ESO is losing interest. Any idea why?

Olen_Mikko

My 2 cents:

- Servers. They are mostly ***, especially in big PVP fights. (Though there's been huge improvements!)
- Normal / veteran content difficulty cap is way too big. Normal mode is like beating toddlers with full riot gear. Veteran mode can be total nightmare and unreachable for some. (No, don't nerf the difficulty, add something inbetween!)
- Balance changes usually are ***.

Unlikely_Ghostbuster

Well...

I don't know how representative the Steam pool is, truly. Sure, in the last two years, I have no doubt a lot of people bought the game through Steam. However, I would not be surprised to learn a large portion of the player-base started at release and purchased the game through means other than Steam. After all, wasn't PC release when the game was hyped the most?

So the Steam sampling may not tell us much. If it's true that Steam didn't start carrying ESO until a later date, then perhaps Steam's reporting is a good sampling of players who were attracted to the game through Steam. The weekly and seasonal Steam sales rope in a lot of the "it was only $10" casual crowd. It would be shocking if a bunch players who try ESO on a whim to both really get into the game AND succeed at it, which are crucial for a person to keep playing.

But in my honest opinion, I haven't noticed any drop in players on PC/NA. It "feels" as though there are just as many players as always.

That being said, if we're asking why there have been a drop in Steam-specific players, and we're asking why these "newer" players are trying ESO and then quitting, well...

As many people have mentioned, ya, the game is now buy-to-play, but the game is unplayable without the crafting bag, period. Inventory management has ballooned out of control. Homestead only compounded the problem. To be brutally frank, it was stupid to add MORE crafting materials to the game for furniture crafting when there are dozens of materials already in the game for each and every crafting line. And some of us remember the dark times before the "collections" tab. All those cool little toys like the bear trap and cherry blossoms would take up inventory/bank space. I know games like this are supposed to be about the item chase -- always looking for better gear -- but like several other comments have noted, it sucks the joy out of life when I spend 60% of my time doing inventory management with alt characters.

And I can imagine new players get frustrated when they face-plant into the paywall on Day-1 because they lack a crafting bag. Give people a chance to get addicted to the fun parts of the game, FIRST. All will hit the paywall at some point, but the impact should be as soft and late as possible. Jugging items is NOT fun unless you're an obsessive masochist.

Other than inventory management, I'd say a lot of people hit some other type of wall.
--Maybe they can't make the jump from standard PvE content to higher-tier dungeons.
--Maybe they had too many bad group experiences.
--Maybe they were off put by the toxicity of grief-troll players.
--Maybe they didn't want to live in min/max city.
--Maybe they could never find an active guild with a trader.
--Maybe they fell into a routine of monotonous grinding play with crappy rewards. *cough-crafting-writs-cough*

I can probably think of about a dozen issues that would drive players away from the game. Those issues have either gone unaddressed or simply *can't* be addressed (can't make people be nicer).

At the end of the day, if ZoS wants to retain more Steam players, there should be fewer "walls" for new players to overcome. Less grinding. Less repetitious housekeeping. Better effort/reward ratios. More options and customization.

The_Protagonist

Why is that?

1) Far too much monetization of game content,
2) Not sticking to promises made before,
3) Anything found in Crown Store will be craftable in game, and craftable will always be superior (Crown Mundus I'm looking at you).

Nuf Said!

RIGHTEOUS_REPORT

Because the game is bloody Disneyland, its a joke.

Anysra

Because of the nerfs.

MidknightWolf

Kneighbors wrote: »

http://steamcharts.com/app/306130#6m

-15% every month during summer! Exactly same time year ago player pool was widening.

New patch kicks in, you would expect the game to gain interest? Nada. It isn't getting any more popular.

I know there are going to be people telling they feel no difference and game is very popular and it's just that most players playing directly through client.

But it feels the same ingame. I see exactly half of the player amount on line comparing to game peak times. It's normal to see 30/495 guildies online in our PvE oriented guild.

Obsolete crafting and Pee Pore Eco=death

ProfesseurFreder

"Fake News." ;-)

Docmandu

Tired of waiting for fixes to Infinite Loading screens and fixes/adjustments taking 4+ months is my main reason for calling it quits.

Knootewoot

For me:

PvE is boring. Nothing exiting happening once you done the quest. I do love the stories and most of the quests, but after doing them once i have little interest in doing them twice.
There are no sandbox elements in this game so once a zone is done i have no reason to go back.

PvP is/was great. Sadly it's plagued by loading screens for me. Also i really dislike poisons and proc sets and both dominate the battlefields. Certain builds make the time-to-kill extreme short which is also something i do not like, and some builds have to much stamina and dodge roll every attack which annoy me to the point i decided to shelf my main for PvP.

Overall i play this game since early access but have taken occasional breaks in between. Since i PvP 95% of the time it's just like a game like battlefield or COD. After half a year it gets boring and you go play other games. After that, you return and have a blast for another half year. Maybe some fixes/changes are there to lengthen playtime (or reduce).

It's not an mmo i am dedicated to like i was to other mmo's in the past. But this is also due to lack of time and other games i like to play.

Tandor

Kneighbors wrote: »

danno8 wrote: »

Uh oh guys! Look at that last bar for Q2 2017. It's lower than the bar before it! It looks like Apple is dying. The statistics don't lie!

There is a long way between losing interest and dying. My point was to show using statistics and in-game observations that ESO community isn't taking positively the direction the game is going. I understand that many still do. But game population is on a decline and there are specific reasons to it.

PS. Btw, you attached steadily raising graph, while ESO graph on steam is exactly opposite if you look at 6 months time span.

You sure you want to compare ESO today with 6 months ago? ESO peaked this month at 18,457 compared with 17,655 in February. And that's just in respect of a small minority of users on one of three platforms.

Ain't statistics a wonderful thing!

Of course there will always be ups and downs in any such situation, life isn't a straight-line graph, but ESO's population has been steadily rising for a very long time now.

Mettaricana

Hammy01 wrote: »

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

It's sad but one of the top reasons I hear/read that people are still putting up with the bugs and other problems in ESO is because there's nothing better out there to play. That will change soon.

This is especially true for console players... atm ESO is the only real fantasy MMO on the market. I for one would love to throw money at another ESO competitor as I am getting tired of the constant issues that have been with the game for a very long time!

Tera is coming to console this year was great on pc loved it til theu stagnated content then out of the blue massive updates new classes im ready for it

MercyKilling

A literal HOST of bad design decisions, poor bug fixing, botched monetization, and a general mindset of "let's get as much out of the rubes as possible" as seen by the crown store.

Seems the only thing they got right was making the game LOOK pretty. That's it. Everything else is a total mess. To me, at least.

Malmai

Brought few ppl in this game, could bring even more... They ask me oh i wanna play ESO is it good? I say yea its good for RP, but if you gnna do more serious content u will need to beat the lag and performance, grind CPs (specially now after all this nerfs), farm gear like crazy (thx to the rigged rng) and have to fight with unbalanced classes, bots, duping, CE engine, endgame has no population almost, and on and on...

Tornaad

Is ESO loosing interest or are people migrating away from Steam?
Additionally what will happen as they move forward with this new aggressive release schedule for game updates and new content?

I think the overall pattern is going to be moving up.

Orlacc

Steam is a great metric

Doctordarkspawn

RIGHTEOUS_REPORT wrote: »

Because the game is bloody Disneyland, its a joke.

Nah.

Disneyland is fun. This is like Disneyland if half the rides were falling apart and the other half were just the employee's stealing your kidneys.

Stovahkiin

Gee, I can think of a few reasons:

-PVE is very repetitive and boring and doesn't feel rewarding in any way.

-PvP can be fun but the lag will make a lot of new people run away screaming.

-ESO is the only MMO in existence that still can't figure out how to properly make a Group Finder work.

-Crown Store prices (for most items) are completely ridiculous. There is no way I'm spending $100+ for a digital house that has literally no function whatsoever.

-Zeni can't balance skills well at all.

-Zeni refuses to balance PVE and PVP seperately.

-New content is often over-priced and is just copy-pasted.

^ That's just a sample of issues.