So the Year Of The Dragon is coming to an end.

The Uninvited

No option for "I loved Northern Elsweyr but not Southern"?

Tommy_The_Gun

It felt more like a year of a cat tbh...

Btw. Call me pesymist but I have been here since 2014 and so far probably it was the worst year in eso.
So many nerfs. So many things got wrecked.
Add server performance on top of that and cancelled events and you will understand why.

When casuals say that they think about quiting you know that game has some serious problems.

Note: I am not judging new zones design and stuff. It was good and probably immersive for cat-fans but for me it is to little to compensate for the other disaters. So final score... 1/10 (1 for new zones. If not for that it would have been 0/10).

gepe87

Too much cats!

Cirantille

I loved Northern Elsweyr but south not much.
Northern Elsweyr looks fancier.

Lord-Otto

I liked nothing.
It was lore-breaking, the dragons look dumb, the fat cats and small cats are stupid, the area is uninspired with artificial vertical barriers, the story is dragged-out and pointless, the combat has become a snore fest and dealing a whole year with that was way too much.
I'm glad it's over.

pod88kk

With all the chopping and changing of builds from patch to patch, it was frustrating.

I still played, but it was only because there were so many people 'taking a break', I didn't want my trial team to have to cancel runs because they were short of players. But yeah, I can see why people player fatigue was so prevalent. Hopefully next year is better.

Gythral

Is the year of the cat almost over???

After all it should have been called that or
The Year of the wait ages for a dragon and it's dead before you can get to it! (as the 'wrong' one appeared)

OtarTheMad

Other
I liked Northern and Southern Elsweyr but not the dungeon DLCs. I wish magcro was better but meh, it'll get to a good point.

Michae

I prefer closed stories instead of this year spanning content since I do things at my own pace. I like to do dlcs in order but when they're self contained at least there's little harm in skipping content. Here you have to get them all and play in order for the story to make sense. Also I liked it more when the dlcs weren't neccesarily about saving the world, like in Orsinium, Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

FierceSam

Michae wrote: »

I prefer closed stories instead of this year spanning content since I do things at my own pace. I like to do dlcs in order but when they're self contained at least there's little harm in skipping content. Here you have to get them all and play in order for the story to make sense. Also I liked it more when the dlcs weren't neccesarily about saving the world, like in Orsinium, Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

I would kind of disagree with you here. Not in terms of how nice it is to do things in sequence, but in terms of the lack of any meaningful storyline within the DLC dungeons.

Hype aside, you could easily have skipped all four DLC dragon dungeons and have lost approximately none of the ongoing plot or storyline.

The impact of the Wrathstone dungeons can be summed up in a couple of lines of Abnur Tharn dialogue. "Oh so you have found the Wrathstone... great." The actual in-dungeon storytelling was minimal, easily skipped and, worst of all, easy to mess up for other players, so even if they wanted to do the storyline, they were unable to.

Similarly, Scalebreaker doesn't even bother to attempt to fit in with the overall storyline. These dungeons are entirely side quests in the Year of the Dragon. They have zero impact on the overall storyline, at least Wrathstone pretended to have some kind of linkage. Again the integration of storyline into the dungeon is perfunctory and badly executed.

You had more plot integration better done and in a more convincing manner in the Elsweyr prologue than you did in any of the DLC dungeons. Indeed the prologue introduced a lot of elements (like the Khajiiti singer/storytellers) that were barely touched on in the actual chapter.

So I'd argue that in terms of the overall storyline, you could safely bypass Wrathstone and totally ignore Scalebreaker. You're going to get more story out of either of the two prologues than you will out of all 4 dungeons combined.

furiouslog

Yes - I loved all of the DLC's!

Loved the new content. Hated the nerfs.

Michaelkeir

Where's the "none" option? I didn't care for Elsweyr at all honestly. Never cared for the cats there either. Didn't care for the new dungeons other than to get the new motifs. Granted I love learning new lore about anything related to Elder Scrolls and lore about khajit was welcome I guess.

But my main drive this year was Necromancers. And even that felt lacking at best due to a number of grips I have about the class...still we got necromancers so that's a plus.

Reverb

Eh, I could take or leave it. I appreciate the new architecture and furnishing styles and like the new dungeons, but the stories weren’t compelling, I’m over the endless, short term hype cycles, and “zomg dragons!!!” still seems gimmicky.

I also think they overdesign all of the new zones, contributing to performance degradation. When we look at the new areas compared to the vanilla zones it’s clear. The original designers knew what the engine was capable of handling. The new ones aren’t familiar with the base code or underlying architecture, and they create textures and assets that the game can’t handle under load. The result is that performance decreases and the game becomes more unstable with each release. The same holds true of the blingy mounts and pets with particle effects.

I was able to appreciate all of the 2018 content in spite of all that, but the same isn’t true of the 2019 stuff. If I logged in tonight and everything from “The year of the dragon” was gone from the game, including Necromancers, I’d be ok with that.

peacenote

Too bad the poll options can't be fixed (forum issue, not OP issue) because I think there is some good feedback in this thread.

Michae wrote: »

I prefer closed stories instead of this year spanning content since I do things at my own pace. I like to do dlcs in order but when they're self contained at least there's little harm in skipping content. Here you have to get them all and play in order for the story to make sense.

I very strongly agree with this. I haven't finished Northern Elsweyr (almost done), which means I haven't even started Southern Elsweyr. I don't appreciate that the easiest way to get tickets in this current event is to venture into Southern Elsweyr when I'm not ready to do so. I pretty much only play weekends, and some weekends I quest, some weekends I PvP, and some weekends I pursue more end game content (trials and achievements in DLC dungeons). I don't have time to do everything and the story is going too fast for me to catch up. I see the appeal for an epic story line across a year, but I really wish they wouldn't plan to do this EVERY year. It isn't for me.

Other thoughts:

• I like the new dungeons
• I had fun with the dragons
• I love the new necromancer class
• I can appreciate the artwork of the new zones although I think some folks over-hyped it such that I wasn't as blown away with the beauty as I expected to be.
• I abhor the combat changes, from the racial changes to the nerfs to the healing changes to the dots craziness. It's not that combat balance was attempted, but more the pace and the order of the changes (why change healing springs before trying visual nerfs like particle effects?) and the extreme lack of communication (especially lack of acknowledgement about enjoyable playstyles that were completely gutted). I was extremely close to quitting when the hatchet was taken to healing, and really the only thing that saved it for me was this lovely stamina healing build (which distracted me when I couldn't face logging into my main) and Z'ens Redress which has been fun to experiment with. I'm still struggling to find a pure HA attack build that's viable so that I can DPS once in a while, because LAs hurt my hand.

Shawn_PT

Missing an 'Other' or 'Don't care' option.

Wrathstone. Dungeons are okay. That they're tied to the story arc is indifferent to me.

Elsweyr. The environment is bleak up north. Makes me appreciate Summerset though with all its color and nice environment. I haven't bothered with quests other than dailies for the events. Necro is okay. I made one that's a mule/crafter. That's about it. Sunspire is fun though.

Scalebreaker. More dungeons. They're okay I guess. Don't see what they have to do with the story arc other than having dragons in them.

Dragonguard. Stepped into the map for the event dragon killing and that's it.

I've stopped trying to catch up with 'content' a while ago. Haven't even done Cadwell's silver so I see no point in running ahead like mad just for moar quests. This year was terrible for my DDs. I was rather pleased with my DPS before, which was not over the top but certainly comfortable to complete any content. Now I'm back to being at the bottom of the DPS scale and no matter what I try I can't catch up so I'm kind of giving up on chasing numbers. Which has severely cut my enjoyment of the game right now.

Went all-in for this New Moon crate season and got pretty much only trash from it, so another disheartening point.

That Opal event was a flop. I managed to grab a few pages and the feather but it was just sad.

All in all, I don't think I've ever felt so Meh towards ESO. And thinking about next year doesn't much bring any joy. More dungeons with frustrating achievements. More quests I won't run. More nerfs. More stuff I probably won't care about. Something has been datamined about mushrooms. Will we see the rest of Morrowind? Or will it be a season lost underground in Blackreach searching for Nirnroot amidst squeaky dwemer junk and screeching Falmer? That was one of two parts in TES Skyrim I abhored doing, so I'm definitely not looking forward to that.

Oh well. Time will tell. I hope this is rock bottom and we can only go up from now on.

Urvoth

The DLC content after Wrathstone was mediocre at best, but the game design choices really ruined it.

whitecrow

Yes - I loved all of the DLC's!

Love is a strong word but I certainly enjoyed all of it. I did like Summerset a bit more as the land was prettier and the story (if you played the chapters in the right order) tied in with previous chapter stories which made me feel more invested.

rpa

I honestly don't remember the Elsweyr story and I'd rather grind Alik'r Desert dolmens than waste time with dragons. I think "chapter" was rushed with insufficient resources and time and relied too much on cats and dragons gimmick and too little on actual interesting and memorable content.

Can't comment on DLC cause no ESO+ for me before performance is fixed.

Shantu

I "loved" none of it. Dragons were interesting for 5 minutes. Sunspire made Northern worth it. Southern was just a waste. The whole arching, year long story line felt like it was written by 3rd graders.

randomkeyhits

Liked it, yes. Loved it.... no

I dunno, it all felt somehow shallow. I kept expecting more than was delivered.

Plus I really hate houses I can't "visit"...... all those locked doors

Kaartinen

None/Other - my least enjoyed year thus far. However, a large portion of that has been the varied combat changes/nerfs. The inability to consistently play due to horrid performance doesn't help either.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

It was average. Better than Summerset (though that's not a high bar), but I felt the whole concept of 'dragons, dragons EVERYWHERE' was too blatant an attempt to tap into Skyrim's success rather than make something memorable and unique to ESO.

Luckylancer

I did not buy anything. I would feel regret if I would.

This sums up my thoughts about this year. I dont play too often anyways.

max_only

None

Edit: well that one dungeon with the moving blocks was unique I’ll give them that.

The dragons, even though I disagree with their existence on principal (we aren’t dovakiin, I feel like we shouldn’t be able to kill them, they should fly off in a huff at 1 health) are fun and look good. I’m not a big fan of Khajiit so the area is lost effort on me.

Not much else appealed to me really. I liked the Necro class though.

I haven’t played the story line yet so maybe my opinion will change.

Khrogo

Had a bellyful go dragons now. LookIng forward to a new year. Maybe something with undead to defeat. Liches get stitches!

Pauls

I didnt play both Elsweyr storylines yet, so opinion based on overland content. When Northern Elsweyr was released, it felt like grinding dragons zone, with partly annoying map design and long rides to dragon landings. Port - ride - kill - repeat. Southern brings grind on another level, now area is way smaller and you reach dragons quite fast, and they respawn faster than in Northern. Whole zone feels like dragons genocide train.

P.S. I loved Crafty Alfiq set, though.

xclassgaming

I loved Southern Elsweyr but not Northen

The chapter was pretty bad ngl, Dragonhold was alright tho.

BlueRaven

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

It felt more like a year of a cat tbh...

Btw. Call me pesymist but I have been here since 2014 and so far probably it was the worst year in eso.
So many nerfs. So many things got wrecked.
Add server performance on top of that and cancelled events and you will understand why.

When casuals say that they think about quiting you know that game has some serious problems.

Note: I am not judging new zones design and stuff. It was good and probably immersive for cat-fans but for me it is to little to compensate for the other disaters. So final score... 1/10 (1 for new zones. If not for that it would have been 0/10).

Agreed. Been here since beta and this year was the least fun for me.

It started with bad (lore breaking) racial changes and ends with a game engine that feels like it’s about to collapse under the strain.

Coupled with so many bizarre combat changes that drove away many of my friends.

The story was ok. But overall a very bad experience.

BlueRaven

max_only wrote: »

None

Edit: well that one dungeon with the moving blocks was unique I’ll give them that.

The dragons, even though I disagree with their existence on principal (we aren’t dovakiin, I feel like we shouldn’t be able to kill them, they should fly off in a huff at 1 health) are fun and look good. I’m not a big fan of Khajiit so the area is lost effort on me.

Not much else appealed to me really. I liked the Necro class though.

I haven’t played the story line yet so maybe my opinion will change.

The storyline is ... fine. The main problem is if you don’t play the zones in the right order, the story arcs for some characters do not make any sense.

Michae

FierceSam wrote: »

Michae wrote: »

I prefer closed stories instead of this year spanning content since I do things at my own pace. I like to do dlcs in order but when they're self contained at least there's little harm in skipping content. Here you have to get them all and play in order for the story to make sense. Also I liked it more when the dlcs weren't neccesarily about saving the world, like in Orsinium, Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.

I would kind of disagree with you here. Not in terms of how nice it is to do things in sequence, but in terms of the lack of any meaningful storyline within the DLC dungeons.

Hype aside, you could easily have skipped all four DLC dragon dungeons and have lost approximately none of the ongoing plot or storyline.

The impact of the Wrathstone dungeons can be summed up in a couple of lines of Abnur Tharn dialogue. "Oh so you have found the Wrathstone... great." The actual in-dungeon storytelling was minimal, easily skipped and, worst of all, easy to mess up for other players, so even if they wanted to do the storyline, they were unable to.

Similarly, Scalebreaker doesn't even bother to attempt to fit in with the overall storyline. These dungeons are entirely side quests in the Year of the Dragon. They have zero impact on the overall storyline, at least Wrathstone pretended to have some kind of linkage. Again the integration of storyline into the dungeon is perfunctory and badly executed.

You had more plot integration better done and in a more convincing manner in the Elsweyr prologue than you did in any of the DLC dungeons. Indeed the prologue introduced a lot of elements (like the Khajiiti singer/storytellers) that were barely touched on in the actual chapter.

So I'd argue that in terms of the overall storyline, you could safely bypass Wrathstone and totally ignore Scalebreaker. You're going to get more story out of either of the two prologues than you will out of all 4 dungeons combined.

I wasn't really talking about dungeons. You can complete those on normal in an hour so it's hardly a chore. But completing Elsweyr when I'm short on time and I don't like speedrunning just to get up to speed with a story is something I don't want to do. Still, I ventured into Southern Elsweyr just as I did with Northern just to get the tickets.

And the second part of my complaint was something entirely different. I prefer smaller stories, like the ones I mentiond. You don't really have to save the world every year to keep things interesting.