Why do these bad design choices even exist?

AuldWolf

I regularly question them.

Forced grouping: Don't do it. You'll lose players and alienate people. Allow any number of people to play any of the content. You'll have more players, a happier playerbase, and whilst you may lose 30~ players who'll be annoyed about their privilege, you'll gain 30,000 more. Forced grouping is one of the things I've heard people talk of as the reason they don't play ESO. They don't like it. Most modern thinking gamers don't. ESO is looking antiquated with it. Socialising doesn't mean forced grouping. Socialising, for most, is roleplaying. When most people are questing, they'll do it solo or in a group of 2-3 max.

Pseudo-forced Grouping: World bosses, in this case. Why? You have an instanced world, so why not allow people to pick difficulty for world zones? You can have anything ranging from casual (for the vast majority) to HYPER-L33T for the fifty or so people who'd actually want that. By having world bosses require a group, or a specific build, you're getting a reputation for upholding antiquated MMO standards.

Forcing Players to Play Content They Dislike: You have certain kinds of abilities (PvP's good heal, the Undaunted magicka taunt) that have absolutely no valid alternatives whatsoever, thus forcing people to play content they won't enjoy. The undaunted thing could be fixed by moving Inner Fire to rank 1 or 2 (I believe 2 can be achieved with This One's on Me), but the PvP heal really needs a valid alternative.

Encouraging Competitive Behaviour Everywhere: This is going to result in an incredibly toxic community. You're allowing duels inside towns (a huge mistake), and you still haven't introduced the sorts of instanced nodes that Guild Wars 2 has had since launch (which is embarrassing). You could make the game more appealing to the average player by reducing these factors.

From 'the outside' ESO still looks far too much like a traditional MMO and still has too much in common with the likes of Wildstar. That's why regular Elder Scrolls players are so readily dismissing it. They'll cite reasons like these as to why. Oh, I can't solo that content? Oh, I can't get those abilities I like because of archaic, draconic reasons? And so on. ESO looks a bit too much like an old man, trying to be hip and cool with his singing, dancing, and dad humour at times. It looks like Everquest trying to hide its shame. And that's really, really unfortunate.

It bothers me because ESO has the potential to be a new wave MMO that could draw in people like never before. It just has to leave its outmoded, outdated, antiquated ideas behind. Ideas that belong in 2006 more than they do in late 2016. If ESO doesn't leave these ideas behind, a new MMO will come along eventually that does, and it'll soak up all of ESO's players. This will happen because although ESO is modern, it still can't let go of these alienating, antiquated factors. So it's leaving room for someone to do it better and just eat up ESO's niche. That's what happened with Champions Online, as I'll keep pointing out. The playerbase kept telling them not to kow-tow to the hardcore, not to bend over to privileged force grouping minorities. We tried. And they did. Their day one patch which was meant to appease those minorites cut their community in half. Half of the players actually left. And we know this since CO provides data on those playing.

They kept attempting to appease those minorities, and now CO is a ghost town. I'm begging you not to make these same mistakes. If you want to keep your subscribers, your whales, the people who'll actually buy things from the crown store? Keep your casuals! The hardcore, the PvP players, these aren't the people you get money from. You get your money from the roleplayers, those who're playing the game to have fun. Those who're grinding will hit the content cap then leave, as they do. They'll only come back for a little while for new content. The people who'll stay after that, and will keep paying for new crown store stuff, are people who don't rush through the game. They're the people you want to appeal to.

I keep making these threads and posts because ESO is just CO's history repeating itself and I'm dreading it. My problem with all this? I really like ESO. I really liked CO, too. CO lost its community, but I stuck around for a really long time anyway. After a while, everything was just hardcore and PvP appeasement, and then the game was put on life support because there was no more money. All of your money comes from your casual audience, whom you are spurning. That's the problem with your community shrinking.

The way to get a bigger community isn't finding new ways to force people to play together, that's an outdated idea that should be left at the mass grave of every MMO that's tried that and failed. The way to get a bigger community is to make a game that's accessible and fun to play for the majority of people.

If you fixed these issues, you'd draw in all of the single player Elder Scrolls fans you're losing out on.

Please don't kill off ESO with bad design choices. One Tamriel's world bosses change tells me that you're going in the wrong direction, now. You're misguided and you believe that this will actually reap you greater profits. It won't. Down this road lies ruin. You'll lose everything. Never listen to the hardcore players or the PvP players. I'm sorry, but they're a minority and you can afford to lose them. What you cannot afford is to lose the casuals who're buying crown store items and paying for subscriptions. I mean, I spend upward of $400~ a month on ESO between subscriptions for myself and my partner, and crown store purchases. There are a lot of people like me.

Keep doing what you're doing, keep going down this path, you'll lose us. There'll always be another MMO that'll be smart enough to figure out what's going on, and to secure a huge community filled with people who'll happily pay large amounts of money.

Fix this. please. This really is a heartfelt plea. Don't be Champions Online 2: Failing Harder.

Ch4mpTW

JD2013

It's an mmo. There's a heck of a lot more solo content than group.

If you're not keen on group content then an mmo may not be for you.

DRXHarbinger

Seems like you need to quit. Pls mail me your stuff.

LadyNalcarya

First of all, please dont speak for all "single player Elder Scrolls fans". Not all of us hate challenges, mind you. Otherwise mods that increase game's difficulty (like Deadly Dragons for Skyrim) wouldnt be so popular. And putting labels on people will never make the community any better.
Yes, the majority of playerbase is casual... But those casual players are not nessesarily TES fans.
Also... Why do you think that the majority of players dislike those new world bosses etc? We, forum users, are the minority, and from what I've seen, it was quite succesful: before 1T update a world boss could stay alive for god knows how long and no one cared. Now dolmens and boss spawns are crowded.
Last but not least, this game doesnt really cater to "hardcore" community. And no, boosting world pve difficulty from old vr12 values doenst mean "catering to hardcore gamers". It was just updating outdated content that was designed with no champion system in mind.

Wollust

You don't sound like someone who should be playing an MMO.

Lashiing

yet another thread where op crys about how hard the game is
i hear maplestory's servers are still up

Apokalypt

Huh? Am I in the wrong game? Last time I checked, ESO was an MMO...
You know that EVERY SINGLE MMO on this planet has your "forced grouping". Heck, that is why it is even an MMO. If you want to play EVERYTHING solo, then play Skyrim or something else. But not an MMO...

Holy ***...that is like crying over the amount of shooting in CoD, Battlefield, CS.
Or like whining when you have to drive a lot in a driving game...

Easily_Lost

How are you forced to group with anyone? Is it because you have no friends in the game to group with!
How does dueling in towns bother you? It used to bother me because it was new, now I just walk thru the middle of the fight like it's no big deal ( or that it's not there ).
Like some of the other posters said, it sounds like it's time for you to move on.

WalksonGraves

It's all the UPS guy's fault. He hangs out by the front desk making suggestions long after he is done with the deliveries.

bellanca6561n

No need to beat up on the op.

ESO, from day one, has suffered from being neither fish nor fowl.

It was merrily moving along as an online game project when Skyrim hit, HUGE, forcing development down its soup sandwich road.

vyndral13preub18_ESO

I thought all the people who thought ESO was the next single player Elder Scrolls game left in Beta.

Zuuman

Your asking for this game to be something else completely, if you dont enjoy what it has to offer just move on. We wont miss you and youll end up enjoying your spent time gaming. No need for a drama filled I QUIT thread that polute my safespace.

Kodrac

Who's being forced to group? No one is being forced to do anything. Period.

Can't solo that WB? Good, it wasn't meant to be. Or run that dungeon all by your lonesome? It wasn't designed for that. Don't want to PvP? Don't. You can do just fine in the PvE world without Vigor. Oh, but you want Vigor because you think it's the key to soloing WBs and dungeons. Gotcha.

idk

@AuldWolf

Appears single player is more your style.

Thelon

AuldWolf wrote: »

One Tamriel's world bosses change tells me that you're going in the wrong direction, now. You're misguided and you believe that this will actually reap you greater profits. It won't. Down this road lies ruin. You'll lose everything.

Fear Mongering has reached Rank IV

AuldWolf wrote: »

Allow any number of people to play any of the content. You'll have more players, a happier playerbase, and whilst you may lose 30~ players who'll be annoyed about their privilege, you'll gain 30,000 more.

AuldWolf wrote: »

Never listen to the hardcore players

AuldWolf wrote: »

By having world bosses require a group, or a specific build, you're getting a reputation for upholding antiquated MMO standards.

AuldWolf wrote: »

From 'the outside' ESO still looks far too much like a traditional MMO and still has too much in common with the likes of Wildstar.

AuldWolf wrote: »

ESO looks a bit too much like an old man, trying to be hip and cool with his singing, dancing, and dad humour at times.

AuldWolf wrote: »

All of your money comes from your casual audience, whom you are spurning.

ValkynSketha

I will say it again MMORPG .

Taleof2Cities

JD2013 wrote: »

It's an mmo. There's a heck of a lot more solo content than group.

If you're not keen on group content then an mmo may not be for you.

^This.^

Though ZOS is doing better at catering to the players that like to do solo activities ... this is still an MMO after all.

Time to work on being social and group up ...

MercyKilling

Really? I found the inability to group for the fighter and mage's guild quests a bad design decision. Ditto non-instanced dungeons. Ditto having to be in a guild to sell/no auction house. Ditto being able to join five guilds and not just one. There are plenty of design flaws in this game(in my experience, anyway) and "forced" grouping is NOT one of them.

Champions Online is a pale copy of City of Heroes. Jack Emmert slunk away after being let go/asked to resign and the tantrum he threw became that game. Please don't compare that game to this one.

Zuuman

ValkynSketha wrote: »

I will say it again MMORPG .

This, this! And again... this!!!!

Going through your discussion history all you talk about is how this whole game *** you off in every aspect.
Why don't you just stop playing it if all you want is single player experience, there is no point in taking the MMO part out of an MMO game. You say every other MMO don't do this and that and blablabla.. i don't know what kind of MMO you are playing but they must be pretty sad to be so empty and unknown. All MMO that are successfull nowadays include LOTS of group content and team-based events.

As i told you before in an other post, you knew what you were getting into when you purshased this MMORPG.

s7732425ub17_ESO

I disagree with most everything in OP's post.

Lashiing

Thelon wrote: »

AuldWolf wrote: »

One Tamriel's world bosses change tells me that you're going in the wrong direction, now. You're misguided and you believe that this will actually reap you greater profits. It won't. Down this road lies ruin. You'll lose everything.

Fear Mongering has reached Rank IV

AuldWolf wrote: »

Allow any number of people to play any of the content. You'll have more players, a happier playerbase, and whilst you may lose 30~ players who'll be annoyed about their privilege, you'll gain 30,000 more.

AuldWolf wrote: »

Never listen to the hardcore players

AuldWolf wrote: »

By having world bosses require a group, or a specific build, you're getting a reputation for upholding antiquated MMO standards.

AuldWolf wrote: »

From 'the outside' ESO still looks far too much like a traditional MMO and still has too much in common with the likes of Wildstar.

AuldWolf wrote: »

ESO looks a bit too much like an old man, trying to be hip and cool with his singing, dancing, and dad humour at times.

AuldWolf wrote: »

All of your money comes from your casual audience, whom you are spurning.

dying irl

idk

@Thelon

Rotflmao

SHADOW2KK

Shrugs, bye OP

NewBlacksmurf

Forced grouping and kinda forced grouping ....I disagree.
While some people may not care to group there are enough players who strongly desire items or treasures that is gated....you should always have forced group content. The kinda forced group content is necessary because it's a world and not single player.

Even the suggestion to allow ppl to pick difficulty and or phase content....I disagree as it's a world and not single player. If we at forced to play on a MMO type server these two in my opinion are a must.

In retrospect there should never be solo only content and forced solo only content.
Solo-able at certain progression, sure but not solo only.



Regarding the Competition everywhere....I mostly agree. Now this is where different campaigns and such make sense but what's absent from this game in context to how you're giving feedback.
I think that PvP was just not done well in this game and it continues to be poorly done as they add things.

I don't have issues with dueling but there should be a different interaction and experience for us all. I really would much rather they get swept off into a kinda deadric portal and fight like as if they were playing Tekken or Mortal Kombat

I know ppl want spectators so that's as simple as a prompt to watch if you're standing close by and while watching you can round robin different duels without another loading screen.


Here is the reality of it all
This IS NOT TES.

After playing Skyrim again I was reminded of this. The only likeness are artwork and some of the poorly imitated lore.
As such you're position is for a great TES game. That's going to require the beautiful characters that ZOS uses but the environments and solo only gameplay of Bethesda.

The next TES could opt to entertain very small servers for 200 people to play one (refer to the initial announcement back in 2012). That type of gameplay is where a handful of players would share a realm together but while it's all hosted on a much larger server for millions of players. In this idea, a lot is going to change and some things will also remain but ultimately that would be a "great TES game" that technology doesn't lend itself to offer today as that's also a mega server but where realms cut down on larger player interactions.

The challenge with this tho is why join a realm and what frequency do players jump in and out of realms. How are add-Ons and mods handled and are there enough players who would support this financially

I say no


Edit:
-also really understand that companies like Sony and Xbox have spent and continue to spent millions on creating infrastructures and opportunities for developers who want to help bring more players together. There are more who want to interact and play with others than there are who want to play alone. Consider the top selling games since 2013 are largely multiplayer games and prior to the internet age, it's was couch co-OP games.

Integral1900

AuldWolf wrote: »

I regularly question them.

Forced grouping: Don't do it. You'll lose players and alienate people. Allow any number of people to play any of the content. You'll have more players, a happier playerbase, and whilst you may lose 30~ players who'll be annoyed about their privilege, you'll gain 30,000 more. Forced grouping is one of the things I've heard people talk of as the reason they don't play ESO. They don't like it. Most modern thinking gamers don't. ESO is looking antiquated with it. Socialising doesn't mean forced grouping. Socialising, for most, is roleplaying. When most people are questing, they'll do it solo or in a group of 2-3 max.

Pseudo-forced Grouping: World bosses, in this case. Why? You have an instanced world, so why not allow people to pick difficulty for world zones? You can have anything ranging from casual (for the vast majority) to HYPER-L33T for the fifty or so people who'd actually want that. By having world bosses require a group, or a specific build, you're getting a reputation for upholding antiquated MMO standards.

Forcing Players to Play Content They Dislike: You have certain kinds of abilities (PvP's good heal, the Undaunted magicka taunt) that have absolutely no valid alternatives whatsoever, thus forcing people to play content they won't enjoy. The undaunted thing could be fixed by moving Inner Fire to rank 1 or 2 (I believe 2 can be achieved with This One's on Me), but the PvP heal really needs a valid alternative.

Encouraging Competitive Behaviour Everywhere: This is going to result in an incredibly toxic community. You're allowing duels inside towns (a huge mistake), and you still haven't introduced the sorts of instanced nodes that Guild Wars 2 has had since launch (which is embarrassing). You could make the game more appealing to the average player by reducing these factors.

From 'the outside' ESO still looks far too much like a traditional MMO and still has too much in common with the likes of Wildstar. That's why regular Elder Scrolls players are so readily dismissing it. They'll cite reasons like these as to why. Oh, I can't solo that content? Oh, I can't get those abilities I like because of archaic, draconic reasons? And so on. ESO looks a bit too much like an old man, trying to be hip and cool with his singing, dancing, and dad humour at times. It looks like Everquest trying to hide its shame. And that's really, really unfortunate.

It bothers me because ESO has the potential to be a new wave MMO that could draw in people like never before. It just has to leave its outmoded, outdated, antiquated ideas behind. Ideas that belong in 2006 more than they do in late 2016. If ESO doesn't leave these ideas behind, a new MMO will come along eventually that does, and it'll soak up all of ESO's players. This will happen because although ESO is modern, it still can't let go of these alienating, antiquated factors. So it's leaving room for someone to do it better and just eat up ESO's niche. That's what happened with Champions Online, as I'll keep pointing out. The playerbase kept telling them not to kow-tow to the hardcore, not to bend over to privileged force grouping minorities. We tried. And they did. Their day one patch which was meant to appease those minorites cut their community in half. Half of the players actually left. And we know this since CO provides data on those playing.

They kept attempting to appease those minorities, and now CO is a ghost town. I'm begging you not to make these same mistakes. If you want to keep your subscribers, your whales, the people who'll actually buy things from the crown store? Keep your casuals! The hardcore, the PvP players, these aren't the people you get money from. You get your money from the roleplayers, those who're playing the game to have fun. Those who're grinding will hit the content cap then leave, as they do. They'll only come back for a little while for new content. The people who'll stay after that, and will keep paying for new crown store stuff, are people who don't rush through the game. They're the people you want to appeal to.

I keep making these threads and posts because ESO is just CO's history repeating itself and I'm dreading it. My problem with all this? I really like ESO. I really liked CO, too. CO lost its community, but I stuck around for a really long time anyway. After a while, everything was just hardcore and PvP appeasement, and then the game was put on life support because there was no more money. All of your money comes from your casual audience, whom you are spurning. That's the problem with your community shrinking.

The way to get a bigger community isn't finding new ways to force people to play together, that's an outdated idea that should be left at the mass grave of every MMO that's tried that and failed. The way to get a bigger community is to make a game that's accessible and fun to play for the majority of people.

If you fixed these issues, you'd draw in all of the single player Elder Scrolls fans you're losing out on.

Please don't kill off ESO with bad design choices. One Tamriel's world bosses change tells me that you're going in the wrong direction, now. You're misguided and you believe that this will actually reap you greater profits. It won't. Down this road lies ruin. You'll lose everything. Never listen to the hardcore players or the PvP players. I'm sorry, but they're a minority and you can afford to lose them. What you cannot afford is to lose the casuals who're buying crown store items and paying for subscriptions. I mean, I spend upward of $400~ a month on ESO between subscriptions for myself and my partner, and crown store purchases. There are a lot of people like me.

Keep doing what you're doing, keep going down this path, you'll lose us. There'll always be another MMO that'll be smart enough to figure out what's going on, and to secure a huge community filled with people who'll happily pay large amounts of money.

Fix this. please. This really is a heartfelt plea. Don't be Champions Online 2: Failing Harder.

Fantastic post, fully support this, god I hope ZOS is paying attention

KochDerDamonen

tbh this is all tired and beaten to death and I don't care.

What has me intrigued is that you want the undaunted taunt, but find the content you have to do for it unsavory. But if you don't want to do dungeons, why do you want that spell?

EZgoin76

That's a long post to be trolling with OP.

Integral1900

For a great game eso does include some apocalyptically stupid descisions

idk

OP isn't replying. I doubt he really thinks this way and is probably getting some laughs.

SHADOW2KK

Giles.floydub17_ESO wrote: »

OP isn't replying. I doubt he really thinks this way and is probably getting some laughs.

Or off crying in a corner because of the alleged toxic community