them is actually having any major effect on their future viability. That may be sad, but it's also true. Maybe if millions more adopt the same approach, the effect might be noticable, or maybe not.

Sticky is up

Well how about just going and reading what they are saying in there 'What we're working on' post.