An ESO Meta-Review, take two

GreyPilgrim

This will be long, so if you don't feel like a wall of text, just move along. It's just my own personal take on why this game is going downhill, despite the enormous potential it had.
Edit: and I do mean this as generally constructive criticism, even if some of its a little harsh.


The Market for Games

To me, the problems facing ESO begin with the market the game was released into. Right now the video game market in general is just absolutely saturated. Just pop onto Steam or some other game provider and see how many thousands of titles are available. And while a lot of those titles aren't worth the code they're constructed out of, they still fill the market with an enormous number of really cheap games, some of which are good.

And with all this competition, even top dollar games face enormous pressure. For example, look at the reception for the most recent installment in the Thief series. Here's a game that must have had an enormous development budget, but people expect EVERYTHING out of the game, and when it fails in certain elements, it just gets panned. It's only been out a year, and it's already selling at half it's initial price, and will likely be available in the 5 Dollar bargain bin by next year.

And this is certainly not the only top-tier game to see this kind of depreciation. Honestly, as a consumer, I expect that games are going to drop in price, and I never pay the launch price of a game. I always wait a year or two and pick them up on sale. My point in all of this is that video game buyers now expect to be able to buy really good games really cheap.

The Market for MMO's

If the market for video games in general is saturated, the market for MMO's is even worse. There are literally over a hundred active MMORPG titles on the market. Only about 20% of those titles are pay-to-play. Of the approximately 40 title launched since 2010, only 5 are currently pay-to-play.

Just think about it. There have been roughly 10 MMO's released per year for the last 4 years, and while many of them are second rate, they are still all competing for players to spend money on them, with each other, and with all the other MMO's that are still active. Is it any wonder that most of them tank? And with the existing track record of games launching and then going Free-to-Play, or Freemium, why wouldn't most gamers assume that a title will be F2P within a few years.

So the same market dynamic occurs with MMO's as the rest of video games. Players expect that MMO's will be cheaper if they wait a few years, and with all the games they can already play for cheap, are simply willing to wait.

So my point is that ZOS decision to launch a premium MMO with a stiff upfront cost and a standard monthly fee was an ill-considered decision. While I would argue that from a quality of development standpoint that this game was worth what it cost, that doesn't mean that the video game market could support that cost.

Given that the whole point of an MMO is to try and create a long-term gaming experience, ZOS should have bitten the bullet, offered the game for substantially less upfront cost, and a substantially lower sub, with the hopes of drawing in and keeping more subbers. They should have accepted that to get to WOW like numbers, they were going to have to spend a few years scraping by.

Instead, they made an upfront money grab, and then watched the numbers fall-off really quickly. Which makes me ask the rhetorical question, why bother making it an MMO? Seriously, that development money could have been spent on another TES single-player title, if all you got out of it was a years profits. What's the point of making long-term games for short-term profits?

And if ZOS thought that players would stick around while the games kinks were worked out, they were clearly wrong. This is the other implication of a saturated market.

Investing in Development Time

Simply put, it is not 1999. Or even 2004. Back in the day, when there were relatively few MMORPG's, and players were not yet 'veterans' of the MMO experience, players were willing to stick around through the rough spots. Seriously, EQ could be buggy at launch, because it was pretty much one of the only games in town.

In order to get players to pony up big bucks, and monthly sub fees, MMO's must now be almost perfect at launch. ESO was not. In retrospect, it seems clear now that it could have used another year of development. Would that have cost more? yeah. But given that the game is going B2P after a year, what was the real value of launching prematurely with a P2P model? Seriously, why not offer an extended free-to-play Beta first, with crowd-funding options to generate some cash, and THEN go pay-to-play when you've actually got a working game?

So this, to me, was another mistake, figuring that the traditional MMO model of development would still work in 2014. It didn't. For an MMO like this to work now it needs to be able to instantly grab players and keep them.

The Game Itself

In addition to these problems with the market that ESO was released into, there have always been problems with the game itself. Some of these are problems that are general to all MMO's, and others are particular to ESO.

The Problem of Player's

The first hurdle in making an MMO is, obviously, the players themselves. Honestly, we're a pain in the arse. We're extraordinarily variable in our desires, our play styles, our levels of ability, and our attitudes towards perceived wrongs.

MMO's attempt to build games that are open-world and offer different approaches for different players. But where a single-player game can accomodate many of those differences with the flick of a difficulty slider-bar, an MMO has to aim for the middle ground, and stick to it. In a single-player game, the player will never know that their build was horribly bad, because they have no baseline for comparison with other players. In an MMO, the first time you get wiped by a boss, or owned in PVP, you immediately know that something is wrong.

This means that pleasing everyone is almost impossible. Some will find the content too hard, other's too easy. Some will find the build they like playable, other's will not. ((I remember seeing a Skyrim review from a player who used only Illusion magic to play it. That was possible with Skyrim, albeit difficult. With ESO, it would simply be impossible.)) Some will figure out the ins and outs of the class and skill systems, some won't. More will blame their difficulties on the developer, than will blame their difficulties on themselves.And since the developers are in fact sometimes at fault, this makes picking out the legitimate gripes from the whining extraordinarily difficult.

So building an open-world game in which players face off against both the game and each other is ridiculously hard. And this difficulty makes the central challenge of any MMO boil down to one thing.

Balance

Seriously, balance is always the issue in MMO's. How to balance classes, how to balance builds, how to balance gear, how to balance abilities, how to balance player skill level, how to balance the needs of PVE and PVP, how to balance the grind that makes MMO's into game time investments with players desires for instant gratification, etc, etc.

So every MMO faces this difficulty, but I want to look at specific balance challenges for ESO.

Balancing TES expectations with an MMO

The first major problem for ESO is the background the game comes from. The TES series has been enormously successful and popular, and often, at least to me, for reasons that inherently have to do with it's being a single player game.

I liked that it was open-world, that I could truly go anywhere, anytime, and do stuff. But that relies on the game constantly rescaling itself to the player level, which is impossible in MMO's.

I liked that I could mix and match my abilities any way I liked. But if I found a particular combination that was OP, all I had to do was adjust the difficulty slider up, and there was no-one complaining "ZOMG! Dual-Wield + Light Armor+ Smithing+ Enchanting is OP!!" (And in Skyrim it was.)

And if a build is OP in a single player game, you don't have to worry whether everyone uses it, and the negative impact on play diversity. In MMO's, the whole point is to get groups of players working together to accomplish goals, and that means having distinct roles for those players. So balancing players expectations of being able to mix and match every weapon/armor/spell/ability combination thinkable, with them having distinct roles that contribute to team play becomes a major challenge.

I also liked the action game feel, that I was just swinging my sword, casting my spells on instinct, not staring at a hotbar looking at timers and trying to calculate synergistic effects. But MMO's need playstyle diversity, and that means having more distinct abilities. This is why basically EVERY MMO ever created uses a hotbar system.

Further, the instant gratification of press-key-attack-executes translates into a play advantage for people with quick reflexes and heads-up awareness. Without timers that force you to space out and mix up attacks, it becomes possible to figure out what skill gives you the most offense/defense, and then how to endlessly spam that skill. It speeds up game play AND slows it down. A tank who figures out the best defense system becomes impossible for ten-people to take down, and game-play grinds to a halt. Alternatively, an attacker who figures out the best offense combo becomes able to dispatch everybody, EXCEPT that tank, in the blink of an eye.

And suddenly these things look OP to everyone who hasn't figured them out. So to me, there is a synergy here of particular things that the ESO devs wanted to achieve that sit in tension with one another. How do you build a game where everyone can do everything, and still have distinct class roles? How do you build a game without timers, and not have all of your AVA devolve into spam wars?

Sadly, the answer so far is "You can't." Seriously, even with the coming 1.6 updates it does not appear that ESO has solved these basic problems. Maybe it isn't possible. In any case, it has killed the AVA system, and is one of the essential problems of this game.

Magicka and Stamina

The issue of Magicka and stamina is a particular sub issue in the balancing of the game. It seems clear that the devs never quite meant for them to be directly balanced, but rather indirectly balanced through mixing of builds.

Basically, for an MMO there is a need for some kind of role division, and therefore for classes. However, TES games have always been 'classless', so to speak, so they needed to be invented ESO. Once ZOS invented them, they assumed that player's would gravitate towards playing those roles, and would therefore focus their attention on Class skills, with armor and weapon skills basically being filler.

Towards this end, all Class skills were made magicka based, and weapon skills were thrown into Stamina. However, stamina is also used for dodge roll, CC break, sneaking, sprinting, and blocking. As long as you focus most of your ability use in magicka skills, this works fine, but as soon as you try to use more stamina abilities you find yourself at a disadvantage.

And in building the game this way, ZOS completely misjudged the desire of players to play roles that aren't magic based. Hence, the first issue here is that the focus on Class/Magicka abilities left players who wanted to play weapon attack based builds feeling crippled.

Furthermore, the way classes were balanced in terms of how much stam and magicka they use was also out of whack. This is especially true in the context of AVA. For example, with Sorc's, the need for stam is greatly reduced. The blink ability almost completely eliminates the need for sprinting, dodge rolling, and blocking. Even CC is needed less because you can often get in and out of a fight before your opponent can get a bead on you. So Sorc's can focus all of their attention on magicka, and be extraordinarily effective. They also have many passives that improve their spell and magicka use, and can focus on staves and light armor to boost that even further.

By contrast, Nightblades playing stealth roles were split between using magicka and stamina. On the one hand, most of their most powerful single target attacks are magicka based, but to get close enough to use effectively you need to be sneaking, which eats up stam, and you're probably going to need to roll dodge, block, and cc break to survive once you get in close enough to use them. So NB's were often torn between balancing two different resources, or using bow to stay at range and make stam focus playable, or abandoning stealth altogether to become just another type of magic user.

Basically, the ways that different classes use stamina and magicka created imbalances in the effectiveness of the classes. This was further exacerbated by the functionality of the armors. Since most people are using class based attacks, which mostly cause magic damage, it turns out that light armor, which has high spell resistance as well as boosts to magic use, was actually superior for many more builds than just damage dealers. The net result was the impression that everyone, even tanks, were all running around in robes.

And weapons had the same problem, that some used magic and some stam. Net result: dresses and sticks. And the diversity of play that ZOS had hoped to achieve went right out the window.

Balance and Symmetry

While the re-balance in 1.6 tries to address these issues, so far my read from both play testing and forum surfing is that it fails, especially in its impact on AVA. And I believe that it fails for the simple reason that the use of magicka and stamina remain asymmetrical, and no amount of tweaking that doesn't address this asymmetry will be effective.

As long as the stamina pool is also used for half-a-dozen functions besides abilities, stamina builds that use those functions will always be at a disadvantage.

As long as the vast majority of class abilities are magicka based, focusing on stamina abilities puts you at a disadvantage (with the exception of bow, which is only effective because its the exception)

These issues are not fixed by the re-balancing and Champ system, and in fact for some people are exacerbated by the handful of class ability morphs that are now stam based.

And many issues besides

These major issues in design and balance are just a few of the problems that ESO faces. For AVA, I could probably write an entire dissertation on how these balance issues have interfaced with the world build to make AVA a virtually complete fail. (Don't think it's a fail? This game launched with TEN PvP servers and failed to ever have more than 2 of those at full capacity. And the excess of servers allowed buff camping that affected the entire balance of gameplay for the whole game. The AVA system simply has never worked, and therefore never drawn the number of players that ZOS had apparently hoped for.)

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy AVA in this game. It is to say that like a bad drug, the side affects start to eat at you the longer you use it. And while I had kind of gotten used to the hangovers, I had also figured out some builds that I found passably enjoyable, even if they were a little frustrating.

But many others were not able to stomach the flaws, and 1.6 so far shows me nothing that will bring people back. And I'm guessing its going to introduce all kinds of issues for players who were more focused on PVE play as well.

Concluding thoughts

In short, ESO is game development gamble that has failed to pay off. The evidence of that is in the switch to B2P. While it MIGHT result in a brief flurry of new and returning players, the essential problems with the game are all still there, and that flurry is unlikely to be sustained.

Furthermore, for those of us who have already bought the game, and who could give a darn less about cosmetic gew-gaws (literally, I have yet to even equip a single 'loyalty reward'. I hate pets), there is substantially less to justify staying subbed. Why invest time playing a game build that's a month from obsolescence? And what I'm seeing of 1.6 is uninspiring.

And unless ZOS plans to release $180 worth of DLC's every year, keeping a sub seems like a waste of money. It starts to look more reasonable to just play for free, and buy the DLC's, than have Premium membership. If too many people make that same calculation, it's bad news for development income.

Which is overall a shame. I actually had hopes that this game would make it, which is why I'm still here. And while I question many of the development decisions for this game, I realize that the challenges the developers faced were huge, and I think the biggest blunders are those made by the business managers.

So, ZOS dev's, good fight!

Money people, good luck with yer money grab, and pinning the games failings on the dev's.

AshySamurai

Awesome post. Read it all. Great job.

Gidorick

Torquebow

Thanks for the repost mate. I guess they take a offense to people that bash their mediocre MMO. If they really wanted their game to grow and succeed, maybe they would take criticism better and learn from it. This game has the potential to be great with a little TLC and a solid base community...


WoW wasn't built in a day.....kek

Gidorick

Torquebow wrote: »

WoW wasn't built in a day

Love it.

Sylvyr

Nice post

MornaBaine

Well done and spot on. I keep WANTING to use Stamina...but basically I find I'm not allowed to. That alone has made this game super frustrating to me. Well, that and the way they treat vampires and werewolves.

ferdiverbeekeb17_ESO2

Just negative blabla, why even bother playing the game?

GreyPilgrim

Torquebow wrote: »

Thanks for the repost mate. I guess they take a offense to people that bash their mediocre MMO. If they really wanted their game to grow and succeed, maybe they would take criticism better and learn from it. This game has the potential to be great with a little TLC and a solid base community...


WoW wasn't built in a day.....kek

Just as a note, the reason for the previous posts closing did not have anything to do with the critique presented. In effect, it was a technicality, and its someones job to observe those, so I wasn't particularly upset.

RazielSR

Great post.

I said it here long time ago: TES universe should never have been mixed with the mmo market.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

@GreyPilgrim‌
Great post, and great attempt at being constructive.
You have a lot of great points and I agree with you on some.

However, you are wrong on one point: The business aspect.

ESO has been and is still a financial success.
We have some numbers from non official but mostly reliable sources, and everything points at ESO doing exceptionally well for its first year. And most of it is due to the upfront cost and the prelaunch marketing of being a subscription only game.

In the current market, positionning an MMO as not going b2p/f2p is a selling point. It's almost a unique selling proposition. There is a real lassitude of MMO players towards the cash shop model and an oasis of quality is what the core audience is looking for. And that core audience is composed of the players that will play, pay and support a game for years.

Revenue wise, f2p/b2p games are doing worse than subscription base, so it's not a sound business move any way you look at it. It's not sustainable either because to create revenue it has to sell items that will make the players willing to pay "finish" the game sooner and leave. It also has to ruin the game for non payers in order to entice them to pay. But by doing so, less and less people actually graduate from free players to customers since the game drive them away faster and faster. The turnover eventually kills the population.
It's like being trapped in a cave and eating your own arm to survive.

I have a couple wall of texts I'd like you to read in order to see the complete picture behind the change.
One interesting article on the new release plan of MMOs by someone else:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/147220/was-zenimax-stupid-like-a-fox/p1
And one post by myself explaining how the b2p change is a bad business decision:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/148940/1-6-looks-great-forget-about-b2p-f2p/p1

If you can afford the time, please comment on either of those. I am certain you have a lot to contribute to those discussions.

KleanZlate

I'm really starting to hate the word "meta"!!

GreyPilgrim

@‌Frosth
Thanks for the forwards. I think I would still put out there that MMO's, to me, are games that are supposed to be around for a LONG time, relatively speaking. Whether they made the switch to B2P now because of an intentional element of their business plan, or because subs weren't bringing them want they wanted, either way, I agree with you that its a bad decision, especially for the long term, which is what really matters.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

GreyPilgrim wrote: »

@‌Frosth
Thanks for the forwards. I think I would still put out there that MMO's, to me, are games that are supposed to be around for a LONG time, relatively speaking. Whether they made the switch to B2P now because of an intentional element of their business plan, or because subs weren't bringing them want they wanted, either way, I agree with you that its a bad decision, especially for the long term, which is what really matters.

I agree too.
The example that should be followed is Eve Online. It started with a very bad launch but by focusing on the core audience of their game and truly improving their game, they are now part of the top 10 MMOs revenue wise.
And that's by starting with no know IP, very little resources and a very niche genre. There is no doubt that ESO with its IP, its resources and soon its release on consoles could have gone above the million susbcribers.
FFXIV managed 2M in a year and isn't even on xbox yet.

The silly thing is that since 2009, I only pay MMOs per month to avoid getting stuck after such a switch. As I saw 1.6 coming closer and all the improvement since release, I was about to pay for the longest possible subscription.
I was starting to trust ZOS.
I'm so glad this b2p switch did not get anounced a month later than it was.
Now I'll just wait for the switch and never give them a dime ever again.

Gidorick

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

FFXIV managed 2M in a year and isn't even on xbox yet.

where does everyone keep getting 2 million players for ffxiv? They have ALMOST 1 million BETWEEN FFXI, FFXIV, & Dragon Quest X

DMuehlhausen

vestmanneb17_ESO wrote: »

I'm really starting to hate the word "meta"!!

Trying playing Magic: The Gathering. All you hear is meta game...

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Gidorick wrote: »

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

FFXIV managed 2M in a year and isn't even on xbox yet.

where does everyone keep getting 2 million players for ffxiv? They have ALMOST 1 million BETWEEN FFXI, FFXIV, & Dragon Quest X

Every single article about that game. Where are you getting the 1M figure?

Berinima

Amazing post, unfortunately a waste of time even writing it. Don't get me wrong, I am writing a lot these days myself. ZOS won't change their route, at least not to the extent they should to vastly improve their game. See, I made this request in the PTS section:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/149984/zos-could-we-have-a-template-with-all-possible-cps-unlocked

The controversy about the Champion System aside, this is an issue that needs to be tested. Because whether people like the system or not it is a balancing issue after all. And testing is what we are supposed to do on the PTS. They moved so many things around with the patch, the hope that no problems will arise at all is a pipe dream. But while their staff is insanely fast at closing threads, moving them around and even reacting to fan art, a thread like this is completely ignored. They don't even react, they completely go into radio silence mode about stuff like that. And I am a developer myself, implementing a request like that would take minutes. An intern could do that for zero money. I am not saying that every request must or should be fulfilled but sometimes even a proper statement would be smart. Unfortunately, they are not very smart about those things. And that is especially bad because a lot of people still care about the game. I mean we all still stick around. You write an amazing post like that. We DO care. They don't.

Same for the XP gain or the more or less apparent nerfs they have done with the patch. I mean, I really don't want to start another argument about 1.6 here, don't get me wrong. But the patch has some severe issues. While they could at least try to prevent some discussions by giving some nice little public relations statements, they just don't. Their route has been set for at least a year ahead and they won't budge. The patch will go live like this, hopefully minus some bugs but that's it.

What makes it even worse is that some issues could be quite easily resolved. I mean the magicka/stamina and hybrid build issue you are also describing. I get that they tried to adapt the TES (offline) system to ESO. But the only reason TES never had these issues is that there have never been classes or weapon skills. Still, they try to hold on to the fundamental concept of having the three resource pools. But it just doesn't work. It never has and it never will. At least not how it should. And there is even an insanely simple fix: Keep everything as it is but introduce an additional resource called "Adrenaline" (or "Initiative" or whatever your writing department comes up with). Then move all weapon skills to this new resource. That doesn't even break the relation to the TES franchise because there never have been any weapon skills in the first place. And finally, don't scale skills with the resource pool. Balancing wise, this is outragously stupid. Get rid of weapon and spellpower. There is no need for that. Let the skills just scale with the item level of your weapons. Boom, you're done. Problem solved. And also this is so much easier to balance. Hybrid builds are suddenly valid. And that even addresses some power gap issues with the Champion System because now your damage won't scale that much with all the points a new player doesn't have. Your pools would be larger so you would need less potions but that's it. And it's easier to grasp. First rule of game mechanics: Keep it simple, keep it stupid. But these things will never change, period.

Same goes with their release cycle of new content. Of course it would have been so much better to scrap all the stuff they have in place for the patch and deliver real content to play with. I mean the Justice System is really nice and offers a good addition to the game in the tradition of their offline installments, sure. But seriously, it's fun for a couple of days. Then you have the skill line maxed out and the one useful passive you want to get. That's it. But it's easy to develop, at least way easier than a new zone or a new raid. Or have a look at the cash shop items. A team of approximately three 3D artists can produce all that content in about a week. But they can sell the Senche panther or the Guar mount A LOT. I mean they are cool, indeed. But the comparison of the costs and what they get out of it means a lot of $$$. They don't even need you to be subscribed for that. It just doesn't matter to them. You are subscribed means $$$ and you get your kitteh. You are not subscribed means $$$ because you need to buy the kitteh. If you feel like there is not enough content for you that doesn't matter either because they already got the $$$ you are willing to pay them. New players will come and buy the box. If they want their kitteh too that means moar $$$ again.

See, spellcrafting has been teased a long time ago. In their last Q&A they stated that they are not currently working on it anymore. Imperial City is said to be ready however they are not releasing it. The new zone was teased, yet they are not releasing it. And they don't do that because if they did they would run out of content for the next year. Because that's how long it takes to produce a DLC like that. Whether people like the patch or not, it was designed around the idea of going B2P. Whether people like the Champion System or not, it was designed around the idea of stretching out the already existing content to eternity. What we will see however are lots of new pets, mounts and costumes. These things are very cost efficient to produce and give them almost the same money as putting actually playable content in the store. Some people could even like a game where this is all they get. But this is what will happen. I think we should probably deal with that or move on.


Kind regards,
Berinima

Gix

A well written post. I just disagree for the most part.

A lot of what you said puts the "blame" on the idea that it's an MMO. The meta, the balancing, the market, etc.

What good would lowering the price tag on release do if most players had problems connecting, questing, playing in a group not to mention the constant crashing?

The only failure here is how the game held up to the expectations of the majority of the players and how Zenimax attempted to remedy some of the complaints.