Returning Player's Question

Nazzraeda

Greetings!

So lately I've been thinking about coming back to ESO. Mostly because of the new chapter incoming and a list of content that I missed starting to get bit too long for my liking.

Anyway, during my "ESO absence" I haven't followed the update natch potes at all, so I'm bit afraid of what I might see when I'll launch the game again. I left some time after Elsweyr launched, after clearing what kitty chapter had to offer. At that point I've cleared all of end game content up to this point including all HM trials and some trifectas like Gryphon Heart so apart from chasing Sunspire trifecta there wasn't much left for me to do. I guess lot of stuff has changed since then (it's been few years after all!) hence my question: what are the biggest changes that I should be aware of? Any groundbreaking meta shift that will make me question reality? Is Cyro still a slideshow with a meme performance?

I know I could just go through all of the patch notes, but frankly, it's a long read and I consider community to be the best source of important information! Thanks for all the answers!

CmdrJohn86

well...They added a few more DLC's that essentially was just murkmire with a few changes.
pvp is in the worst place its been since the games inception and they added companions to help with the already to easy overland content.
They recently added an invisible mount but took it away from us and most sets in the game are pretty much the same now doesn't really matter what you throw on.
you missed Rich's mum/wife maybe nan (I don't know) on live stream putting down the hole pvp community and the 2 lady's who do the live streams for releases don't really know that much about what's getting released other than what's going into the crown store and pretty much all bugs that were live during Elsweyr are still there or worse.
They managed to fix cyro on pc na with hardware upgrades but broke it with next update
that's pretty much everything of the top of head i think.

BenTSG

They've changed skills and stats to be 'Hybrid' now, if you've not seen. So instead of a Magicka skill scaling off your Magicka and Spell damage, it will just scale off your highest stat regardless, so now you have more skills you can use in your off stat that will hit just as hard as if you had specced into it, just you won't have a big resource pool to keep casting them from. I have forgotten when this came into play, now.

PvP is in a state, yes. EU is going to begin it's new Hardware swap in April, which might fix Cyros horrid performance, but between the horrendous balance and cheaters, I doubt it's going to do much good.

The Mount John was on about was the Pre-order mount for Necrom that was just invisible for some reason, though I am unsure of the state of it right now

Oh, there is the Armoury System now. You can officially save your builds and create entirely new ones and switch between them with ease. Have one build as a WW, bother as a Vamp, all with different attributes, skill morphs and CP points assigned to them and kept separate from each other!

Lastly, ZOS is changing their game plan for content releases going forward. Now instead of a year long story like Elsywer was, we are going back to having the whole story in the expansion itself instead of being broken into a Q2 Chapter and a Q4 Story DLC, of which the Q4 update will now be new 'Tentpole' systems (This year's one seems like an endless dungeon of some sort. Details are due to come yet) and the Q3 Dungeons are now replaced with QoL updates

That's all I can think of right now, I'm sure there is probably more but the Hybridisation is probably the biggest thing of note for you to return to.

TheImperfect

A lot of skill changes, check all your skills

spartaxoxo

They added a new system for obtaining gear (antiquities) and all gear is now both curated and kept in a sticker book. This means that once you find a piece of gear, you can make it whenever you want from your sticker book. It also means that when a piece of gear drops, next time you fight a boss it will give you only a piece of gear you don't already know from it's available pool.

They also added something called endeavors. It lets you obtain items from crown crates (loot boxes) for free.

lillybit

Then there's the card game nobody asked for. I'm trying to level it now and like eso less for it!

PeacefulAnarchy

Hybridization: The line between mag and stam is blurrier so there's value in using your off resource for casting things, along with skill changes this has changed the skills people use in rotations.

CP changes: the entire CP system has been reworked. You may find yourself at relatively low CP, but you'll go up a lot faster now.

The armory: The first lets you change and save builds, or keep a build blank for instant reset.

stickerbook+reconstruction+curated loot: The gear grind now has a limit and you can reconstruct anything you find, makes changing builds and getting that darn weapon to drop a lot easier.

Mythics: Powerful single items that either have a medium power bonus or a high power bonus and a drawback. Some are uselss, some are situational, some very strong. This means a lot of build now either have just one piece monster set and a mythic or have a mythic and 2 piece but no arena weapon and split front and back bar.

Antiquity system used mostly for mythics, but also some furnishings and motifs
Companions:vaguely competent NPCs that help you out.
Tales of Tribute: Card game

Tenthirty2

Nazzraeda wrote: »

Greetings!

So lately I've been thinking about coming back to ESO. Mostly because of the new chapter incoming and a list of content that I missed starting to get bit too long for my liking.

Anyway, during my "ESO absence" I haven't followed the update natch potes at all, so I'm bit afraid of what I might see when I'll launch the game again. I left some time after Elsweyr launched, after clearing what kitty chapter had to offer. At that point I've cleared all of end game content up to this point including all HM trials and some trifectas like Gryphon Heart so apart from chasing Sunspire trifecta there wasn't much left for me to do. I guess lot of stuff has changed since then (it's been few years after all!) hence my question: what are the biggest changes that I should be aware of? Any groundbreaking meta shift that will make me question reality? Is Cyro still a slideshow with a meme performance?

I know I could just go through all of the patch notes, but frankly, it's a long read and I consider community to be the best source of important information! Thanks for all the answers!

Well if you do decide to jump back in, welcome back!

I'm newer to ESO, having only been here a few years.
Your questions are kinda like a "where do I start" answer. There seems to have been SO much in just these last couple years.

I don't chase meta, so can't really comment well to that. I mostly figure it out as I go, I poke things, they die, win.
I can even poke much larger things and they die too, just takes longer.

One significant thing is the CP system rework. I think that happened after Elsweyr?
Once you log in you will need to check your CP, bcuz when they did the rework there are now only 3 trees and your CP will have been reset. TBH I preferred the previous way of doing CP but I adapted to this and now it's the norm.

I have yet to run any trials myself, mostly solo everything so I can't comment on any of the new ones, etc.

Cyro I only know of from what I see others mention. Seems to be overland is ok-ish, while inside the city it's bad performance. PVPers can speak better to that. I only stealth around the zone when I have maps to do and have my loadout set up for stealth and escape (don't care for PVP), so for that it seems fine to me.

All in all I think it is a great game, many bumps to smooth out yet and optimizations to do. But it's fun for me and feels like time well spent yet. Hope you enjoy it if you do return!

EDIT: Forgot to mention cold storage. If your account has not been used in a long time (a year? can't remember tbh) it will have been moved to a cold storage cluster to save on active database space. So when you first log in it may take longer than usual the first time while it pulls your data back into the live server.

lillybit

Another change is groups have been reduced to a max of 12 which has really hurt casual PvPers - if you don't PvP enough to be in a guild you won't get in to a group most times. You also come across a lot more RPers in zone chat because the groups aren't big enough.

There's also account wide achievements now which has been a mixed bag. Some parts are ok (I managed to finally get my red BGs dye with it) but it's messed up map icons and individual achievements might be listed under different characters than you'd want.


There's been lots of other little changes like those - not much on their own but all together it can be annoying

ZOS_Icy

Greetings,

This thread has been moved to the Players Helping Players section, as it is better suited there.

Thank you for your understanding.