Bad Timing For New Players?

Triddle

It's not the best game out there for quality of life, but it's one of the better ones. Recently has been a pretty rough patch, but they'll resolve it before long and it'll be smooth sailing for a while before the next trouble strikes, likely around the morrowind release.

raglau

Nerouyn wrote: »

Pibbles wrote: »

I've been in this game since beta and there are three things that have persistently dogged this game:

I've also been playing the game on and off since then. Less earlier and more lately though.

Pibbles wrote: »

1 - Performance is ...snip.

Game performance has always pretty smooth for me and my computer isn't the greatest.

Today has been a little bit bad with lag. I'm guessing the double pvp xp drew a crowd. But lag isn't common. Unless you're in one of the really popular cities and all the bloody duellers are at it in the streets.

Pibbles wrote: »

2 - Reliability is bad...snip.

So point 2 is the same point 1?

No, performance and availability are two seperate measures.

In terms of performance, it would be better for me to say it's inconsistent. Sure, I got 144FPS throughout VoM this morning, but then went to MoL and it drops to 30FPS, which is not really acceptable in 2017. Any trial would be the same poor experience, as is PvP. Some of this is of course the dependency on the API, but many games do it a lot better than ESO. e.g. FF14 is still visibly constrained by DX11 (one main thread etc.) but is more consistent and is a better looking game.

Turelus

Seraphayel wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Unsent.Soul wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

There have been some issues recently but it's not something you should solely judge the game on, these current issues are not the norm for ESO.

However they are issues right now which they're working to address, so it might be a bumpy time to join.

Considering the game literally becomes trash after each update/dlc means nothing?

I'm not going to say there are no issues as I hate that whole "dismiss it's an issue because it doesn't effect me" thing, however it's not so bad that everyone's having the issues.

The NA outage last night was an issue sure, but that's not common practice happening ever single week, nor after every single update.

For the most part the game runs fine a majority of the time and it's biggest issues are on mechanics within the game rather than the server issues.

Did you play Cyrodiil? The game never ran fine in Cyrodiil and most likely never will. If you're solo roaming through Cyrodiil the game might run good but that's not the point of Cyrodiil.

After big updates those issues are pretty common but Homestead caused the worst kind of performance issues ESO ever had, especially on consoles. I never experienced so many downtimes, lags, disconnects and problems in ESO since... maybe the first weeks after launch. The game is in a poor state when it comes to performance.

And everybody who says the forum is just full of negative nancys... that is not right. This game has exceptional performance issues that just downgrade this game's qualities by a huge margin.

Was on the main campaign for two years. I know the issues of Cyrodiil the old and the new, that doesn't make the game worthless for a new player to invest in however.

kevlarto_ESO

I play on PC, and after Monday when things go back to like they were and they turn off double AP and cp points back on things should die down this week has been a test.

Like all online games they have bump in the road every now and then but for the most part up time for PC is pretty good.

BlackSparrow

Oso wrote: »

Thanks for all of the great criticism you all provided, constructive or not. I personally have not been experiencing any issues, aside from the downtime today. But it's good to be aware of what others might experience or think in case my time comes. I do enjoy the game a lot and will continue playing, as long as things don't get too shady

"Shady" is one thing you really don't have to worry about here. (Never mind what the "ZO$ JUST WANTS YOUR MONEY" crowd on this forum says... The devs are always working hard to improve the game, and they do listen to the wants and needs of the player base. They're a bit hesitant to communicate anything development-related, but that is more likely attributable to them covering their bases against parts of the community who are liable to jump on anything a ZOS team member says as "absolute canon forever" than on anything shady.)

I've played a number of MMOs over the years, and this is easily one of the most ethically managed. They have a strict policy of avoiding anything pay-to-win: both their cash shop and their subscription program stick to quality-of-life or convenience upgrades. Some of their decisions are better than others (last fall, they added gamble boxes, but at least those are full of just cosmetic items) but overall, for an MMO where most of the players pay box price and that's it? They walk the line of making money ethically very well.

There are occasionally bugs. The big, game-breaking ones are usually addressed ASAP, excepting the occasional outliers in the playerbase (which are unavoidable in any MMO). The other week, I was personally affected by a crash-to-desktop issue that seemed to affect a small group of players. It was addressed and fixed within two weekly patches.

The one thing that they do deserve some flak on is the customer support system. They seem to have pretty large ticket volume that they solve by sending auto-responses where you daily have to opt in to keeping your ticket open, and it can take a week or more to get an actual person to look at your ticket. Meanwhile, the forum is managed by a community manager and a handful of forum mods... not really anyone on the tech team (as well it shouldn't be, since they have more important things to do!). That means that if you post about a problem on the forum, it can take a while to see anyone acknowledge it, since the community team doesn't always know what the tech team are doing. So yeah. They do fall a bit short on the communication front. That doesn't mean they're not listening... they just fall a bit short on giving us feedback on it.

(Though, to be fair, these forums are salty piles of salt. There is a very vocal minority of players who will attribute every bad experience with this game to laziness, greed, or downright maliciousness on ZOS' part. Don't listen to these people. There were some DDoS attacks on the servers a month ago (something literally out of the devs' hands) and that part of the community was declaring that clearly that was just part of ZOS' ongoing conspiracy. A lot of the negative generalizations on the forums are just sour grapes. Take them with a grain of salt.)

As for downtime? It's not nearly as common as the doom and gloom crowd says. MMOs, in general, are prone to glitches, bugs, and server problems. It's just part of the genre, especially when you have a game that's this big. They happen every once in a while, but ZOS resolves them as quickly as they can, and has lately been pretty good about giving us updates along the way (this one was a bit odd to see nothing official posted for so long, tbh. Usually, they're quick to put up notices along the lines of "We are aware that XX server is experiencing issues and are looking into it." Since it happened on Saturday, Gina, the community manager, just may have been busy and and therefore not immediately available to post the message *shrug*.)

Personally, I just accept any bugs and glitches that do crop up as part of Elder Scrolls tradition... every single game in this series has come with bugs, but forgive those and you have a great game.

Really, if you like the game, just go ahead and play it. As long as you enjoy your time, it's worth it... and as a fellow subscriber, I definitely think it's worth the money.

Meld777

I'll try to be honest and objective here. I played many MMOs and ESO is definitely one of the best I've experienced, especially regarding the player community. The world is huge, all quests are voiced, unique, there are thousands of books in game you can read to follow lore, and the graphics and animations are amazing, lots of love for detail. This game is a roleplayer's dream.

If you come here from Dark Souls, BDO or even NWO, expect not to be faced with much difficulty. You can smash a single button all the way to level 50, and then to CP600. The game doesn't teach you how to use your character effectively. At some point in progress, way beyond max level, you will be faced with a spike in difficulty. However, it's only a handful of content. And all of it is available in a "light" version to experience it without the increased difficulty.

If you're the kinda guy who likes playing multiple characters and roleplay, this is the number 1 game for you. If you're the kinda guy who's looking to min-max, focus on only one character, become perfect at it, unlock everything, and compete for the leaderboards, you should know that the end-game loot system is atrocious, by far the worst I have seen in any game, and I have played Korean MMOs before. BDO's RNG is a dream compared to ESO. We're talking spending 1000+ hours in a solo arena and still not getting your BiS weapon.

This game does not suffer more from performance issues, botters, exploiters/hackers than other MMOs. The people on these forums that haven't experienced spikes in NWO or delays in BDO might disagree.

The number 1 reason to play this game? The community. Due to the RP focus, people are much friendlier and more willing to help than in other MMOs - as long as you stay away from Group Finder. Don't use it. No normal person does. Find your friends to do dungeons with outside in the world. Just walk up to people and say Hi.

ESO is definitely worth giving it a shot. It's very unique. And I'm saying it as someone who quit it for BDO due to the terrible end-game loot system.

KerinKor

Palidon wrote: »

Players have been dealing with constant load screens, lag, game crashes and freezing for over two years. Server problems seem to be more frequent.

Very true, which is why @Oso this is as good a time as any, at least new players get to experience the problems early in their game life so can decide whether or not to give ZOS more money not to fix problems that have existed since pre-release.

Tandor

Seraphayel wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Unsent.Soul wrote: »

Palidon wrote: »

Players have been dealing with constant load screens, lag, game crashes and freezing for over two years. Server problems seem to be more frequent.

This is true, spot on.

max_only wrote: »

The forums don't represent the majority of players, just the loudest.

Like all game forums? Don't act like zos has been open about these issues, since homestead there has been issues that are affecting players ability to play, doesn't matter if people are on the forums or not. The people that aren't vocal most likely choose to just play another game. Either way that doesn't help zos.

Some players, not all. Comparatively few players, judging by the number I see running around quite happily whenever I log on without any problem.

All platforms had additional downtimes besides maintenance in the last weeks. So in fact it affected all of the players and not only some.

I wasn't aware of any downtime for the PC EU server outside of the scheduled patch/maintenance day, so must have been lucky to have missed it if there was some.

Jemcrystal

I was lucky when I joined the servers ran well for months. This is a recent thingy. But yeah this would put off new recruits to the eso mmo. Sad.

Woopy

shauny.gibbsb16_ESO wrote: »

Oso wrote: »

Hi all

I'm curious as to how often the community experiences these downtimes. I've been trying to switch from one MMO(AA) to this one,

I too have left AA to return to ESO, so firstly well done for escaping

There has been extra downtime but stay with it as it will normalise eventually, the PvP is fun here and ridiculously easy to get geared up (compared to AA) so you can actually spend your time Playing however you want. You'll also notice the forums are a *** cat compared to AA, even if you do have the odd end of world forum complainer.

Just bear with it, you won't be sorry

P.s the eso subreddit is a good forum to check out

Hahah, oh yeah! A lot less salt over here that's for sure. And this game is definitely a lot friendlier to my wallet.

Pallio

Housing is more of RP/ fun thing than actually functional, like if you could store stuff in a house that would make them worth it.

PvP is the current focus, ignored mostly for years now seems to be all the balance that matters, end game raiding etc is mostly ignored.

Class balance fluctuates wildly, currently Mag >>>>> Stam, if you enjoyed magic now it a good time.

Bugs and other problems generally ignored for a very long time, or just called "fixes" they forgot to mention in the patch notes.

90% of the player base are here waiting for a new game to come out that will pull them away, Camelot Unchained etc.

Woopy

Pallio wrote: »

Housing is more of RP/ fun thing than actually functional, like if you could store stuff in a house that would make them worth it.

PvP is the current focus, ignored mostly for years now seems to be all the balance that matters, end game raiding etc is mostly ignored.

Class balance fluctuates wildly, currently Mag >>>>> Stam, if you enjoyed magic now it a good time.

Bugs and other problems generally ignored for a very long time, or just called "fixes" they forgot to mention in the patch notes.

90% of the player base are here waiting for a new game to come out that will pull them away, Camelot Unchained etc.

90% huh. That's quite a lot.

Unsent.Soul

Oso wrote: »

Pallio wrote: »

Housing is more of RP/ fun thing than actually functional, like if you could store stuff in a house that would make them worth it.

PvP is the current focus, ignored mostly for years now seems to be all the balance that matters, end game raiding etc is mostly ignored.

Class balance fluctuates wildly, currently Mag >>>>> Stam, if you enjoyed magic now it a good time.

Bugs and other problems generally ignored for a very long time, or just called "fixes" they forgot to mention in the patch notes.

90% of the player base are here waiting for a new game to come out that will pull them away, Camelot Unchained etc.

90% huh. That's quite a lot.

60% of all statistics are made up...

Kneighbors

Pibbles wrote: »

I've been in this game since beta and there are three things that have persistently dogged this game:

1 - Performance is terrible and getting worse each month. The game client performance is weak despite ESO being rather simplistic graphically, in modern terms anyway, but I can live with this. The main issue is garbage network performance which leads to a certain lack of playablity. Using abilities sometimes has a really noticeable lag attached, and bar-swapping is hit and miss.
2 - Reliability is bad, disconnects, crashes, they are very common in this game. Last night I was tanking a trial and I could not swap my bar to get to my taunt, game just stopped accepting input, then froze then crashed and I had to run a 'repair', a painfully slow process, before I could play again. The LFG tool is totally broken since the Homestead patch, and that's the core tool for an MMO. This is the only game l know of that needs an working day of outage for a weekly patch, and these patches often land so badly that the game is taken down again in the same week to patch the patch.
3 - Support - ZOS do not support us, they don't care once they have our money. They will auto-respond tickets, auto-close tickets even if you ask for them to be escalated, send you pages full of duff support info that has no bearing on the issue you are experiencing. You really are on your own in this game if you need tech support.

I subbed from release up until recently but the clear decline in standards of this game mean I did not renew this time around. I mainly play FF14 now, but I do follow what's happening here and login a few times a week still to see if things are improving, sadly they are getting worse each week.

So by all means sub, but perhaps do it on a monthly basis so you can get out if you feel things are not going your way.

Damn man, I agree with you on every word. The LFG tool issues simply ruined the game for me. I was playing 30 runs a day, many of them just subbing as heal and tank. Right now I can barely make through one or two runs.

Random dungeons was my primary tool for leveling my 6 chars to cp500 within 3 months. So yea, the timing is bad, I wouldn't be able to do it now.


Actually I never felt it's right to blame ZoS for bugs in Cyrodiil. Because it's pretty challenging to make such a platform of 100 vs 100 zerg running without bugs and smooth fps even for today's gaming.

But damn, LFG tool is an easy one. It's about time they had to improve it to super consition adding groupping for trials and putting different options like a limitations of cp etc. Instead of that with Homestead they just went 100 steps back leaving no hope in me for this game.

Triddle

Meld777 wrote: »

Due to the RP focus, people are much friendlier and more willing to help than in other MMOs - as long as you stay away from Group Finder. Don't use it. No normal person does.

As someone who uses group finder on a daily basis, this is both a little insulting and highly inaccurate. The rest of your post was pretty spot on, but group finder just isn't that bad. It is true that there're more brats to be found in group finder than through chat, but it's a useful system, and is frequented by many kind and helpful players.

Woopy

Kneighbors wrote: »

Pibbles wrote: »

I've been in this game since beta and there are three things that have persistently dogged this game:

1 - Performance is terrible and getting worse each month. The game client performance is weak despite ESO being rather simplistic graphically, in modern terms anyway, but I can live with this. The main issue is garbage network performance which leads to a certain lack of playablity. Using abilities sometimes has a really noticeable lag attached, and bar-swapping is hit and miss.
2 - Reliability is bad, disconnects, crashes, they are very common in this game. Last night I was tanking a trial and I could not swap my bar to get to my taunt, game just stopped accepting input, then froze then crashed and I had to run a 'repair', a painfully slow process, before I could play again. The LFG tool is totally broken since the Homestead patch, and that's the core tool for an MMO. This is the only game l know of that needs an working day of outage for a weekly patch, and these patches often land so badly that the game is taken down again in the same week to patch the patch.
3 - Support - ZOS do not support us, they don't care once they have our money. They will auto-respond tickets, auto-close tickets even if you ask for them to be escalated, send you pages full of duff support info that has no bearing on the issue you are experiencing. You really are on your own in this game if you need tech support.

I subbed from release up until recently but the clear decline in standards of this game mean I did not renew this time around. I mainly play FF14 now, but I do follow what's happening here and login a few times a week still to see if things are improving, sadly they are getting worse each week.

So by all means sub, but perhaps do it on a monthly basis so you can get out if you feel things are not going your way.

Damn man, I agree with you on every word. The LFG tool issues simply ruined the game for me. I was playing 30 runs a day, many of them just subbing as heal and tank. Right now I can barely make through one or two runs.

Random dungeons was my primary tool for leveling my 6 chars to cp500 within 3 months. So yea, the timing is bad, I wouldn't be able to do it now.


Actually I never felt it's right to blame ZoS for bugs in Cyrodiil. Because it's pretty challenging to make such a platform of 100 vs 100 zerg running without bugs and smooth fps even for today's gaming.

But damn, LFG tool is an easy one. It's about time they had to improve it to super consition adding groupping for trials and putting different options like a limitations of cp etc. Instead of that with Homestead they just went 100 steps back leaving no hope in me for this game.

Ehh, the 100v100 isn't too hard to manage today. I've played a couple games that had servers bringing in 100v200 or 150v150 with minimal lag/fps drop. The LFG tool is new to me, finding myself doing 3-4 dungeons a day isn't too bad.. but if you did 30+ then yeah I can see where you might be disappointed.

Tannus15

This week has been pretty ***.

Homesteads seems to have increased their server load by more than they expected and they are attempting to resolve the issues with the update.

Things should smooth out over the next week or two.

Just wait till Morrowind. Then you'll see some server problems

Kram8ion

Forums can be a bit of tabloid rumours at the best of times but if you're genuinely asking a question and give as much information as possible you'll get an answer or two to help

zaria

Oso wrote: »

Pallio wrote: »

Housing is more of RP/ fun thing than actually functional, like if you could store stuff in a house that would make them worth it.

PvP is the current focus, ignored mostly for years now seems to be all the balance that matters, end game raiding etc is mostly ignored.

Class balance fluctuates wildly, currently Mag >>>>> Stam, if you enjoyed magic now it a good time.

Bugs and other problems generally ignored for a very long time, or just called "fixes" they forgot to mention in the patch notes.

90% of the player base are here waiting for a new game to come out that will pull them away, Camelot Unchained etc.

90% huh. That's quite a lot.

LOL.
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelot_Unchained will be more like an survival game.
No other options with the budgets they operate with, making an high quality mmo is idiotic expensive.

zaria

Tannus15 wrote: »

This week has been pretty ***.

Homesteads seems to have increased their server load by more than they expected and they are attempting to resolve the issues with the update.

Things should smooth out over the next week or two.

Just wait till Morrowind. Then you'll see some server problems

Yes, I wonder if creating all the extra instances for houses who is created all the time overloaded server code designed for quest and group dungeons.

Meld777

Triddle wrote: »

Meld777 wrote: »

Due to the RP focus, people are much friendlier and more willing to help than in other MMOs - as long as you stay away from Group Finder. Don't use it. No normal person does.

As someone who uses group finder on a daily basis, this is both a little insulting and highly inaccurate. The rest of your post was pretty spot on, but group finder just isn't that bad. It is true that there're more brats to be found in group finder than through chat, but it's a useful system, and is frequented by many kind and helpful players.

@Triddle I myself am a fan of the Group Finder. But more often than not, when a CP300- joins the group, there's some *** trying to kick him for "low CP". Even in the simplest dungeons like Vet Spindle. And don't get me started on non-vets, new players trying to queue for normal. Getting kicked instantly by *** for no reason is not the first thing one should experience in ESO.

pod88kk

max_only wrote: »

The forums don't represent the majority of players, just the loudest.

And empty ships make the most noise

Woopy

Meld777 wrote: »

Triddle wrote: »

Meld777 wrote: »

Due to the RP focus, people are much friendlier and more willing to help than in other MMOs - as long as you stay away from Group Finder. Don't use it. No normal person does.

As someone who uses group finder on a daily basis, this is both a little insulting and highly inaccurate. The rest of your post was pretty spot on, but group finder just isn't that bad. It is true that there're more brats to be found in group finder than through chat, but it's a useful system, and is frequented by many kind and helpful players.

@Triddle I myself am a fan of the Group Finder. But more often than not, when a CP300- joins the group, there's some *** trying to kick him for "low CP". Even in the simplest dungeons like Vet Spindle. And don't get me started on non-vets, new players trying to queue for normal. Getting kicked instantly by *** for no reason is not the first thing one should experience in ESO.

I've experienced this, group members have left my group without even beginning the dungeon because of (under assumption) my low level or others' low levels. It gets annoying when you've been queued for quite a while.

rotaugen454

Unsent.Soul wrote: »

Oso wrote: »

Pallio wrote: »

Housing is more of RP/ fun thing than actually functional, like if you could store stuff in a house that would make them worth it.

PvP is the current focus, ignored mostly for years now seems to be all the balance that matters, end game raiding etc is mostly ignored.

Class balance fluctuates wildly, currently Mag >>>>> Stam, if you enjoyed magic now it a good time.

Bugs and other problems generally ignored for a very long time, or just called "fixes" they forgot to mention in the patch notes.

90% of the player base are here waiting for a new game to come out that will pull them away, Camelot Unchained etc.

90% huh. That's quite a lot.

60% of all statistics are made up...

Yeah, but 10% of the time, they are right every time.