I would assume that eventually ZOS would have to make that decision.

Nick’s first statement as Director was that it is intended that ESO be a 30-year game. So… do we honestly expect that ESO in 2045 will still be shackled by 2014-era hardware?

Making the game actively worse to cater to obsolete hardware does not seem to be a strategy for longevity. Eventually, they will need to drop things holding the game back… and hopefully before the players who are frustrated from this backsliding and lack of progress go find games that don’t try to kneecap themselves.

lostineternity wrote: »

This is from "Studio Director's Letter: 2025"



What can I say... The overall feel from combat with animation improved so much that I can say Oblivion original combat animations from 2006 are not so dated anymore...

p.s. amazing read overall, I have never had so much spaghetti on my ears

Maybe @ZOS_Kevin can enlighten us more on how we went from improving the combat feel to downgrading for the old tech in just under a year? I suspected the whole letter was a way with words to mask what actually happens with the game, painting downgrades as features and cut corners as new and bold strategies but definitely would want to hear from someone from zos on it.

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.

From a player’s perspective, it seems like there could be some additional optimizations made that would be the more preferable low-hanging fruit.

1. Remove bodies of dead npcs and bosses when the respawn occurs, or earlier if the player seeing them is not able to loot the body.
2. Remove the repeating play of animation for mount summoning that other players see when the that player is already on the mount and riding.
3. Allow turning off other player ability animations on consoles.
4. Allow turning off other player combat pets and companions.
5. Create more instances to lower the amount of players in each instance and reduce strain.

I don’t know exactly what the savings might be for these, or if it is even possible in the last one, but it would be worth investigating. Each one might be small but the aggregate could be significant.

Like you, I am concerned that even upgrading machines only seems to work for a while before some kind of code bloat catches up. PS5 came along in time to save performance issues on PS4, but now even PS5 is seeing those same issues again. The game frequently struggles and fails to show the glow of wayshrines, the Volundrung portal in Cyrodiil, and similar items. I suspect it is due to the rapidly increasing number of glowing mounts, costumes, emotes, etc. from the Crown store. These things are great if they are making money for ZOS, but if they are causing harm to the gameplay then they need to be addressed in some way, like allowing players turn other player’s high performance visuals on older machines with performance issues, if they are going to be supported. I know this would not be their first choice but it seems easier to do than redo the complete list of combat animations.

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.

Im just so confused as to why ZOS feels it needs to maintain these older platforms ability to access the game. This is like a city deciding it needs to turn roads into slip and slides because individual drivers drove their cars til the tires fell off. Now those tireless cars can get around with a push but all of those who maintained their cars have to deal with the consequences of the roads having no traction.