PC EU: What is happening to ESO? Why cities are so empty?

Tandor

I personally haven't noticed any decline in population on the PC EU server.

However, it's precisely because of the effect on city populations that I have always been opposed to such things as crafting stations being made available in houses and guild halls, it always without exception kills off the cities and that gives a false impression of the game's population level level to new players.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a falling-off in grouping (especially PUGs) due to the fact that so many elitist groupers find it too easy these days to kick members whose every detail doesn't match up to their expectations. Why would mere mortals put themselves in the firing line any more? People just tend to stick to solo play unless they're with friends or guildmates.

I also find that a lot of players are currently doing the Jesters Festival quests, and doubtless plenty of others are using their houses for free travel rather than the city wayshrines as before. The best locations for houses aren't always the busiest cities so it shouldn't be surprising if those cities aren't as busy as before.

Bam_Bam

Maybe they are all queuing to get into Azura (70+ most evenings). I'm online every day and everywhre I go is chokka (busy), even the wilderness areas are busy.

Egonieser

I know that every time I try to group with my wife, we are in separate instances all the time and are split off, I always log on later and in my instance there is a ghost town. I travel to her and same exact place is FULL of people. And this happens almost daily so it's not a isolated scenario. I fear OP is experiencing the same.
There are no pop issues whatsoever, if anything it's overpopulated to such extent that new layers are constantly being made which gives you the opposite effect, making the game feel more dead than populated.

zaria

Tandor wrote: »

I personally haven't noticed any decline in population on the PC EU server.

However, it's precisely because of the effect on city populations that I have always been opposed to such things as crafting stations being made available in houses and guild halls, it always without exception kills off the cities and that gives a false impression of the game's population level level to new players.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is a falling-off in grouping (especially PUGs) due to the fact that so many elitist groupers find it too easy these days to kick members whose every detail doesn't match up to their expectations. Why would mere mortals put themselves in the firing line any more? People just tend to stick to solo play unless they're with friends or guildmates.

I also find that a lot of players are currently doing the Jesters Festival quests, and doubtless plenty of others are using their houses for free travel rather than the city wayshrines as before. The best locations for houses aren't always the busiest cities so it shouldn't be surprising if those cities aren't as busy as before.

I assume it was an increase in player activity after homestead and we have an slowdown now who will continue towards Morrowind.
However number of players in Rawl'kha dropped to 1/2-1/3 after an patch has to do with more shards.

Eweroun

MarkusLiberty wrote: »

Callous2208 wrote: »

As a roleplayer, I have heard whispers of the EU community being down quite a bit overall, wasn't sure though. Sorry to hear this, PC/NA seems to be booming still in all areas of play.

That's a separate issue, the roleplaying community on EU is practically non-existent.

That doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of players who wants to get involved with roleplaying, the problem is that there just aren't any established communities for them to join anymore. What EU needs is someone who can take the initiative to establish and maintain a strong role playing presence, untill then it's just going to keep fading.

nah, just leave the roleplayers on NA... I like it how it is now..
It's always very weird if you jump out of a wayshrine, standing in the middle of a circle of roleplayers cheering at you... very weird...

Nestor

Housing could be it. If you have all the basic crafting stations, and your assistants in your house, why go to town? Guild Trading? That is about the only reason now.

mandricus

Egonieser wrote: »

I know that every time I try to group with my wife, we are in separate instances all the time and are split off, I always log on later and in my instance there is a ghost town. I travel to her and same exact place is FULL of people. And this happens almost daily so it's not a isolated scenario. I fear OP is experiencing the same.
There are no pop issues whatsoever, if anything it's overpopulated to such extent that new layers are constantly being made which gives you the opposite effect, making the game feel more dead than populated.

This is exactly what i'm talking about. As we are going along with this discussion, i'm starting to think that this issue is related to a distribution algorithm that needs some fine tuning.

It's ok to create several instances to reduce lag and loading time at logon, it's not ok to spread all players to a different instance, making everyone feel in a dead city.

May be just a little tune up on the number of istances and to the logic behind how people are distributed across shards could lead to a fair compromise, leading us again to a good gaming experience, having cities with the right population (not overcrowded, not empty... just somewhere in the middle).

mandricus

Nestor wrote: »

Housing could be it. If you have all the basic crafting stations, and your assistants in your house, why go to town? Guild Trading? That is about the only reason now.

Even if you have a house with all crafting stations, banker and merchant, you still need to go to city after your runs in order to be able to fix gear and to list your stuff to your trading guilds, as far as I know. And this is good IMHO, because otherwise we all would spend our time after runs in our isolated housing instance, causing a bad gaming experience for all new players that moves around tamriel, making them feel the game a lot emptier.

Berenhir

Group finder is empty because noone in his right mind would want to use it anyway.

mandricus

Berenhir wrote: »

Group finder is empty because noone in his right mind would want to use it anyway.

Group finder is a workaround you have to use if you are always put into instances with little or no population. No chance to form a group using zone chat, so, if you want to try to run pledges anyway, you just have to cross your fingers, have faith and queue using dungeon finder.

Like I said, before homestead I never had the need to use group finder, because forming a group using zone chat in city was usually a matter of seconds, having people seeking for other players all the time.

Being split into too much instances of the same city all the times makes quite hard for the players to form a group, because you spam messages in a zone chat that nobody is going to read. So if your guildmates / friends are not available, your only chance is to use finder (which is horribly broken at it's current state and, I agree with you on this, it's not a good experience at the moment).

Asardes

Regarding strictly PUG-ing, including manual one off zone chat, after One Tamriel dungeons have gotten harder and you cannot just expect to group with anybody and get 2 x 3 keys fast. People always avoid PuG-ing the DLC ones and request specifically for non-DLC on zone and trade guild chat. Many have probably joined PVE guilds for this so the chatter which was on zone chat has moved there.

Sleep

because you login at the right time

G0ku

i´d guess a combination of springtime (finally sun, yeay,), andromeda and a *** year without an addition which I would call real content, so that´s for me at least

hmsdragonfly

MarkusLiberty wrote: »

Callous2208 wrote: »

As a roleplayer, I have heard whispers of the EU community being down quite a bit overall, wasn't sure though. Sorry to hear this, PC/NA seems to be booming still in all areas of play.

That's a separate issue, the roleplaying community on EU is practically non-existent.

That doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of players who wants to get involved with roleplaying, the problem is that there just aren't any established communities for them to join anymore. What EU needs is someone who can take the initiative to establish and maintain a strong role playing presence, untill then it's just going to keep fading.

Joke on you I have seen 2 ERPers having sexy time in an inn the other day.

Kalante

PS4 NA mournhold also got a major hit. The only time is crowed is friday and saturday and even then it doesn't looks like anywhere near like it used to during prime time before homestead. This game is on it's last legs.

Kesstryl

It could be the time of day and what server you are on too. I'm definitely not noticing empty cities or a population drop. I'm NA on EST timezone, and play early evenings.

akl77

Get into Cyrodiil you'll find them.

Tandor

Kalante wrote: »

PS4 NA mournhold also got a major hit. The only time is crowed is friday and saturday and even then it doesn't looks like anywhere near like it used to during prime time before homestead. This game is on it's last legs.

I love it when people state the positive in their description of a situation and then draw an entirely negative conclusion!

If you're seeing reduced numbers since homestead, then either there's something about homestead that drove players from the game in their masses (which seems unlikely given the lack of "Homestead RageQuit" topics) or well, you know, perhaps they could just be in their houses decorating them and crafting there, not to mention entertaining their friends and guildmates as they work on them.

But no, the game is on its last legs !

Ajaxandriel

xSkullfox wrote: »

They need to change the writ completion to every city, so craglorn would not be overcrowded and the player base would more split up.

They should allow us to change the instance, in STO theres a wheel in the map corner to select the map instance like
#Craglorn-1
#Craglorn-2
#Craglorn-x
#Craglorn-50

but i would prefer:

#Craglorn-de1
#Craglorn-......
#Craglorn-en1
#Craglorn-.....
....
#Craglorn-Int1

That would be crazily awesome.

Illurian

I'm on PC EU as well, and haven't noticed any real decline in population. I wouldn't even mind having less people in my zone as that would mean fewer character models to load!

mandricus

Illurian wrote: »

I'm on PC EU as well, and haven't noticed any real decline in population. I wouldn't even mind having less people in my zone as that would mean fewer character models to load!

This is not a single player game. Is a multiplayer game, hence, having less people in an enviromnent that is supposed to be a place where you can meet other players, is not good for the gaming experience.

Illurian

mandricus wrote: »

Illurian wrote: »

I'm on PC EU as well, and haven't noticed any real decline in population. I wouldn't even mind having less people in my zone as that would mean fewer character models to load!

This is not a single player game. Is a multiplayer game, hence having less people in an enviromnent that is supposed to be a place where you can meet other players is not good for the gaming experience.

I didn't say empty zones, I said reduced. There is a difference.

Everything in moderation. Having too many people in a single instance is also immersion breaking. Just look at the Jester's festival. The DC daily, where you have to kill and collect is extremely annoying and tedious to do because of the amount of people doing it.

Also doing quests where the quest npc talks about being stealthy and having 10 other people just running in and killing everything in the background is simply annoying.

I'm quite happy with the populations in ESO right now (PC-EU). No zone is ever empty by any stretch of the imagination, but not annoyingly overcrowded either, aside from the capitals.

Nermy

I think you'll find it one of those times where between updates and expansions people take a break from the game. It's happened in all the MMOs I have played over the years. It'll jump back up when Morrowind releases.

Cogo wrote: »

On PC-EU, the imperial city is never empty (Trueflame), which is one of the best features with ESO. Doesnt matter when you play, there always are enemies to hunt and kill.

Bloody Orcs, always killing stuff... Never want to have a chat, just lop your head off!!

Runschei

I have been playing ever since beta and as I see mostly just the big trading cities (Rawl'kha and Mournhold etc.) crowded during primetime pvp hours. I'm on from 3pm to 10pm German time if I'm free and no one is around before 6-7pm

Torbschka

Ps4 EU is huge, so many players, im concerned that with morrowind it will be way toi much

Saturnana

I'm on PC/EU and if anything, I've seen a big increase in the amount of players online when I am (usually in the 4-11PM timeframe, GMT+1). Last few weeks especially seem to have gone from busy, to crowded, to crammed in a tin can like sardines, at times. Would definitely not describe the cities as empty or dead. Au contraire!

Cpt_Teemo

It's either zoning different instances or people converting to console from the looks of it

RoamingRiverElk

Didn't they mention years ago that the technology tries to place you in the same instances with your friends and guildmates? If so, I wonder if those who are constantly experiencing empty zones aren't in many large guilds?

Ragnork

I know it was dismissed earlier however I will add there have been two events back to back;
Thieves Guild and then Jesters
I feel that it has been quieter in some areas, but the event locations have been very busy.

I also, subjectively, feel that there are a lot more people running dolmens then before. I have been at a number of world boss sites (either on my own or responding to call for help) and they appear less popular (in some areas you can see people stream past on the way to the dolmen....)

Sausage

Inside Houses?