No base game update in 48?

FabresFour · September 11

Normally, ZOS always announces QoL and base game changes during the live stream for a new update. Are we really not getting anything this quarter? I think this is one of the first times—if not the first time—I’ve seen this happen… ever lol.

emilyhyoyeon · September 11

I was wondering the same

Soarora · September 11

I saw several people unhappy about this in the stream chat but honestly it seems like they’re taking the time to focus on bigger projects and that’s a good thing. We also just got mount swimming and writ stacking which were qol updates.

DenverRalphy · September 11

They said near the end of the stream that no recognizable QOL changes until 2026.

At least, I think that's what they said. They asked it of Brian Wheeler representing Combat/PvP which I find a bit odd.

Aylish · September 11

I was waiting the whole stream for the chart of base game stuff and QoL features coming with U48. Only to see that there is zero new features or updates. Nothing besides some minor or niche combat stuff. Really disappointing…

Renato90085 · September 11

Watch stream before:I only know wall event and Cyro test coming
Watch stream laterI still only know wall event and Cyro test coming
In 2am watch 1hour stream and not any newthing is crazy

Ruj · September 11

Full summary:

I didn't see anything about QoL improvements.

I barely kept my eyes open during the stream, and my boyfriend (who has Elder Scroll tattoos) fell asleep.

They showed 2 screenshots of new Crown houses, but no news on their housing item limit.
The first house had trees with many colors and what looked like Alinor greenhouses in a new shape. It was really well done from what little we could see.
Second house was like the Coldharbour house, but with a Worm Cult building instead of an empty plot.
Players again asked for furniture house limit increase in chat.

The first part of the stream was showing us areas that looked like Coldharbour. They went into delves to show us art in there... as if they don't know we only go into delves to do repeatable daily quests and most people skip those in favor of doing the world boss daily quests since they are faster.
I would have been more excited for them to say they aren't wasting resources on making more delves. (AKA the repeated daily chore zones most players speed run through)

Second part of the stream was about PvP. Chat wanted 4x4x4 BGs back.
French people asked for French voiceover.

Summary of most popular player requests in chat:
1) French voiceover
2) Furniture item limit increase
3) 4x4x4

They didn't comment on anything from chat.

Nothing was announced that they couldn't have posted as screenshots in a letter.
The Twitch drops were 2 crates.

valenwood_vegan · September 11

I feel like we've heard some version of "less now, but big things are coming" for a while now. Hope it pans out eventually, but a lot of people (this one included) are losing interest. Gonna need to generate some real excitement at some point to bring them back.

ZOS_Kevin · September 11

Hi all! Just wanted to follow up here. There will be a base game update for U48. It will be focused on bug fixes and minor adjustments, rather than bigger QoL features this patch. The team has added quite a bit of QoL features over the last several patches and working on some good ones that you will see roll out next year, including some from the top pain points list many of you contributed to earlier this year. So this quarter will be lighter in that area.

The focus for this patch will be rolling out The Writhing Wall Event, the Eastern Solstice zone and Vengeance tests as those are both pretty sizable tasks for the team.

LunaFlora · September 11

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all! Just wanted to follow up here. There will be a base game update for U48. It will be focused on bug fixes and minor adjustments, rather than bigger QoL features this patch. The team has added quite a bit of QoL features over the last several patches and working on some good ones that you will see roll out next year, including some from the top pain points list many of you contributed to earlier this year. So this quarter will be lighter in that area.

The focus for this patch will be rolling out The Writhing Wall Event, the Eastern Solstice zone and Vengeance tests as those are both pretty sizable tasks for the team.

thanks for the clarification! update 48 seems awesome and very full to me

Ruj · September 11

^ This gives me hope that all outdoor homes can be upgraded to 700 slots.

Or that our overall housing item limit will increase for all houses.

*Starts praying to every Daedric Prince* I will sell my soul, sanity, and ability to consume cheese for increased furniture limit.

Punches_Below_Belt · September 11

How can they not understand that unless we get a paycheck from ZOS, we don’t care what the corporate structure is, what their job title is, what their job responsibilities are? We didn’t tune in for a LinkedIn round table.

If your position is relevant to why you are avoiding answering my questions and not fixing the QoL issues by all means slip it in. Otherwise, give me information I need or want to play the game.

I’m also kind of sick of the reveal/not a reveal game. If we cared about spoilers we wouldn’t be tuning in. Why would I want to watch you run around for half an hour trying to avoid spoilers?

They always seem more interested in entertaining each other than answering questions . I’m also always secondhand embarrassed by how badly they play their own game.

Some things I did learn today that I had always suspected. The second half of Solstice is no more interesting than the first.half. The “season pass” was a shrinkflation cash grab and they weren’t going to reveal it until as late as possible i.e. this stream. “This is a transition year” How about you transition twenty dollars back into my account? They think recycling assets, call backs and milking played out aspects of the game are fooling the players and a positive experience that they can continue to ride for another twenty years.

Elvenheart · September 11

Ruj wrote: »

Full summary:

I didn't see anything about QoL improvements.

I barely kept my eyes open during the stream, and my boyfriend (who has Elder Scroll tattoos) fell asleep.

Can we see the tattoos? That might be the highlight of this stream experience! 😂

Morvan · September 11

Buff underperforming lines and I'll be happy.

valenwood_vegan · September 11

Hey Kevin, I do appreciate you answering here. I don't mean to be overly negative and I know you guys can't do everything all at once, as quickly as some of us want. I do hope I'm back here in a few months saying "Wow!" I know there have been a lot of changes and some difficulties this year and I'm very willing to give the new leadership a chance to make us sit up and take notice. My point is just that you guys really *are* gonna have to come through on the "bigger things are coming" part eventually.

And I guess my feedback to take back to the powers that be is just that this tail end of the year has felt pretty flat for the last couple years now. Other than the wall event, which does sound like it could be interesting, I once again find myself being pretty unexcited going into the holiday season and early winter. I think another part of that in addition to the end of the year update feeling a bit light once again, imo, is that events like witches and particularly new life are excruciatingly repetitive for those of us who have been around for a while.

And on the one hand I get it, but on the other hand, the whole "we can't really talk about next year yet" doesn't generate any excitement either.

Imo, it might be beneficial for the team to look at ways to spice up the end of the year and the gap between the end of one year's content and the unknown next year, so that players don't drift away.

Ruj · September 11

Elvenheart wrote: »

Ruj wrote: »

I barely kept my eyes open during the stream, and my boyfriend (who has Elder Scroll tattoos) fell asleep.

Can we see the tattoos? That might be the highlight of this stream experience! 😂

I can't post pics on these forums sadly.
It's a really neat sleeve with Nocturnal and Hermaeus Mora. Many many eyeballs, tentacles, crows, and pretty lady.

Soarora · September 11

Punches_Below_Belt wrote: »

How can they not understand that unless we get a paycheck from ZOS, we don’t care what the corporate structure is, what their job title is, what their job responsibilities are? We didn’t tune in for a LinkedIn round table.

I mean, personally, I've continuously lost faith in this game. Knowing what positions have gotten shifted around and what that means helped inspire a small spark of faith that maybe things will change for the better and we won't continue on the same downward spiral we've been on into the abyss.

Ruj · September 11

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

My point is just that you guys really *are* gonna have to come through on the "bigger things are coming" part eventually.

I'm almost wondering if Microsoft told ESO not to do anything that would retain players so everyone buys WoW's Midnight. Hopefully after Midnight releases, we get the QoL things we've been asking for in ESO.

One company owning 2 MMOs with shareholders to please is the only thing that makes sense as to why ESO has stalled improving housing.

Midnight's selling feature is 10K housing item limit. It's not only ESO housing community that is eyeballing switching to WoW. It's also FFXIV, GW2... even BDO's housing community (small as it is) is mostly talking about switching to WoW for their furniture item limit.

I guess we'll see in 2026 if ESO wins housing players back after they have already bought Midnight and are deep-dived into WoW's housing.

T3vvy · September 11

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all! Just wanted to follow up here. There will be a base game update for U48. It will be focused on bug fixes and minor adjustments, rather than bigger QoL features this patch. The team has added quite a bit of QoL features over the last several patches and working on some good ones that you will see roll out next year, including some from the top pain points list many of you contributed to earlier this year. So this quarter will be lighter in that area.

The focus for this patch will be rolling out The Writhing Wall Event, the Eastern Solstice zone and Vengeance tests as those are both pretty sizable tasks for the team.

Can we get some insight into what those changes next year may be and/or the pain points that they will be fixing? Even if its just in vague terms of 'we are looking at tackling x y and z in the next year'

ZOS_Kevin · September 11

T3vvy wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all! Just wanted to follow up here. There will be a base game update for U48. It will be focused on bug fixes and minor adjustments, rather than bigger QoL features this patch. The team has added quite a bit of QoL features over the last several patches and working on some good ones that you will see roll out next year, including some from the top pain points list many of you contributed to earlier this year. So this quarter will be lighter in that area.

The focus for this patch will be rolling out The Writhing Wall Event, the Eastern Solstice zone and Vengeance tests as those are both pretty sizable tasks for the team.

Can we get some insight into what those changes next year may be and/or the pain points that they will be fixing? Even if its just in vague terms of 'we are looking at tackling x y and z in the next year'

That is as far as I can share right now, unfortunately. But we will update everyone as soon as we get the greenlight to do so!

Chrisilis · September 11

Ruj wrote: »

^ This gives me hope that all outdoor homes can be upgraded to 700 slots.

Or that our overall housing item limit will increase for all houses.

*Starts praying to every Daedric Prince* I will sell my soul, sanity, and ability to consume cheese for increased furniture limit.

I would love to be able to add 100 slots to a house, say, upgrade classic to notable or even better upgrade notable to Grand @ 800 slots. I would pay real money for this if it was a crown store option. Now if they'd go ahead and bring back 4v4v4 I'd never have anything to complain about ever again 😊

Elvenheart · September 11

Ruj wrote: »

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

My point is just that you guys really *are* gonna have to come through on the "bigger things are coming" part eventually.

Midnight's selling feature is 10K housing item limit.

<gasp>

LatentBuzzard · September 11

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

The team has added quite a bit of QoL features over the last several patches

The team must be playing a different game then as the QoL updates for this game have been poor for a long time, especially since the Q3 update had the dungeons removed and would supposedly focus on things like QoL updates at which point they promptly dropped the ball on QoL updates.

ZOS_Kevin · September 11

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

Hey Kevin, I do appreciate you answering here. I don't mean to be overly negative and I know you guys can't do everything all at once, as quickly as some of us want. I do hope I'm back here in a few months saying "Wow!" I know there have been a lot of changes and some difficulties this year and I'm very willing to give the new leadership a chance to make us sit up and take notice. My point is just that you guys really *are* gonna have to come through on the "bigger things are coming" part eventually.

And I guess my feedback to take back to the powers that be is just that this tail end of the year has felt pretty flat for the last couple years now. Other than the wall event, which does sound like it could be interesting, I once again find myself being pretty unexcited going into the holiday season and early winter. I think another part of that in addition to the end of the year update feeling a bit light once again, imo, is that events like witches and particularly new life are excruciatingly repetitive for those of us who have been around for a while.

And on the one hand I get it, but on the other hand, the whole "we can't really talk about next year yet" doesn't generate any excitement either.

Imo, it might be beneficial for the team to look at ways to spice up the end of the year and the gap between the end of one year's content and the unknown next year, so that players don't drift away.

No worries, not negative at all. In fact, I want to highlight your response as a great way to highlight frustration, that we're sure others share, while giving constructive feedback. It helpful to get feedback like this because it is something actionable we can take back to the team and leadership.

We want to acknowledge that we understand the frustration here. We tried to be clear about that earlier this year when noting that this year was one of transition. It's setting things up so we can come through on the "bigger things are coming" part. Development and changing things up takes time to set up. But we are getting close to the point of sharing everything we have been working on. So we appreciate everyone's feedback and passion around this. Leadership really wants the team to take our time on this to make sure we are hitting your expectations and addressing your feedback.

DenverRalphy · September 11

I think that when announcing upcoming events like a livestream, there needs to be some caution in how it's promoted.

Take the following headline that preceded today's livestream as an example..

It's the & More portion of the headline that gets everybody worked up and excited. Because it infers that there's some juicy information forthcoming. But then the event arrives, and the & More is "Don't worry, there's more coming, we just can't tell you right now". And it comes across as the popular kids on the playground giggling behind the hands over a secret. Now I know that's not the intent. But that's what a lot of the playerbase sees. It would have been better for all if the headline had simply left the & More out entirely, and the participants of the livestream not even hint at anything they're not prepared to actually talk about.

Keep in mind too, we had this very same conversation 1 year ago when we were told "Next year we've got big changes coming, but we can't tell you anything until April!" and we've been in that perpetual "wait until next year" state ever since.

Twohothardware · September 11

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

T3vvy wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all! Just wanted to follow up here. There will be a base game update for U48. It will be focused on bug fixes and minor adjustments, rather than bigger QoL features this patch. The team has added quite a bit of QoL features over the last several patches and working on some good ones that you will see roll out next year, including some from the top pain points list many of you contributed to earlier this year. So this quarter will be lighter in that area.

The focus for this patch will be rolling out The Writhing Wall Event, the Eastern Solstice zone and Vengeance tests as those are both pretty sizable tasks for the team.

Can we get some insight into what those changes next year may be and/or the pain points that they will be fixing? Even if its just in vague terms of 'we are looking at tackling x y and z in the next year'

That is as far as I can share right now, unfortunately. But we will update everyone as soon as we get the greenlight to do so!

I hope one of those pain point fixes coming in 2026 is Crossplay. Full Crossplay with PC would be ideal but Crossplay between at least Xbox/PS5 consoles is mandatory at this stage because the player counts need a boost to keep activities like Dungeons and Trials popping and fill lost numbers in Cyrodiil.

Lysorris · September 11

All I even hear is that they are working on "more" but that "more" will be later. One may think that they are working on every single possible thing that players ever requested and they listen to players feedback but whenever they are supposed to deliver they claim that they looked at the stats and that's not it. When I've heard on the stream that they will do survey to get players feedback.... I mean, forums for the past few years were not enough?

RiverBrian · September 11

I for one am glad there isnt a whole lot of base game tweaks with this release. It seems like for the past several years, we het a huge base game update with a new chapter, and it seems like there is always big, server killing issues. The big updates need to be separate from chapter updates. This way, the bugs that slipped through the cracks are easier to narrow down. Im my mind, i see the base game update released a couple weeks before a new chapter update. Thats my thoughts anyways.

ZOS_Kevin · September 11

Twohothardware wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

T3vvy wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all! Just wanted to follow up here. There will be a base game update for U48. It will be focused on bug fixes and minor adjustments, rather than bigger QoL features this patch. The team has added quite a bit of QoL features over the last several patches and working on some good ones that you will see roll out next year, including some from the top pain points list many of you contributed to earlier this year. So this quarter will be lighter in that area.

The focus for this patch will be rolling out The Writhing Wall Event, the Eastern Solstice zone and Vengeance tests as those are both pretty sizable tasks for the team.

Can we get some insight into what those changes next year may be and/or the pain points that they will be fixing? Even if its just in vague terms of 'we are looking at tackling x y and z in the next year'

That is as far as I can share right now, unfortunately. But we will update everyone as soon as we get the greenlight to do so!

I hope one of those pain point fixes coming in 2026 is Crossplay. Full Crossplay with PC would be ideal but Crossplay between at least Xbox/PS5 consoles is mandatory at this stage because the player counts need a boost to keep activities like Dungeons and Trials popping and fill lost numbers in Cyrodiil.

Crossplay is a ways out. Trust me, this is a thing you do not want us to rush. There is a lot that needs to be worked through. So there is no eta at the moment. Just that teams are working on it.

ZOS_Kevin · September 11

Lysorris wrote: »

All I even hear is that they are working on "more" but that "more" will be later. One may think that they are working on every single possible thing that players ever requested and they listen to players feedback but whenever they are supposed to deliver they claim that they looked at the stats and that's not it. When I've heard on the stream that they will do survey to get players feedback.... I mean, forums for the past few years were not enough?

We have specific questions that we will be asking in the surveys. And we also want to get the most recent feedback from folks. There is definitely feedback to look for here on the forums and other mediums. And the team has looked at those as well. But it’s always good to do a current gut check with folks. We don’t think anyone wants us to spend time on only making changes based on feedback given 2+ years ago. We want to give another opportunity with specific questions to get the most up to date info as the team continues to work.

Mr_Friendly · September 11

Punches_Below_Belt wrote: »

How can they not understand that unless we get a paycheck from ZOS, we don’t care what the corporate structure is, what their job title is, what their job responsibilities are? We didn’t tune in for a LinkedIn round table.

If your position is relevant to why you are avoiding answering my questions and not fixing the QoL issues by all means slip it in. Otherwise, give me information I need or want to play the game.

I’m also kind of sick of the reveal/not a reveal game. If we cared about spoilers we wouldn’t be tuning in. Why would I want to watch you run around for half an hour trying to avoid spoilers?

They always seem more interested in entertaining each other than answering questions . I’m also always secondhand embarrassed by how badly they play their own game.

Some things I did learn today that I had always suspected. The second half of Solstice is no more interesting than the first.half. The “season pass” was a shrinkflation cash grab and they weren’t going to reveal it until as late as possible i.e. this stream. “This is a transition year” How about you transition twenty dollars back into my account? They think recycling assets, call backs and milking played out aspects of the game are fooling the players and a positive experience that they can continue to ride for another twenty years.

Perfectly stated. My growing list of friends that never log in also agree.

I stopped watching their live streams after the PvP Q&A when they answered only easy, silly questions. Difficult questions are never addressed and the reveals give no meaningful tidbits or sneak peaks. It gives the impression that ZOS cares only about new players and does not have a desire to retain older players.

This game is hemorrhaging "old" players and with them goes vast amounts of information. PvP is in the worst state since I've played ESO and don't even get a bone. Vengeance tests do not count - that was the reason for the seasons, so experiments can happen. That shouldn't mean nothing else happens, particularly with these long-standing and game-breaking bugs.

I would like to remind @ZOS_Kevin that players are desperate for change. They want to be engaged, feel listened to (not heard), and to feel like game development is making progress. Several patches now have gone in the complete opposite direction - how long are we supposed to wait for positives? People complain because they love the game. Those that don't just disappear without a trace.