An Open Letter to Zenimax

MikeTheeElder

To Whom It May Concern,

As both an TESO:TU player and ESO Plus subscriber on XBOX ONE essentially from day one, my dissatisfaction and distrust in the direction in which this wonderful game is headed is growing steadily. I write this letter on March 23 having spent about 12 hours exploring the new Thieves Guild content which is a combination of enjoyable, often beautiful, but overall underwhelming and frustrating. Yes, the actual Thieves Guild patch, the new zone, and the quest line are welcome additions. What I can't understand though is how badly you missed on the issues that are at the very core of what is causing the most frustration among your community of players. I want to preface the rest of my comments here by saying that I am in no way familiar with the actual technical aspects of game construction and that my issues are more directed towards your actions in a philosophical sense.

The very first thing I want to bring up is the ever intusive, ever frustrating , ever present issue of lag. I'm not just talking PvP here either, although that is where one is most likely to find this enemy of fun. I'm speaking more of the two newest DLC zones, Orsinium and Hew's Bane respectively. I can only assume you have testers who have made mention of this along with rampant disconnect issues and random loading screens. The latter of which is an issue in any high traffic zone throughout Tamriel, particularly Elden Root in Grahtwood. Let me focus on Hew's Bane though, as this is the newest DLC and the one where, after basically 6 months of console players addressing these same issues on these same forums, you still failed to create a smooth running enviroment, free of lag and the intolerable amount of disconnecting and dashboarding. Here we have a zone with both a skill line and quest line which rely heavily upon not being detected. This of course involves sneaking past guards and the watchful eyes of NPC. How then do you think it is going to work out when your players are hit with lag while trying to evade either detection or pursuit? My most aggravating moment came when I was disconnected with an inventory of stolen loot, only to log back in face to face with the guard I had been trying to avoid prior.

In fairness I should say I derive a certain amount of pleasure of seeing my fellow players frozen in various degrees of action throughout these zones. There's just something about a High Elf on a camel frozen in mid-air that tickles my funny bone. The problem is of course far more obtuse than these acute examples. Just running through the city exploring, subjects your players to an endless wave of glitching and what can best be described as stuttering mechanics. What I find the most disheartening about these issues is that they universally exsist in Orsinium as well. I loved Wrothgar! Loved it for about a day that is, before just trying to do the daily writs at the city's crafting areas meant a constant wave of disconnections. The clothing station, you know, the one where you fixed the cooking fire, had me trapped one time for 15 minutes trying to reach the door to escape. As of the time of this letter I still cannot run from the guild traders to the bank without encountering a random load screen, or being disconnected. I simply don't understand how that can be possible after months of feedback on these very forums. These problems are of course all PvE based, let me quickly address PvP.

I'm not a big PvP player, never have been, probably never will be, and my hope is that when I post this someone can add to my thoughts and hopefully do so with the same respectful spirit in which I aimed for in this letter. My experiences in PvP, in particular large group play, has been steadily declining with each new patch. Yes, small group versus small group action seemingly runs very smooth, but if this is your aim, it's simply not realistic. No amount of new sets, abilities, buffing, or nerfing will address the reality of the problem with PvP lag: Players want to play in groups, usually large groups. We're not just talking siege where all the players are essentially forced to be stacked on top of each other as being where your biggest problems exsist, but open field combat where the fighting factions are relatively spread out leads to an equal amount of lag. If you've never played on an open battlefield where say 40 plus players are engaged, let me tell you, for about 85% of those players they can just close there eyes and hope for the best and get nearly the same results as your best PvP players. Animations, both effect and movement, typically breakdown to the point where you look like a cartoon character whose legs start spinning before they zoom off. By the time you do zoom off though, the whole situation has changed and there's no telling what mess you've just gotten yourself in to.

Here then is the crux of my argument. You have an essentially great game in theory. If everything is working right it really is alot of fun, with some fantastic features, cool skills, and mechanics. Most importantly, and I can't stress this enough, you have an amazing community of players. These players are your greatest asset, whether you want to recognize that or not. However, since the Imperial City DLC which was amazing, but inexplicably left to rot on the vine, you have been steadily force feeding us mediocrity. What's frustrating is that it's mediocrity with amazing potential! Along with that, you have failed in every way possible to keep the older content relavant. I know you're tired of hearing questions about why end game PvE content and the subsequent rewards haven't scaled up, but I think you have to agree that this omission is an agregious one. You essentially brought that elephant into the room of your own accord. My goal in writing this letter was to hopefully address these issues, albeit from the limited understanding of a relatively casual player (Although, I've logged probably close to 2 thousand hours of game play!), and say this final thought:

If you refuse to address the core issues affecting the quality of gameplay in TESO:TU (Lag, broken skill mechanics, outdated content/rewards) and instead continue focusing on surface issues such as new DLC, you will continue to lose the players who make this game as enjoyable as it is. I know that negativity, especially on the scale which you must deal with when you have a community this large, with the communication skills of the vast majority of your key demographic audience, is a labor of Herculean effort, but know that it comes from a good place; from people who want this game to succeed because we see its potential; from a community that wants this game to be around for a very long time.

Thank you for your time.

Volkodav

Yeah,threads about all of this have been up for a long time,but people still play,and new ones arrive all the time.
ESO aint goin' nowhere for a looong time.

ZOS_MollyH

We are closing this thread as there are already several active threads regarding quality of play in Cyrodiil as well as discussion of the pros and cons of content releases. These are some of the most commonly discussed issues on the forums here, and as such we are suggesting continuing the discussion in one of the already active threads. There are currently open threads in PvP Combat and Skills, here and here in General Discussion, as well as the other PvP forums.