ESO Population size... are we losing players?

Kova

I see this topic more times than I see my own toes.

But hey, why does it matter how many people there are if no one ever fetching talks to each other? I know players that don't even read the names of their group members when they run content.

The most active chat in game is the starter areas and it's literally a verbal flood of memes and trolling. I helped a cp 132 duo a wrothgar boss and ended up messaging them, "fun stuff! Hits hard, yeah?"

They sat there for a good 5 minutes and then just ran off, completely ignoring me. Stuff like that happens at least once a week.

Anotherone773

kikkehs wrote: »

So. PvE is dead because of the elite? So weird that it's the elite that gives you build, tactics, walk-troughs and whatever information you need.

I once was a scrub, I did 20k DPS and felt GOOD! But the time I started playing the game there was no new players, so all the trial guilds had been made, main groups were full, secondary groups were full. Most guild wanted a few trial achievements before inviting a new player.

What did I do? Go on the forums and complain about the "elitism" in the game? No, why should people that progressed and worked hard to be were they are spend their time carrying me? No!

I made my own trial focused guild, we ended up around 24man strong, NOONE had done veteran trials before. First run we clear vAA. We kept going that until we felt ready to move up, then we cleared vHRC without much problem. Our group dps was extremly low, but we made our own strategies that worked for us.

We spend months in craglorn trials too practise, get better, stronger. Time flew by as we had an amazing time. And by the end of it all. EVERYONE was what you would call 'elite 40k+ dps pharses'. Tho, we worked for it, we earned it.

By the end of the guild we had cleared vAA HM, vHRC HM, vSO HM, vMoL, vHoF.

And no, We never brought ANYONE in for a carry! Because why do trials, if you don't progress them yourself?

Some problems with your post. One, you dont seem to know what elitism is. There is a difference between vet and elitism/elitist. Elitism is an attitude. Its "im superior to you" and "your not worthy". Its a very toxic and selfish attitude. It has nothing to do with ones ability to master the game and be a good player. There are many vets i have met that are pleasant people, helpful and fun to play with. They will be just as good as an elitist, the difference is in the attitude and treating everyone that isnt as good or doesnt want to be as good as a peasant not worthy of licking the dirt off their boots.

This game has a high portion of toxic elitists that play it. Community is important in an MMO and a toxic one drives players away. We are here to have fun and enjoy the game we all paid for equally. Some players try to ruin that for others by acting like they own and manage the game and your lucky they even allow you to login. That is a problem. When people get done faffing around with quests and leveling and all the other little trinkets in the game and want to do end game content, you have this huge wall of toxicity and people leave.

This game has a much lower vet population than it should. In a healthy game 50% or so of the population should be max level vet players doing end game content. The other 50% should be players progressing to the end game that replace the players that left. From what i can tell the vet population is closer to 10-20%. What makes it even worse is that you only have to reach max level on a single character. The rest get to cheat and become max level at level 50. So there should be far more end game players. This means ESO has a high turn over rate.

The toxicity is only one problem. Add to that the joke of a leveling system in the game. You dont really feel like you get much stronger when gaining a level, but its even worse for CP. With CP the increase is so marginal that many players dont even care. There are players that have been playing for 4 years that still are in the mid CP range because their is no desire or reward to gain CP. No urgency. Get 500k xp and put a point in a tree so you can gain 5 dps in a game where dps is measure in thousands. There is no sense of progression. No sense of accomplishment. No sense that all that work you put in has made your character stronger.

Then you have the gear issue. The other major issue with no progression in ESO. There is no gear progression. Its all CP160 and the only reason to change gear is because they nerf a set or buff another set so you gain or lose a couple of percent of dps. I know people whine about having to grind gear here but this is the easiest gear grind in any mmo i have ever seen and its pretty much a one and done. Its not like in 6 months there will be new gear sets that are more powerful made out of new materials. Gear and level progression are primary drivers for keeping end game players and ESO fails on both. So players get bored and stop playing when they run out of stuff to do.

Just like with summerset, there will be many players who login run through summerset in a few weeks or a couple of months and then go play something else because there is no reason to run cloudrest 200 times or run around summerset farming for months.

TLDR: Once you get to end game there is nothing keeping you here and the toxic elitists practically push you out the door.


Edit: Also the whole "carry" thing is a stupid thing elitists made up to make themselves feel superior to others. If your doing 40k in a trial and i am doing 25k in a trial, you arent carrying me because you do more DPS. Same with dungeon. If your doing 30k in a dungeon and im doing 10k, your not carrying me. If the instance can be completed with all the dps doing X amount and every dps exceeds X then no one is being carried. And you can complete all content in this game doing 25k dps or less and a very large majority of it you can do with 20k dps or less.

Knootewoot

I want to log in but i lack time. And even if i have time, i only want to PvP. But then lag and loading screens and stupid proc sets make me log out again, I might convert to a PvE player so i can be a placeholder in the PvE zones. I will wait until Summerset though.

Raraaku

I think another thing to keep in mind is that ESO's population is broken up between 3 different platforms. Each of those platforms further divided between two different servers; not even counting the PC PTS server which is receiving a lot of attention right now with Summerset testing.

Assuming that each of the platforms are evenly distributed in terms of player populations, that means that each platform only contains 33.33333% of the total player population. Also, the buy-to-play model is a double edged sword. By that I mean it's easy for a player who is not subscribing to take a break; but it's also easy for a player to return once new content has been released.

Most other MMOs are platform specific, and even then if they have a multitude of different servers on a single platform, they also suffer from a similar problem of perception (think cross-realm zones in WoW).

So is ESO population declining as a whole? Probably not.

I also expect a wave of new players and returning players with the upcoming release of Summerset.

jazsper77

The easiest way to tell if population is down is simple. Check your guild members online when you play. I believe pop is down a bit examples below. Since that back to back events my Guilds avg online dip.

PS4 NA

1. Wayrest Trader- before events 225-250 online all times/after 125-140.

2. Rawl Trader-b4 events 175-200 online/after 100 online

3. Eldenroot- b4 events 275-300 online all times after 200-225

4. Mournhold- b4 events 325 online after- 250

Finding my PC Guilds are also following the same dip.

Is GOW and Fortnite hurting maybe a bit.

But I do think we will get an uptick with Summerset but once players beat that I see that pop leaving.

ZOS has some work to do.

Jameliel

Anotherone773 wrote: »

I do notice a high portion of elitists vet players in ESO. And that in itself is off putting. Couple that with stagnant end game content and its just not appealing for casuals to hang around. Some very good points have been made in this thread. A good part of the problem lies on ZOS's shoulders but the community is also at fault.

You dont need to do max DPS to raid, if you do then either you are doing it wrong, or ZOS completely screwed up the raid. Essentially, you have to have BiS gear, perfect rotations, an expert understanding of your character with a very specific build with no variation to get BiS gear.

Ive raided in multiple other games. End game top tier raids. Never have i raided in which you need max dps. Its just not a thing. You need to understand mechanics, you need to work as a team, and you need to be able to do a decent amount of DPS. But you can totally do end game raids with everyone doing within 25% of the top DPS. If your raiders are good enough they can even carry lower DPS people through. Not in ESO though. If you cant kill a 6 mil dummy in 30 seconds self buffed then you just need to L2P.

Ive been in about 100 dungeon groups in ESO. I can count on one hand, the runs in which someone bothered to mention the mechanics. If you die because you did something wrong they just keep letting you die and rezzing you( most of the time). They dont bother to teach you anything. I had to look up how to do most bosses, and trying to learn all the bosses and their mechanics for over 2 dozen dungeons at the same time is really nothing but confusing. " Queue for each dungeon and run it until you understand it!" they say. Lets be practical here. If i queue for even a pledge dungeon i may have to wait 1 or 2 hours during peak to get a group. if i queue for a random dungeon , i can get one in under 20 minutes and rewards for doing it. So what in your tiny mind, makes your think im going to sit in a queue for 2 hours for no rewards when i can sit in one for 30 minutes and get rewards?

Someone in this thread said " Its easy to do 40k dps if you do this, this and this." My reply to this is its easy for you. Casual players arent looking to make a job out of gaming. Its ENTERTAINMENT. There is nothing entertaining about watching noneducational cheese videos on dpsing a dummy or a raid group showing us how leet they are. Many players dont want to be a clone of someone else, they want to build their own characters for their own play style. They dont want to have to learn a bunch of mechanics, rotations, exploits that are features, and then perfect everything as if they were performing brain surgery on their first born.

Either these elitist need to come down to the casual level or they are going to end up spending all their time playing with themselves.

Perfectly stated. As a 20 year hardcore MMO vet, ESO sticks out as being the most annoying. Games are supposed to be fun. ESO is often like a 2nd job with all the videos and tutorials you have to read outside of the game. Many of us who live in Asia and Australia also have to deal with mediocre-bad ping. Sometimes in trials the lag and fps is so bad it's worse than Cyrodiil. My computer is above average, and ESO is the only* game where the problem is this bad.

Top all this off with dogmatic guild leaders who constantly rant about builds they think are the best, and it becomes preferable to only run with friends. Some players who post online actually explain their builds and rotations. Other players become Emperor or display their skills solo or in small groups.

I see many so-called leaders, and they basically do nothing except run in large groups(zerg), and yet act as if they are experts with every class. It's absurd. As an educated grown man with a family of my own, it's off-putting the way some of these elitists arrogantly speak and yell at others. You would think that at their age they would learn to be more polite and open-minded instead of imagining they know it all.

It's exasperating when I see them discover the strong-points of a certain build which has actually been around for ages. Yet they act as if if it's brand new, and that since they are excited with it, everyone should immediately embrace it as the absolute best. If they spent a small amount of time talking to vets who are very experienced in top-performance, then they would learn a lot more. Instead they discover a set and semi-learn how to use it, then start theory-crafting with basic math, and then pushing their assumptions on everyone. Of the few friends I've invited along for guild runs, they ask me how I stand it and then they never run again.

Imhotep71

Its the natural ebb and flow of MMOs but if this is the only one you have ever played you wouldnt know that.

It happens to all of them over time. The player base rises and dips due to a variety of factors. We will take a hit when Battle for Azeroth drops, when Anthem drops etc.

Overall the population on PS4 seems healthy for a 4 yr old MMO and hitting the panic button seems unnecessary.

Cpt_Teemo

Imhotep71 wrote: »

Its the natural ebb and flow of MMOs but if this is the only one you have ever played you wouldnt know that.

It happens to all of them over time. The player base rises and dips due to a variety of factors. We will take a hit when Battle for Azeroth drops, when Anthem drops etc.

Overall the population on PS4 seems healthy for a 4 yr old MMO and hitting the panic button seems unnecessary.

I think every game will take a dip once Anthem and Ashes of Creation launch tbh

Lysette

Sergykid wrote: »

i've actually seen an increasing number of players on steam. The game doesn't feel crowded though, only on events

It is more crowded than I would like actually - I have to play at alien times, where most people world-wide tend to either sleep or work, to be able to do a quest on my very own - without that most of the enemies in it are dead already. The game is going strong population-wise IMO, far better than a year ago and potentially better than ever even. And with no TES VI in sight anytime soon this will not change much.

A_Silverius

2 man arenas sounds awesome

Rawkan

I see people everywhere, I'm even annoyed at times how the dungeon bosses are always dead, even at off hours like early in the morning. PC EU.

zaria

Lysette wrote: »

Sergykid wrote: »

i've actually seen an increasing number of players on steam. The game doesn't feel crowded though, only on events

It is more crowded than I would like actually - I have to play at alien times, where most people world-wide tend to either sleep or work, to be able to do a quest on my very own - without that most of the enemies in it are dead already. The game is going strong population-wise IMO, far better than a year ago and potentially better than ever even. And with no TES VI in sight anytime soon this will not change much.

Public dungeons is night or morning only, quests I don't mind other players.

Too many players will be an serious issue in Summerset if like Morrowind.

Priyasekarssk

Anotherone773 wrote: »

kikkehs wrote: »

So. PvE is dead because of the elite? So weird that it's the elite that gives you build, tactics, walk-troughs and whatever information you need.

I once was a scrub, I did 20k DPS and felt GOOD! But the time I started playing the game there was no new players, so all the trial guilds had been made, main groups were full, secondary groups were full. Most guild wanted a few trial achievements before inviting a new player.

What did I do? Go on the forums and complain about the "elitism" in the game? No, why should people that progressed and worked hard to be were they are spend their time carrying me? No!

I made my own trial focused guild, we ended up around 24man strong, NOONE had done veteran trials before. First run we clear vAA. We kept going that until we felt ready to move up, then we cleared vHRC without much problem. Our group dps was extremly low, but we made our own strategies that worked for us.

We spend months in craglorn trials too practise, get better, stronger. Time flew by as we had an amazing time. And by the end of it all. EVERYONE was what you would call 'elite 40k+ dps pharses'. Tho, we worked for it, we earned it.

By the end of the guild we had cleared vAA HM, vHRC HM, vSO HM, vMoL, vHoF.

And no, We never brought ANYONE in for a carry! Because why do trials, if you don't progress them yourself?

Some problems with your post. One, you dont seem to know what elitism is. There is a difference between vet and elitism/elitist. Elitism is an attitude. Its "im superior to you" and "your not worthy". Its a very toxic and selfish attitude. It has nothing to do with ones ability to master the game and be a good player. There are many vets i have met that are pleasant people, helpful and fun to play with. They will be just as good as an elitist, the difference is in the attitude and treating everyone that isnt as good or doesnt want to be as good as a peasant not worthy of licking the dirt off their boots.

This game has a high portion of toxic elitists that play it. Community is important in an MMO and a toxic one drives players away. We are here to have fun and enjoy the game we all paid for equally. Some players try to ruin that for others by acting like they own and manage the game and your lucky they even allow you to login. That is a problem. When people get done faffing around with quests and leveling and all the other little trinkets in the game and want to do end game content, you have this huge wall of toxicity and people leave.

This game has a much lower vet population than it should. In a healthy game 50% or so of the population should be max level vet players doing end game content. The other 50% should be players progressing to the end game that replace the players that left. From what i can tell the vet population is closer to 10-20%. What makes it even worse is that you only have to reach max level on a single character. The rest get to cheat and become max level at level 50. So there should be far more end game players. This means ESO has a high turn over rate.

The toxicity is only one problem. Add to that the joke of a leveling system in the game. You dont really feel like you get much stronger when gaining a level, but its even worse for CP. With CP the increase is so marginal that many players dont even care. There are players that have been playing for 4 years that still are in the mid CP range because their is no desire or reward to gain CP. No urgency. Get 500k xp and put a point in a tree so you can gain 5 dps in a game where dps is measure in thousands. There is no sense of progression. No sense of accomplishment. No sense that all that work you put in has made your character stronger.

Then you have the gear issue. The other major issue with no progression in ESO. There is no gear progression. Its all CP160 and the only reason to change gear is because they nerf a set or buff another set so you gain or lose a couple of percent of dps. I know people whine about having to grind gear here but this is the easiest gear grind in any mmo i have ever seen and its pretty much a one and done. Its not like in 6 months there will be new gear sets that are more powerful made out of new materials. Gear and level progression are primary drivers for keeping end game players and ESO fails on both. So players get bored and stop playing when they run out of stuff to do.

Just like with summerset, there will be many players who login run through summerset in a few weeks or a couple of months and then go play something else because there is no reason to run cloudrest 200 times or run around summerset farming for months.

TLDR: Once you get to end game there is nothing keeping you here and the toxic elitists practically push you out the door.


Edit: Also the whole "carry" thing is a stupid thing elitists made up to make themselves feel superior to others. If your doing 40k in a trial and i am doing 25k in a trial, you arent carrying me because you do more DPS. Same with dungeon. If your doing 30k in a dungeon and im doing 10k, your not carrying me. If the instance can be completed with all the dps doing X amount and every dps exceeds X then no one is being carried. And you can complete all content in this game doing 25k dps or less and a very large majority of it you can do with 20k dps or less.

You cannot complete all content with 25K dps. Wrong statement. Also dps check are in majority of DLC vet dungeons. Elitism is an issue, how about puggism ? I see people with around 5K dps pugging with level CP less than 160 in for COA 2, scallerpeak, fang lair . They are expecting me to carry them when they die with dungeon dps check.
Many max cp players now a days leaves dungeon gracefully , if they feel it doesn't going to work out and have to wait for another 30 mins to get slot.

Tandor

zaria wrote: »

Violynne wrote: »

Priyasekarssk wrote: »

Steam is not overall , but its good indicator and eye opener.

No, it's not.

You're going to sit there and convince people that the most active number of users is currently 10k, with the peak at 30k, with a game base of 8+ million?

All the chart shows is number of people actively playing, who allow their account to be tracked.

This is not only a poor indicator, but hardly representative of the player base.

People take breaks from games all the time. Only a halfwit would expect someone to be online 24/7/365 and anything contrary is "ESO is dying".

Its the number of players who launch eso with the steam launcher. This is not needed as ESO don't use steam drm.
Still many do it out of habit. probably mostly causal players.

Now its probably an downturn before summerset as many take an break or play less before an major update.

Do you happen to know if it only relates to those launching the live ESO client, or does it also include the PTS launch which is, of course, a totally separate client installation albeit through the same initial launcher?

Heka Cain

YES!

Shadowmaster

FloppyTouch wrote: »

Agree and these top tier players forget that they had help learning to and think they did it all on their own like no one ever gave them advise.

I had someone act like I didnt know vAA recently, had to achievement link the HM icon from 2014 to show I knew it.....they responded that the trial had changed since then....linked vMoL hm from a year or so ago and they finally stfu.....this was for a regular vAA run....elitism is one of the worst things I see in ESO but its a community/player issue, not a game one. Same players crying they cant get jobs IRL without experience...hypocrisy reaching epic levels.

Shadowmaster

Agalloch wrote: »

I hope ZOS will bring back Paul Sage to make team with Matt . This will be a real success ...for ESO

Pretty sure you will see something from Paul soon but it wont be ESO related.

Shadowmaster

Buffler wrote: »

As the game caters to the casual i have seen an awful lot of original players leaving, numbers wise is about the same, just new players replacing the old.

Agreed, BI tells you your endgame players are a small %...what the BI doesnt show is how much those players bring in and inspire others to try to git gud

Mettaricana

I been on tera, conan exiles, trove, etc lately eso since the worm cult event ended i havent given two craps to log in... daily quests and rerunning same trial a fun long term experience it does not make...

Im at cap for cp and next dlc cp..., im in bis for my class, golded out dyed out...

So as of now unless they add in some mini game time killers or new fresh mechanic i got no real reason to play i dropped my eso plus last week til something of interest really catches my interest. I dont hate eso but the amount of content per dlc or chapter is far to minimal to keep me longer than a day or 2 after it releases, a new peice of dirt with some trees and a mountain with different faces giving you fetch quests arent doing it lately would love some more branching impactful red choice quests that make redoing them on alts fun so far only lasting decisions ive seen was who survives bleakrock...

Eyro

No worries. Old people have all the stuffs. New players have none of the stuffs. So new players need to spend more money, so that means even more content! Right!?

Cpt_Teemo

Eyro wrote: »

No worries. Old people have all the stuffs. New players have none of the stuffs. So new players need to spend more money, so that means even more content! Right!?

Yeah, more content for the Cash Shop !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLFB25CT5k8

Camb0Sl1ce

I can't say for sure players are leaving, but ive played on xbox eu since console launch and now it seems whenever I log on the majority of the time 4 out of my 5 guilds had less than 20 players on, sometimes less than 10. I've been grinding a character on xbox na, and there seems to be much larger population. A lot of the way things are done on na I don't like, like dues and such but its better than standing around in a ghost town.

Asardes

A lot of console players are moving to PC, all I've spoken to have done so due to horrible performance issues. That doesn't mean the game is dying, just some parts of it, to live elsewhere

Cladius30

no

DanteYoda

Honestly the upkeep to play this game a lot is expensive compared to other mmo's so i wouldn't be shocked to see a lot of burn out at this time..

Summerset will pull in more customers but if Zos continues with the lacking content and pushing crown content only the game will deplete again..

Also the lack of balancing classes and races really hurt the populations as well.

AnviOfVai

PS4 is very well populated, especially Cyrodiil. Everyone seems to be there, lag and cheese for everyone!

Auros

Let me tell you a short story: I am relatively new to group content, very dedicated to perfect my skills and knowledge.
Had just finished the first pledge, and entered the second in a pug (as the previous one too) and something strange happened:
two nice ladies joined via group finder and we did ok, completed the dungeon and had our goal achieved.

The thing that was interesting was the relaxed way they treated the content: every now and then one of the two made a pause,
said something funny to the other one or talked about the design of a craftable home item ... they were so chill that it made me relax too and reminde me why am I playing this GAME for fun!
No elitism, no heart attacks, no toxic silence or insults... so ... I hope all impatient, rude and negative people would really leave this game, I will not miss them.

ATomiX96

Iccotak wrote: »

It's not losing players as bad as Destiny 2 is, that's for sure

can't lose that many players, if you never had such a playerbase in the first place *taps head*

Geekgirl

I wish there were a few more options for end-game content as well. I would love to see six- and eight-man content.

I have a great group of friends, we're more than four but far less than eleven and I would love to run together for end game.

ErMurazor

No, No and No. "We" are not loosing players.