Every Studio Director's Letter (by year) that promised to improve game performance.

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Aurielle wrote: »

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React wrote: »

This right here is exactly why I no longer get my hopes up regarding ESO.

There is no reason to believe this time will be any different, and you would be a fool to think otherwise. Zenimax has not once made good on a promise to improve performance or the PVP side of the game, except when they accidently improved it by replacing the hardware before allowing it to slip back into disrepair within a 9 month timeframe. Every time people begin to get vocal regarding their unhappiness with PVP/Performance/combat/balance, we get some PR post and a few weeks of weak forum communication, followed by a return to the norm and much later an excuse as to why they couldn't accomplish the goals they laid out at the end of the previous year.

I would love to be wrong. I'd love to see the PVP side of this game return to it's former glory. But their track record and the actions of their developers do not provide any reason to believe that they are willing or even capable of achieving that.

even if they toss out this new camp and performance is great, at what cost? I would literally sooner just go play bdo or wow or some other mmo. I play eso because i love the combat and the diverstiy. Combat has been dumbed down by zos for years, and so has diversity. But what they proposed is even worse. I dont play eso to be forced to run something by the devs. Skills or a build or whatever. I would hate it, im sure someone like you would hate it, everyone i know would hate it.

Even if its not super invasive, and they just ban a few skills, then would it really make a difference? From the way i read it, it sounds like loadouts or something. Idk, time will tell, but the question i have to keep asking is, what does any of this do for cyrodiil the way it is now. Unless they have some other idea that i missed or they havent talked about. But ofc, i have zero faith. We have played too long lmao, been watching every year, reading these posts, how could we have any faith in things improving.

Agreed fully. The time to make a change like this was at launch when it became apparent that shifting skill calculations server-side was tanking performance in Cyrodiil — not ten years into the game’s life, when having considerable build diversity is all we’ve ever really known. I’m still willing to wait and see and give it a try if it does indeed perform well, because theorycrafting has never been my own priority in Cyrodiil, but I know that any system that dumbs things down and lessens build diversity is going to drive even more players away. That gives ZOS execs the chance to throw up their hands and say something like “See? We improved performance and they STILL left, there’s no pleasing PVP players.” Gets them off the hook, in their minds, and gives them even less incentive to work on Cyrodiil.

im not saying i disagree that they could justify something like that internally, as insane as it may be, but anyone who believes that would have to be doing a wild amount of coping and mental gymnastics to get to that point. You know what might fix performance? If they just changed cyro so there are no sets, 1 skill bar, no healing, no shields, no dodge roll, no block, just damage skills. So everyone would just run around and see who died first. Could they make the same argument then? Well, maybe they would but again Its insane.

To me, if you take cyrodiil so far away from what it was originally meant to be, and what it has been for the last 10 years, then you have completely and utterly failed. And im not sure thats a failure most of us are willing to accept. Being unable to fix performance because of server or mechanical issues is also a huge failure but its a failure that some of us have learned to somewhat live with. But many other people wont live with it and left. And cyrodiil is much worse because of it, in many ways. Lack of content, smaller pop, bad gameplay, less veteran players/leaders, and so on.

Also zos always goes about these changes in a bad way. When you dont fully grasp or engage with a part of the game, how can you know whats best for it? Like with removing proc sets from no CP. The set list made no sense. For example, iirc, pariah was allowed but stuhns was not. And so on.

And with them disabling cross healing for a while, many of us thought it made a good impact on performance. Especially at some bigger fights. But it didnt last all that long and zos said it didnt make enough of an impact to remain. Enough of an impact huh. To who? If performance is a death by a thousand cuts situation, if its many small things making it worse over the years, then you would think them doing things that made some small impact would help reverse it.

Like cross healing, thats a small increase. Or maybe disabling a set or a skill every now and again, in cyrodiil if they think its having an impact. Small changes, over time, with careful observation both in game and behind the scenes. But unfortunately, thats not how they do things. Its always large sweeping changes. And no matter how much they say they will change, they never change that way of doing things.