Would you sacrifice 6 months of content for 6 months of pure optimisation?

SgtSilock

The question is simply as above, would you rather have silky smooth performance after 6 months of pure dedication to optimizing, or 6 months of more content?

Gythral

Yes

As long as it's the 2 3 months of dungeon DLC (you know thew bit every one ignores), not the solo stuff

zvavi

Yes

Wait lemme change to 12. But when u say optimization it means OPTIMIZATION. Not some ***. I honestly consider not to subscribe because of it. Still gonna buy the dlc though.

theyancey

No

That would equal 6 months of cancelled subs.

Aliyavana

No

No, as my pc isnt a potato and im on a good platform

Sanctuary_Reaper

yes, but it would have to be guarenteed fixes, otherwise it would be a wasted 6 months.

itsfatbass

Yes

Aliyavana wrote: »

No, as my pc isnt a potato and im on a good platform

Optimization needs to occur regardless of whether you're "not on a potato". Has nothing to do with YOUR PC but way to sound like a ***.

Nutshotz

Six?! I'd take twelve!

Count me in at 12. A full year of no new content and guarantee fixes and new servers I'm all in or I'm out

Waynerx8

Do we have to have this choice, a game that is sold and have a sub should have good performance and content, if the company can't do this then I suggest the staff go pull ***?kin spuds up in a field for a living.

DeadlyRecluse

In theory, sure.

In practice, nobody is offering this choice. It's not on the table.

MartiniDaniels

Yes

Gythral wrote: »

As long as it's the 2 3 months of dungeon DLC (you know thew bit every one ignores), not the solo stuff

Who is this "everyone"? As for me dlc dungeons is one of the best things in this game both content and gameplay wise.

notimetocare

No

Would it be nice? Probably
Would it kill the game? Financially, for sure lol

whitecrow

No

No, I don't really experience any performance problems.

zvavi

Yes

NA people please refrain from answering, it is an EU problem.

Rex-Umbra

No

Other than unable to mount in Cyrodiil no major issues for me atm.

Gilvoth

.

MasterSpatula

No

One quarter? Sure. Two quarters? See ya.

TiaFrye

No

No issues for me thus far after the last patch, everything is the same, and I'm not ready to sacrifice my sub and wait for a year or a half to continue on story arcs. I am already waitin for a half of the year in between chapters and story dlcs.

Shantu

No

This is a hypothetical that will NEVER happen. Besides, optimization should be ongoing, not something you wait until it's so bad you need 6 months of lost profits to fix.

I run a high end gaming machine with very high online speed. I rarely see huge issues. That's not to say that the system couldn't use some optimization, but online performance is a complex and layered issue and doesn't all rest at the feet of ZOS.

TheGreatBlackBear

Six?! I'd take twelve!

I'd be unemployed if my job performance was as bad as some of the people working on this game. Let's not kid ourselves

Akrasjel

No

They earn enough money to hire additional people focused only on this.

Tandor

No

No, not because I don't have any performance issues but because different teams handle different things and ZOS would either have to pay the content team for doing nothing or else lay them off. Moreover, I'm willing to bet that at the end of the six months this forum would still be full of complaints.

Ertosi

Yes

Why not? We've already sacrificed 6 months of substantial content for an "overarching story", with the rest of this year likely to follow the same trend.

Unlike previous years, this year's first quarter brought no new game systems or crafting. Look at everything each recent year's first quarter brought, comparing similar features, and a pattern of diminishing yearly content becomes apparent. Add in each year's second quarter and the content gap widens even further:



I was bothered enough by the lack of substantial new game systems coming to ESO this year that I cancelled my sub for the first time; even emailed explaining that was the reason why. From their reply of "[…] sorry that you feel the story this year is not worth the price of admission.", as well as how much they are hyping it, it's clear they view story as being equivalent to new features. I disagree for a few reasons:

• New real features and content affect and enhance all of your characters (ex new crafting systems, skill lines, battle modes, etc); story can only be freshly experienced once and you take nothing of it with you afterwards.
• New stories already came with each new zone, so it's nothing new. There was already a continuing plot and we already saw reoccurring characters between them.
• It takes much less overall work to make stories which fits with their trend of maximum buck intake vs minimum effort output.

I say all of this because we need to be ever cautious of this trend of lessening effort being put into the game.


We should all be quite cautious of telling them they have a free pass to not bring any new content if they focus on optimizations. Based off of their past choices, they're likely to take advantage of it, making lots of hype of all of the stuff "being fixed" but in the end we'll find the game barely moved forward and with nothing new to show for it.

Donny_Vito

Yes

But they won some awards this year for Best MMO.

dotme

Yes

But they won't do it.

From a PvP perspective, I don't know what the devs do to fill 40 hours every week. And now with Mr Wheeler taking on new responsibilities, Cyrodiil is in danger of becoming abandonware. The bugs that go on for months with no remedy (and often no acknowledgement) is alarming.

We saw a post a while back about how communication was going to improve. It didn't. The number of posts in the Bugs Forum that get an official "Thanks - We've seen this and it's been added to the list" is so small you'll have to dig to find one.

Whether ZOS cares or not about the problems, I can't say - but if all you had to go on was these forums and the level of engagement between developers and players, it's easy to see why most people think they don't.

SteveCampsOut

Six?! I'd take twelve!

Donny_Vito wrote: »

But they won some awards this year for Best MMO.

We all know about this generation's awards for doing nothing right?

Acrolas

No

"Pure optimisation" would be impossible as some people just aren't overly familiar with their own hardware or software and would continue to blame ZOS for issues that can only be troubleshot on the client side.

Known server-side bugs and issues have a hierarchy of prioritization and just because your pet problem isn't fixed doesn't mean that development is doing nothing. Some problems take a while to understand exactly why they're happening. Dropping content releases is not guaranteed to expedite this process.

Turelus

Yes

Yup. Said for years they should take ome quarter a year to clean up previous releases.

Tandor

No

Ertosi wrote: »

Why not? We've already sacrificed 6 months of substantial content for an "overarching story", with the rest of this year likely to follow the same trend.

Unlike previous years, this year's first quarter brought no new game systems or crafting. Look at everything each recent year's first quarter brought, comparing similar features, and a pattern of diminishing yearly content becomes apparent. Add in each year's second quarter and the content gap widens even further:



I was bothered enough by the lack of substantial new game systems coming to ESO this year that I cancelled my sub for the first time; even emailed explaining that was the reason why. From their reply of "[…] sorry that you feel the story this year is not worth the price of admission.", as well as how much they are hyping it, it's clear they view story as being equivalent to new features. I disagree for a few reasons:

• New real features and content affect and enhance all of your characters (ex new crafting systems, skill lines, battle modes, etc); story can only be freshly experienced once and you take nothing of it with you afterwards.
• New stories already came with each new zone, so it's nothing new. There was already a continuing plot and we already saw reoccurring characters between them.
• It takes much less overall work to make stories which fits with their trend of maximum buck intake vs minimum effort output.

I say all of this because we need to be ever cautious of this trend of lessening effort being put into the game.


We should all be quite cautious of telling them they have a free pass to not bring any new content if they focus on optimizations. Based off of their past choices, they're likely to take advantage of it, making lots of hype of all of the stuff "being fixed" but in the end we'll find the game barely moved forward and with nothing new to show for it.

They're bringing plenty of new content into the game, it's just that you don't consider things like battlegrounds, additional zones, or a new skill line to be content. As for new systems, which is all you're really talking about, it's hardly surprising that these are added in the first few years of a game and that the focus after that is on content - which I'm willing to bet you click through as fast as you possibly can.

However, so far as the DLCs and Chapters are concerned, if they don't meet your requirements then don't buy them and don't subscribe to the game. If the base game wasn't providing any enjoyment or value to you then you wouldn't even be playing it, would you? I think you under-estimate the effort being put into the game, but hey if you think you can do better then I'm willing to volunteer to pop up on your game's forum and tell you what I think of it !

Danksta

Six?! I'd take twelve!

I'm not playing the game now because of poor performance so why not?

Zacuel

Yes

Potatoes! Unite!