Maintenance for the week of December 16:
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – December 16
• NA megaservers for patch maintenance – December 17, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
• EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 17, 9:00 UTC (4:00AM EST) - 17:00 UTC (12:00PM EST)
• PC/Mac: No maintenance – December 16
• NA megaservers for patch maintenance – December 17, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
• EU megaservers for patch maintenance – December 17, 9:00 UTC (4:00AM EST) - 17:00 UTC (12:00PM EST)
The issues on the North American megaservers have been resolved at this time. If you continue to experience difficulties at login, please restart your client. Thank you for your patience!
Something needs to change
Gnortranermara
✭✭✭✭✭
✭
✭
I am guildmaster for a small guild on XBox One. At this time last year, we had 50+ players online at most times and up to 20 in chat doing guild-related activities. We had multiple dungeon groups running daily and 1-3 weekly veteran trials. Since then, over 80% of our veteran trials team has quit the game. We're lucky to see 4 in chat simultaneously. It's a good day when we're able to get a group together for daily Undaunted pledges. Scrolling through the roster, the overwhelming majority of people have not logged on in 6+ months. Since I've been in chat listening to these former players and their complaints for hours a day, I am well-qualified to tell you why this is happening:
1) Voice chat is broken. When joining groups, we are involuntarily moved to group chat. About 25% of the time, it fails to transfer us to group chat correctly and the chat channel disappears. If we survive the transfer, it's only temporary because group chats break about 50% of the time when going through load screen. So we try to get back to guild chat, where we want to be. But about 25% of the time, the channel disappears from the menu when selected. Can there be any confusion why you're losing players when this is a social MMO and the primary means of social interaction is broken?
2) Server lag issues. ESO makes a lot of money for Zenimax/Bethesda. Some of that money should be spent updating the hardware that runs the game, but it clearly isn't. During peak usage hours, the server cannot handle moderate populations that are only a fraction of the size they used to be. I used to fight in massive, epic PvP battles in Cyrodiil with only occasional disconnects. Now the game becomes absolutely unplayable if there are even 1-2 bars of population per alliance.
3) Problems are ignored by the dev team, despite player reports. The examples above are just a tiny sampling of dozens of issues. Two max-level endgame players, both Flawless Conquerors, who quit the game months ago came back today. We went to play Scalecaller Peak to do vet hard mode. The poison, stony gaze, and other mechanics continually killed us, REPEATEDLY, despite being several steps away from the red AOE of those effects. We could roll out of the poison breath and it would kill us anyway a second later, several feet away. After hours of frustration, both players expressed their disgust with ZOS and promised never to play again. YOU ARE LOSING PLAYERS BECAUSE YOU WON'T FIX BUGS! Another example: players have reported the lag problems in VMA since it released. Today I made it to the final boss of vet Maelstrom with no deaths for my first time ever. Take a wild guess what happened... total server lag spike during the crystals, puncturing sweeps did that glitchy sound-plays-with-no-animation thing, and then I rubber-banded down to the bottom already eating the flame breath of a Daedroth, and it was over. Just like that, through no fault of my own, I was robbed of all the time and effort and stress invested into getting my achievement. Do you think I EVER want to touch this game again after that experience? I'm a marginal player who barely made it there and probably never will again. I am not far behind my friends at this point. I understand that you can't change the nature of the internet, but you CAN design content that doesn't punish players so harshly for latency. WHY is the poison breath a one-shot mechanic that requires reaction times faster than your own servers can handle?? This is company-ending sort of behavior and the loss of endgame players proves it.
4) Lack of class balance. In past interviews, lead developers have claimed that we can play any role with any class with similar efficacy. This is a lie. The gaps between classes in DPS, sustain, and utility are enormous. Players have given you all the feedback a competent team would need to fix the problem, and yet we never see any intelligent changes aimed at restoring balance. From my experience hanging out in the voice chat of my own guild and many others, the general consensus among players is that the combat dev team is incompetent at their jobs, and it's hard to find evidence to the contrary. Of course the majority of players are incapable of diagnosing the problems or prescribing solutions, but these forums are full of examples of excellent players who clearly understand the game better than the combat dev team, trying to be helpful and tell you what the problems are and how to fix them. The class reps did an amazing job of this. And despite excuses about time limitations, the majority of the solutions are simple and could be implemented by one competent developer in a single day of work.
5) The release schedule. Sure, ESO Plus subscribers want our 3 DLC's and one Chapter per year. Too bad. Without investing in staff increases (and/or improvements), the current release schedule is incompatible with the health of the game. FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY, STOP! Take a cycle to fix the current problems before adding more!
Players love this game and it's a phenomenal product, when it works. But it's not working. It's a frustrating mess that isn't fun anymore. The content is great but playing it is a struggle because of problems beyond our control. Bad decisions, whether from investors or corporate heads or within the team or wherever they're coming from are killing this game. These new players you're bringing in rarely pass 300CP before they quit, too.
Please fix the game, maybe?
Edited by Gnortranermara on July 21, 2018 7:16AM 1) Voice chat is broken. When joining groups, we are involuntarily moved to group chat. About 25% of the time, it fails to transfer us to group chat correctly and the chat channel disappears. If we survive the transfer, it's only temporary because group chats break about 50% of the time when going through load screen. So we try to get back to guild chat, where we want to be. But about 25% of the time, the channel disappears from the menu when selected. Can there be any confusion why you're losing players when this is a social MMO and the primary means of social interaction is broken?
2) Server lag issues. ESO makes a lot of money for Zenimax/Bethesda. Some of that money should be spent updating the hardware that runs the game, but it clearly isn't. During peak usage hours, the server cannot handle moderate populations that are only a fraction of the size they used to be. I used to fight in massive, epic PvP battles in Cyrodiil with only occasional disconnects. Now the game becomes absolutely unplayable if there are even 1-2 bars of population per alliance.
3) Problems are ignored by the dev team, despite player reports. The examples above are just a tiny sampling of dozens of issues. Two max-level endgame players, both Flawless Conquerors, who quit the game months ago came back today. We went to play Scalecaller Peak to do vet hard mode. The poison, stony gaze, and other mechanics continually killed us, REPEATEDLY, despite being several steps away from the red AOE of those effects. We could roll out of the poison breath and it would kill us anyway a second later, several feet away. After hours of frustration, both players expressed their disgust with ZOS and promised never to play again. YOU ARE LOSING PLAYERS BECAUSE YOU WON'T FIX BUGS! Another example: players have reported the lag problems in VMA since it released. Today I made it to the final boss of vet Maelstrom with no deaths for my first time ever. Take a wild guess what happened... total server lag spike during the crystals, puncturing sweeps did that glitchy sound-plays-with-no-animation thing, and then I rubber-banded down to the bottom already eating the flame breath of a Daedroth, and it was over. Just like that, through no fault of my own, I was robbed of all the time and effort and stress invested into getting my achievement. Do you think I EVER want to touch this game again after that experience? I'm a marginal player who barely made it there and probably never will again. I am not far behind my friends at this point. I understand that you can't change the nature of the internet, but you CAN design content that doesn't punish players so harshly for latency. WHY is the poison breath a one-shot mechanic that requires reaction times faster than your own servers can handle?? This is company-ending sort of behavior and the loss of endgame players proves it.
4) Lack of class balance. In past interviews, lead developers have claimed that we can play any role with any class with similar efficacy. This is a lie. The gaps between classes in DPS, sustain, and utility are enormous. Players have given you all the feedback a competent team would need to fix the problem, and yet we never see any intelligent changes aimed at restoring balance. From my experience hanging out in the voice chat of my own guild and many others, the general consensus among players is that the combat dev team is incompetent at their jobs, and it's hard to find evidence to the contrary. Of course the majority of players are incapable of diagnosing the problems or prescribing solutions, but these forums are full of examples of excellent players who clearly understand the game better than the combat dev team, trying to be helpful and tell you what the problems are and how to fix them. The class reps did an amazing job of this. And despite excuses about time limitations, the majority of the solutions are simple and could be implemented by one competent developer in a single day of work.
5) The release schedule. Sure, ESO Plus subscribers want our 3 DLC's and one Chapter per year. Too bad. Without investing in staff increases (and/or improvements), the current release schedule is incompatible with the health of the game. FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY, STOP! Take a cycle to fix the current problems before adding more!
Players love this game and it's a phenomenal product, when it works. But it's not working. It's a frustrating mess that isn't fun anymore. The content is great but playing it is a struggle because of problems beyond our control. Bad decisions, whether from investors or corporate heads or within the team or wherever they're coming from are killing this game. These new players you're bringing in rarely pass 300CP before they quit, too.
Please fix the game, maybe?
19
-
Shadow-Fighter✭✭✭✭✭
✭Thanks for your efforts but as you also written, they dont care. See class reps.Natch Potes is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get7 -
shaielzafine✭✭✭✭✭I wonder if they make more money from advertising DLCs / expansions to random new players vs retaining their current players that subscribe and purchase hundreds of dollars worth of stuff from the crown store and recommend the game to their friends. I suppose in the long run, if they don't fix the bugs and performance problems, the new players they attract will quit eventually anyway as well.1
-
gp1680✭✭✭✭✭Well said OP.
You can also add the glitch with the crafting stations in the guild houses which render them useless. All the time, effort, and money these gm’s put into their house for their guildies and half the time they don’t work.
ZOS doesn’t care about the performance of their own game or keeping long time players. Their only concern is pumping out new crown crates, cosmetic crap, and DLC’s.0 -
Sophocles1✭✭✭Ok so I am new to the game But I’ve been on lots of other games and read forums, and it seems to me I heard this version of a complaint against every game I’ve ever played. These are massively hard undertakings to develop and maintain. Are we just expecting the impossible? I mean, a company as massive as Apple has problems with glitchy function in its product too. There will be bugs. But my guess is they’re working their butts off and they’re actually pretty skilled. I mean, look at this amazing product, right?2
-
Wildberryjack✭✭✭✭✭
✭I haven't seen one game yet that isn't complained about. All games have some issues, lag, whatever. I don't think it's possible to make a perfect game.
But you want to see an example of true incompetence? Look right now at WoW, they just tried to sneak in whole-world scaling tech through the backdoor on a major patch... and completely broke the game. I mean for real broke it. Log in, you'll see, it's unplayable atm and they are scrambling to fix it. Talk about incompetent. They did not test what their backend change would do to the live game at all and it affected EVERYTHING in a negative way. It's a massive clusterF. I won't even bother logging into that game until they revert or fix it. If it means I miss the launch of their upcoming expansion then so be it. It's THAT bad.The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. ~Pablo Picasso1 -
Gnortranermara✭✭✭✭✭
✭Sophocles1 wrote: »Ok so I am new to the game But I’ve been on lots of other games and read forums, and it seems to me I heard this version of a complaint against every game I’ve ever played. These are massively hard undertakings to develop and maintain. Are we just expecting the impossible? I mean, a company as massive as Apple has problems with glitchy function in its product too. There will be bugs. But my guess is they’re working their butts off and they’re actually pretty skilled. I mean, look at this amazing product, right?
My perception is that (1) there are a few specific people on the team who are ill-suited for their job and it drags the game down in certain areas, and (2) corporate priorities are interfering with the health of the game because devs are pushed to work on new content instead of fixing what's broken.3 -
TheCyberDruid✭✭✭✭✭Sophocles1 wrote: »There will be bugs. But my guess is they’re working their butts off and they’re actually pretty skilled. I mean, look at this amazing product, right?
If you have been around for at least the last six months you might have a different perspective on the situation. The game didn't get more stable. It actually worked the other way. I'm not sure if people who maintain the game are 'skilled', but the result is pretty underwhelming after the Summerset release. The 'amazing product' is surely overshadowed by quite a few technical issues that could be resolved in a more timely manor by a different kind of outlet.2 -
D0PAMINE✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭Sophocles1 wrote: »Ok so I am new to the game But I’ve been on lots of other games and read forums, and it seems to me I heard this version of a complaint against every game I’ve ever played. These are massively hard undertakings to develop and maintain. Are we just expecting the impossible? I mean, a company as massive as Apple has problems with glitchy function in its product too. There will be bugs. But my guess is they’re working their butts off and they’re actually pretty skilled. I mean, look at this amazing product, right?
As others have mentioned, broken things get ignored and each content release creates more disconnects, glitches, lag etc. Even logging in has become worse. They hope we will just go away because all the new players will put up with it while those of us who have been here since beta/launch know exactly how it will play out.0
