How much do people play ESO, and who should ZOS be catering to?

opalcity

Calastir wrote: »

They should cater to players like me, yet for some reason they choose to cater to OP PVP bullies that suck all the fun out of playing.

And what kind of player are you?

Stamicka

Calastir wrote: »

They should cater to players like me, yet for some reason they choose to cater to OP PVP bullies that suck all the fun out of playing.

Veteran PvPers are the least catered to group in the entire game. Quite literally every update since Summerset has been a step backwards for veteran PvPers.

moo_2021

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

You'd *think* they'd be losing money by the state of PVP and the unpopular changes to BG, but the fact that the issues around these aspects continue to drag on, year over year, show that they don't think it's a big enough problem, otherwise they'd fix it. PVP accounts for a fraction of the play in the game, so I guess no matter how badly that part is going, it can't help or hinder the bottom line very much.

Didn't they finally try to fix BG? Why is it unpopular? It's exactly what some of us asked for: More engagements, less watching or running. And in mornings I had all 4x4 DMs, though team balance was terrible. Problematic sets were also fixed.

Considering bg is end game and the population is small, it's nice to have changes.

Jierdanit

moo_2021 wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

You'd *think* they'd be losing money by the state of PVP and the unpopular changes to BG, but the fact that the issues around these aspects continue to drag on, year over year, show that they don't think it's a big enough problem, otherwise they'd fix it. PVP accounts for a fraction of the play in the game, so I guess no matter how badly that part is going, it can't help or hinder the bottom line very much.

Didn't they finally try to fix BG? Why is it unpopular? It's exactly what some of us asked for: More engagements, less watching or running. And in mornings I had all 4x4 DMs, though team balance was terrible. Problematic sets were also fixed.

Considering bg is end game and the population is small, it's nice to have changes.

It's mainly unpopular because despite trying to fix BGs they still didn't fix a lot of the flaws.

MMR still doesn't work properly and isn't visible.
The leaderboards are still absolutely meaningless.
Healers are still completely overpowered (this is also more noticeable now than it was in the 4v4v4).
And the matchmaking is absolutely horrible and balanced matches are incredibly rare.

So while I generally think team vs team BGs are a good direction, the update seems very rushed and flawed.
Also I guess there are some players who miss being able to 3rd party or do BGs without actually PvPing.

Destai

From a business perspective, whatever demographic makes them the most money.

From a gameplay perspective, it’s harder to say. I do think the trend of content creators leaving or taking breaks bodes poorly. It seems like a lot of people are reporting their guilds dying down, which has been a noticeable problem since U35.

I would consider myself a casual, even though I play nightly. I do whatever content I can squeeze in around holding an infant. Most of the time it’s quests, skyshards, or dailies. I try to get my normal dungeons in on a few toons, but nothing more involved than that.

Overall I respect them for trying to accommodate so many playstyles. I think the overall approach going forward is acceptable, where they’re focusing on more repeatable activities. I just hope they can continue adding content like trials for those who enjoy them.

Lags

they shouldnt be catering to anyone. They should be making this game a good mmorpg. Not skyrim online. The super casual players can do the story quests, like they do in any mmo. Fine. But they have driven this game away from what an mmo is and its going to sink it. I have 25k hours in this game and theres a reason for that. Theres also a reason why a massive chunk of that time was like 2020 and before. They have been dumbing things down, making things solo friendly, not fixing glaring issues, and chasing vet players away for years.

Community is everything and the people in a community who make the difference are the people who stick around. NOT the people who come to quest through a chapter once a year, and log in every now and again. They have a place too, obviously, but you shoud not be hyper focused on those players. When the vet players leave, the people who test things and teach others, the people who make addons, the people who create community events, and run guilds, and create content, or stream, or whatever, what are you left with? Well, basically what we have now. A game that feels pretty lonely compared to what it did just a few years ago.

They need to address core issues. The progression in this game for starters, which is combined with incentives and rewards. Give people good rewards for zone exploration or harder/longer achievements. Give us random drops like rare mounts/outfits/polymorphs off of certain bosses and dungeons. Things we can chase to use or sell. Incentivize people to improve at pve or pvp by giving good rewards along the way, and exciting rewards for those that put in time and effort, rewards that other people can see and want.

and on top of all that, fix the issues that people have been complaining about for years. Maybe even have some of the team actually play the game and try to understand some of these issues, like ROA in pvp.

Performance is another issue, but we have dealt with it even though we shouldnt have had to. But maybe if this game had 10 times the players they would work harder at fixing it. Now its like, you need to fix it to get people back. Why do you think so many of us have kept pvping since launch or close to it? Even though performance has always been bad, getting slightly worse each year. We dealt with it because pvp was fun most of the time, there were a ton of players, and the game felt populated. It even felt competitive for a while. It was interesting. Not anymore.

You cant leave all these glaring issues, while rarely improving things people complain about, or taking forever and a day to it, while simultaneously veering off the rails of what an mmorpg is meant to be, while also making similar content every year that has gotten stale, and expect things to get better. Of course things will only get worse.

Like how many sets does this game need? How long should people keep accumulating sets that are mostly useless with the occasional broken one? Which is basically the only reward for most* content in the game. The progression is not good for vet players or casuals. We have gone this way for long enough, we can split off other directions while still keeping this way of progression, but it has to be rewarding. For as long as you put most of the rewards on the crown store, while having such lacking rewards in most of the game, you lose so many would be players. Its just how it is.

Thats my rant. Maybe they read it, probably not. TLDR community is everything in an mmo. Theres a reason vet players are leaving. stop catering to causals and cater to everyone. Casuals come for what you already do, the story. Dumbing down everything else in the game and ignoring the issues that impact vet players has done nothing for causals, and only driven away everyone else.

Castagere

Maybe it was a mistake to make an MMO based on popular single-player games. To this day Skyrim is more popular than Eso. However, the MMO community is not the TES single-player community. They are still making updates to Skyrim and the mod community is alive and well.

fizzylu

Castagere wrote: »

Maybe it was a mistake to make an MMO based on popular single-player games.

ESO isn't the first MMO to do that though? And more than one of the other titles are far more successful than this game so not sure if that's making any real point. What would be good to look at though is how ESO differs from these other MMOs that were based off of established non MMO titles.

Some quick comparisons:
ESO has clunky, spammy combat.
ESO lacks some basic features other ones have.
ESO is far more monetized.
ESO is known to have poor performance.
ESO content updates are way smaller yet cost the same price, and sometimes even more.

Taril

Castagere wrote: »

Maybe it was a mistake to make an MMO based on popular single-player games.

I don't think that's much of an issue.

If anything, it's a point of sucess, because it means that upon release, you have a base community already interested in the game (Even if they're not necessarily long term MMO players)

Even more so considering the popularity of Multiplayer mods for TES titles, showing that people are in fact interested in multiplayer in their Elder Scrolls.

I think the crux of the problem is the notion of converting TES into an MMO was never really thought through in much detail.

Like, TES is mostly a narrative driven series, with much of the world interaction being about flexibility with skill systems and spellcrafting (As well as Enchants) that let you do almost anything you want.

While, MMO's are mostly content driven experiences. Where players abilities are minimized to set standard options and gameplay revolves around consistent content releases (Be they stories like FFXIV/GW2, zones like GW2, Dungeons/Raids like WoW/FFXIV or PvP like Warhammer Onl-Oh wait...)

We saw with the release version of ESO where it was more of a traditional MMO. Classes with set capabilities. Gear treadmill as you went zone by zone gated by levels where you'd also access new dungeons with new gear to acquire as you leveled up eventually leading into the end-game of farming Veteran Dungeons for max level gear.

Which was a large contrast from the standard TES fare. Which is why there was the eventual One Tamriel overhaul that brought things back to being closer to regular TES games, with a lot more freedom in how someone played and how gearing worked.

But being "Closer" to TES games doesn't make it play like a regular TES game. The core of the issue is that it's still an MMO so it's still bound by MMO standards. You can't have people being literal god mode maxed skill in everything (Especially when PvP is a factor), you can't have crazy freedom in making stupid broken spells and enchants, you can't have tons of freedom to interact with the world in silly ways (Like putting buckets on NPC's heads to steal things freely, or killing notable NPCs, or just moving things around on a whim) because you have to factor in the multiplayer aspect, both in terms of how servers can handle things but also in how players want to play (Not everyone likes to do the crazy stuff that is possible in TES games).

So the game is overall caught in a weird spot where it's too much like a TES game to be a great MMO and too much like an MMO to be a great TES game. With a mess of a community that come from both sides of its duality. TES players want to get more of a "Skyrim with Multiplayer" type game and MMO players want "WoW but in Tamriel"

dehzr

They should cater to everyone who bought the game by fixing the lag and desync and overall performance and bugs before adding new content. Just my opinion.

dk_dunkirk

Lags wrote: »

they shouldnt be catering to anyone. They should be making this game a good mmorpg. Not skyrim online. The super casual players can do the story quests, like they do in any mmo. Fine. But they have driven this game away from what an mmo is and its going to sink it. I have 25k hours in this game and theres a reason for that. Theres also a reason why a massive chunk of that time was like 2020 and before. They have been dumbing things down, making things solo friendly, not fixing glaring issues, and chasing vet players away for years.

Community is everything and the people in a community who make the difference are the people who stick around. NOT the people who come to quest through a chapter once a year, and log in every now and again. They have a place too, obviously, but you shoud not be hyper focused on those players. When the vet players leave, the people who test things and teach others, the people who make addons, the people who create community events, and run guilds, and create content, or stream, or whatever, what are you left with? Well, basically what we have now. A game that feels pretty lonely compared to what it did just a few years ago.

They need to address core issues. The progression in this game for starters, which is combined with incentives and rewards. Give people good rewards for zone exploration or harder/longer achievements. Give us random drops like rare mounts/outfits/polymorphs off of certain bosses and dungeons. Things we can chase to use or sell. Incentivize people to improve at pve or pvp by giving good rewards along the way, and exciting rewards for those that put in time and effort, rewards that other people can see and want.

and on top of all that, fix the issues that people have been complaining about for years. Maybe even have some of the team actually play the game and try to understand some of these issues, like ROA in pvp.

Performance is another issue, but we have dealt with it even though we shouldnt have had to. But maybe if this game had 10 times the players they would work harder at fixing it. Now its like, you need to fix it to get people back. Why do you think so many of us have kept pvping since launch or close to it? Even though performance has always been bad, getting slightly worse each year. We dealt with it because pvp was fun most of the time, there were a ton of players, and the game felt populated. It even felt competitive for a while. It was interesting. Not anymore.

You cant leave all these glaring issues, while rarely improving things people complain about, or taking forever and a day to it, while simultaneously veering off the rails of what an mmorpg is meant to be, while also making similar content every year that has gotten stale, and expect things to get better. Of course things will only get worse.

Like how many sets does this game need? How long should people keep accumulating sets that are mostly useless with the occasional broken one? Which is basically the only reward for most* content in the game. The progression is not good for vet players or casuals. We have gone this way for long enough, we can split off other directions while still keeping this way of progression, but it has to be rewarding. For as long as you put most of the rewards on the crown store, while having such lacking rewards in most of the game, you lose so many would be players. Its just how it is.

Thats my rant. Maybe they read it, probably not. TLDR community is everything in an mmo. Theres a reason vet players are leaving. stop catering to causals and cater to everyone. Casuals come for what you already do, the story. Dumbing down everything else in the game and ignoring the issues that impact vet players has done nothing for causals, and only driven away everyone else.

They should remove a bunch of sets from the game. I've said this on a few occasions on the forums, and each time, the thought was met with vehemence. Whatever set I used as an example of something no one would ever actually play, someone would chime in and say they had some cheese/lore build that used it. Maybe so; maybe they were just trolling me.

Regardless, every set, every skill, every proc effect, every scribed skill combination (over 8,000! and counting!) is another if-then-else statement in the giant calculation to resolve combat for every character and creature in every GCD tick. Every time they add a zone, there's another 3 zone sets, another couple crafted sets, a couple mythics, and maybe another 6 or 8 trial sets, and lines of code -- to be checked for EVERYTHING in combat -- for every one of them, and performance keeps getting worse every year. But, sure, argue with me how they can't possibly remove anything. Ever. The answer is still as obvious to me now as it was the first time I recognized it.

They need to separate the sets for PVE vs PVP. I've complained that PVP is a completely different game than PVE, and both are holding each other back because they share the same sets and skill. Now they've announced that they'll be separating the skills. OK, whatever. I don't get it, but maybe that's a better bang-for-buck than separating the sets? I wish they'd do both.

dk_dunkirk

fizzylu wrote: »

Castagere wrote: »

Maybe it was a mistake to make an MMO based on popular single-player games.

ESO isn't the first MMO to do that though? And more than one of the other titles are far more successful than this game so not sure if that's making any real point. What would be good to look at though is how ESO differs from these other MMOs that were based off of established non MMO titles.

Some quick comparisons:
ESO has clunky, spammy combat.
ESO lacks some basic features other ones have.
ESO is far more monetized.
ESO is known to have poor performance.
ESO content updates are way smaller yet cost the same price, and sometimes even more.

I think combat in ESO is a timing minigame almost like Crypt of the Necrodancer. The weaving trick to get good DPS is apparently a bug that stuck? I don't know; I haven't been around that long. However, I did get into the game before the light attack nerf, took a break, and came back to Oakensoul builds and Arcanists. They've substantially reduced the importance of weaving, at least, but the combat remains a strange beast quite unlike anything else in video gaming that I'm aware of, and I'm not sure what else could improve it.

MincMincMinc

As others may have pointed out, the biggest thing to blame was the corporate structuring of the game releases. Probably as simple as a director not bothering to look into the state of the game itself or be in tune with their managers, then demanding quantifiable numbers per quarter to show success. For numbers to be on the up and up, zos focused on dailies and login reward structure instead of actual content and playtime engagement.

At the same time actual combat was dumbed down to be more of a macroable/ automatic concept instead of telegraphs and feedback response. Most new players I talk to in pve crutch on addons. For pvp most new players turn towards sets/builds that play the game for you like tarnished or hist/mara. Just look at the livestream for example, the devs who are new to playing the game just ran builds that played themselves.

Atleast overworld may be somewhat challenging again for new players. Just look at how much content is absolutely useless in the game right now. EVERY zone is hundreds or thousands of hours of dev time wasted since 99% of players can mount through at 3x speed and light attack world bosses.

belial5221_ESO

Only ZOS knows the real total stats,and will cater to those players more.All other stats you see are a small fraction,either one person,small group of players on a forum,or even steam(which is actually a small part of total ESO players).They must know what they are doing,cause the game hasn't been shutdown,and seems to still be played by alot of people.

xylena_lazarow

AngryPenguin wrote: »

This is why I never understood ZOS' focus on new players when it's the vets paying the bills. This is why I think U35 may have been the death nail for ESO.

Vets don't play forever. Without new players, the game dies, like what we're seeing in Cyrodiil, where they cater solely to sweaty tryhard 12 mans, now even the main camp is dead 12 hours a day. You nailed it about U35 though, not sure who that update was supposed to be for, but it was horrible for old vets and new casuals alike.

CrazyKitty

Lags wrote: »

they shouldnt be catering to anyone. They should be making this game a good mmorpg. Not skyrim online. The super casual players can do the story quests, like they do in any mmo. Fine. But they have driven this game away from what an mmo is and its going to sink it. I have 25k hours in this game and theres a reason for that. Theres also a reason why a massive chunk of that time was like 2020 and before. They have been dumbing things down, making things solo friendly, not fixing glaring issues, and chasing vet players away for years.

Community is everything and the people in a community who make the difference are the people who stick around. NOT the people who come to quest through a chapter once a year, and log in every now and again. They have a place too, obviously, but you shoud not be hyper focused on those players. When the vet players leave, the people who test things and teach others, the people who make addons, the people who create community events, and run guilds, and create content, or stream, or whatever, what are you left with? Well, basically what we have now. A game that feels pretty lonely compared to what it did just a few years ago.

They need to address core issues. The progression in this game for starters, which is combined with incentives and rewards. Give people good rewards for zone exploration or harder/longer achievements. Give us random drops like rare mounts/outfits/polymorphs off of certain bosses and dungeons. Things we can chase to use or sell. Incentivize people to improve at pve or pvp by giving good rewards along the way, and exciting rewards for those that put in time and effort, rewards that other people can see and want.

and on top of all that, fix the issues that people have been complaining about for years. Maybe even have some of the team actually play the game and try to understand some of these issues, like ROA in pvp.

Performance is another issue, but we have dealt with it even though we shouldnt have had to. But maybe if this game had 10 times the players they would work harder at fixing it. Now its like, you need to fix it to get people back. Why do you think so many of us have kept pvping since launch or close to it? Even though performance has always been bad, getting slightly worse each year. We dealt with it because pvp was fun most of the time, there were a ton of players, and the game felt populated. It even felt competitive for a while. It was interesting. Not anymore.

You cant leave all these glaring issues, while rarely improving things people complain about, or taking forever and a day to it, while simultaneously veering off the rails of what an mmorpg is meant to be, while also making similar content every year that has gotten stale, and expect things to get better. Of course things will only get worse.

Like how many sets does this game need? How long should people keep accumulating sets that are mostly useless with the occasional broken one? Which is basically the only reward for most* content in the game. The progression is not good for vet players or casuals. We have gone this way for long enough, we can split off other directions while still keeping this way of progression, but it has to be rewarding. For as long as you put most of the rewards on the crown store, while having such lacking rewards in most of the game, you lose so many would be players. Its just how it is.

Thats my rant. Maybe they read it, probably not. TLDR community is everything in an mmo. Theres a reason vet players are leaving. stop catering to causals and cater to everyone. Casuals come for what you already do, the story. Dumbing down everything else in the game and ignoring the issues that impact vet players has done nothing for causals, and only driven away everyone else.

Excellent post!

In short, ZOS should have stuck with the original direction the original game designers intended. They intended for vet HM trials to be end game PvE, and for Cyrodiil to be end game PvP. It was hugely disappointing to see how apparently lacking the dedicated combat and PvP dev was during the PvP live stream. He even said he hasn't PvP'd much in the last couple years during the stream. So ya, in my view there is a pretty significant lack of focus on the things that matter in ESO coming from the company.

dk_dunkirk

CrazyKitty wrote: »

Lags wrote: »

they shouldnt be catering to anyone. They should be making this game a good mmorpg. Not skyrim online. The super casual players can do the story quests, like they do in any mmo. Fine. But they have driven this game away from what an mmo is and its going to sink it. I have 25k hours in this game and theres a reason for that. Theres also a reason why a massive chunk of that time was like 2020 and before. They have been dumbing things down, making things solo friendly, not fixing glaring issues, and chasing vet players away for years.

Community is everything and the people in a community who make the difference are the people who stick around. NOT the people who come to quest through a chapter once a year, and log in every now and again. They have a place too, obviously, but you shoud not be hyper focused on those players. When the vet players leave, the people who test things and teach others, the people who make addons, the people who create community events, and run guilds, and create content, or stream, or whatever, what are you left with? Well, basically what we have now. A game that feels pretty lonely compared to what it did just a few years ago.

They need to address core issues. The progression in this game for starters, which is combined with incentives and rewards. Give people good rewards for zone exploration or harder/longer achievements. Give us random drops like rare mounts/outfits/polymorphs off of certain bosses and dungeons. Things we can chase to use or sell. Incentivize people to improve at pve or pvp by giving good rewards along the way, and exciting rewards for those that put in time and effort, rewards that other people can see and want.

and on top of all that, fix the issues that people have been complaining about for years. Maybe even have some of the team actually play the game and try to understand some of these issues, like ROA in pvp.

Performance is another issue, but we have dealt with it even though we shouldnt have had to. But maybe if this game had 10 times the players they would work harder at fixing it. Now its like, you need to fix it to get people back. Why do you think so many of us have kept pvping since launch or close to it? Even though performance has always been bad, getting slightly worse each year. We dealt with it because pvp was fun most of the time, there were a ton of players, and the game felt populated. It even felt competitive for a while. It was interesting. Not anymore.

You cant leave all these glaring issues, while rarely improving things people complain about, or taking forever and a day to it, while simultaneously veering off the rails of what an mmorpg is meant to be, while also making similar content every year that has gotten stale, and expect things to get better. Of course things will only get worse.

Like how many sets does this game need? How long should people keep accumulating sets that are mostly useless with the occasional broken one? Which is basically the only reward for most* content in the game. The progression is not good for vet players or casuals. We have gone this way for long enough, we can split off other directions while still keeping this way of progression, but it has to be rewarding. For as long as you put most of the rewards on the crown store, while having such lacking rewards in most of the game, you lose so many would be players. Its just how it is.

Thats my rant. Maybe they read it, probably not. TLDR community is everything in an mmo. Theres a reason vet players are leaving. stop catering to causals and cater to everyone. Casuals come for what you already do, the story. Dumbing down everything else in the game and ignoring the issues that impact vet players has done nothing for causals, and only driven away everyone else.

Excellent post!

In short, ZOS should have stuck with the original direction the original game designers intended. They intended for vet HM trials to be end game PvE, and for Cyrodiil to be end game PvP. It was hugely disappointing to see how apparently lacking the dedicated combat and PvP dev was during the PvP live stream. He even said he hasn't PvP'd much in the last couple years during the stream. So ya, in my view there is a pretty significant lack of focus on the things that matter in ESO coming from the company.

You'd think ZOS could hire a developer who was nuts about PVP in this game to make it better. They have to be out there. Alternatively, they could hire someone who was nuts about PVP, and they wouldn't even need to be a coder! All that person really needs to do is tell the developers what they should do, and let them implement it. As a dev, I understand there's a lot of give-and-take in this exchange, but my point is that they don't seem to even have that person/people in the company, let alone in development. That's telling.

Elsonso

CrazyKitty wrote: »

In short, ZOS should have stuck with the original direction the original game designers intended. They intended for vet HM trials to be end game PvE, and for Cyrodiil to be end game PvP. It was hugely disappointing to see how apparently lacking the dedicated combat and PvP dev was during the PvP live stream. He even said he hasn't PvP'd much in the last couple years during the stream. So ya, in my view there is a pretty significant lack of focus on the things that matter in ESO coming from the company.

The original PVE end game was also Craglorn. A concept they are looking at experimenting with. Aside from them backing away from Adventure Zones, end game PVE has not really changed much in the last 10 years. They have added more dungeons, arenas, and trials to the mix every year. More evolution than revolution.

PVP has been suffering from problems for a while now. I personally think they lost the bulk of the end game PVP crowd years back. It has been so long that my opinion is that whatever they do is going to be too little, too late. At least, in terms of the big picture.

I suspect that more people like the idea of there being hard end game content than actually do hard end game content.

Also, my feeling is that the Elder Scrolls players, more than simply MMO players, have paid for this game and that is reflected in where it is today. The game needs to be Elder Scrolls Online, catering to Elder Scrolls players, single and multiplayer.

On the "MMO" side, I think that what ZOS needs to do is focus more on multiplayer and less on "MMO". The Group is not strong here, and I think that the mindset needs to focus on solo and smaller multiplayer modes. Adding in MMO features that do not facilitate that may be an ineffective way to retain players.

I think that the biggest challenge facing ZOS is what I see as a dichotomy between the average player wants and what the end game and Streaming community wants. I do not think they necessarily play this game for the same reasons, or do the same things when they are in the game. ZOS needs to feed both of them. I doubt they will merge the two groups, but one side can definitely leave. Both sides if things go horribly wrong.

Syldras

The problem is that a lot of players who play ESO alone and (more or less) like a singleplayer TES game, focussed on stories and lore, aren't content either for a few years now. Main reason is the writing.

Destai

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

CrazyKitty wrote: »

Lags wrote: »

they shouldnt be catering to anyone. They should be making this game a good mmorpg. Not skyrim online. The super casual players can do the story quests, like they do in any mmo. Fine. But they have driven this game away from what an mmo is and its going to sink it. I have 25k hours in this game and theres a reason for that. Theres also a reason why a massive chunk of that time was like 2020 and before. They have been dumbing things down, making things solo friendly, not fixing glaring issues, and chasing vet players away for years.

Community is everything and the people in a community who make the difference are the people who stick around. NOT the people who come to quest through a chapter once a year, and log in every now and again. They have a place too, obviously, but you shoud not be hyper focused on those players. When the vet players leave, the people who test things and teach others, the people who make addons, the people who create community events, and run guilds, and create content, or stream, or whatever, what are you left with? Well, basically what we have now. A game that feels pretty lonely compared to what it did just a few years ago.

They need to address core issues. The progression in this game for starters, which is combined with incentives and rewards. Give people good rewards for zone exploration or harder/longer achievements. Give us random drops like rare mounts/outfits/polymorphs off of certain bosses and dungeons. Things we can chase to use or sell. Incentivize people to improve at pve or pvp by giving good rewards along the way, and exciting rewards for those that put in time and effort, rewards that other people can see and want.

and on top of all that, fix the issues that people have been complaining about for years. Maybe even have some of the team actually play the game and try to understand some of these issues, like ROA in pvp.

Performance is another issue, but we have dealt with it even though we shouldnt have had to. But maybe if this game had 10 times the players they would work harder at fixing it. Now its like, you need to fix it to get people back. Why do you think so many of us have kept pvping since launch or close to it? Even though performance has always been bad, getting slightly worse each year. We dealt with it because pvp was fun most of the time, there were a ton of players, and the game felt populated. It even felt competitive for a while. It was interesting. Not anymore.

You cant leave all these glaring issues, while rarely improving things people complain about, or taking forever and a day to it, while simultaneously veering off the rails of what an mmorpg is meant to be, while also making similar content every year that has gotten stale, and expect things to get better. Of course things will only get worse.

Like how many sets does this game need? How long should people keep accumulating sets that are mostly useless with the occasional broken one? Which is basically the only reward for most* content in the game. The progression is not good for vet players or casuals. We have gone this way for long enough, we can split off other directions while still keeping this way of progression, but it has to be rewarding. For as long as you put most of the rewards on the crown store, while having such lacking rewards in most of the game, you lose so many would be players. Its just how it is.

Thats my rant. Maybe they read it, probably not. TLDR community is everything in an mmo. Theres a reason vet players are leaving. stop catering to causals and cater to everyone. Casuals come for what you already do, the story. Dumbing down everything else in the game and ignoring the issues that impact vet players has done nothing for causals, and only driven away everyone else.

Excellent post!

In short, ZOS should have stuck with the original direction the original game designers intended. They intended for vet HM trials to be end game PvE, and for Cyrodiil to be end game PvP. It was hugely disappointing to see how apparently lacking the dedicated combat and PvP dev was during the PvP live stream. He even said he hasn't PvP'd much in the last couple years during the stream. So ya, in my view there is a pretty significant lack of focus on the things that matter in ESO coming from the company.

You'd think ZOS could hire a developer who was nuts about PVP in this game to make it better. They have to be out there. Alternatively, they could hire someone who was nuts about PVP, and they wouldn't even need to be a coder! All that person really needs to do is tell the developers what they should do, and let them implement it. As a dev, I understand there's a lot of give-and-take in this exchange, but my point is that they don't seem to even have that person/people in the company, let alone in development. That's telling.

In the IT consulting world, we actually do something like this. There’s functional and technical consultants. The first one is focused on identifying business needs and defining the UX. The other figures out how to get it done. All sorts of give and take, but having someone completely focused on how a product feels goes a long way towards customer satisfaction. I wonder if they have similar roles at ZOS, like an internal class rep or something.

fizzylu

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

The weaving trick to get good DPS is apparently a bug that stuck?

It wasn't a bug, it's more accurate to call it an oversight in the combat design that they later decided to just keep rather than reworking aspects of the combat to get rid of it. Even just the spammy nature (no CDs and micromanaging buffs, for example) is something that seems to push many away as well though, not just the light attack weaving.

But I truly think ESO combat is just an either you love it or hate it situation and from what I've seen over the years, most gamers seem to not be fans of it. And even as someone who can enjoy ESO combat for what it is.... sometimes the more smooth feeling gameplay and visually appealing animations+VFX of MMOs like WoW, or the less spammy style of New World does appeal to me more.
I also think class identity does play a small factor as well. ESO's combat design really doesn't allow for many diverse gameplay mechanics class wise in comparison to games like WoW and FFXIV (which makes Zenimax choosing to go the class route to begin with beyond questionable), but that's kind of a whole nother branch of the subject.

alpha_synuclein

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

AngryPenguin wrote: »

This is why I never understood ZOS' focus on new players when it's the vets paying the bills. This is why I think U35 may have been the death nail for ESO.

Vets don't play forever. Without new players, the game dies, like what we're seeing in Cyrodiil, where they cater solely to sweaty tryhard 12 mans, now even the main camp is dead 12 hours a day. You nailed it about U35 though, not sure who that update was supposed to be for, but it was horrible for old vets and new casuals alike.

Focusing on new players works only if you can turn them into vets at some point. This doesn't seem to happen enough for quite a while.

Mesite

I read a book called Power of Moments which talked about rating a service out of 10. It's cheaper and more beneficial to add to a service so people who rate something 6 out of 10 will bump up the 6 to a 7, than it is to fix the problems that make people vote a 1 out of ten, as they'll never be happy.

I don't know if that's what happens in ESO though.

I got in the top 5% on Xbox this year, and that's after I took time off. I ran around doing the same old quests I'd done before to get tickets to buy a house I would rarely visit. But I still enjoyed myself. I think ESO is aimed at me. Someone who should be decorating and doing DIY but wants something else to do instead.

It's about the moments. Getting a new house. Priceless. 7/10.

AllenaNightWood

in an ideal situation there should always be something for at least most of the ppl who play because its impossible to get 100% of everyone to enjoy something