Veinblood1965 wrote: »

The WW wall event and Sub-classing were the last straws for me. Overall the last two years or so it just felt like two things were lacking. For any changes that were made the first question should have been "Is this change going to be fun for more players" and the second question should have been "will this change cause more people to leave than it draws into the game on a long term basis". Actually the first question asked should be the second question I listed above. Subclassing for example, how many people just quit due to that? Do we think more people that quit before we release or have never played the game would be subscribing? At best from research my guess would have been 50/50, and that's at best. If 20000 people leave and 15000 people subscribe it's a loss. Combine that with other changes where the losses outweigh the gains we get where we are now. It's harder to draw new long term players into anything, it's easier to cause existing players to just reach that last straw IMO.

The fun was sucked out of the game. It really just was. My main was a night blade. Cloak was changed, a core ability. I also used to like to vendor, the time for listing was decreased from a month to 14 days and the fees stayed the same(the fees were just a huge slap in the face that made us feel like ZoS just didn't give a hoot how we would feel, seriously it's just fake gold what harm to halve the listing costs?), then scribing, a huge grind for nothing, nothing hardly worth using at all for the grind, then subclassing, I didn't mind the concept, it was the cost of two skill points each time, I just felt it was an unnecessary extra grind that had no purpose other than to add a grind, the last straw was the writhing wall event, I logged in, saw the stupid daily quests where you literally just killed a few wolves or even worse just turned around and turned in a crafting quest within a second, over and over. I logged off right then, un-subscribed and am just lurking the forums for a some reason. It was such a let down i had even paid for the season and still quit without seeing the other half of the release. All that being said a HUGE portion of my friends I've played with for years have quit slowly after each change mentioned above was released, a large portion after the vendoring change and another large chunk after subclassing. Of course in any game if a change is made people leave that's just a given. But when the amount that leaves is more than the amount of new incoming players that stay long term eventually it leads to where we are now. I'm on PS5 NA server and it's a ghost town compared to how it used to be. Zone chats and guild chats empty, long term larger trading guilds have shut down.

If they ever start asking IS THIS FUN FOR THE PLAYERS I might give them another chance, for now I'm looking elsewhere. It's really just not fun any more. The question is what changes would be considered fun enough to bring me back. I honestly don't know which is sad also as I'd like to but I don't trust the rug to be pulled out from under me over and over again once I find something new to latch onto in the game.

I'm sorry if this feels like a rant, it is not. I've played this game since Summerset and hated to leave, this isn't an I'm quitting post either. I'm hoping others can answer the question as to what would bring them back to help ZoS alter the course of their ship.

I quit, solely on the basis that I could make a build with the hundreds of sets and different playstyles to build around for PvP and PvE. Just to find out in any serious situation you will be laughed at if you don't have 1 of 5 of these sets on (in both contents btw).

There is no playstyle choice for each class, there is no choosing between mag pools and stam pools anymore. There is no diversity at all.

The only thing that would bring me back is real balance and not favoring new classes or pay gating gear/classes to compete.

Additionally, just for the meme, If they buff swallow soul and the "MageBlade" playstyle, for both pve and pvp, ill think about coming back.

Tyrobag wrote: »

4. Quest rewards. Connected to the poor writing. Why are most quest rewards now just a bag with a random set piece in it? They should be used as an opportunity to provide semi-unique pieces, like a heavy piece for a normally light set, or a pair of gloves with an enchantment typically reserved for jewelry. One of my favorite items in the game are the pants you get from "The Wizard's Tome" quest in Davon's Watch for exactly this reason. They're worthless, but they're unique so I keep them. Another great example is the Grievous Leeching Ward from the ICP quest, it TALKS TO YOU. Despite using a generic model, that makes it the most unique item in the game. Or the weapons from MoL, which have unique visual effects as part of the items themselves, rather than the set/enchantment. Do more things like that for quest rewards.

While I agree with everything you wrote, this stood out to me. Yes. We need better quest rewards, and all of these past examples are PERFECT.

With Overland changes coming, I really hope we don’t just get higher rarity gear, similar to dungeons for clearing Veteran Overland, and while I do like new Styles and Skill Style fragments; they can’t be the only approach taken for how those quests will be rewarded. Let rewards be interesting again.

FoJul wrote: »

I quit, solely on the basis that I could make a build with the hundreds of sets and different playstyles to build around for PvP and PvE. Just to find out in any serious situation you will be laughed at if you don't have 1 of 5 of these sets on (in both contents btw).

I really, honestly don't care if people laugh at my gear. Let them. When I start posting my achievements in chat they stop laughing and start crying. I let my achievements speak for me.
If you feel good about your build don't let others discourage you at all. Build your toons the way you want, not what others want.

What has caused you to quit the game or barely play any more?

My first TamOne character (I don't count anything before that because I became so disillusioned with the devs' lack of listening to testers during beta) was a bow-wielding Sorceress. She was/is a recreation of a very old TTRPG character of mine, a storm magic-based mage ranger. And her build, once I figured it out, was effective as all get-out. Then one of those updates hit, and suddenly at max level she was less effective than a vestige straight out of the Prison. To be honest, that "balancing" just about caused me to quit, and the build still isn't as good as it was, years later.

Fast forward to the nearer past. Chapters/DLCs with storylines and writing which are increasingly sloppy and poor quality especially when compared to the original. Skill "balances" which aren't. Classes added (usually a good thing) which don't necessarily make sense the way they're introduced or laid out. Lands opened up (again, usually a good thing) which just appear without solid backstories to explain their rediscovery/quest lines. PvP still not being worked on in a meaningful way for those who enjoy it, and Cyrodil in general, despite being a *must do* for PvE achievements, still requires workarounds and a whole lot of luck to escape those who camp and gank.

Continued disregard for the multitude of testers and their findings of imbalances or flat out 'nope, that doesn't work no matter what and would be bad for the game'. Seeming lack of direction by the dev team other than put out another chapter/DLC regardless of needing testing or lore checks or anything.

Sub-classing? I haven't even tried it, to be honest. When it was announced, I thought it would finally be the way I could turn my bow sorc into a proper mage ranger. Then I saw how many are simply running the same three or four build combinations and how many players are being absolutely shut down trying to get into groups when they aren't running one of those builds. I play mostly solo or with guild, anyhow (mainly due to one of those updates' effects), but I've seldom seen such a divide in this community.

And then the events. I can forgive the yearly roster of event quests being stale after playing for so many years. It's to be expected. This Life Day, the devs added a few little quick alternatives - which is much appreciated! If a mechanism could be built in to the rewards which limited how many redundant motifs a player was awarded, especially after so many years, and if the devs would stop "balancing" the trader system........

Then there's the Writhing Wall - the writhing was by the players due to its absolute lack of consistent functionality; it was basically for Pass holders and the rest of us were tossed an even moldier broken bone to shut us up. It was tinkered with in the background by the devs (actual manipulation of progression), it was half-broken at best, it was sloppy, it was ill-advised, and it was divisive. For that reason and several others related, I will likely never purchase the "pass" on top of the two ESO+ subs I already run (and have for years). The event, even from my limited ability to participate (which was appreciated, by the way) was bugged all the way to Coldharbor and back, needlessly.

On the topic of events - by all the small gods, stop the endless cycle of back-to-back or concurrent events and/or Pursuits!!! Yes, I realize we can choose to participate or not. But then someone determined to link certain rewards to said events/pursuits. But then a player loses out on a particular something which can only be gotten by participation in that event/pursuit, so it depends on just how badly you want that costume or skill animation or abode.

What would bring you back?

Honestly, I'm not sure. I log in every day on four accounts (2 EU and 2 NA), do the minimum event or Pursuits requirement, and log out. Yesterday, after earning the new house (on all four logins ), I started decorating on one of them. Then I finished the logins and signed off. Today. I'll go to Craglorn on all four, purchase a few of the enchanted mushrooms or flowers - because such things are my favorite ways to light a property - and then log off.

More "events" such as the server-wide ones which granted us the Grand Psijic Villa or the fragments-combination of the current one. These are gentler, solidly consistent and generally popular. Yes, they sometimes require the purchase of the adjacent DLC if server-based.

On a side note but perhaps somewhat pertinent. Another game which I played twenty years ago and which has consistently had a playerbase even though it went into "maintenance mode" several years ago, just re-emerged with modernization of its systems. It has again become wildly popular ... without adding any more content or promising super duper stuff or anything. It has a limited cash shop, all cosmetics. It also never really suffered power creep, skill imbalances were dealt with immediately (usually brought on by the addition of classes in new content), and even figured out a version of PvP(ish) which made sense game-wise and worked though it was limited and instanced away from the regular content. Its descendant game appears to also be very popular even though it is a vastly different game and experience. I have recently returned to that first, solidly functioning, beautifully crafted game to escape the unfeeling coldness of ESO.

I fear vengeance may have been the last straw for me. I'm still logging on daily, but my trust in ZOS/Bethesda is totally shot. I'm not sure they can get my trust back at this point. I feel like I'm in a relationship I know is over and we just haven't had "the talk" yet. :'(

FoJul wrote: »

Ulvich wrote: »

FoJul wrote: »

I quit, solely on the basis that I could make a build with the hundreds of sets and different playstyles to build around for PvP and PvE. Just to find out in any serious situation you will be laughed at if you don't have 1 of 5 of these sets on (in both contents btw).

I really, honestly don't care if people laugh at my gear. Let them. When I start posting my achievements in chat they stop laughing and start crying. I let my achievements speak for me.
If you feel good about your build don't let others discourage you at all. Build your toons the way you want, not what others want.

If I played the way I wanted in a perfect world, it would be a swallow soul build shooting merciless resolves from ranged while having AOE dots that I can cast from medium range. I would still be able to do decent damage, and would bring some kind of buff or debuff to the team.

In no shape or form does my build
1. Outshine in Single target DPS
2. Outshine in AOE DPS
3. Bring Buffs to the team
4. Bring debuffs for the fight
5. Bring off heals/off tank capabilities

My build doesn't excel in anything. Matter of fact I would even say that my "range blade" build is the least damage/role important playstyle in the entire game.

Usually if you aren't bringing buffs/debuffs from class skills, you at least can-do tons of damage either single target or AoE or sometimes both. This playstyle offers nothing, at all, period.

Before you go on and say, "well bring vulnerability from this skill line or bring this from this skill line".
^ This defeats the whole purpose and I'd rather just slot beam at the end of the day.

But I'm just one persons PoV, I'll just keep the game uninstalled for now.

EDIT:

I asked the best PvE'er I know just for clarity. Take a look at his response.

Swallow Soul Nightblade used to be so much fun back in early ESO, especially on my old Sap Tank.

Really wish one of those morphs would have it’s damage and healing scale off of max health. 🥲

I played around 8,000-10,000 hours on ESO. But now I'm just fed up. I've played something like 4-5 hours this month, whereas I was playing around 100-150 hours per month before.

I feel like the game has completely abandoned endgame & PvP players year after year. A major problem for me is how ridiculously simple the game has become, except for the new dungeons and trials, which represent something like 2% of the game content. We now have rookies with 100 hours in the game who hit 120k DPS, while we're still meeting 30k/60k/120k HP mobs in the overland. It's like we're all playing on super easy mode. No challenge. Nothing. I just feel like all the time, literally dozens of hours, spent parsing and training was successively wiped out by that ***** Oakensoul Ring, then by the strengthening of the HA builds, and then by the subclasses.

The game doesn't offer any challenge anymore. When the Gold Road chapter was released, I completed the new trial on the first day of release with a PUG. And if you don't see why that's a problem, just do some research and see how many times it took a fully dedicated and experienced roster to beat vMOL for the very first time.

I can solo beat any world boss from Gold Road (from what I remember). I've solo beaten the Minotaur in Gold Road. I've solo beaten Ghishzor. I've solo beaten Hollowjack on my first try. I've solo beaten nAS Llothis. I've also solo trifecta'd some of the first DLC dungeons. The game has less than 10% of its content that is HL content. But now, most of it is soloable. It shouldn't be.

I also have a problem with what I see as a cruel lack of ambition. It would be too long to explain, but I just can't accept that a game generating 2 billion in 10 years has evolved so little. I don't know if we can speak and clearly name other MMOs, but if you take the biggest and most famous one in the world, just compare what it looked like 20 years ago to what it looks like now. This is the same engine, but the game looks marvelous in 2025 compared to its past because the dev team has improved the game's graphic aspects with new FX, new assets, new textures, shaders, RTX, etc.

Meanwhile, we had to wait 11 years (11 years) to be able to use our mount in the water.

What would it take for me to come back? Many things:

• Greater difficulty (and I mean real difficulty, not just buffing mobs)
• Better rewards for endgame players (for instance: more exclusive furnishing items when we beat trifecta trials, not just mounts)
• More endgame/HL content, no matter what more casual/unexperienced players might say
• Major visual improvements
• Bigger item limits in housing
• The addition of the 50 most requested QoL features
• More content for what we're paying for every year
• The complete revision of existing and yearly events (not just new quests)
• Strong classes identities to be back
• Nerf beam as much as needed to make other spammables valuable.
• Better daily rewards

This would be a very good start.

Four_Fingers wrote: »

The community of players that are aways complaining about balance because they won't take the time to learn how to build which is major part of the game and wanting nerfs and to take away modes from others who enjoy them.

Just go on ESO Logs, search for any recent trial and look what the best ranked players are playing on bosses...



There is objectively a balance problem. It doesn't mean that the other classes are not playable. It means that you have to play beam if you wanna reach the top of the charts and optimize your group dps.

the not just ignoring feedback on pts, but the fact it was shown that the devs dont even read the PTS forums. they pushed to live Necromancer in the solstice update being broken by their new pet limitations and didnt even realize it was broken till after it went live.

Despite it being reported week 1 of that PTS cycle.

Then they maybe attempted a hotfix? But it didnt work and the class was just left to rot till the next PTS cycle.

seeing the overall patchnotes for that cycle and every single player complaint being ignored yet again, was depressing enough i checked out and completely skipped the wall event. which from what im hearing, was somehow even more depressing.

I've seen a lot of debate about the clumsy implementation of subclasses these days, but as a French player, what has truly set me off was the forced English dubbing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the use of English in video games. In fact, I speak and write English regularly. I even play many games that are not dubbed in my native language, so this is alright to me as long as it's stated clearly that this is temporary and the foreign language in itself is not a big deal. What is a big deal, however, is when you promote a game that is available in different languages while, in reality, it's just done partially, let alone the fact that ESO has always been translated in French since the very start.

The lack of voice acting in my language was already a thing during the Writhing Wall event, but do you know how to make it even more horrible? For me, this became even more problematic with the arrival of the New Life Festival. Sometimes I got the written dialogs in my language, sometimes I didn't. I heard NPCs speaking in French, but there still was some of them speaking a different language in the background. I mean, this omission of details just sucks. And most importantly, it greatly broke the immersion to me.

It was so frustrating that I straight up muted the NPCs, like no joke. I opened the settings, went to the audio menu, set the sound of dialogs to zero and hurried to finish the quests by skipping most of the dialogs just like I did during the Writhing Wall event. At the end of the day, I barely had fun. Not because the quests were bad with a poor writing (I would even say it was quite the opposite) but because I just couldn't enjoy them in the conditions they were promoted. I can't lie, I've sworn a lot when I discovered it and this problem is still present today, so I'm not going to tone it down now or go further into complaints but this move from ZOS was really, really bad.

While I haven't quit yet, my playtime has significantly decreased over this year (to the point I never even bothered to buy the season pass for solstice, and I haven't missed a single chapter in 10 years of playing this game, most of which were pre-ordered).

What has caused me to quit
Like I said, I technically haven't quit. There are technically lots of little factors, most of which have already been mentioned by others here, but the main reason for my reduced playtime (outside of external life factors) has been the complete erosion over the years of the theme and playstyle I find the most fun to play, Lightning Mage, just to force one of the more boring playstyles (to me) that being pet heavy attack builds onto my main class (Sorcerer).

There's so many things that are wrong/have been left to rot for the lightning theme:
Secondly, the constant dismissal/lack of communication surrounding player feedback, especially constructive feedback, posted to the forums and especially regarding balance.
Thirdly, and this has been a very recent thing, the recent class update announcement really does not bode well for my preferred playstyle/theme and will likely be the final straw, removing the last thing keeping my interest in the game.
What would bring me back
Like I said, I haven't quit yet, but what would get me excited to keep playing (and look to buy the latest chapter/pass/whatever they call it), would be addressing the issues outlined above.

Lucasl402 wrote: »

ToddIngram wrote: »

My #1 pain point by far is customer relations.

ZOS has the PTS and all these threads asking for feedback, but they won't even revert the god awful jabs animation after years of complaints. They went with 2 team BG's in spite of being told what a disaster it would be. They changed almost nothing with U35, which drove off project vitality and most of the end game PvE trial community that was creating most of the tutorials and offered training for those willing to put in the time. Then there is vengeance and subclassing, which sure look like efforts to take ESO to official maintenance mode.

All of these shoot yourself in the foot actions by ZOS could have been avoided if they listened to their customer base. Then there is the layers and layers of "customer service" AI interactions it takes to deal with an actual live person at ZOS and how heavy handed the AI moderation is in game and on this forum.

For me it all comes back to customer relations that got us where we are today. It feels like the end of the movie when we're all on shore waving goodbye as the ship we got here on sails away into the sunset.

It's like ZOS decided to totally ignore customer feedback when they released U35. It's been a pretty sharp decline in player population since then. And I'm just flabbergasted that ZOS has said they're going to refuse to support normal live Cyodiil going forward. What happens when a company says they're not going to support the product they're selling? .....

I know what would happen to my business if I refused to support the items I sell in my store. Customers would find someone to shop from who does support the products they sell.

Juomuuri wrote: »

I quit ESO right before sub-classing came out since that launch destroyed my main class, tankblade. Why should I play when my main, my first ever character, was useless? I played him in my vAS+1 clear, and I tanked up to arc 4 IA on him (even got the Inkslayer title from there!). And I played many of my other tanks in clearing vet HM dungeon content.

I actually tested Solstice on the PTS, and it was a sad joke of a DLC. ESO's writing turned awful little by little, starting slowly from Elsweyr and culminating in Gold Road. But I kept playing at that point since I had fun with housing and dungeon gear farms with the occasional IA. Solstice PTS broke me. I uninstalled and canceled my ESO+. In March this year I returned to WoW and that game is great since I can play as a tank spec in any PvE content and actually DEAL DAMAGE to be able to solo group content! You can't do this in ESO, I'm a tank main 100% and I always hated how useless wet towels tanks are here. I want to do enough damage to actually solo IA's first arc, or better yet, have the idiotic companions be competent DDs so I could play the role I'm actually GOOD AT. In WoW, I can do most current content normal dungeons with NPC buddies who make ESO's "companions" seem like utter jokes. They're even better than PUGs sometimes! They also introduced a type of mini dungeon, "delves", which I absolutely love since you have an NPC companion there whose role you can choose depending on your own - I play my tanks with an actual competent enough DD on my side who doesn't stand in stupid!

And now I've been coming back to the forums at times to read threads and watched critical videos on YouTube, and I'm happy I made the decision to pull the plug... But what would bring me back?
> Revert the sub-classing garbage so I can actually play my tanks as intended again.
> Write dialogue that doesn't make me wanna stab my ears, write quests that are interesting to follow (like the stuff we had in Orsinium, Morrowind, Clockwork City, Summerset, Murkmire), tell us about the LORE of the existing races, places etc. And make puzzles actually be puzzles again, not one-click solves...
> Introduce solo content that's soloable as a tank, or make the companions viable DDs in IA and normal dungeons.
> Remove the stupid race locked sliders so I can make my fat elves ACTUALLY fat.
> Add a "visage" for vampires so we can hide our ugly pasty powder skin.
> Make MUCH more cosmetics that are earnable from questing, achievs etc. Gotta losen the cash shop's grip.

...Yeah, that's about it.

All of us who've played for a decade or more have had to create new builds from scratch roughly annually. And we never stop tweaking and updating the builds while we're running them, at least on the PvP side that's how it goes. PvE doesn't change that much, so don't have to update builds near as much in PvE, but it's still expected that people keep up with the times even in PvE for group content.

Extinct_Solo_Player wrote: »

When they moved a lot of things from client side to the server. (Stadia patch) Made lag much worse but ZOS would rather waste even more time with "troubleshooting" with Vengeance and such. Hybridisation and Subclassing just added fuel to the fire. Considering the fact that Stadia is dead maybe revert the server side checks back to client side and invest into a decent anti-cheat. Just my 2 cents.

This along with using TCP instead of UDP like most multiplayer games.

For reference:

TCP vs. UDP

TCP is a connection-oriented protocol that ensures reliable delivery of data by retransmitting lost packets and ensuring that packets are received in the correct order. This makes TCP suitable for applications where data integrity and order are crucial, such as file transfers, web browsing, and email.

UDP, on the other hand, is a connectionless protocol that does not guarantee the delivery or order of packets. This makes UDP faster and more efficient for applications where speed is more important than reliability, such as real-time gaming, video streaming, and voice over IP.

No matter what people left for or what people would need to come back, the important thing to understand is that what ZOS says and does are two vastly different things. Is there a tone shift with the new leadership team? Absolutely. I'm thrilled about that. But the amount of content we need quantitatively, the quality that we need, and the depth that we need going forward honestly seems daunting, in order to regain trust of the playerbase. There's been a lot of talk since COVID and little-to-no action RELATIVELY. That really has to change in 2026.

It's so common for people to doom the game & they have been since 2014, but 2025 in my opinion, felt like the worst year for ESO by a long shot thus far. It was the culmination of so many foundational issues: over-monetization, lack of PTS feedback consideration, and rushing a product out just to release it rather than waiting & testing for maximal quality. It really hurt the game unfortunately. Let's see what they do to turn it around.