Update 48: The Discount Animation Update

Gabriel_H · November 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.

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.

Similarly, bugs that turned out not to be a direct result of this effort also affected combat animations and needed investigation - for example, certain abilities not doing damage and an issue with controller UI causing performance issues on PC were both issues that impacted the visual look of animations in combat but were not caused by this effort.

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.

Then what did cause them? Those skills weren't touched in the patch notes so why would the code have been changed to cause the bug? Not trying to criticize simply understand what it is you guys are doing.

Gabriel_H · November 5

Asdara wrote: »

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.

You have that backwards. Looking at the player numbers in New World their issue was ONLY new mattered. Their numbers would spike on new content, which was chewed through in a couple of months and then players would leave because there was nothing to hold their attention.

ESO doesn't have that problem. Numbers jump a little on new content, but not spiking from 5,000 to 50,000 like NWs.

Toanis · November 5

Gabriel_H wrote: »

Then what did cause them? Those skills weren't touched in the patch notes so why would the code have been changed to cause the bug? Not trying to criticize simply understand what it is you guys are doing.

Likely back in the day animators and UI programmers worked hand in hand and used some unconvential ways to synchronize the old animations the UI backend and server feedback, the stuff had to run on (now) ancient hardware after all.

New guys remove redundant stuff, and suddenly something breaks. Who's to blame? New guys who didn't fully understand what the stuff they removed was doing, or old guys who ignored standard procedures and didn't document their shenanigans well enough?

Morvan · November 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.

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.

Similarly, bugs that turned out not to be a direct result of this effort also affected combat animations and needed investigation - for example, certain abilities not doing damage and an issue with controller UI causing performance issues on PC were both issues that impacted the visual look of animations in combat but were not caused by this effort.

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.

Thank you so much for clearing that out, I wish we had this explanation on PTS, players are always more receptive to this kind of change when you add reason behind them.

As for bugs not being directly caused by the change, there are some polymorphs in the game that still use the old animations, and at least for the visual part, (character jittering and bending in unnatural ways) I can confirm they don't happen with those polymorphs, so the visual bugs are definitely directly associated with the new animations themselves.

I'm all in for this change if it means getting new stuff to the game, but if the old platforms are holding you guys back like that it's probably time to let them go, put things on a balance and think about how many players you'd keep and gain if those constraints were not there.

Alternatively, you guys could consider you don't really need to apply the exact same changes for every platform, if the animation change was made to remedy an issue majoritarily present in the old gen consoles, then apply those changes only there.

ESO_Nightingale · November 5

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.

Yeah, it's becoming more and more apparent that older consoles are holding eso back. Support needs to be dropped.

tomofhyrule · November 5

ESO_Nightingale 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.

Yeah, it's becoming more and more apparent that older consoles are holding eso back. Support needs to be dropped.

I do think that a lot of the complaints that may present from dropping support for last-gen consoles and older PCs could also be mitigated if they follow that announcement in the same sentence with “we’re doubling furnishing limits though.”

Rkindaleft · November 5

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.

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.

Similarly, bugs that turned out not to be a direct result of this effort also affected combat animations and needed investigation - for example, certain abilities not doing damage and an issue with controller UI causing performance issues on PC were both issues that impacted the visual look of animations in combat but were not caused by this effort.

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 Kevin, your communication has been really good the past few days in regards to bugs.

You probably have the data, but I simply cannot imagine the people who are still playing on their original PS4 or Xbox One from 2013 or their potato PC that they haven't upgraded in years is big enough to warrant not increasing the minimum required specs for the game to run effectively. We shouldn't have to downgrade (or worsen) the experience for the vast majority just because there are a few people who haven't or won't upgrade.

Maybe the performance is still okay for like overland in older zones, but I distinctly remember my mate not being able to prog Sanity's Edge HM with us when the trial released (mid-2023) because he was still on a PS4 and the trash mobs would basically never load in and half the boss mechs had massive visual delays/desyncs. Even older trials like Sunspire and a lot of dungeons have this problem too.

We've already been made aware in the past that old hardware is one of the reasons y'all can't do things like increasing housing slots, and addons weren't released on the old gen consoles due to storage limits.

LukosCreyden · November 6

Lowering the quality of the game to keep it functioning on outdated hardware seems like a bad idea honestly. Older systems will inevitably need to be dropped eventually, sooner rather than later in fact.

Overamera · November 6

I love how everyone is trying to figure out what Kevin meant by "future development". I personally hope it's about crossplay but I doubt they have come that far into it.

Vaqual · November 6

Mattymoo92 wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.

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.

Similarly, bugs that turned out not to be a direct result of this effort also affected combat animations and needed investigation - for example, certain abilities not doing damage and an issue with controller UI causing performance issues on PC were both issues that impacted the visual look of animations in combat but were not caused by this effort.

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.

If older consoles are problem let them go… I highly doubt you’ll lose that many customers… not as many you lose by making bad changes

I agree with this opinion. Compromise your product at your own risk. In my eyes this strategy of catering to outdated hardware is a step in the wrong direction. The bugs are one thing, but the new animations do look noticeably worse. You are making the game worse, and if all we can expect for it is Arcanist 2.0 the "benefit" of it all will be viewed as divisive at best. I do not think that the animations from the Add-On classes look good compared to the base game classes (too childish, too flashy, too specific) and in that sense I would view this trade-off as a lose-lose scenario. There are some scenarios where the benefit is great enough to justify the cost, but I suppose it remains to be seen.

Thanks for being honest and direct about the topic though. The verdict remains, the animation update, however helpful it might be, is currently not good enough.

Kappachi · 1:05AM

my own thread fits here, didn't realize they changed animations, must be why this is happening: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/684946/view-randomly-changing-to-third-person-in-combat

katanagirl1 · 5:44AM

As I mentioned in another thread, if older consoles (and likewise older PCs) are causing such problems for the game, then it is time to move on. I was opposed to the idea during the COVID pandemic aftermath when you often couldn’t get a next gen system, but that is not the case anymore. I switched from PS4 to PS5 not long after it came out, and it was oftentimes unplayable for trials or PvP at that time and has only gotten worse. Many who had the original PS4 simply ran out of space to even play it as the footprint of the game got so large.

Kappachi · 6:24AM

katanagirl1 wrote: »

As I mentioned in another thread, if older consoles (and likewise older PCs) are causing such problems for the game, then it is time to move on. I was opposed to the idea during the COVID pandemic aftermath when you often couldn’t get a next gen system, but that is not the case anymore. I switched from PS4 to PS5 not long after it came out, and it was oftentimes unplayable for trials or PvP at that time and has only gotten worse. Many who had the original PS4 simply ran out of space to even play it as the footprint of the game got so large.

I'd be fine with that too, but I'm bias and my last rigs were 3090/titan RTX, now on 5080 with 9800X3D. i can handle any kind of spec increase and would love to see them drop older consoles like FFXIV did and get with the times, but maybe they have the numbers as for why that's not possible? or maybe during cross-platform update they'll do that?

colossalvoids · 8:03AM

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.

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.

Similarly, bugs that turned out not to be a direct result of this effort also affected combat animations and needed investigation - for example, certain abilities not doing damage and an issue with controller UI causing performance issues on PC were both issues that impacted the visual look of animations in combat but were not caused by this effort.

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.

I'll be just dead honest here but when you're cutting on a very core parts of the game to fit something new it's a symptom of a bigger disease. Not that it's just bad inherently by itself as it's a direct downgrade with combat feel and smoothness which are a core part why ESO is still played by many despite many issues it has, but it can't be done indefinitely cutting every smooth corner into a strictly optimised asset lacking their basic properties.

It also should be evaluated if those new things even worth it with those downgrades. Like we got a new card game and I'm betting it's not as well received as company hoped and still here we are, stuck with it and might probably be the one thing also holding a precious memory slot that can be used elsewhere for a better overall experience with the game. Not even mentioning that maybe, a better solution would be dropping the objectively weaker consoles and optimising the other things properly to for them to still have an ability to load a 10yo game despite new requirements.

Kappachi · 8:06AM

colossalvoids wrote: »

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.

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.

Similarly, bugs that turned out not to be a direct result of this effort also affected combat animations and needed investigation - for example, certain abilities not doing damage and an issue with controller UI causing performance issues on PC were both issues that impacted the visual look of animations in combat but were not caused by this effort.

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.

I'll be just dead honest here but when you're cutting on a very core parts of the game to fit something new it's a symptom of a bigger disease. Not that it's just bad inherently by itself as it's a direct downgrade with combat feel and smoothness which are a core part why ESO is still played by many despite many issues it has, but it can't be done indefinitely cutting every smooth corner into a strictly optimised asset lacking their basic properties.

It also should be evaluated if those new things even worth it with those downgrades. Like we got a new card game and I'm betting it's not as well received as company hoped and still here we are, stuck with it and might probably be the one thing also holding a precious memory slot that can be used elsewhere for a better overall experience with the game. Not even mentioning that maybe, a better solution would be dropping the objectively weaker consoles and optimising the other things properly to for them to still have an ability to load a 10yo game despite new requirements.

ToT still one of the main things I come on to play, I literally play it over other online card games pretty often, don't go messing with ToT, unless you plan to add new decks.

lostineternity · 9:48AM

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.

Why did you decide to reduce combat animations?
Why does my radiant apex mount's summon animation have more frames than all my character's combat animations altogether?
It says a lot about your priorities.
Combat, in terms of how it feels and how it looks, is a significant part of a game and a crucial appeal for the majority of the player base.
So you decided to ruin everything about it? Isn't that a bad decision? Recently, I've been watching a world-first HM kill in Rockgrove from 5 years ago and compared it to our run this week. It seems like now we are playing a game from 2006 in terms of combat visual appeal.

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.

Okay, you received "many reports of animation issues," you didn't have time to reproduce and fix all of them... and yet you still decided to deploy the changes with all the bugs in production? Really? What is this if not a sign of unprofessionalism?
If I had done the same thing, I would have been fired the next day.

And now you are asking for more feedback. Let me explain one thing to you: a lot of dedicated players who spent hundreds and hundreds of hours on the PTS server testing everything and basically doing your job currently have no enthusiasm left to do this again.
Why is that? Because they see that everything they reported during the PTS cycle is on the live server now, and none of the reported issues were addressed - literally zero communication about that.

Kelenan7368 · 5:15PM

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

We went through with the animation reduction efforts in order to save memory for future development efforts within the game. We have heavy constraints with older platforms that require us to save as much memory as we can to ensure that future features will run on every supported platform.

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.

Similarly, bugs that turned out not to be a direct result of this effort also affected combat animations and needed investigation - for example, certain abilities not doing damage and an issue with controller UI causing performance issues on PC were both issues that impacted the visual look of animations in combat but were not caused by this effort.

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.

I guess my frustration with my game experience got the best of me so my post was removed and I was informed not to bash your efforts.

Well Having my strongest PVP build made unplayable kinda sucks! And continuously being booted out of PVP matches only to fight to log back in to have a 30 minute lock from PVP IMO is unacceptable.

It's a frustration to say the least that the animations worked great, and to move forward decreasing animations so outdated platforms can still play is absurd IMO.

As a sub client of ESO, ( I know just a drop in the bucket) I find this an unacceptable direction. I am paying for an High end gaming experience! Not a Fix what's not broken approach to animations to cater to outdated consoles.

I am certain I am not your only customer that finds this Unacceptable!

I have enjoyed and loved this game since I started play years ago! I also have always defended the Dev's on almost every turn on these forums. But I can not defend this!

It is my sincere wish that you please stop using development time on this and actually fix real broken issues in the game and create content, instead of reworking things that don't need reworked.

Good luck with your efforts, and God bless you all moving forward so you don't drive your sub clients away.