ESO's future - The community needs clear answers

Syldras

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Hey OP. [snip] Please replace all instances of "the comunity" with the appropriate first-person article. If others agree with you, thats on them to share, but obviously many do not.
[edited for baiting]

Well, this reads like giving a personal opinion to me (quoted from the first post), also, OP isn't a native English speaker from what I know:

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

I will speak for myself and let others add or correct my thoughts, but I think many of us want:

And I absolutely share his concerns. And I know several other users who do as well. So I really hope that ZOS will be able to give us a bit of info about this year's changes soon to hopefully alleviate the worries we have.

licenturion wrote: »

I still login daily but after that letter I have stopped all spending on the game until there is more information available.

Yes. I still play and I will continue playing, but without knowing what awaits us later this year, how much and what types of content we will get, how much it will cost me, whether ESO+ will still provide enough for me to find it useful, I don't want to plan ahead right now, which includes things like buying crowns. I usually make use of the end-of-year crown sale. This time I did not. Which doesn't mean I'd buy crowns for the normal price later, it means I don't buy them at all (until the next sale, maybe, if at that point I'm sure that there will be enough new content to keep me playing ESO regularly).

Northwold

On the "community", I have to say whenever someone claims that X is what the "community" wants they make their argument weaker. It's a hyperbolic claim. Others may share the opinion, they may not, but, no, no one individual speaks for the "community" and claiming to do so only diminishes what's being said.

colossalvoids

Northwold wrote: »

On the "community", I have to say whenever someone claims that X is what the "community" wants they make their argument weaker. It's a hyperbolic claim. Others may share the opinion, they may not, but, no, no one individual speaks for the "community" and claiming to do so only diminishes what's being said.

People need to distinguish that not everyone saying community means everyone. Game consists of many communities, it's like hundreds of circles where some are sharing space with other circles or multiple of them.

Speaking about precise issues from a community should obviously indicate that it's going about the community(s) which is concerned (check latest end of the year letter thread where a ton of concerns being shared by different communities be it good ones or not, people still are concerned, frightened, not believing the company and it's actions or else) about an issue at hand. There is no one using umbrella term to gather every single player in their community talk.

Deter1UK

TaSheen wrote: »

@Mathius_Mordred , @Elvenheart - thanks for saying my mouthful for me! May you live long and prosper!

That makes four of us then!

(Five if you include my autistic daughter for whom her slow pace of ESO is a daily relief after coming in from work)

There's more to this game than just gaming.

Aurielle

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

I've been playing since Closed Beta, I love the game, I have no issues with the game, frankly I haven't got a clue what you're going on about. If you don't like it then play something else. I'm looking forward to 2025 with the same level of excitement I've had at the start of each year since 2014.

That’s great. For you. I’ve also been playing since beta, and unfortunately had to uninstall the game (again) last year due to a major performance issue that can be traced back to a particular patch in May 2024. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on this game over the years, and it’s my favourite MMO when it’s actually playable, so it would be great if I could be as optimistic about the future of ESO as you are. Alas, there has barely been ANY official input on this particular performance issue, no ETA for any fixes, etc.

Destai

Northwold wrote: »

A slight tangent, but I just finished the High Isle story arc, having avoided it for a really long time because I couldn't bear the writing.

I don't recognise the characterisation of ZOS's work for years as "low effort". Indeed, playing through High Isle etc, with the constant negativity of this forum at the back of my mind, I actually felt rather sorry for them. So much work clearly went into making the engine do new things. Eg persistent changes to the city environment after the player has done X, which the game didn't do before, roaming bosses (introduced with Deadlands), rising lava, more complex fight mechanics brought into zone story quests instead of being confined to dungeons, the idea of a proper length coda story, ship battles.

The work is clearly there to make the game do new and interesting things despite the age of the underlying engine. The work is still visibly there in Necrom, which I'm slowly playing through.

So, on the questing side of things, the problem really does seem to be that, trapped on a conveyor belt where you must release dungeon, chapter, feature (or previously, second story DLC), you face creative exhaustion, not laziness. And it was showing, most obviously, in the writing.

People are going to read what they want into the end of year letter. Indeed, some people on this thread seem not to have read what is actually written at all. But a hell of a lot of work plainly has been going into the game even into recent chapters. It just hasn't been producing a great end result.

That being the case, it feels absolutely right that the devs innovate and free themselves from the shackles of a factory-process release calendar. People are complaining that we're not going to get a new zone to a fixed date. But people were equally complaining when we did that the end product of such a rigid release schedule wasn't good enough. Well: experience shows that, for whatever reason, trying to have it both ways wasn't working.

I really liked that whole year of content. The story had some issues, but so much more was strong. The zone, the assets, the gameplay, the dungeons, the trial, and motifs were the best in years. It’s one of those chapters where it’s easy to get lost in the negatives, but it’s honestly not bad content.

edward_frigidhands

Northwold wrote: »

A slight tangent, but I just finished the High Isle story arc, having avoided it for a really long time because I couldn't bear the writing.

I don't recognise the characterisation of ZOS's work for years as "low effort". Indeed, playing through High Isle etc, with the constant negativity of this forum at the back of my mind, I actually felt rather sorry for them. So much work clearly went into making the engine do new things. Eg persistent changes to the city environment after the player has done X, which the game didn't do before, roaming bosses (introduced with Deadlands), rising lava, more complex fight mechanics brought into zone story quests instead of being confined to dungeons, the idea of a proper length coda story, ship battles.

The work is clearly there to make the game do new and interesting things despite the age of the underlying engine. The work is still visibly there in Necrom, which I'm slowly playing through.

So, on the questing side of things, the problem really does seem to be that, trapped on a conveyor belt where you must release dungeon, chapter, feature (or previously, second story DLC), you face creative exhaustion, not laziness. And it was showing, most obviously, in the writing.

People are going to read what they want into the end of year letter. Indeed, some people on this thread seem not to have read what is actually written at all. But a hell of a lot of work plainly has been going into the game even into recent chapters. It just hasn't been producing a great end result.

That being the case, it feels absolutely right that the devs innovate and free themselves from the shackles of a factory-process release calendar. People are complaining that we're not going to get a new zone to a fixed date. But people were equally complaining when we did that the end product of such a rigid release schedule wasn't good enough. Well: experience shows that, for whatever reason, trying to have it both ways wasn't working.

Agreed on all points.

I will add that it might be high time for them to pause additions to the game and work on it's coding, engine and server performance.

JiubLeRepenti

DeadlySerious wrote: »

We have to judge ZOS on what they do, not what they say. We don't need clear answers, we need clear and conclusive results when it comes to resolving the big problems with ESO, like fixing lag and disconnects. As the PvP community well knows, the "we're working on it" statements aren't getting the job done. They need to fix things so they don't have to work on them anymore.

Or they can do both: communicate effectively AND take concrete actions that align with their communication