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Is ZOS sundowning ESO?
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HowlKimchi✭✭✭✭✭
✭Recently I have been hearing ESO contentcreators talking about Zos "sundowning" ESO and moving on to different projects. I really hope thats not the case. Im all for them expanding their list of games, but i hope they keep ESO alive. Anyone out there with more insight/informed predictions who can put my gamer heart at ease XD ?
All the best.
We've talked about this before, but we have no intention of "sundowning" ESO at this time. There are plenty of stories left to tell and the team is eager to work on those. We do have another project in the works, which is public information. But ESO has no plans to slow down.
You say this as the amount of content we get per year just got cut in half.
yeah, for new repeatable content. meaning they want people to keep playing for longer
The thing I see most on this forum is people not wanting to repeat content. They must have skyshards and thereby skill points, along with guild skill lines in the Crown Store so they don't to repeat content. They must have account-wide achievements so they don't have to repeat content, they must have class change tokens so they don't have to repeat content, they must have account-wide mount training so they don't have to repeat content. What is this repeatable content that people want, or ZOS think they want, in order for them to keep playing for longer?
To be clear, feeding a virtual horse every 20 hours so it runs 1% faster is not content. Riding skill not being account wide is a crime imo.Edited by HowlKimchi on 7 February 2023 02:135 -
Elsonso✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Recently I have been hearing ESO contentcreators talking about Zos "sundowning" ESO and moving on to different projects. I really hope thats not the case. Im all for them expanding their list of games, but i hope they keep ESO alive. Anyone out there with more insight/informed predictions who can put my gamer heart at ease XD ?
All the best.
We've talked about this before, but we have no intention of "sundowning" ESO at this time. There are plenty of stories left to tell and the team is eager to work on those. We do have another project in the works, which is public information. But ESO has no plans to slow down.
You say this as the amount of content we get per year just got cut in half.
yeah, for new repeatable content. meaning they want people to keep playing for longer
The thing I see most on this forum is people not wanting to repeat content. They must have skyshards and thereby skill points, along with guild skill lines in the Crown Store so they don't to repeat content. They must have account-wide achievements so they don't have to repeat content, they must have class change tokens so they don't have to repeat content, they must have account-wide mount training so they don't have to repeat content. What is this repeatable content that people want, or ZOS think they want, in order for them to keep playing for longer?
To be clear, feeding a virtual horse every 20 hours so it runs 1% faster is not content. Riding skill not being account wide is a crime imo.
Not really. It taking months to raise up horse skills... that is the crime. Account wide is just one of multiple solutions.2 -
Jaraal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭Recently I have been hearing ESO contentcreators talking about Zos "sundowning" ESO and moving on to different projects. I really hope thats not the case. Im all for them expanding their list of games, but i hope they keep ESO alive. Anyone out there with more insight/informed predictions who can put my gamer heart at ease XD ?
All the best.
We've talked about this before, but we have no intention of "sundowning" ESO at this time. There are plenty of stories left to tell and the team is eager to work on those. We do have another project in the works, which is public information. But ESO has no plans to slow down.
You say this as the amount of content we get per year just got cut in half.
yeah, for new repeatable content. meaning they want people to keep playing for longer
The thing I see most on this forum is people not wanting to repeat content. They must have skyshards and thereby skill points, along with guild skill lines in the Crown Store so they don't to repeat content. They must have account-wide achievements so they don't have to repeat content, they must have class change tokens so they don't have to repeat content, they must have account-wide mount training so they don't have to repeat content. What is this repeatable content that people want, or ZOS think they want, in order for them to keep playing for longer?
To be clear, feeding a virtual horse every 20 hours so it runs 1% faster is not content. Riding skill not being account wide is a crime imo.
Not really. It taking months to raise up horse skills... that is the crime. Account wide is just one of multiple solutions.
But then your motivation to buy riding lessons in the crown store is severely diminished, and profits are impacted.
I would be shocked to see any streamlining of the mount training grind.RIP Bosmer Nation. 4/4/14 - 2/25/19.1 -
Vrienda✭✭✭✭✭
✭I think they'll keep it alive and getting content but that content pipeline has been shrinking for years. This year we're on track to get less content than we've gotten in a long while, if ever. And the scope of the game's been decreasing too. I think there's a reason you never see actual choices anymore or full on phasing like with certain cities you could liberate in the base game.
It's alright to say they have no plans to but the writing's on the wall, it definitely feels more and more like ESO is being but on the backburner for their next project.Desperate for Roleplaying servers to bring open world non-organised RP to Elder Scrolls Online. Please ZOS.2 -
DMuehlhausen✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭ZOS has been scaling back their commitment to Cyrodiil for at least four years now. Every year the pop caps get lower, performance gets a little worse (with a brief exception when new servers installed for PC NA, but it didn't last), and more and more players stop playing in Cyrodiil. It seems very much like this has been an intentional divestment into PvP by ZOS. That's why PvP players have been asking for a number of years now if ZOS is sunsetting ESO.I'd love to know of any MMO that has introduced a new class while sunsetting (sundowning if you prefer) the game at the same time. It's palpable nonsense.
This is due to the fact they can't fix it, they don't know how and it's essentially a mini game added on to a PvE based game.
Now you're going to tell me it was the main selling point at launch so ESO was intially a PvP based game. That's wrong, but even it were true at this point it isn't the case. This is a 95% PvE based game. Just like Blizzard couldn't balance and fix PvP between alliance and Horde because of Shamans and Paladins they just went against their lore and said F you both get the classes, and oh even though we said Blood Elves could never be warriors now they can cause we don't know what else to do.
Cyrodil is in the same state. They don't know how to fix and probably never will.0 -
ProudMary✭✭✭✭✭
✭DMuehlhausen wrote: »ZOS has been scaling back their commitment to Cyrodiil for at least four years now. Every year the pop caps get lower, performance gets a little worse (with a brief exception when new servers installed for PC NA, but it didn't last), and more and more players stop playing in Cyrodiil. It seems very much like this has been an intentional divestment into PvP by ZOS. That's why PvP players have been asking for a number of years now if ZOS is sunsetting ESO.I'd love to know of any MMO that has introduced a new class while sunsetting (sundowning if you prefer) the game at the same time. It's palpable nonsense.
This is due to the fact they can't fix it, they don't know how and it's essentially a mini game added on to a PvE based game.
Now you're going to tell me it was the main selling point at launch so ESO was intially a PvP based game. That's wrong, but even it were true at this point it isn't the case. This is a 95% PvE based game. Just like Blizzard couldn't balance and fix PvP between alliance and Horde because of Shamans and Paladins they just went against their lore and said F you both get the classes, and oh even though we said Blood Elves could never be warriors now they can cause we don't know what else to do.
Cyrodil is in the same state. They don't know how to fix and probably never will.
It's a patently false claim to make that PvP was added onto a PvE based game as an afterthought. We get it. You've repeatedly stated how you hate PvP, but it's a totally and knowingly false to claim PvP wasn't an integral part of the game design from inception. It says so right on the back of the box the original game was sold in. PvP was always advertised as the original end game in ESO. (the three banners war) PvP was and still is advertised as one of the primary end game activities in ESO.
Edited by ProudMary on 7 February 2023 09:048 -
lusshtgarel✭✭✭I think they'll keep it alive and getting content but that content pipeline has been shrinking for years. This year we're on track to get less content than we've gotten in a long while, if ever.
They are merely doing what the players have been asking for. People on the forums complained about year-long stories being horrible and boring, so they're changing that sceme. I personally don't really see the amount of content shrinking. We have had the same DLCs, the same chapter, new features and multiple big overhauls. This year the system is going to change, but on the bright side, that's what a lot of people wanted, maybe it'll work out for the better? Who knows, we just have to wait and see.I think there's a reason you never see actual choices anymore or full on phasing like with certain cities you could liberate in the base game.
I've done two out of three base game alliance quest lines and haven't seen any quests where the choices actually mattered. Base game is wonderfully designed, but rating it higher than the DLC stories as a personal preference does not make it objectively better.It's alright to say they have no plans to but the writing's on the wall, it definitely feels more and more like ESO is being but on the backburner for their next project.
This is the kind of doom and gloom I've been seeing on those forums since the day I joined in 2018. So many people are praising Summerset now, but I still remember how people were complaining about the implementatioon of jewelry crafting, pay to win, about how the game was being gutted more and more since Morrowind and about how it was about to die. And yet, still very much alive and kicking.
There have been some bad changes recently, but also some good changes like the CP overhaul and the stickerbook which has become the most important QoL thing for me, since I hate the idea of keeping a ton of stuff in my bank and coffers in hopes that I might need it sometime.
I might be wrong, but it honestly feels like ESO is not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. And to draw our final conclusions about how good or bad is this year going to be, I suggest we wait till the end of it. So far it seems promising.
Edited by lusshtgarel on 7 February 2023 16:155 -
Jaraal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭DMuehlhausen wrote: »ZOS has been scaling back their commitment to Cyrodiil for at least four years now. Every year the pop caps get lower, performance gets a little worse (with a brief exception when new servers installed for PC NA, but it didn't last), and more and more players stop playing in Cyrodiil. It seems very much like this has been an intentional divestment into PvP by ZOS. That's why PvP players have been asking for a number of years now if ZOS is sunsetting ESO.I'd love to know of any MMO that has introduced a new class while sunsetting (sundowning if you prefer) the game at the same time. It's palpable nonsense.
This is due to the fact they can't fix it, they don't know how and it's essentially a mini game added on to a PvE based game.
Now you're going to tell me it was the main selling point at launch so ESO was intially a PvP based game. That's wrong, but even it were true at this point it isn't the case. This is a 95% PvE based game. Just like Blizzard couldn't balance and fix PvP between alliance and Horde because of Shamans and Paladins they just went against their lore and said F you both get the classes, and oh even though we said Blood Elves could never be warriors now they can cause we don't know what else to do.
Cyrodil is in the same state. They don't know how to fix and probably never will.
It's a patently false claim to make that PvP was added onto a PvE based game as an afterthought. We get it. You've repeatedly stated how you hate PvP, but it's a totally and knowingly false to claim PvP wasn't an integral part of the game design from inception. It says so right on the back of the box the original game was sold in. PvP was always advertised as the original end game in ESO. (the three banners war) PvP was and still is advertised as one of the primary end game activities in ESO.
"Engage in epic player vs. player battles with enemy armies of hundreds across the lands of Cyrodiil."
Pretty sad that eight years ago each faction could have at least 200 players on at one time. Imagine that with all the technological advances and exponentially faster and more powerful computation and data transmission systems of the past decade that the game can now barely handle population caps of 70 per side.
What went wrong? And why do they remain silent about it?RIP Bosmer Nation. 4/4/14 - 2/25/19.5 -
Elsonso✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭It taking months to raise up horse skills... that is the crime. Account wide is just one of multiple solutions.
But then your motivation to buy riding lessons in the crown store is severely diminished, and profits are impacted.
I would be shocked to see any streamlining of the mount training grind.
Same here. Out of account wide horse training, and other solutions, the very best solution a game studio will see is the monetized one that streamlines the very long grind that they have manufactured.
It's a patently false claim to make that PvP was added onto a PvE based game as an afterthought. We get it. You've repeatedly stated how you hate PvP, but it's a totally and knowingly false to claim PvP wasn't an integral part of the game design from inception. It says so right on the back of the box the original game was sold in. PvP was always advertised as the original end game in ESO. (the three banners war) PvP was and still is advertised as one of the primary end game activities in ESO.
Oddly enough, and while I was not around to witness this, one of the old beta testers once mentioned that Cadwell was added because they didn't have any PVE after the main quest and that there was only Cyrodiil for an end game. True? False? Like I said, I wasn't there.
"What went wrong" is exactly the question.2 -
fizzylu✭✭✭✭✭"What went wrong" is exactly the question.
I'd say it was probably the choice to cut so many corners when the game was already experiencing performance and optimization issues even in beta testing prior to official release. It was only a matter of time for the rocky foundation ZoS built for ESO to start falling apart.3 -
Oakenaxe✭✭✭✭ZOS has been scaling back their commitment to Cyrodiil for at least four years now. Every year the pop caps get lower, performance gets a little worse (with a brief exception when new servers installed for PC NA, but it didn't last), and more and more players stop playing in Cyrodiil. It seems very much like this has been an intentional divestment into PvP by ZOS. That's why PvP players have been asking for a number of years now if ZOS is sunsetting ESO.
Agree, this is what made me stop playing this game. My favorite part of the game is simply uncared for.a.k.a. Leo
non-native English speaker
200-300 ping and low fps player2 -
ProudMary✭✭✭✭✭
✭DMuehlhausen wrote: »ZOS has been scaling back their commitment to Cyrodiil for at least four years now. Every year the pop caps get lower, performance gets a little worse (with a brief exception when new servers installed for PC NA, but it didn't last), and more and more players stop playing in Cyrodiil. It seems very much like this has been an intentional divestment into PvP by ZOS. That's why PvP players have been asking for a number of years now if ZOS is sunsetting ESO.I'd love to know of any MMO that has introduced a new class while sunsetting (sundowning if you prefer) the game at the same time. It's palpable nonsense.
This is due to the fact they can't fix it, they don't know how and it's essentially a mini game added on to a PvE based game.
Now you're going to tell me it was the main selling point at launch so ESO was intially a PvP based game. That's wrong, but even it were true at this point it isn't the case. This is a 95% PvE based game. Just like Blizzard couldn't balance and fix PvP between alliance and Horde because of Shamans and Paladins they just went against their lore and said F you both get the classes, and oh even though we said Blood Elves could never be warriors now they can cause we don't know what else to do.
Cyrodil is in the same state. They don't know how to fix and probably never will.
It's a patently false claim to make that PvP was added onto a PvE based game as an afterthought. We get it. You've repeatedly stated how you hate PvP, but it's a totally and knowingly false to claim PvP wasn't an integral part of the game design from inception. It says so right on the back of the box the original game was sold in. PvP was always advertised as the original end game in ESO. (the three banners war) PvP was and still is advertised as one of the primary end game activities in ESO.
"Engage in epic player vs. player battles with enemy armies of hundreds across the lands of Cyrodiil."
Pretty sad that eight years ago each faction could have at least 200 players on at one time. Imagine that with all the technological advances and exponentially faster and more powerful computation and data transmission systems of the past decade that the game can now barely handle population caps of 70 per side.
What went wrong? And why do they remain silent about it?
8 years ago the population cap was right about 400 players per faction. That's how radically they've reduced the population cap. Now the pop cap is about 80 players per faction and performance is less reliable today than 8 years ago, even given the huge leaps forward in processing capacity and bandwidth availability over the last decade.
What went wrong was capitalism.
ZOS did the math and decided that the profit margin was greater to invest less into the game, so they started cutting back on their server capacity, which is/was one of their largest recurring costs.
Anyone else remember that for years when a Midyear Mayem event would roll around that magically performance got better? Then after people started noticing and asking why we got improved performance during PvP events it stopped happening? This is how we know PvP could experience the great performance it once had again in the future if ZOS decided to make it happen.It taking months to raise up horse skills... that is the crime. Account wide is just one of multiple solutions.
But then your motivation to buy riding lessons in the crown store is severely diminished, and profits are impacted.
I would be shocked to see any streamlining of the mount training grind.
Same here. Out of account wide horse training, and other solutions, the very best solution a game studio will see is the monetized one that streamlines the very long grind that they have manufactured.It's a patently false claim to make that PvP was added onto a PvE based game as an afterthought. We get it. You've repeatedly stated how you hate PvP, but it's a totally and knowingly false to claim PvP wasn't an integral part of the game design from inception. It says so right on the back of the box the original game was sold in. PvP was always advertised as the original end game in ESO. (the three banners war) PvP was and still is advertised as one of the primary end game activities in ESO.
Oddly enough, and while I was not around to witness this, one of the old beta testers once mentioned that Cadwell was added because they didn't have any PVE after the main quest and that there was only Cyrodiil for an end game. True? False? Like I said, I wasn't there.
"What went wrong" is exactly the question.
Edited by ProudMary on 7 February 2023 20:123 -
Tandor✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭It taking months to raise up horse skills... that is the crime. Account wide is just one of multiple solutions.
But then your motivation to buy riding lessons in the crown store is severely diminished, and profits are impacted.
I would be shocked to see any streamlining of the mount training grind.
Same here. Out of account wide horse training, and other solutions, the very best solution a game studio will see is the monetized one that streamlines the very long grind that they have manufactured.It's a patently false claim to make that PvP was added onto a PvE based game as an afterthought. We get it. You've repeatedly stated how you hate PvP, but it's a totally and knowingly false to claim PvP wasn't an integral part of the game design from inception. It says so right on the back of the box the original game was sold in. PvP was always advertised as the original end game in ESO. (the three banners war) PvP was and still is advertised as one of the primary end game activities in ESO.
Oddly enough, and while I was not around to witness this, one of the old beta testers once mentioned that Cadwell was added because they didn't have any PVE after the main quest and that there was only Cyrodiil for an end game. True? False? Like I said, I wasn't there.
"What went wrong" is exactly the question.
I believe the reason Cadwell's quests were added was because beta being pre-One Tamriel meant you could only enter and advance through your own alliance zones, meaning you needed to roll 3 characters in order to see the whole of the PvE content, which many testers considered unacceptable. ZOS quickly dreamt up a plot whereby you could get to see the other two sets of alliance zones as well as your own.
While many PvPers believe, wrongly in my view, that ESO was marketed as a PvP-only endgame (I wouldn't have bought it if that had been the case), I suspect that ZOS always intended to add endgame PvE content but it wasn't ready at launch and had to be added shortly afterwards. That's not uncommon in MMOs, not least because of (a) financial pressure to launch before a game is ready and (b) developers over-estimating the time it takes some players/guilds to rush through PvE content.
I believe the game was aimed at launch equally to both PvE and PvP audiences, and marketed accordingly. This is borne out by the fact that the back of the box as shown above stated with equal emphasis that you could adventure alone or with friends, or engage in massive PvP battles. There is no reference at all to whether one or the other, or both, constituted the intended endgame activity which isn't mentioned at all. The introductory statement "Three alliances vie for control of the Empire" applies equally to both the PvE and PvP content.Edited by Tandor on 7 February 2023 20:591 -
Jaraal✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭ZOS did the math and decided that the profit margin was greater to invest less into the game, so they started cutting back on their server capacity, which is/was one of their largest recurring costs.
Well, that would certainly explain why performance has gone downhill. And why they refuse to talk about it with us.Anyone else remember that for years when a Midyear Mayem event would roll around that magically performance got better? Then after people started noticing and asking why we got improved performance during PvP events it stopped happening? This is how we know PvP could experience the great performance it once had again in the future if ZOS decided to make it happen.
I always noticed that, too. And the event performance improvements stopped happening immediately after the Microsoft acquisition, too.
RIP Bosmer Nation. 4/4/14 - 2/25/19.3 -
DMuehlhausen✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭DMuehlhausen wrote: »ZOS has been scaling back their commitment to Cyrodiil for at least four years now. Every year the pop caps get lower, performance gets a little worse (with a brief exception when new servers installed for PC NA, but it didn't last), and more and more players stop playing in Cyrodiil. It seems very much like this has been an intentional divestment into PvP by ZOS. That's why PvP players have been asking for a number of years now if ZOS is sunsetting ESO.I'd love to know of any MMO that has introduced a new class while sunsetting (sundowning if you prefer) the game at the same time. It's palpable nonsense.
This is due to the fact they can't fix it, they don't know how and it's essentially a mini game added on to a PvE based game.
Now you're going to tell me it was the main selling point at launch so ESO was intially a PvP based game. That's wrong, but even it were true at this point it isn't the case. This is a 95% PvE based game. Just like Blizzard couldn't balance and fix PvP between alliance and Horde because of Shamans and Paladins they just went against their lore and said F you both get the classes, and oh even though we said Blood Elves could never be warriors now they can cause we don't know what else to do.
Cyrodil is in the same state. They don't know how to fix and probably never will.
It's a patently false claim to make that PvP was added onto a PvE based game as an afterthought. We get it. You've repeatedly stated how you hate PvP, but it's a totally and knowingly false to claim PvP wasn't an integral part of the game design from inception. It says so right on the back of the box the original game was sold in. PvP was always advertised as the original end game in ESO. (the three banners war) PvP was and still is advertised as one of the primary end game activities in ESO.
you clearly ignored where I said maybe it was at launch, but at this point it's an add on that they aren't currently and in the future will not put much time into. They don't know how to fix it.2 -
akdave0✭✭✭✭There’s still a lot of open map left to unlock, I don’t see a sundowner anytime soon. I feel the game will go on for another decade. Until then, have fun and happy adventures!Edited by akdave0 on 9 February 2023 15:382