How's the server "dead"?

Raudgrani

Bhaal5 wrote: »

Raudgrani wrote: »

Bhaal5 wrote: »

russelmmendoza wrote: »

Raudgrani wrote: »

eso_lags wrote: »

@Raudgrani Im not sure about any other servers besides xbox NA, but i would assume they are all similar. But for some reason I see a lot more posts and threads about EU dying than anything else..

But if you cant see that this game is declining then you haven't been paying attention. Compared to one tamriel, or even morrowind, there is so much less life in this game. I miss one tamriel to be honest, the game was so populated and fun. Even as a pvp player in the proc meta, it was a great time to play.

But now things have changed, especially in cyrodil. Sure you can go to any zone in the game and run around and find people out and about. But this is nothing like it used to be. Cyrodil, at least here, is dead most of the time. Last year you would sometimes see a 250 que for vivec and a 60+ que for shor. You dont see that now. I havent waited in a que for shor in god knows how long. Maybe vivec will get a que at prime time on the weekends, but im not sure i try to avoid vivec at that specific time because its unplayable when its 3 bars..

And the under level 50 campaign is completely dead all the time. Back in morrowind, and even more so before, that campaign was very popular. I think this specifically says a lot about what zos has done to pvp. People used to re roll into that camp to pvp because the azuras star, or sotha sil, is dead on xbox and always has been... I think pvp has lost a great many players and i think that really shows in how dead the under lv 50 camp is now.

And the same goes for malestrom. Every time i look at the leader boards for vma they are never full. Even a day or so ago when i checked and there was a couple hours left, no class was full. And warden, dk, and templar, if i recall, were all under 40 players. If i had to guess id say its similar, but not as bad, with trials but i cant say for sure because i dont really look at it. Im sure theres more to it though. We have BGs now which im sure plays a part in the cyrodil decline.. And there are many more arena weapons now.

Also the undaunted areas. In one tamriel, and in morrowind, you could go to mournhold, eldenroot, or wayrest, and see tons of people waiting for ques, LFG for dailies, and dueling. This is not the case anymore. No one duels anywhere, on xbox, besides wayrest. Sure, some people hang in auridon and duel, and maybe even in riften although i dont think so. But wayrest seems to be the popular place now. And even then on many nights it seems to be dead everywhere. Not like a year or two ago. Im sure there could be multiple reasons but this is just what i see..

But i still believe somethings that play a big part in it are that a lot of people are just sick of the ongoing decline in performance, especially in cyrodil, constant nerfs, boredom, and zos not seeming to care. I base my opinion of this on seeing many, many, friends leave the game since morrowind. Many of them who were small scale pvp players who just cant play because of performance. I also base that on how many people i see in game running around.

For example, last night was sunday. A slow time for the game. During the event. But every instance i went to in every alliance capitol city was dead. I went to eastmarch on 4 characters and it was always dead. Same with craglorn and same with cyrodil. Everywhere was a ghost town. I mean so dead that when i ported into wayrest i thought i crashed because there wasnt one person...

This seems to be more common at slow times now a days, where even a year ago I could still find many players around on a sunday night at 8pm est. Also, i was doing this to find a duel to test a build, not just for the sake of doing it. And i even notice it in my guilds too. Many people just not logging on anymore for long periods. Im not saying the game is dead but, from my perspective of playing for a few years, it seems there are a hell of a lot less players than morrowind.. And many, mannnyy, less players than one tamriel..

Don't really know the difference between platforms, servers, when they were officially declared open and so on. But compare June 2016, when One Tamriel was released to the numbers now. Can you see the difference? I can: https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

Tell me how there were more players active back then? Please explain, and I am not being sarcastic. I want to know how you think, what you mean.

I THINK you are being somewhat melancholic. You are the ones not paying attention. It's easy to get stuck in a feeling of "good old days"; no matter what we speak about. "Back then" kind of always feels better than right now, most often at least. Maybe the people YOU played with don't play anymore? It's an old game after all. Maybe it's not as fun anymore - for you - because you've seen and done like everything, it's not a "thrill" anymore. But still, tell me how the game is dying. Because I don't understand what people mean. There's like nothing to support the statement, except highly subjective personal opinions.

We can both agree Cyrodiil has been depopulated, but that's a given fact. It doesn't work. Only hardcore PVP'ers still go there, the PVE'ers have had their Spell Strategist gear now, so it's back to 1-2 bars, and mostly same old faces when you meet any kind of real resistance. Sad, but true. It doesn't however make the game neither "dead" nor "dying".

TYVM FOR THE LINK.

I am always boggled this f uck heads keep saying the game is dead.

Please for the love of all the divines, and all the deadric prince if you want, dont project your deadgaminglife to the game.

When i get on eso, ghratwood or many major trading hub has around 10 people at tops. Group finder takes over 30 minutes to find a 'random' group. And cyrodiil.... Vivec has the only popluation bar and on side will have 2 bars and every other colour none. (The other campaigns have no bars what so ever). So that doesnt really scream 'active' to me.
(Ps4 gmt +10 NA)

No need to discuss Cyrodiil. EVERYONE agrees it's in a horrible state, no one every denied that. It's a sad truth. Judging the state of the game by bars in Cyrodiil is just wrong. Many do Battlegrounds instead now. It takes seconds up to a minute to get into Battlegrounds these days, just a year ago you even forgot you were in queue when you finally got a ready check.

But for dungeon activity finder? Seriously? How is it worse now than it ever was? Queuing as a DD has always taken a long time. If I go with my tank or healer, I need to have my armor fixed, weapons charged and inventory emptied BEFORE I queue, because it literally takes seconds to get into group. Same as always.
Here's also where you can see a bit of indication of a "generation shift", there are sooo many really, really bad players in group. Who doesn't know basic mechanics of non-DLC dungeons, who have awful skill loadouts, who do less damage than me as a tank; and so on. This wasn't the case like 1½ year ago, it's gotten way worse. If I go with a DD, tank is at least 60% of the time not a tank, and they go like "What do you mean, tank the boss? Taunt? What's that?".

And this "xxxxx (city) has maximum 10 players, it's so dead". I can't see that. I see so many names I can't even count them, if I go there in the afternoon. People are not dueling around wayshrines these days, that's true. I can't really say I miss it, I hate when people do. But the numbers in cities. I dunno, I must be in another instance than you guys? It's the same numbers or MORE than it used to be, I'm being totally honest here. I can't see what you mean, I just can't.

Om comparing recent experiences to my now recent ones in guild wars 2
-Trading hubs in eso, i can only compare to crafting hub as gw2 has an awesome trade house. But its always packed with players and feels like a mmo not a glorified downscaled version of solo skyrim.
-I can queue for a dungeon and be in it with in minutes (dd or not)
-I can go to wvw and instantly find a group and be immersed
-In can jump into pvp and again grouped up and playing within minutes
-overland pve meta events (closes thing are dolmens, thats only a fart in the wind compared to a gw2 meta)
-Not to mention the content eso just doesnt provide that gw2 does.

So yeah, eso feels dead in the oceanic times. But maybe because of the treat of players in this timezone aswell most cant be bothered sticking around.
But hey, i guess people like the solo experience.

I think comparing one game to another, trying to see if a "server us dying", is a sort of an off comparison. It doesn't quite do it. The "Oh it was PACKED when Morrowind dropped!", while in reality there are like 3 times as many players now, is a weird kind of attitude, that I want to understand. I don't even know what "Guild Wars" is (a game, obviously), so it really doesn't help explaining why people say another game is "dead" or "dying".

My thought is, that it's partly reflecting their own opinion. They might have grown tired with the game itself, only seeing old in game friends that left (and they don't look for new ones), they have done everything already and nothing feels interesting, and they might not be pleased in what direction the game is heading.
I also think we have a kind of generation shift. A big part of the new players might not eat, sleep and breath ESO, like many did way back when the game was new. Maybe they don't have the "become best of all - min/max everything" mindset like many old players do/did.
Some of the new players I've got to know, doesn't even know what Maelstrom Arena is. And for good reason, those weapons are *** now. Besides the Bow and some destro staff as backbar for PVE, there's no use for any of them - except maybe the resto staff and 2H axe for very niece PVP builds (but you sure don't NEED them). if people don't do what they did back then, it might have an impact too. There's really no reason to spend a month at least, trying to get something which is useless (or have a tiny, tiny chance to get something worth keeping!). Back then you NEEDED those weapons, whatever you did. The old players already have them all, and don't need more of them. Just as an example.

Elsonso

Bhaal5 wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

Bhaal5 wrote: »

When i get on eso, ghratwood or many major trading hub has around 10 people at tops. Group finder takes over 30 minutes to find a 'random' group. And cyrodiil.... Vivec has the only popluation bar and on side will have 2 bars and every other colour none. (The other campaigns have no bars what so ever). So that doesnt really scream 'active' to me.
(Ps4 gmt +10 NA)

So, you are in Russia? What time are you playing? (in Eastern Time if you care to do the conversion)

Gmt +10 is eastern Australia (well thats what google tells me also why i used gmt rather than AEST.. That gets people confussed)

It was a guess. I didn't look you up to see if you had revealed your location in another comment, and I see a lot of Russians in the game, although, admittedly on the EU server. Australians are usually leading the charge about lag, not population, although I can see how you would think the two are related.

You still did not say what time you were playing. I only asked for it in Eastern Time so that it was easier to see how that related to prime time on the NA server.

drguild wrote: »

For this game with it being called dead, I want to know how Sharding works in relation to that.
When I am in Summerset quite often there are hardly anyone around especially in Alinor and I believe it's the shard.
I have ported to guildies shards and it was like 3 times the population of the shard I was already in.

Also do we know the shard caps for a area like the Summerset overland?

The game does segment players into "channels" (which you called "shards"). Obviously, ZOS did not use "shard" because, like "expansion" and "chapter", the term did not apply to what ZOS was doing. Same basic concept, I guess.

We don't know how large these channels can be, but we know that it apparently includes the entire zone exterior, and a large amount of what people might consider "indoor". That would be like banks, shops, and other small indoor places, which are seemingly inside but are tucked under the map directly below their outside counterparts. These cap at somewhere around 300-500 people, by my estimation. However, ZOS can change those numbers much faster than I can estimate them, so it is really pointless to try and figure that out. For example, I suspect that Eastmarch is capped lower than The Rift due to the holiday.

The game does tend to favor placing people in a channel where they share guilds and friends. If you can travel to different guild members and the people in zone chat change, then it is likely that there are quite a few channels for that zone. If seem stuck with the same people, the probability increases that there are fewer channels active. I also suspect that loading screens are longer when there are more channels in play. More channels means more time required to find a spot for you because it has to check more of them. One time it took me 45 seconds to zone into Eastmarch to turn in a New Life quest. When I got there, the area had several people from my guilds.

Even when an area is "dead", it is not really possible to tell how many channels there are. I tend to assume that if a zone is sparsely populated and the time of day is at the lowest point of server population for the day, that there is only one channel, particularly in the less used zones. However, there is no way to be certain. ZOS might also have a minimum number of channels that are always there and they all get used, even when the server population is lowest. It is better to plan for a certain number of channels and keep them around than it is to spin up a new channel, which I suspect they do when things get busy, and close them down when they are not.

Tabbycat

It used to be practically dead when I'd play in the mornings. Now people are everywhere all the time like locusts.

I'd say if anything the game has gotten more popular over time, not less.

Raudgrani

Tabbycat wrote: »

It used to be practically dead when I'd play in the mornings. Now people are everywhere all the time like locusts.

I'd say if anything the game has gotten more popular over time, not less.

Exactly. That's whay I'm saying. How can people not see this? The (new) population might be playing a bit different than they used to do, but numbers certainly have not dropped. Might be something about "shards"/instances, but I mean... People say cities are "ghost towns", went online today around half past eight this morning, and there was at least 20 guys in Mournhold. Went to Breda's place in Eastmarch, people everywhere. Are some people blind...? :-P