Is it time for me to unsub?

aleister

andersan wrote: »

You can't argue it is the problem and you can't go on. You just named them all. The sheer amount of issues ESO has far exceeds the issues WoW had. This was many many years ago. It's 2014 and given the amount of money invested this is just... pathetic.

People who think WoW was this bad at launch are deluding themselves or have very faulty memories. I played WoW from launch day and it certainly had its issues - mostly login/server availability problems. Those were serious, but once you were in, the game was pretty solid and most players did not feel the other issues (balance, etc.) until they were much further into the game.

ESO's issues start punching you in the face the moment you log in and don't let up. Lag? Yeah, WoW had it - sometimes - in ESO, it's a constant companion in every fight. Bots? Yeah, WoW had them, but I never saw what I knew to be a bot until I'd played for many weeks. I saw huge trains of bots the first day of ESO. Bugs? Yeah, WoW had them, but they rarely impact my experience. In ESO? Every third quest has some NPC that you are supposed to talk to not show up or refuse to talk or some object that you're supposed to click not appear.

Gilandred

andersan wrote: »

I agree with you, but there are some *extreme* issues with ESO. If the only problems we had with this game were the same issues experienced during the WoW launch I'd be happy as hell. You can't deny that if the only problem ESO had was it was too popular you'd see a singular focus on these forums as to the problem. Instead, you see so many different issues that affect people it's all over the place.

WoW wasn't even playable at launch. For days. Rift had a major security hole that allowed hackers to take control of your account without needing your username or password. Those are pretty "extreme" issues if you ask me. I'm not denying that ESO has issues. The evidence I've seen so far is that they are being addressed, and this will take them some time. The game is worth waiting for the fixes; for me it is.

HandofBane

andersan wrote: »

Gilandred wrote: »

All MMOs go through these types of growing pains after launch. I always give new games at least 6 months before things start to even out. If you enjoy the core game and see the potential, then I say just stick it out and continue to play unless and until the bad outweighs the good.

I'm going to stop you right there. Name a AAA MMO released in the last 10 years that had as many issues as ESO. Please just name one.

AoC. Vanguard. Note this does not speak well in favor of ESO for that kind of comparison. At least they did better than Sword of the Stars II at launch with a game that let (most people anyway) log in successfully.

aleister

Gilandred wrote: »

WoW wasn't even playable at launch.

Absolutely, 100% untrue.

andersan

HandofBane wrote: »

AoC. Vanguard. Note this does not speak well in favor of ESO for that kind of comparison. At least they did better than Sword of the Stars II at launch with a game that let (most people anyway) log in successfully.

I wouldn't call those AAA games.

Not directed at you but people here seem to have selective memories when comparing ESO to other games. ESO literally JUST came out. You would think after the money spent, the experience from other MMO's, and the talent from DAOC they would have done better.

HandofBane

andersan wrote: »

HandofBane wrote: »

AoC. Vanguard. Note this does not speak well in favor of ESO for that kind of comparison. At least they did better than Sword of the Stars II at launch with a game that let (most people anyway) log in successfully.

I wouldn't call those AAA games.

Not directed at you but people here seem to have selective memories when comparing ESO to other games. ESO literally JUST came out. You would think after the money spent, the experience from other MMO's, and the talent from DAOC they would have done better.

Vanguard was published by Sony, and had a hefty portion of hype/backing from the old EQ1 crowd going in. AoC... well, it was Conan, had a massive marketing plan, was handled by FunCom /Eidos, neither exactly small - and the whole concept of AAA MMOs really didn't come into effect until just a few years ago with the TORtanic. Before that there really were no MMOs with budgets in the 9 digit range, most were done for 10s of millions of dollars or less. For their time, though, these games were massive money sinks for their respective publishers, which is as close to AAA as you can really get in the genre at the time.

andersan

HandofBane wrote: »

Vanguard was published by Sony, and had a hefty portion of hype/backing from the old EQ1 crowd going in. AoC... well, it was Conan, had a massive marketing plan, was handled by FunCom /Eidos, neither exactly small - and the whole concept of AAA MMOs really didn't come into effect until just a few years ago with the TORtanic. Before that there really were no MMOs with budgets in the 9 digit range, most were done for 10s of millions of dollars or less. For their time, though, these games were massive money sinks for their respective publishers, which is as close to AAA as you can really get in the genre at the time.

Okay I'll bite. What issues did AoC and Vanguard suffer from? And being a bad game doesn't count.

HandofBane

andersan wrote: »

HandofBane wrote: »

Vanguard was published by Sony, and had a hefty portion of hype/backing from the old EQ1 crowd going in. AoC... well, it was Conan, had a massive marketing plan, was handled by FunCom /Eidos, neither exactly small - and the whole concept of AAA MMOs really didn't come into effect until just a few years ago with the TORtanic. Before that there really were no MMOs with budgets in the 9 digit range, most were done for 10s of millions of dollars or less. For their time, though, these games were massive money sinks for their respective publishers, which is as close to AAA as you can really get in the genre at the time.

Okay I'll bite. What issues did AoC and Vanguard suffer from? And being a bad game doesn't count.

Vanguard:
Quest items vanishing from inventory
Constant issues after teleporting of loading inside the ground or objects
Characters changing appearance for no reason (forget keeping the same face)
Ability lag/delays on par with some of what we have now
Turning on some graphic options (like AA) would cause the screen to blank out or flicker constantly
Excessive use of system resources, even on a high end PC

AoC:
PvP didn't work properly in most places, aside from the handful of PKs camped at the max possible level inside newbie dungeons
Many zones weren't working or even completed at launch - the only "complete" zones were the newbie island and the kingdom starting areas
Very heavy instancing, beyond what many other games at the time had, which resulted in lots of small overcrowded areas fighting for spawns
In many cases questing was far less effective for leveling that straight up grinding (I wonder what other game we know has this issue?)

By no means am I defending ZOS here, they have dozens of MMOs to look at and learn from the mistakes of - and having part of their team with experience from DAoC gives them even less ability to claim "we never expected this to not work properly!"

Gilandred

andersan wrote: »

HandofBane wrote: »

Vanguard was published by Sony, and had a hefty portion of hype/backing from the old EQ1 crowd going in. AoC... well, it was Conan, had a massive marketing plan, was handled by FunCom /Eidos, neither exactly small - and the whole concept of AAA MMOs really didn't come into effect until just a few years ago with the TORtanic. Before that there really were no MMOs with budgets in the 9 digit range, most were done for 10s of millions of dollars or less. For their time, though, these games were massive money sinks for their respective publishers, which is as close to AAA as you can really get in the genre at the time.

Okay I'll bite. What issues did AoC and Vanguard suffer from? And being a bad game doesn't count.

Keep in mind that ESO is a far more complex game than any of its predecessors. The megaserver and phasing technologies alone could certainly cause issues that haven't been seen before. WoW and GW2 are both in the midst of implementing "megaserver" tech. Have those been flawless implementations? If we want this genre to move forward, we need to realize that problems and mistakes will be made along the way. If all we do is beat someone down for trying something new, then we'll be stuck playing games launched in 2004.

poodlemasterb16_ESO

Yes, go.

Korah_Eaglecry

B1oodcrow wrote: »

Ashlynne wrote: »

Haxer wrote: »

Yeah I just don't see how people are blowing issues way out of proportion. It's an MMO, soon after launch, and we're making huge sweeping world-ending claims about how it's just not worth going on. Is 50 cents a day really that intense for some people? Give it time. Have fun. Give it time.

For me, it's not really the money more than it's the time I'm putting into the game. Of course, I'm obsessive in my game play, so I spend a lot of time here. I love new content so it takes a lot for me to say this but, I would rather see them stop new content development and focus all their efforts on address/fixing bugs and imbalance. Once the game is stabilized, then I'd love to see them rolling in the new stuff.

I think they need to work on both. We need more content, bug issues fixed, classes balanced, and bots. The one thing I am happy to see is a more aggressive approach to the bots and announcing in zone that they are purging them. I have seen a drastic reduction in bots. Now if only the in game mail gold spam would stop.

Theres three factions worth of level 1-50 content. Thats 150 levels worth of Content not including PvP and all the PvE content in Cyrodiil. They now have Craglorn out which is a bit harder to quantify but considering they added 2 VR levels, each one the round about equivalent of 10 or so levels. They have plenty of content/time playing to last them a while.

I dont want them to stop creating content either. But we arent in the first month of release anymore. And anyone who has spent enough time in MMOs and participated in enough releases. Will tell you that theres something wrong with ZoS and their operating policy. There should have been some level of steady increase in stability and function since atleast week 2 or 3. Instead we've gotten the complete opposite. Some areas are getting improvements while the areas in dire need remain broken.

The time for wishful thinking and crossing our fingers is winding down. Its time people, regardless of being a 'fanboi' or a 'hater', start calling ZoS out on what they arent doing right. No ones helping them by denying the issues while posting 'Thank You Zenimax' threads. Thats sending the wrong message.

As for the OP. Pros and Cons. Take a good hard look at what you do like about this game and what you dont. If the things you dont like interfere severely with what you do like. Maybe its time to put the game down. I know Im probably going to unsub this upcoming month and stay away from the game for the next two to three months. As much as I want to support this game with both my time and wallet. As a customer and consumer. I cant see myself getting through to Zenimax without yanking my wallet out of the equation. Hopefully Zenimax wakes up and realizes they need to make some serious changes before too many of us unsub. Because Id hate to try and resub in a few months only to hear its not better, its going F2P or its tanking and wont be worth returning.

andersan

Those are definitely issues, but (and this is just my opinion) the issues in ESO are much more severe.

ESO shares many of the issues from both and a whole lot more. It seems like, and I could be very wrong, that ESO was pushed out waaaaaay too early and it seems like either they're short knowledgable developers or just straight up short developers.

They can't properly fix bugs, push out content, or QA their work fast enough and people are getting very impatient. I'm one of those people. I so want to love this game, but I just can't right now. If it succeeds, which I unfortunately doubt it will, then I will come back in a few months to try it again. I'm still playing right now but I'm not going to resub until it looks like the game is at a stable point.

I'll keep following the forums and the subreddit and tamrielfoundry, hoping that I'll start seeing some good news instead of the enormous amount of posts listing what is wrong with the game. I'm not talking about opinions of what's wrong. More about the bugs, exploits, server/client issues, and whatever else people find.

I think my biggest gripe is how horrible Zenimax is at communication. I'll go back to the fact that we have yet to see any kind of formal apology for the state of the game right now. We're paying customers and we honestly deserve better.

Korah_Eaglecry

Gilandred wrote: »

andersan wrote: »

I agree with you, but there are some *extreme* issues with ESO. If the only problems we had with this game were the same issues experienced during the WoW launch I'd be happy as hell. You can't deny that if the only problem ESO had was it was too popular you'd see a singular focus on these forums as to the problem. Instead, you see so many different issues that affect people it's all over the place.

WoW wasn't even playable at launch. For days. Rift had a major security hole that allowed hackers to take control of your account without needing your username or password. Those are pretty "extreme" issues if you ask me. I'm not denying that ESO has issues. The evidence I've seen so far is that they are being addressed, and this will take them some time. The game is worth waiting for the fixes; for me it is.

Pretty sure I was able to log into WoW on Launch Day. I remember it quite well even though its 10 years ago now.

As for the Rift thing...Pretty sure that problem happened here in ESO. I remember people freaking out because it was 1 in the morning and no one could log in.

Addressed how? Theres a Sticky at the top of this Forum stating itll take possibly the same amount time to release the next shot of content to get NBs fixed. Thats a month and a half people wont be able to log into their possibly prefered characters. If they only have that character, no interest in any more. That would be more then enough reason to unsub. Why spend 30 dollars for 2 weeks of gameplay time when everyone else has 6 weeks?

andersan

Gilandred wrote: »

Keep in mind that ESO is a far more complex game than any of its predecessors. The megaserver and phasing technologies alone could certainly cause issues that haven't been seen before. WoW and GW2 are both in the midst of implementing "megaserver" tech. Have those been flawless implementations? If we want this genre to move forward, we need to realize that problems and mistakes will be made along the way. If all we do is beat someone down for trying something new, then we'll be stuck playing games launched in 2004.

I see where you're coming from but c'mon man, you can't use the "it's more complex" excuse. My phone is more complex than my phone from 2004 and it works much better than my phone from 2004. They spent years developing this and they have the past to look at. Technology has excelled, hardware is faster, coding languages are more developed. It's just no excuse. If they weren't ready for launch and knew things would go haywire then they shouldn't have launched.

HandofBane

@andersan‌ I agree with you for the most part on your assessment of the situation there. I am a couple days away from cancelling myself, if we don't get something more substantial regarding nightblades, personally.

I know I am not the only person during the beta who said they need to hold off release by at least 6 months, a year would have been optimal. Sadly, the suits and guys in marketing had to have their shiny 4/4/14 launch date, and thus we are where we are today.

Communication may well be their greatest flaw, and I have a feeling it's not just the lack of communication we get here, but also within their own ranks. We have multiple cases of PTS players stating outright they have reported specific bugs that made it live, yet were ignored - which means the person/people responsible for filtering the PTS bug reports and passing them along to the devs is either completely overwhelmed and needs extra bodies to help, or they stopped giving a damn and are only passing along the bare minimum they are asked to (see: Craglorn patch with all the things broken that weren't directly related to the zone itself).

andersan

HandofBane wrote: »

@andersan‌ I agree with you for the most part on your assessment of the situation there. I am a couple days away from cancelling myself, if we don't get something more substantial regarding nightblades, personally.

I know I am not the only person during the beta who said they need to hold off release by at least 6 months, a year would have been optimal. Sadly, the suits and guys in marketing had to have their shiny 4/4/14 launch date, and thus we are where we are today.

Communication may well be their greatest flaw, and I have a feeling it's not just the lack of communication we get here, but also within their own ranks. We have multiple cases of PTS players stating outright they have reported specific bugs that made it live, yet were ignored - which means the person/people responsible for filtering the PTS bug reports and passing them along to the devs is either completely overwhelmed and needs extra bodies to help, or they stopped giving a damn and are only passing along the bare minimum they are asked to (see: Craglorn patch with all the things broken that weren't directly related to the zone itself).

Oh I'm 100% with you. I play a NB myself and I stuck with it too thinking "any day now any day now" with patches to fix our abilities. I also heard from testers that they reported all of these issues that made it into live. Apparently, during the 1.1+ testing the testers were forced to ONLY test craglorn so they would never have known about those other bugs (VR buff?). I feel like management on down at Zenimax is just as broken as the game and they are the reason we are where we are.

I'm willing to bet now that the amount of subs this game will have between now and 6 months from now will be low and to the point where there will not even be a console release. That's only if they don't very QUICKLY fix these issues and attract players back. I fear the damage has been done though and people are just fed up to the point where they'll never trust this company again.

xylus289_ESO

Yeah a lot of this is really beginning to *** me off. I love the game, but man...WTF.

Singular

No, you can unsub right after you send me all your stuff. Then, time for you to go. Seeeeee you! Thanks for the stuff.

Ashlynne

Singular wrote: »

No, you can unsub right after you send me all your stuff. Then, time for you to go. Seeeeee you! Thanks for the stuff.

Spoken like a true troll. Enjoy your broken game.

Alomar

I've seen hundreds of guildies abandon this game while I stood by it, no longer. Unsubscribed.

Quick summarization: exploits, ninja-patches, bugs, crashes, memory leaks, decreasing performance, target-caps, issues reported on PTS months before launch still in place, item duping never punished or removed, too limited add-on capabilities, terrible UI, etc, etc.

Leesha

The time for you to unsub is when the game no longer provides you with fun. It doesn't matter in the least if others agree with you or not since it is a personal decision only you can make for yourself.

Purple_Prophet

Take a break and come back later when more content is released. Plenty of things you can do while you wait.

TheGrandAlliance

Answer? NO.

andrantos

I have kept my sub up on FF14 even though I haven't really played since December. I put ESO away for the weekend so I could evaluate whether or not I will continue to keep that sub open.

While I feel FF14 is a very polished, very well produced MMO there were things that really irked me.

1) FF14 lacks a consistently entertaining main scenario that is intermittently voice acted.

2) Sidequests are nothing but filler and glorified text boxes.

3) A really uninspiring end-game gear treadmill. Grinding and repeating the same said stuff over and over and over and over again.

4) A vocal, toxic community. Over on the lodestone's forum, you really can't go without some nasty comments back and forth. Lots of immature and rude folk running about. While this community hasn't gone without similar players, it seems FF14 has attracted a bulk of them.

5) The armory system is fairly inflexible. Yes, you can level up multiple classes on one character, but it doesn't feel like moving forward as it does starting over. If I want to change up my build or invest in skills to allow me to fulfill a different group role, I don't have to go all the way back to Stonefalls to do so. I'm not putting my "progress" on hold temporarily and continue to move forward.

6) FF14 doesn't encourage exploration at all. Zones are dense with sights and visuals but at the cost of hidden bits.

Even with all its flaws I still prefer ESO. It has admittedly been the only MMO that seems to have gotten more buggy since launch. It has had its share of controversies with various dupes and service decisions.

But... I like the skill system. Combat is actually enjoyable to me. I like the ideas behind Craglorn and can't wait to experience that. Dungeons have been fun so far.

ZiRM

Gotta do what you gotta do OP.

tordr86b16_ESO

Misty

The moment I loose interest or get annoyed with the game I would unsub Ashlynne. It's as simple as that. But I would never write the game off, and would always intend to try again at a later date.

You play games for enjoyment, they are not a job or your lively-hood.

true2moon_ESO

funny but you know the ones talking *** here are the PvE scrubs...

and yes I think if you are a PvP person, you might as well unsub - as its pretty clear they dont give a *** about pvp.

the caltrops exploit should have been #1, on their list, and same with the lag and the mercs.

and dont get me started with the garbage design, like Bolt Escape, lol who designs a pvp game that you let a class exit combat so easy??

I think its safe to say this stuff isnt getting fixed anytime soon, maybe by the time it goes F2P, they will hopefully have got their heads out of their asses and will have addressed and fixed the vast problems with PvP by then.

It is a shame though, I had high hopes for this game, croydiil had a lot of potential, but this crap they are pushing isnt worth $15 a month sub, that is for dam sure....

oh and not to mention, its only a matter of time before we see the hacks in PvP, because of their poor programing skills, so yea I would say pack it in....

Swordguy

PC version of ESO is a Beta Test to weed out issues for when they launch on console, not much more. anyone who can't see this is burying their head in the sand to ignore the obvious. I'm almost tempted to abandon everything I've done so far, wait and buy a ps4 when ESO launches on console and start over fresh. Its that or nothing with the direction the pc version is headed at this time.

ZiRM

Shudders*** MMO on consoles...