My poor Bosmer. She loves to dance but now dances like a man!

Also can’t emote with weapons anymore, they seem to accidentally “fix” that every other update despite players asking them not to.

they really have to abandon the xbox series s at this point im sorry - its just holding the game back so much that it will just hurt the playerbase...besides the next msoft console is apparently high end premium high performance so it makes even less sense

We literally told you guys to undo these changes due to the amount of evidence that we had that it was broken during the pts and it was completely ignored and pushed live.

I mean what the hell else are we supposed to do at that point?

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hi all. These issues are currently being worked through by the Dev team. Some of them will be fixed in Incremental 1, and we have noted those in specific threads. You can also check the dev tracker for those updates. Others will require further investigation and will be fixed as quickly as possible.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_Kevin Can we get an explanation on how we got here please? If this could be fixed through incremental hotfixes, why wasn't it fixed in PTS? This wasn't a change anyone asked for, correct me if I'm wrong, so it's a bit vexing to see it rushed out only need to a litany of hotfixes. The timeframe for deploying those hotfixes would've fit in the PTS cycle when these were flagged back in September. What happened here? Was it a code freeze? Was it a priority issue? Something's not adding up.

There's an expectation that if something is up for testing in PTS, then it can be fixed during that PTS cycle. If that's not the case, someone needs to say so, before it becomes another fiasco.

Appreciate all the work you CMs are doing, I know things are probably chaotic for you guys.

Thank you Kevin. That is mostly what I suspected, but it is good to hear it confirmed.
(Crossing my fingers that “future developments” means “new Class coming soon”)

But - and I don’t expect an answer; this is food for thought for the devs - with all of the constraints, is it getting time for ESO to advance its minimum specs?

We’ve been hearing for a while that older hardware has prevented the addition of housing slots and new animations, and now we see the solution is to try to cannibalize that space back, potentially making the look and feel of the game worse to support the addition of new content. And now with other games coming out with a much more advanced housing system and a lot more features, ESO is seemingly ceding ground.

ESO has officially changed their min software specs more than once. But it may be time to consider that 11-year-old hardware may no longer be able to support the game isn its current state. I know that several people who have moved to current-gen consoles or a more modern PC have reported smoother gameplay, so even the oldest hardware is struggling to play the game as intended now… which is not a good look if the game is still saying it officially supports that hardware.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Thank you Kevin. That is mostly what I suspected, but it is good to hear it confirmed.
(Crossing my fingers that “future developments” means “new Class coming soon”)

But - and I don’t expect an answer; this is food for thought for the devs - with all of the constraints, is it getting time for ESO to advance its minimum specs?

We’ve been hearing for a while that older hardware has prevented the addition of housing slots and new animations, and now we see the solution is to try to cannibalize that space back, potentially making the look and feel of the game worse to support the addition of new content. And now with other games coming out with a much more advanced housing system and a lot more features, ESO is seemingly ceding ground.

ESO has officially changed their min software specs more than once. But it may be time to consider that 11-year-old hardware may no longer be able to support the game isn its current state. I know that several people who have moved to current-gen consoles or a more modern PC have reported smoother gameplay, so even the oldest hardware is struggling to play the game as intended now… which is not a good look if the game is still saying it officially supports that hardware.

My god… a new class!? For what?! Why??
We already have seven classes, and all of them feel useless now.
We’ve got a mix of everything, "“DK/NB/Arcanist" and in the end, almost everyone runs the same build.

So why do we need another class? To "bring something new" into the game? Like, for example, a "pure class" where you can’t use subclassing… for what?
So we can have eight classes in the trash and one top-tier class made just to sell, like they did with the Arcanist!?

Crossing my fingers that ZOS could bring our seven classes back, balanced and unique once again.

If ZOS adds a new class, and I really hope they don’t, that class will have only one purpose: selling.

It won’t balance the game, it won’t bring the lore back, and it won’t add anything meaningful.
Instead, it’ll just make things worse, burying all the mess we already have under overpowered, pay-to-win buffs and throwing the other seven classes into the trash.
And of course… it won’t be free. We’ll have to pay to make the game worse, not better.

My god… why does everyone seem to bury the game even faster than ZOS itself? Just why??

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We updated over 900 animation files in order to support this effort, including animations that are used outside of player combat. We have gotten many fantastic reports of animation issues from players on PTS, but tracking down reproductions of these issues and the appropriate fixes on our internal realms takes time.

Wonderful information, thanks for tracking that down.

I think it'd reduce some of the wider frustration to get that context during the PTS cycle. It seemed like people could replicate it just fine on PTS, so it's worrisome that PTS and internal realms are different. But again, something I can understand, and appreciate as a developer myself. If there's changes that can't be replicated or need prod-like data to truly fix (kinda like why Vengeance is happening), then again, that should be mentioned by the developers.

Was this considered a "Known Issue"? I wasn't see it on the log, but this new context implies that it was.

Broadly speaking, I hope future animation changes are handled a bit more carefully. We've had a few animation changes that were very poorly received, on PTS and Live, and took considerable time to change. Namely, the Jabs change (which still needs to be reverted) and the PermaGlow changes (which took over a year to resolve). I get its balancing act between performance fixes and our feedback, but I hope those changes can be more tightly coupled with the PTS feedback to avoid these situations.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

As you continue to come across issues, please let us know. Videos of the issues are extremely helpful in tracking down potential bugs and the team will continue to do all we can to ensure that any confirmed issues are addressed in an upcoming package.

Thanks for all you do. I know you guys are a small team and have a lot on your plates, so getting this insight is really appreciated.

Yes, this topic is about animations, speaking of that, have you seen Bashsei? What drugs did ZOS give him?? Skooma?
All of this is a disgrace, a complete mess, total disorder.

Did anyone ask for this “animation fix”? No. But they had to “fix” (and break) things for future updates… Why? for sales!
They break stuff and create more bugs just to sell later.

But now we can use potions while channeling a skill. But can we pick up synergies too? No. Why? Because once again, giving us something almost complete is not how ZOS works.
They give us ten new bugs to fix one and deliver only half of what they could.

Bro… all this is a joke!

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Last'One wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Thank you Kevin. That is mostly what I suspected, but it is good to hear it confirmed.
(Crossing my fingers that “future developments” means “new Class coming soon”)

But - and I don’t expect an answer; this is food for thought for the devs - with all of the constraints, is it getting time for ESO to advance its minimum specs?

We’ve been hearing for a while that older hardware has prevented the addition of housing slots and new animations, and now we see the solution is to try to cannibalize that space back, potentially making the look and feel of the game worse to support the addition of new content. And now with other games coming out with a much more advanced housing system and a lot more features, ESO is seemingly ceding ground.

ESO has officially changed their min software specs more than once. But it may be time to consider that 11-year-old hardware may no longer be able to support the game isn its current state. I know that several people who have moved to current-gen consoles or a more modern PC have reported smoother gameplay, so even the oldest hardware is struggling to play the game as intended now… which is not a good look if the game is still saying it officially supports that hardware.

My god… a new class!? For what?! Why??
We already have seven classes, and all of them feel useless now.
We’ve got a mix of everything, "“DK/NB/Arcanist" and in the end, almost everyone runs the same build.

So why do we need another class? To "bring something new" into the game? Like, for example, a "pure class" where you can’t use subclassing… for what?
So we can have eight classes in the trash and one top-tier class made just to sell, like they did with the Arcanist!?

Crossing my fingers that ZOS could bring our seven classes back, balanced and unique once again.

If ZOS adds a new class, and I really hope they don’t, that class will have only one purpose: selling.

It won’t balance the game, it won’t bring the lore back, and it won’t add anything meaningful.
Instead, it’ll just make things worse, burying all the mess we already have under overpowered, pay-to-win buffs and throwing the other seven classes into the trash.
And of course… it won’t be free. We’ll have to pay to make the game worse, not better.

My god… why does everyone seem to bury the game even faster than ZOS itself? Just why??

Thank you for that kind analysis. It’s good to be able to have healthy discussions on the forums.

This thread is about animations so I don’t want to hijack it too much, but I will briefly say why I think the addition of a new Class would be a boon for the game and not doing so would be, as you say, a way to bury the game faster than ZOS itself.

Mainly: a new Class is something that every player could use - RPers get new looks and themes, PvErs get new skills and new strategies, PvPers get new tactics and enemies. It allows all playstyles to get something new. And now, with Subclassing, that means that players mo longer need to make a whole new character to experience it, but they could if they wanted to. As for lore, there are still many avenues that could absolutely be explored that have not been in ESO but were in mainline games.

And yes, it would be monetized. And that is a good thing, especially to the suits upstairs. ESO’s content delivery in 2025 was… less than stellar, and a lot of people are moving to drop support after this year. If this game is no longer profitable because of the number of people who dropped in disgust, then Microsoft will pull the plug. It would be in ZOS’s best interest to drop something really big that people need to pay for in order to prove to the executives that the game deserves to not go the way of New World.

Balance is of course an issue, and I am appalled that the Combat Team still has not even tried to balance things post Subclassing. But as we have seen several times, “this patch is just for balance and bugfixes” usually does neither of those things and just adds more bugs. They can’t just stop adding things until the Team gets their act together if they want the game to survive. But I do think that a shakeup of the Combat team is definitely in order.

Finally, the other “big features” that are on the horizon - Crossplay and Overland Difficulty - won’t be able to carry a patch the same way. Neither would be able to be monetized (so that’s not going to inspire the suits to keep the servers online since there’s nobody paying for the new pass because of it), and both also are extremely targeted towards specific communities (vet players and console players respectively). In fact, some things like Crossplay could also be detrimental to other communities, like how PC players would then get delayed patches due to crossplay because they’d need to wait for certification cycles.
Now note that I do think both should still be added, but I do not think either could serve as a “selling feature” for a specific pass.

I very much agree, on all counts. While the game as it sits needs significant work in terms of class balance after subclassing, the game will wither and die without new content. I'm a die hard who even preorders chapters while not actively playing the game. I very much want the game to succeed but I'm so disgusted and disappointed with 2025 that I don't know how we even get to good again. The 2026 roadmap needs to be stunning. Like amazing. A key thing there will be new quests, new systems, new raids (the biggest for me really a long with:) new dungeons and yes. A new class. 3 skill lines to play with. New ways to attack older content. It will of course need to be sold. That's the way this works. But so many folks are upset with 2025 that it's gonna have to be good to get back that revenue.

So while things in the game have to be fixed, you can't stop moving forward to do it. To do so would be fatal imo.

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Asdara wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Last'One wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Thank you Kevin. That is mostly what I suspected, but it is good to hear it confirmed.
(Crossing my fingers that “future developments” means “new Class coming soon”)

But - and I don’t expect an answer; this is food for thought for the devs - with all of the constraints, is it getting time for ESO to advance its minimum specs?

We’ve been hearing for a while that older hardware has prevented the addition of housing slots and new animations, and now we see the solution is to try to cannibalize that space back, potentially making the look and feel of the game worse to support the addition of new content. And now with other games coming out with a much more advanced housing system and a lot more features, ESO is seemingly ceding ground.

ESO has officially changed their min software specs more than once. But it may be time to consider that 11-year-old hardware may no longer be able to support the game isn its current state. I know that several people who have moved to current-gen consoles or a more modern PC have reported smoother gameplay, so even the oldest hardware is struggling to play the game as intended now… which is not a good look if the game is still saying it officially supports that hardware.

My god… a new class!? For what?! Why??
We already have seven classes, and all of them feel useless now.
We’ve got a mix of everything, "“DK/NB/Arcanist" and in the end, almost everyone runs the same build.

So why do we need another class? To "bring something new" into the game? Like, for example, a "pure class" where you can’t use subclassing… for what?
So we can have eight classes in the trash and one top-tier class made just to sell, like they did with the Arcanist!?

Crossing my fingers that ZOS could bring our seven classes back, balanced and unique once again.

If ZOS adds a new class, and I really hope they don’t, that class will have only one purpose: selling.

It won’t balance the game, it won’t bring the lore back, and it won’t add anything meaningful.
Instead, it’ll just make things worse, burying all the mess we already have under overpowered, pay-to-win buffs and throwing the other seven classes into the trash.
And of course… it won’t be free. We’ll have to pay to make the game worse, not better.

My god… why does everyone seem to bury the game even faster than ZOS itself? Just why??

Thank you for that kind analysis. It’s good to be able to have healthy discussions on the forums.

This thread is about animations so I don’t want to hijack it too much, but I will briefly say why I think the addition of a new Class would be a boon for the game and not doing so would be, as you say, a way to bury the game faster than ZOS itself.

Mainly: a new Class is something that every player could use - RPers get new looks and themes, PvErs get new skills and new strategies, PvPers get new tactics and enemies. It allows all playstyles to get something new. And now, with Subclassing, that means that players mo longer need to make a whole new character to experience it, but they could if they wanted to. As for lore, there are still many avenues that could absolutely be explored that have not been in ESO but were in mainline games.

And yes, it would be monetized. And that is a good thing, especially to the suits upstairs. ESO’s content delivery in 2025 was… less than stellar, and a lot of people are moving to drop support after this year. If this game is no longer profitable because of the number of people who dropped in disgust, then Microsoft will pull the plug. It would be in ZOS’s best interest to drop something really big that people need to pay for in order to prove to the executives that the game deserves to not go the way of New World.

Balance is of course an issue, and I am appalled that the Combat Team still has not even tried to balance things post Subclassing. But as we have seen several times, “this patch is just for balance and bugfixes” usually does neither of those things and just adds more bugs. They can’t just stop adding things until the Team gets their act together if they want the game to survive. But I do think that a shakeup of the Combat team is definitely in order.

Finally, the other “big features” that are on the horizon - Crossplay and Overland Difficulty - won’t be able to carry a patch the same way. Neither would be able to be monetized (so that’s not going to inspire the suits to keep the servers online since there’s nobody paying for the new pass because of it), and both also are extremely targeted towards specific communities (vet players and console players respectively). In fact, some things like Crossplay could also be detrimental to other communities, like how PC players would then get delayed patches due to crossplay because they’d need to wait for certification cycles.
Now note that I do think both should still be added, but I do not think either could serve as a “selling feature” for a specific pass.

I get what you’re saying, on paper, a new class is the kind of headline feature that could bring people back. But at this point, ESO’s issues aren’t about a lack of “new toys.” The problem runs deeper: the reward systems are outdated, almost all the older content has become irrelevant, and there’s no long-term motivation to replay anything. You can drop a new class tomorrow, but it won’t fix the fact that 99% of sets, dungeons, and achievements have no real value or purpose anymore.

Players don’t stop logging in because they’ve run out of classes; they stop because progression feels meaningless once you’ve done the meta dungeons and raids a few times. Until ZOS reworks how rewards, difficulty scaling, and itemization actually interact, every “big” feature just ends up being another layer on top of a system that’s already lost its reason to keep people playing.

So yeah, a new class could be fun, but it’s not the kind of “proof to executives” that will save ESO. What would really show commitment is investing in the game’s foundation = making all the content, old and new, worth playing again.

And this is the problem: doing nothing brings in no new players, but could bring back lapsed players. Adding new stuff may excite new players but existing things fester. It’s a lose-lose unless they can successfully do both. Not to mention that a lot of the severe overhauls people ‘want’ (like completely changing all 500+ sets, or potions, or provisionings) will absolutely lead to confusion and frustration, almost like how Subclassing didn’t magically fix balance and make everyone super happy.

After all, once no new stuff gets added… well, that’s where New World is right now. And as bad as ESO is, I don’t want it to get to that state.

But also remember we’ve had several “this is a light patch, mostly bugfixes and QoL.” U39. U43. U48. And what do they have in common? More bugs got added than got fixed.

If I were the director, I would make it my top priority to have a Come to Akatosh talk with the Combat Team, because they need to get their act together and fast. They 100% should take advantage of the fact that the PTS is unused until January to start testing balance for all Class stuff and read the feedback from PTS testers so that balance is in a not-miserable state by the time they need to start adding new stuff.

You’re absolutely right that doing nothing is a death sentence (no one’s arguing ESO should just freeze in place). The issue is that “adding new stuff” only looks like progress if it meaningfully interacts with the existing systems. Right now, new content doesn’t actually connect to the core of the game. It just floats on top of an ecosystem that’s been stagnant for years.

Take any new dungeon or zone: great art, great story, but the moment you finish the questline, the rewards are outdated, and the mechanics don’t tie into a broader progression system. Even sets from brand new DLCs end up useless even before release. That’s not a problem solved by adding a class sadly, it’s a problem of structure.

You mentioned New World, and that’s actually a perfect comparison: they also kept adding new stuff while their core systems rotted underneath. Eventually, people realized nothing new mattered, and that’s when the real decline started. ESO’s on the same trajectory if they don’t rebuild incentive loops and make older content meaningful again.

And I agree with you on the Combat Team ! that’s 100% the biggest internal bottleneck. But the direction from above matters too. New class or not, until the reward and itemization systems are rethought, the game will keep bleeding players who don’t see a reason to care about anything they earn or unlock.

Asdara wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Asdara wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Last'One wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

Thank you Kevin. That is mostly what I suspected, but it is good to hear it confirmed.
(Crossing my fingers that “future developments” means “new Class coming soon”)

But - and I don’t expect an answer; this is food for thought for the devs - with all of the constraints, is it getting time for ESO to advance its minimum specs?

We’ve been hearing for a while that older hardware has prevented the addition of housing slots and new animations, and now we see the solution is to try to cannibalize that space back, potentially making the look and feel of the game worse to support the addition of new content. And now with other games coming out with a much more advanced housing system and a lot more features, ESO is seemingly ceding ground.

ESO has officially changed their min software specs more than once. But it may be time to consider that 11-year-old hardware may no longer be able to support the game isn its current state. I know that several people who have moved to current-gen consoles or a more modern PC have reported smoother gameplay, so even the oldest hardware is struggling to play the game as intended now… which is not a good look if the game is still saying it officially supports that hardware.

My god… a new class!? For what?! Why??
We already have seven classes, and all of them feel useless now.
We’ve got a mix of everything, "“DK/NB/Arcanist" and in the end, almost everyone runs the same build.

So why do we need another class? To "bring something new" into the game? Like, for example, a "pure class" where you can’t use subclassing… for what?
So we can have eight classes in the trash and one top-tier class made just to sell, like they did with the Arcanist!?

Crossing my fingers that ZOS could bring our seven classes back, balanced and unique once again.

If ZOS adds a new class, and I really hope they don’t, that class will have only one purpose: selling.

It won’t balance the game, it won’t bring the lore back, and it won’t add anything meaningful.
Instead, it’ll just make things worse, burying all the mess we already have under overpowered, pay-to-win buffs and throwing the other seven classes into the trash.
And of course… it won’t be free. We’ll have to pay to make the game worse, not better.

My god… why does everyone seem to bury the game even faster than ZOS itself? Just why??

Thank you for that kind analysis. It’s good to be able to have healthy discussions on the forums.

This thread is about animations so I don’t want to hijack it too much, but I will briefly say why I think the addition of a new Class would be a boon for the game and not doing so would be, as you say, a way to bury the game faster than ZOS itself.

Mainly: a new Class is something that every player could use - RPers get new looks and themes, PvErs get new skills and new strategies, PvPers get new tactics and enemies. It allows all playstyles to get something new. And now, with Subclassing, that means that players mo longer need to make a whole new character to experience it, but they could if they wanted to. As for lore, there are still many avenues that could absolutely be explored that have not been in ESO but were in mainline games.

And yes, it would be monetized. And that is a good thing, especially to the suits upstairs. ESO’s content delivery in 2025 was… less than stellar, and a lot of people are moving to drop support after this year. If this game is no longer profitable because of the number of people who dropped in disgust, then Microsoft will pull the plug. It would be in ZOS’s best interest to drop something really big that people need to pay for in order to prove to the executives that the game deserves to not go the way of New World.

Balance is of course an issue, and I am appalled that the Combat Team still has not even tried to balance things post Subclassing. But as we have seen several times, “this patch is just for balance and bugfixes” usually does neither of those things and just adds more bugs. They can’t just stop adding things until the Team gets their act together if they want the game to survive. But I do think that a shakeup of the Combat team is definitely in order.

Finally, the other “big features” that are on the horizon - Crossplay and Overland Difficulty - won’t be able to carry a patch the same way. Neither would be able to be monetized (so that’s not going to inspire the suits to keep the servers online since there’s nobody paying for the new pass because of it), and both also are extremely targeted towards specific communities (vet players and console players respectively). In fact, some things like Crossplay could also be detrimental to other communities, like how PC players would then get delayed patches due to crossplay because they’d need to wait for certification cycles.
Now note that I do think both should still be added, but I do not think either could serve as a “selling feature” for a specific pass.

I get what you’re saying, on paper, a new class is the kind of headline feature that could bring people back. But at this point, ESO’s issues aren’t about a lack of “new toys.” The problem runs deeper: the reward systems are outdated, almost all the older content has become irrelevant, and there’s no long-term motivation to replay anything. You can drop a new class tomorrow, but it won’t fix the fact that 99% of sets, dungeons, and achievements have no real value or purpose anymore.

Players don’t stop logging in because they’ve run out of classes; they stop because progression feels meaningless once you’ve done the meta dungeons and raids a few times. Until ZOS reworks how rewards, difficulty scaling, and itemization actually interact, every “big” feature just ends up being another layer on top of a system that’s already lost its reason to keep people playing.

So yeah, a new class could be fun, but it’s not the kind of “proof to executives” that will save ESO. What would really show commitment is investing in the game’s foundation = making all the content, old and new, worth playing again.

And this is the problem: doing nothing brings in no new players, but could bring back lapsed players. Adding new stuff may excite new players but existing things fester. It’s a lose-lose unless they can successfully do both. Not to mention that a lot of the severe overhauls people ‘want’ (like completely changing all 500+ sets, or potions, or provisionings) will absolutely lead to confusion and frustration, almost like how Subclassing didn’t magically fix balance and make everyone super happy.

After all, once no new stuff gets added… well, that’s where New World is right now. And as bad as ESO is, I don’t want it to get to that state.

But also remember we’ve had several “this is a light patch, mostly bugfixes and QoL.” U39. U43. U48. And what do they have in common? More bugs got added than got fixed.

If I were the director, I would make it my top priority to have a Come to Akatosh talk with the Combat Team, because they need to get their act together and fast. They 100% should take advantage of the fact that the PTS is unused until January to start testing balance for all Class stuff and read the feedback from PTS testers so that balance is in a not-miserable state by the time they need to start adding new stuff.

You’re absolutely right that doing nothing is a death sentence (no one’s arguing ESO should just freeze in place). The issue is that “adding new stuff” only looks like progress if it meaningfully interacts with the existing systems. Right now, new content doesn’t actually connect to the core of the game. It just floats on top of an ecosystem that’s been stagnant for years.

Take any new dungeon or zone: great art, great story, but the moment you finish the questline, the rewards are outdated, and the mechanics don’t tie into a broader progression system. Even sets from brand new DLCs end up useless even before release. That’s not a problem solved by adding a class sadly, it’s a problem of structure.

You mentioned New World, and that’s actually a perfect comparison: they also kept adding new stuff while their core systems rotted underneath. Eventually, people realized nothing new mattered, and that’s when the real decline started. ESO’s on the same trajectory if they don’t rebuild incentive loops and make older content meaningful again.

And I agree with you on the Combat Team ! that’s 100% the biggest internal bottleneck. But the direction from above matters too. New class or not, until the reward and itemization systems are rethought, the game will keep bleeding players who don’t see a reason to care about anything they earn or unlock.

Absolutely. Say what you want about Tales of Tribute, but at least we were getting new decks consistently until this year. Now if only they would increase the drop rate of those ridiculous fragments to “possible.” Ditto antiquities continually being added as well (but please stop hiding leads in treasure maps behind nested RNG). Those were systems that were continually added to over time, not just dropped and forgotten… until this year.

The one interesting thing about ESO as opposed to other MMOs is that it does skew very casual, so (unfortunately for those of us who do high-level content) there is a tendency to forget about or not even consider endgame. I’ll go back to Subclassing - despite the endgame discords all calling the OP setups instantly, the team never considered any builds other than “oops all pets!” (which itself didn’t even work right because of the necro corpse replacement bug). And then it released and caused a massive problem for endgamers because it made one single OP meta and everything else was memetically useless.

This year has shown that the combat team’s entire idea is “throw anything at the wall and see what sticks,” which is demonstrably not working out well for them. It’s also clear that all of these ‘abandoned systems’ are also combat related. They seriously need to get their act together, and in a way that favors all players.

I genuinely appreciate the optimization efforts and I also appreciate the fact that they are not being done at the expense of the complexity of the existing combat system. It would be too easy to say "well, everyone is using Beam/everyone is just overshielding and jumping anyway, so let's just remove everything else" and the devs are NOT doing that, which is great and needs to continue. Whether you understand it or not: if you like ESO, you like this, too. Because this is ESO.

When Kevin said "future features running smoothly" I thought about the optimization efforts immediately; I don't think that this meant "very new features" or "new class" - which in this case would've been "new instead of good" (the type of thinking which has brought a lot of harm to the game and its systems).

The way I see it: this is a healthy and direct attempt to make the existing combat mechanics work, to make the complex non-overpowered builds be efficient, have their proper amount of impact; by making the server more responsive and the complex and fast mechanics reliable. Sure, it could've been done more elegantly and smoothly but "it could be better" says nothing - everything "could be better", always. As I understand ZOS is in a really tight situation now (and not just them), I think this update is "a bit rough around the edges" due to that. With that being said, it could be extremely useful for finally balancing combat.

And with that: unlocking the potential of the game and making all of its parts relevant, engaging, charismatic, always fresh. "Things not working properly"/"Things not working on time" has always been a major problem for fast-paced builds in this fast-paced game, has been a hidden "boon" for overpowered builds, has influenced what overpowered builds have been and are.
(Examples: tanky overshielded builds in PvP, abilities "doing too many things at the same time", Beam, certain HA builds - things that don't rely on timing, tactics, and reaction speed.)
I'm assuming this is not the final state of the optimization and currently the balance is being found between "optimizing" and "removing".

One major (generally unacceptable) problem on my end was the "animation nerf" for Blood for Blood. The way it aligns with your melee weapon (my experience: two-handed, dual wield) is a major trait of this skill's charisma. It would provide a really interesting and dynamic movement for greatsword wielders and in general would look like a "blood-empowered melee attack", which it is. The skill's animation looks and feels extremely uncomfortable, "giving your enemy a hand-pat while holding a baguette" could be a really good description for it.

edit: a minor typo

Nemesis7884 wrote: »

they really have to abandon the xbox series s at this point im sorry - its just holding the game back so much that it will just hurt the playerbase...besides the next msoft console is apparently high end premium high performance so it makes even less sense

Do you mean the Xbox one?

Series S is the same age as Series X and both play the game with better graphics, performance mode, add-ons etc.

Xbox one is years older and plays a different, less flashy graphics-wise game.