Forum atmosphere.

NMT · April 2016

I used to visit these forums fairly regularly to keep upto date with the game. Now....well, I find visiting the forums makes me not want to play the game anymore, so I don't come here as much as I used to.

When I do play the game I tend to pve, never had any interest in pvp in any game I've played.

Now, a lot of what I see posted on the forums doesn't reconcile with my experience, sure, the game isn't perfect but it keeps me playing and I enjoy it. I've played almost every mmorpg since ultima online and what I've noticed is that every game evolves, every game gets better or worse depending upon the person experiencing it.

I guess my question is off this game was purely pve would there be as many negative posts?

I ask because if i was a potential player looking at these forums I wouldn't come anywhere near this game, whether I was interested in pvp or pve.

stewhead2ub17_ESO · April 2016

Keep in mind that that the vast majority (imo) of people just play the game and enjoy it. This goes for any mmo. The toxic posts are generally a vocal minority of the player base. That's not to say that many don't have a legitimate complaint.

Egonieser · April 2016

stewhead2ub17_ESO wrote: »

Keep in mind that that the vast majority (imo) of people just play the game and enjoy it. This goes for any mmo. The toxic posts are generally a vocal minority of the player base. That's not to say that many don't have a legitimate complaint.

I see the exact same negative talk in zone chats, guild chats in PvP and PvE zones alike, so no - it's not just the forum minority. Pretending that the game is fine and only a few people are displeased with non-meaningful problems means you live in LALA-land. (I don't mean "you" the poster, I mean generally people who diss the issues in question, because it doesn't particularly affect them)

Lightninvash · April 2016

Egonieser wrote: »

stewhead2ub17_ESO wrote: »

Keep in mind that that the vast majority (imo) of people just play the game and enjoy it. This goes for any mmo. The toxic posts are generally a vocal minority of the player base. That's not to say that many don't have a legitimate complaint.

I see the exact same negative talk in zone chats, guild chats in PvP and PvE zones alike, so no - it's not just the forum minority. Pretending that the game is fine and only a few people are displeased with non-meaningful problems means you live in LALA-land. (I don't mean "you" the poster, I mean generally people who diss the issues in question, because it doesn't particularly affect them)

"That's not to say that many don't have a legitimate complaint." he says this at the end meaning the minority of people complain about the game they may have a legitimate complaint and most of the rest just follow the herd. is what I took from his post.

NMT · April 2016

I get that it's a vocal minority, and I agree many do have legitimate complaints.

I do think however that the majority of complaints come from pvp players and from what I've read I feel their pain.

I just think the forums would better serve people (and Zen) if they are split into pve and pvp.

Right now from reading the forums I wouldn't touch this game, but my experience tells me different to what the forums portray. A potential player does not have that insight.

I'm not saying the game is perfect and I'm far from a fanboy, but the pve game works as good as any other in my experience but reading the forum makes me believe the game is broken and unplayable as a whole.

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO · April 2016

Ive never once seen anyone complain in zone chat outside of cyrodill. I think someone is exaggerating a bit. Heck for the most part people dont talk in zone chat at all.

Moonscythe · April 2016

Just ignore them. There are lots of us still around who only PvE and don't particularly care if we have a powerful build as long as we survive more often than we die. I play slowly. It took me forever to finally get my play style synched with what was possible in this particular game. I have never played an MMO before but needed a new TES experience after 2 years of Skyrim. Now, I have a sorcerer in each alliance and play them concurrently so they are at the same level. I have never reached level 50 with any character and am not sure if I will even want to go through Cadwell but by the time that is relevant things will have changed.

As for the complaints, I started on a sub-optimal Mac and my only problem was low level graphics and there was nothing I could do about it so why complain? I transferred to Xbox and have had 8 characters on each server with no problems on either. I have problems with too many players around and don't use chat or group and just avoid the cities at night in NA. I don't play much on EU anymore though it is a good place to go if I want to play with the character creator.

This is all to say that there will be complaints from some no matter how they play or when they play so just ignore them. The forums are sometimes fun to just skim through to watch the turmoil; but if you have a real problem or question I have found the crafting and player helping player discussions to be very friendly and very helpful and not judgmental even if I know I have been utterly dumb about something.

Tavore1138 · April 2016

I think it is fair to say that this game has never had as many low level issues as landed in the last patch and that has increased the negativity in the forums and, IMO, with some justification.

It's one thing when people are moaning about the occasional bugged quest but right now you have a whole resource tree that is being ignored for no good reason, PvP is more unstable than ever and there are frequent outage of the whole game.

If we were playing some D list game with no budget and no income stream that would be less of a problem but these guys are putting themselves forward as an A grade studio making an A grade game and many players either subscribe or pay in other ways so as consumers we are more than entitled to complain about poor quality of service (I don't subscribe to the rather odd view that the customer should just shut up and deal with it).

The other side of this is that many of us also love playing the game when it is at it's best so you have those feelings of frustration and betrayal in there - if we hated the game it would be easier as we would just walk away but we have invested time and money in this game and we want it to be good so when it seems like the devs are thumbing their noses at us it generates rage.

stewhead2ub17_ESO · April 2016

Egonieser wrote: »

stewhead2ub17_ESO wrote: »

Keep in mind that that the vast majority (imo) of people just play the game and enjoy it. This goes for any mmo. The toxic posts are generally a vocal minority of the player base. That's not to say that many don't have a legitimate complaint.

I see the exact same negative talk in zone chats, guild chats in PvP and PvE zones alike, so no - it's not just the forum minority. Pretending that the game is fine and only a few people are displeased with non-meaningful problems means you live in LALA-land. (I don't mean "you" the poster, I mean generally people who diss the issues in question, because it doesn't particularly affect them)

@Egonieser I would disagree. Even if you see people complaining in zone chat etc, I would submit it's still the minority of the PLAYER BASE. And for many, like myself, there is no need to "pretend the game is fine" or "are displeased with non-meaningful problems". These two things are subjective. What may be "meaningful" to you may not be of concern to me. My experience in ESO has been overwhelmingly positive. I've had a couple of technical issues over the past 2 years but nothing that sent me into a rage. I'm primarily a pve and rp player. I have little interest in pvp, so those issues aren't that big a concern to me. I acknowledge that for pvp players they are of great concern (other than the "this class is OP, blah blah blah drivel that is often posted on the forums)

Sausage · April 2016

MMORPG 101 - Dont come to the forums. Forums always show the worst of the worst. I think ESO forum is actually quite good and civilized if compared to some. Ill give ESO forums 8+/10.

CherryCake · April 2016

Dont mind the forums, people here are complaining about the tiniest things and ask for more and more stuff, because they believe here is the place where they can get something out of it xD.
(Mind you, I am not saying that constructive criticism, or asking for something to get fixed is bad, but you can do that respectfully or not)

Dont get me started on how many of them, KNOW how "easily" some features could be implemented in the game.

Just dont mind them, play the game, dont let this whole negativity surround you.

I PVE for the most part but also take some part in pvp. I read most of the forum posts and there is a ton of "lag", "harassment", "templars suxs" and the list can go on, however your line here explains everything:
"Every game gets better or worse depending upon the person experiencing it."

So its not the game, its the people.
People can choose to enjoy the game or not.

FriedEggSandwich · April 2016

The main issues with the game are not exclusive to pvp, they just become more noticable in pvp, doesn't mean the issues are any more acceptable. The game is an mmo but can't deliver a smooth experience when there are over a certain number of players in one instance fighting (using skills). This just so happens to be in pvp for the most part, but shortly after wrothgar came out I experienced similar crippling lag and fps drops when about 30 players decended on one world boss, the game couldn't cope.

So the game is great at providing an awesome single player experience to multiple players at once, but sucks at actually being an mmo.

The other complaints you might see often are balance complaints, and these will predominantly be from pvp players, and that's understandable because "balance" is a term you can only really apply to pvp. Pve is considered balanced if it's completeable and fun, pvp balance goes much deeper. This doesn't mean pve players should have to tolerate constant skill changes due to pvp "rebalancing", but on the flip side pvp players shouldn't have to tolerate imbalance to appease pve players. It shoukd be up to zos to find a solution for both groups of players. Personally I don't understand why battle spirit is the only thing that comes between pve and pvp skills; they should be independant of each other imo.

NMT · April 2016

I can see it from almost all points. Like I said, I understand it from my experience, not others, but I can empathise.

The group of people I play with, and we only play pve, have never come up against any more performance issues in this game than we have in any others. I would say less.

Yes, we have the odd dodgy quest or disconnection issue......all games do . We also have some questionable business decisions from Zos, but that's the world of microtransactions we live in.

But, every game I have played has had issues, no one can get it right all the time. But reading these forums you would think that Zos only ever gets it wrong.

Don't misunderstand me, by trying to be all things to all people Zos has made things difficult for themselves and definitiely need to work on aspects of the game but I think we are naieve to think they aren't aware of this and aren't working on the issues.

Give the feedback on a constructive way (should be a feedback forum) . At the moment all that is happening is that potential new players don't buy the name cause they think it is too broken, when only elements of it are.

Personally, and this is only my opinion but I think peoples expectations are too high.

FriedEggSandwich · April 2016

NMT wrote: »

I can see it from almost all points. Like I said, I understand it from my experience, not others, but I can empathise.

The group of people I play with, and we only play pve, have never come up against any more performance issues in this game than we have in any others. I would say less.

Yes, we have the odd dodgy quest or disconnection issue......all games do . We also have some questionable business decisions from Zos, but that's the world of microtransactions we live in.

But, every game I have played has had issues, no one can get it right all the time. But reading these forums you would think that Zos only ever gets it wrong.

Don't misunderstand me, by trying to be all things to all people Zos has made things difficult for themselves and definitiely need to work on aspects of the game but I think we are naieve to think they aren't aware of this and aren't working on the issues.

Give the feedback on a constructive way (should be a feedback forum) . At the moment all that is happening is that potential new players don't buy the name cause they think it is too broken, when only elements of it are.

Personally, and this is only my opinion but I think peoples expectations are too high.

I think you might have hit the nail on the head with your last sentence. People expect lag free pvp but I can't remember the last pvp game I played without lag. There are different levels of lag though and a lot of the frustration comes from long-term players who remember the game in a better state. In the case of eso we had our expectations set for us only to watch zos break the game for pvpers with lighting patch/anti-bot code/whatever it was. I remember the patch where they introduced the lag and it was like they switched it on; before patch no lag, after patch unplayable lag, within the time it takes to download and install one patch they broke pvp. Not only that but they have made it objectively worse since, only to improve it and then make it worse again. It all seems very experimental and leads the pvp player base to suspect zos don't really know what they're doing. Their inexperience is showing shall we say. It's a shame at worst cos the combat in this game is incredible; good enough to keep people playing despite lag, but for how long?

Hortator Indoril Nerevar · April 2016

NMT wrote: »

I used to visit these forums fairly regularly to keep upto date with the game. Now....well, I find visiting the forums makes me not want to play the game anymore, so I don't come here as much as I used to.

When I do play the game I tend to pve, never had any interest in pvp in any game I've played.

Now, a lot of what I see posted on the forums doesn't reconcile with my experience, sure, the game isn't perfect but it keeps me playing and I enjoy it. I've played almost every mmorpg since ultima online and what I've noticed is that every game evolves, every game gets better or worse depending upon the person experiencing it.

I guess my question is off this game was purely pve would there be as many negative posts?

I ask because if i was a potential player looking at these forums I wouldn't come anywhere near this game, whether I was interested in pvp or pve.

ofc there is more hate in pvp.

Tandor · April 2016

I agree with the OP, and what I find surprising and somewhat frustrating is that it's not been long since it was announced that there'd be a tightening up of moderation on the forums but nothing seems to have happened. At the very least it would help if the PvP-related stuff could be kept on the PvP forums.

NobleNerd · April 2016

jamesharv2005ub17_ESO wrote: »

Ive never once seen anyone complain in zone chat outside of cyrodill. I think someone is exaggerating a bit. Heck for the most part people dont talk in zone chat at all.

You do realize there are different "phases" or channels for everyone on the mega server? You don't see everyone in your phase that is actually playing the game. So you don't also see all the text chat in each zone.

When a concern about the game arises on the forums with many of them being repeated over the last year it is not just the minority of players just complaining!

FriedEggSandwich · April 2016

Tandor wrote: »

I agree with the OP, and what I find surprising and somewhat frustrating is that it's not been long since it was announced that there'd be a tightening up of moderation on the forums but nothing seems to have happened. At the very least it would help if the PvP-related stuff could be kept on the PvP forums.

Pvp posts should be in the pvp section and the forum mods seem pretty good at moving inappropriate posts to relevant sections, but the 'recent' tab will ignore all that and just show you everything recent regardless of section.

Edit: There have been several influxes of soul shrivens over the last few months though, maybe they just have their work cut out for them.