eso did a lil 'ask us anything' and hooooooooo boyyyyy. i don't have the energy to go into detail on that, so let's just sum it up with:
it's not even bad corpo pr speak. it's ai. it's an ai chatgpt jumble.
elderscrollsonline players asked questions they've been asking for years and, wanting clear solid tangible answers, got wishy washy nothing-speak in return (if their questions weren't just y'know, straight up ignored).
I said I don't have the energy to go into full detail on it, but i have to show this lil thing i saw on the forums (when checking up on the game's website to see if anything of note was happening this month).
There is a single sentence made by a single community manager in response to players stating the above (wanting actual direct answers) that is the smoking gun. It's buried under paragraphs of suspiciously ai-sounding nonsensical circle-talk and repetition, but it says everything.
ZOS has got nothing. there is nothing.
"I do want to hit on the concrete details part. We are trying to provide everything we can at the moment. Some of this stuff is still in flight, so there isn't concrete information to give quite yet. For example, I believe Susan answered a questions about logistics of crossplay and what we are thinking, but it is actively being worked on and will be a lengthy process. So that is why she noted we are a long ways out. If we described what we have now as concrete and things changes later, then we are setting everyone up for disappointment. So we are trying to be careful with things that are in active but not concrete development.
However, we are trying to provide all the information we have at the moment. Which is why we touched on things like crossplay, overland difficulty, character writing/development and general balance."
"If we described what we have now as concrete and things changes [sic] later, then we are setting everyone up for disappointment."
this sentence right here, in the context of the repetitive paragraph, says it all.
We'll ignore the strange spelling mistake/use of the word 'changes' for now (but keep that at the back of your mind and ponder on its implications).
A concrete answer to 'hey there's been all these bugs and bullshit for years now the players have been asking about and you guys have continued to string us along, promising you're doing things, WHAT have you been doing all this time???' could mention the fact there's been a ton of movement and resettling in the company (cough cough microsoft firings, cough), so time this year has been focused on all of that, and that's why there hasn't been changes towards the game's problems. Like @kaisamms was saying to me last night, community people are supposed to be the bridge between players and company: you do NOT use corpo-speak on the player community. You're not trying to sell shit to them, they already bought the product! You can lay things out and say 'we can't work on _____ for ____ amount of time because _____' and still save face (cough masking the reality of the game industry and capitalism and shit cough cough).
Sure, i'm glad i'm in the process of taking a break from the game, but wOW, wooooooooow, this is all... really something.
