Best Of
Re: Update 48: The Discount Animation Update
colossalvoids wrote: »We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.
We updated over 900 animation files in order to support this effort, including animations that are used outside of player combat. We have gotten many fantastic reports of animation issues from players on PTS, but tracking down reproductions of these issues and the appropriate fixes on our internal realms takes time.
Similarly, bugs that turned out not to be a direct result of this effort also affected combat animations and needed investigation - for example, certain abilities not doing damage and an issue with controller UI causing performance issues on PC were both issues that impacted the visual look of animations in combat but were not caused by this effort.
As you continue to come across issues, please let us know. Videos of the issues are extremely helpful in tracking down potential bugs and the team will continue to do all we can to ensure that any confirmed issues are addressed in an upcoming package.
I'll be just dead honest here but when you're cutting on a very core parts of the game to fit something new it's a symptom of a bigger disease. Not that it's just bad inherently by itself as it's a direct downgrade with combat feel and smoothness which are a core part why ESO is still played by many despite many issues it has, but it can't be done indefinitely cutting every smooth corner into a strictly optimised asset lacking their basic properties.
It also should be evaluated if those new things even worth it with those downgrades. Like we got a new card game and I'm betting it's not as well received as company hoped and still here we are, stuck with it and might probably be the one thing also holding a precious memory slot that can be used elsewhere for a better overall experience with the game. Not even mentioning that maybe, a better solution would be dropping the objectively weaker consoles and optimising the other things properly to for them to still have an ability to load a 10yo game despite new requirements.
ToT still one of the main things I come on to play, I literally play it over other online card games pretty often, don't go messing with ToT, unless you plan to add new decks.
Kappachi
2
Re: Thank you
Oh, please, is everyone too young to remember Ahn’Qiraj gate opening? Writhing wall is a copycat, just that the original was better.
Re: Writhing fortress broken?
Can you fix the drop rate of the Shard of Writhing Bone?
I am getting multiple of Writhing Haj Mota Scale daily but the bones are few and far between
This isn't a bug, but rather ZOS's standard procedure. They simply expand the loot tables by adding new items alongside the old ones. Take a look at the potential loot from the Witches Festival, for example. You'll mainly find ancient items that hardly anyone can use anymore. Guild masters are urgently requesting that guild banks not be filled with this junk. You'll hardly find a player in zone chat to whom you can sell these old items. So, you can only destroy them. Due to the abundance of old items in the loot tables, the chance of obtaining one of the new items decreases steadily.
And that's exactly the case here. In phase 1, you could loot armor style pages and scales; in phase 2, weapon style pages and bones were added. The chance of getting these new items is therefore naturally lower.
I currently have 147 scales and only 14 bones.
TomCat
1
Re: Thank you
Its often said that its a new idea and new content, but its really not.
They decided last year to change to a season model, while solstice as a chapter was probably a good bit in development already. So they just split the chapter in half to have time to develop whatever theyre planing for the actual seasonal content that will come next year.
What they hyped up as this seasons "one of a kind" event is just your normal world event that every chapter has. Thats mainly the siege camp quest. They added some uninteresting fetch and crafting quests and thats it.
Whats truly new about this is only phase 3, the writhing fortress. And thats timegated content that you really only do once because why would you do it more? No incentive whatsoever. And while it is enjoyable that they put the MMO back in, seeing how many people you complete it with, its still no challenge. I appreciate the final boss design, wasnt hard but kind of unique, thats about it.
Now also considering the amount of bugs that actually needed hotfixing(!) because they completly broke parts of this event... i play for 5 years and this many i havent seen so far in that short of a time.
If thats the standard one wants to hold ZOS to, it will not make 30 years. lol
They decided last year to change to a season model, while solstice as a chapter was probably a good bit in development already. So they just split the chapter in half to have time to develop whatever theyre planing for the actual seasonal content that will come next year.
What they hyped up as this seasons "one of a kind" event is just your normal world event that every chapter has. Thats mainly the siege camp quest. They added some uninteresting fetch and crafting quests and thats it.
Whats truly new about this is only phase 3, the writhing fortress. And thats timegated content that you really only do once because why would you do it more? No incentive whatsoever. And while it is enjoyable that they put the MMO back in, seeing how many people you complete it with, its still no challenge. I appreciate the final boss design, wasnt hard but kind of unique, thats about it.
Now also considering the amount of bugs that actually needed hotfixing(!) because they completly broke parts of this event... i play for 5 years and this many i havent seen so far in that short of a time.
If thats the standard one wants to hold ZOS to, it will not make 30 years. lol
excole10
4
Re: Writhing fortress broken?
@ZOS_JessicaFolsom
Can we please get a confirmation the event will be extended? This would go a long way to helping right now.
Can we please get a confirmation the event will be extended? This would go a long way to helping right now.
Ezhh
8
Re: Lack of French Localization – Silence and Legal Concerns
I don't know why you are waiting, please escalate this through official channels that are available to you as soon as possible.
kevkj
2
Re: PC/NA - Blackreach - What happened?
i used to play in a medium sized group and because most folks couldn't queue early or we would get queue bugged whenever we tried gh, we mained br. there were a lot of good fights and high pop so didn't even think about going gh. this was like 2022 - 2023. in 2024 we started feeling a decline. our faction started getting way more populated than the others and fights were boring so we swapped factions and it was fine for a bit. a lot of guilds (both zergs and ball groups) at this point either left or swapped to gh. then fights started getting harder to find or create so we were forced into gh. it used to be at least populated on the weekends but now its a ghost town, only people there are those sitting in gh queue and now theres hardly ever a queue for my faction anyways (i imagine its the same for the other 2 factions).
i think a lot of it is due to balance issues. been sitting in the same meta for years and i think its just slowly draining the population. rush of agony being the meta for bombers, small groups, and ball groups i think is the biggest contributor, followed by the doubling down of the tanky ball group meta that has absurd amounts of shield stacking. it also sucks for newer players. just imagine pvping for the first time and you get pulled out of nowhere with no counter into instant death. if you feel there is no counter to a playstyle that's so rampant, then that discourages you from ever coming back.
i think vengeance and subclassing were the nail in the coffin. sub classing i think was a last ditch effort but it achieved the opposite effect because of how poorly they balanced it (shocking). also I'm seeing the same thing that happened to br happening to gh right now. gh population feels lower than it did in br in like 2022. if nothing changes then gh is going to be just as dead as br and no cp are now. well maybe not to same extent, but only because its the last campaign left, and there are some die hard gh players that will quit no matter what, but i think it might get pretty close.
i think a lot of it is due to balance issues. been sitting in the same meta for years and i think its just slowly draining the population. rush of agony being the meta for bombers, small groups, and ball groups i think is the biggest contributor, followed by the doubling down of the tanky ball group meta that has absurd amounts of shield stacking. it also sucks for newer players. just imagine pvping for the first time and you get pulled out of nowhere with no counter into instant death. if you feel there is no counter to a playstyle that's so rampant, then that discourages you from ever coming back.
i think vengeance and subclassing were the nail in the coffin. sub classing i think was a last ditch effort but it achieved the opposite effect because of how poorly they balanced it (shocking). also I'm seeing the same thing that happened to br happening to gh right now. gh population feels lower than it did in br in like 2022. if nothing changes then gh is going to be just as dead as br and no cp are now. well maybe not to same extent, but only because its the last campaign left, and there are some die hard gh players that will quit no matter what, but i think it might get pretty close.
Re: Thank you
I ran a poll on the event design with 204 votes. The results were clear:
- 32% said “I hate it, this grind makes me want to uninstall.”
- 48% said “I hate it, but I will keep playing the rest of the game.”
- 16% said “It is just a grind, some folks do not mind the hamster wheel.”
- Only 2% combined said they genuinely enjoyed it.
That means nearly 80% of respondents expressed active dislike, with only a statistical sliver reporting genuine enjoyment.
It's a bias poll. People tend to come to the forums to make a complaint. It skews any poll.
I understand the concern about forum bias, but it is worth looking at the numbers in context.
Yes, forums often attract more critical voices. That is true of almost any game community. But even with that caveat, the distribution of responses here is telling: nearly 80% expressed active dislike, while only 2% reported genuine enjoyment. A skewed sample might exaggerate negativity, but it does not invent that level of imbalance.
It is also important to note that players are not coming here at random. They are being driven to the forums by frustration. The sheer volume of negative posts on this single subject proves that out. When one topic dominates discussion across threads, it signals a genuine pain point in the player experience.
The poll does not claim to represent every single player. What it does show is that among those motivated enough to engage, frustration is overwhelming compared to enjoyment. That is valuable feedback in itself, because engaged players are the ones who sustain guilds, organize events, and keep communities active.
So while the poll is not a census, dismissing it as “bias” risks ignoring a clear signal. The healthiest approach is to weigh both the positive experiences and the negative ones, and use that balance to inform better event design going forward.
Furyous
8
Re: Praise to ZOS for the Last Solstice Zone Story Quest ("The Final Dark")
Sorry to ruin the mood, but in case nothing has changed between PTS and Live (which unfortunately I don't believe, if not even many bugs were fixed, from what it looks like), I found it uncreative and formulaic. Not sure how much into detail I can go here, but...
...bringing a character back to life and killing him again after what can only be few months in-game time, in which he achieved basically nothing, isn't the super interesting thing storywise. It brought no new lore, it told us nothing new about the fictional world or its characters. There were no different endings, or at least not that I know of. For me, it makes the whole story feel rather redundant.
But everyone is entitled to their own opinion, of course. I still have to play the story on Live (and will so do in the upcoming week). If my view on this changes, I might post it here.
Syldras
9