How would You rate year 2019 in ESO ?

Faulgor

3

All my characters have steadily gotten weaker over the year, no new features for existing characters ... if you don't like cats, the year has been a dud. Fingers crossed for 2020.

Internet_Mask

6

A mixed bag.

What we got in Elsweyr was decent but it feels like the content included in each chapter has gradually been reduced.

The constant cycle of nerfs and buffs to skills is getting tiresome.

We still don't have the long requested ability to toggle off chest armor tassets, flaps and misc things like the bags on the Silver Dawn heavy chest armor. Nor do we have the similarly long requested ability to hide our shoulders.

Dawnblade

3

Meh

The new zones and storyline were ok, but remarkably in a game with mediocre combat, they somehow made it worse over the course of the year.

Not to mention persistent issues like latency and loading screens show no signs of improving.

xaraan

5

I went with 5 b/c there has been both really good and really bad.

The good: The DLC's in the area of art direction and design, quest and lore, etc. get better every year. I also liked the entire story going through the same year connected all the DLCs/expansions. Plus, like many I like the Elsweyr region, so it was nice to see that.

The Bad: performance, especially in pvp has made that unplayable for me and many of my pvp only friends don't even play anymore for this reason. Sometimes the bad performance effects other traffic heavy areas like events and trials as well, or just weird bugs messing up trials like not being able to synergize something in Cloudrest ruining an entire run. Bugs like that should be tackled ASAP imo.

Some of the other stuff comes up average for me are actually some of my favorite type of content: dungeons and trials. Even though art/design are amazing, the stories are cool, I feel like zos has come to rely on too many one shot gimmicks to create what feels like an artificial challenge to me. In fact, a couple of my friends and I 4 manned normal Sunspire and had more fun doing that than any of the new HM vet dungeons and found it more challenging trying to strategize things there than just figuring out how to grind out the HM dungeons. For the trial itself (not talking normal now, but vet HM with a full team), though I like the idea of being able to HM the different bosses seperately, the actual fights were pretty boring.

I also feel like they've done a horrible job balancing the game. The HUGE swing from one patch with the DoT meta to killing it the next reeked of swinging wildly in the dark. When I saw that they couldn't get racials better balanced considering only 3 passives for 10 races, I knew they couldn't tackle the thousands of variables that make up the various skill lines and passives. (No, I'm not saying racials didn't improve vs before, but balancing racials is the easy job out of all the other balancing that needs done and should have closed the gap even more than it did imo). But then watching that huge change to dots, then away from dots was just eye opening as to how much worse it could actually get. Plus, personally I'm getting really tired of having to rebuild/relearn things every other patch (I expect a bit of it of course, but not the level it's been lately). There will come a point where the content just won't be good enough to keep putting up with it.

My last issue is that I really feel like they've slowly ruined tanking year after year and I used to love tanking in this game. Certainly changes from MW into the next couple years hurt things directly with nerfs in various ways. Though some were probably reasonable, not everything was well done. And sometimes things were rolled out to hit tanky pvp builds and pve tanks got hit in crossfire (as happens in this game). But something about playing tanks has also just gotten really really boring, whether it's dungeon/trial designs on top of play or something I haven't seen. The changes to block have me worried this will add to the problem.

darthgummibear_ESO

5

I like the necro, it's my new favorite class...however, Elsweyr as a whole was pretty disappointing. Terrible performance in the zone compared to pretty much everywhere else, the zone being pretty barren, and the main "city" being deceptively hollow with most of the buildings closed off.

Then there's the bugs.

Xarc

2

bad year for stam NB & stamDK
poor additional content for cyrodiil (and sometimes bad like volendrung)
annnnnd.... bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs ... offline servers etc.

Fata1moose

6

A 6, the content was decent but didn't really offer anything new, even the Necromancer plays in line with everything else (with bad targeting to boot). The constant nerfs this year was also a negative as it killed all progression I made.

Daviiid_ESO

3

too much performance issues in pvp.

Iccotak

7

@bluebird

But we did have to buy another DLC to see the end of Nocturnal and Daedric Triad story

Both ended on cliff hangers about the Daedra Triad - Clockwork City ended with a Nocturnal boss and foreshadowing her plans for the Summerset chapter.
The Daedric War was a storyline we had to buy DLC in order to complete. It was just in two years instead of one
But I do agree the Chapter -> Zone DLC -> Chapter formula did produce a higher quality story.

As for PvE content yeah Dragon hold could have had a group PvE activity - like the one I proposed in a recent post: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/509067/solo-group-settings-play-the-way-you-want

I think I would be happier with
Q1 - Dungeon prologue
Q2 - Chapter + Trial
Q3 - Zone + Dungeon
Q4 - Zone + Trial

essi2

7

Performance has been garbage, but overall it was enjoyable.

Kittytravel

7

I went with 7. The gameplay was still about normal even with the nerf fest that happened it just meant changing a few things up like in any MMO.

My real gripe was I don't particularly like the year long story being barred behind forced paid content; on top of that the story of Elsweyr felt really odd and forced and part of me was just genuinely looking forward to being the "Clean up" of the great Knhaten Flu that we hear about and finally getting to see the actual destruction and devastation it caused.

Sadly all we really got on that front was Orcrest.

jircris11

9

Juhasow wrote: »

Like in the thread title. What do You think about general state of the game in this nearly finished year. Talking about all aspects together. Season of the dragon story and all DLCs that were part of it , base game changes , new additions like necro class , balance , performance etc.

It was good, never had many of the pc issues others seemed to have, fps and ms is good do I'm happy

curtisnewton

8

I cant really compare 2019 with 2018/17, as i did not play those years. But I just compare it to WoW.

Compared to wow and single pkayer Tes games expectations ESO exceeds most points.

I subtracted 1 point for missing story dungeons,

And 1 point for missing graphic updates

bluebird

4

Iccotak wrote: »

@bluebird
But we did have to buy another DLC to see the end of Nocturnal and Daedric Triad story

Both ended on cliff hangers about the Daedra Triad - Clockwork City ended with a Nocturnal boss and foreshadowing her plans for the Summerset chapter.
The Daedric War was a storyline we had to buy DLC in order to complete. It was just in two years instead of one
But I do agree the Chapter -> Zone DLC -> Chapter formula did produce a higher quality story.

@Iccotak
No, we didn't have to. Foreshadowing future threats isn't the same as not getting a conclusion to our current story.

In Summerset, you could defeat Nocturnal without the game telling you that you have to go back and buy CWC if you want to see the ending. In Dragonhold, you needed to buy Elsweyr to get a conclusion, and vice versa. 'It would make more sense if your character plays through all of these in order' isn't the same as 'Players literally don't have a choice to finish it without a paywall requiring other DLCs.'

Also, the MW-CWC-SS storylines had far more individual closure, with only foreshadowing at the end. We don't need CWC to save Vivec, to help the Ashlanders; just as we don't need Summerset to free Sotha Sil and save the people of Clockwork City. But in Elsweyr, Kalgrontiid is the main villain from the start, his threat is the main threat built up from the moment we free him in the Halls of the Colossus prologue all the way throughout his schemes in N.Elsweyr, and his aeonstone empowerment operation in S.Elsweyr. But we can't end the threat in Dragonhold, you need to go back and buy Elsweyr to do so.

So it's not about the fact that ever-evolving MMO stories may later build upon a storyline - i.e. Varen appears at the end of Orsinium if you did the Main Quest and Orsinium in order, and he doesn't if you didn't. It's about retroactively content-locking future releases in order to sell previous DLCs, and removing player choice in favour of pushing sales.

Sleep

2

connection is so bad

Bekkael

4

Worst year out of the 3+ I’ve been playing. Nerfs and especially performance and bug issues are horrific.

The characters and storytelling are the only saving graces. All 4 points and all my praise go to the writers.

I buy every expansion as soon as it becomes available. I have not bought Greymoor, and may never. I’m half out the door, begging for a reason to stay. Thus far, ZOS haven’t given me one. 🤷‍♀️

KyleTheYounger

1

Not a fan of playing beast folk particularly where cats and lizards are concerned. So after Black Marsh, Elsweyr turned out to be a really disappointing dud.

Also it was bad enough that Bethesda lazily re-purposed Skyrim dragons as poorly re-meshed Scorchbeast Queens in F76. Didn't even bother to clean up the references in code to Skyrim dragons! Then ZoS decided to jump the Skyrim bandwagon with the complete lack of innovation or originality with the Elsweyr DLC. Which once again, was a straight up rip off and copy-paste, re-mesh/re-texture of Skyrim dragons.

And now they're once again milking the Skyrim dragon popularity for all it's worth by revisiting.....wait for it......wait.....

The Reach. aka Eastern Skyrim. Oh for the love of God ZoS. Talk about trying to given fan boys franchise burn out with the online component to the superior single player game mode.

COME UP WITH ORIGINAL CONTENT FOR THE UPCOMING DLC CHAPTER ZOS. YOU'VE GOT AN ENTIRE UNEXPLORED CONTINENT IN TAMRIEL AKA AKAVAVIR.

Which you've yet to extend in any world building, or expand the deep, rich lore which TES founding father Julian Le Fay created over 2 decades ago! Would it kill you to be at least original with future Chapter updates since Howard guided Bethesda is clearly no longer interested in developing the rest of Tamriel for single player TES?

Iccotak

7

@bluebird

Well first off, ESO is an MMO
With ESO+ it literally operates like any other MMO.
WoW also has DLCs they are just in the form of quarterly updates.

Kaalgrontiid is supposed to be the main Villain and requiring players to complete the rest of the story before they can get to the final fight makes sense.
Why would the players know anything about Kaal if they only played Dragonhold?

Personally, as an active subscriber and someone who buys the content as it comes out - I like that they are going with a year long narrative that is more closely connected and has some form of linear storytelling.
I think it allows them to do more with the story while still working within the boundaries of letting players go where they want.

I think it would be an incredibly restrictive and predictable system if it had each story installment (Chapter/DLC) end in a neat little bow.
It would have been very underwhelming if we had completely stopped Kaalgrontiid in the Chapter. Would have wasted the character and storyline.

Also the Daedric War DLCs are not as individual as you say.
There was some individual closure but if you play those stories out of order then it definitely makes less sense and doesn't quite work as a cohesive story.
They were not Murkmire or Orsinium which were both complete stories on their own.

However for the Daedric War; if you wanted the Whole story and for it to makes sense, then you had to play them in order.
The Daedric War wasn't a series of loosely connected events - it was a Linear 2 Year Story Arc.
ZOS decided that it was spread out too much and is sticking to a formula to make a more close-knit story.

There was nothing retroactive about Dragonhold - they did not release the DLC only to release the final fight at a later date and make previous content inaccessible. The Rules were clear: You had to play the whole story in order to do the Season final Fight.
I think it was obvious that this would be a consequence and was something that I wanted as it would prevent alot of confusion for new players.
They did this BECAUSE of all the confusion from the Daedric War story line.

If I played Summerset before CWC then that would have left me under an entirely different impression than the correct order. You could do it in any order but it could be confusing - which ZOS knew was a growing problem.

There's also the problem of people, not having played the original game, meeting the old characters in DLC only to run into them in the base game in weird situations and being treated like they never met.
I think there should at least be an option to make it so those DLCs don't activate until you finish other storylines.

In fact, I think Dragonhold story was actually limited because they didn't go far enough.
Don't get me wrong, Players should be free to explore the Southern Elsweyr Zone but they should have had to complete the Elsweyr Chapter to access to the Dragonhold main story.

Kaalgrontiid, Abnur Tharn, and Khamira (all important characters in the Season) were absent for a third of the Story because it would not have made sense to players that had not done Elsweyr.
Instead they got rushed in for 3 quests to do the Final Fight because Dragonhold focused on a completely different villain - they should have been more integral to that questline.

Darkstorne

7

Overall fairly good this year imo! Started better than it ended, and while performance and latency issues tempted me to rate it lower, they've finally learned to be proactive in communicating with us about the improvements they're working on through monthly updates, so I really appreciate that

Will be good to see all that back-end engine work start to pay off in 2020! Small Chapter and no new weapon line or guild class though... could make it a tough year

bluebird

4

Iccotak wrote: »

Well first off, ESO is an MMO. With ESO+ it literally operates like any other MMO. WoW also has DLCs they are just in the form of quarterly updates.

@Iccotak ESO isn't like other MMOs. Not sure why that's relevant anyway, but it isn't. People who bought the Legion expansion were able to complete it, and didn't have to go back and play through The Burning Crusade expansion to find out what happens to Illidan.

I already told you that 'the story makes more sense if you play it all in a linear fashion' is not the same as 'you can't finish this storyline if you didn't buy other DLCs before this.' Players who bought and played CWC got more out of Summerset (lore-wise and build-up-wise) than players who only bought Summerset, but everybody had that choice.

Iccotak wrote: »

I like that they are going with a year long narrative that is more closely connected and has some form of linear storytelling. I think it allows them to do more with the story while still working within the boundaries of letting players go where they want.
[...]
In fact, I think Dragonhold story was actually limited because they didn't go far enough.
[...]
Kaalgrontiid, Abnur Tharn, and Khamira (all important characters in the Season) were absent for a third of the Story because it would not have made sense to players that had not done Elsweyr. Instead they got rushed in for 3 quests to do the Final Fight because Dragonhold focused on a completely different villain - they should have been more integral to that questline.

This literally proves that this new multi-DLC-locked storytelling is worse. So your opinion contradicts itself. The 'Year of the Dragon' story does absolutely not 'let players go where they want', it's not only a linear storyline (like MW-CWC-SS) but on top of that it's also multi-DLC locked. It's far more restrictive than anything before (obviously standalone adventures like Murkmire, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood had the most flexibility to let people choose where they want to go).

Previously ZOS included recurring characters - Raz, Naryu, etc. - in their future instalments without any issues. If players played old zones before and encountered them earlier, the NPCs acknowledge that; and if they didn't, that still doesn't take away from the experience and it was up to players' choices if they wanted to play through the backstory of that character or not. In Elsweyr-Dragonhold, as you say, they locked character arcs and story progression behind a rushed 3 quest endgame. Sotha Sil featured in Summerset for example, and that was completely fine for someone who hasn't played CWC. The old system worked fine. It provided an extra continuation and acknowledgement to players who've done previous content; without locking new players out of experiencing the current story ending, and without forcing players to buy previous DLCs.

Iccotak wrote: »

There was some individual closure but if you play those stories out of order then it definitely makes less sense and doesn't quite work as a cohesive story. [...]However for the Daedric War; if you wanted the Whole story and for it to makes sense, then you had to play them in order.
[...]
There was nothing retroactive about Dragonhold - they did not release the DLC only to release the final fight at a later date and make previous content inaccessible.

This isn't about player's choices to play DLCs out of order. I already said that. If players want to play only Summerset, let them. If players want to play Summerset first and then Morrowind, let them. If players played through all of it in order, good for them, whatever. But it was up to player's choices.

Dragonhold's conclusion was retroactively locked behind an Elsweyr paywall. While Summerset's story wasn't literally locked behind Morrowind and CWC purchases. In a trilogy of movies, you can start on the last movie knowing that you probably missed out on some backstory but will still get a whole movie. The movie doesn't stop 3/4th of the way through and tell viewers that they have to leave and watch the prequels first, and only then can see the ending to the story.

This was even more pronounced in ESO, since the purpose is so clearly to push more people into buying all DLCs. Would you like a house in Elsweyr? You can only unlock 2 of its 4 rooms if you buy extra DLCs! MW allowed us to buy 2 whole houses with gold, and Summerset allowed us to buy 1 whole house, and gave away another 1 whole house for free. Players who have been subbed for the year played through Wrathstone, the Elsweyr Prologue, Scalebreaker and Dragonhold... but they can only see the ending if they also buy Elsweyr. Come on. It's clearly a moneygrab nothing more.

Iccotak wrote: »

If I played Summerset before CWC then that would have left me under an entirely different impression than the correct order. You could do it in any order but it could be confusing - which ZOS knew was a growing problem.

There's also the problem of people, not having played the original game, meeting the old characters in DLC only to run into them in the base game in weird situations and being treated like they never met. I think there should at least be an option to make it so those DLCs don't activate until you finish other storylines.

See, if that was even remotely true, they would NOT have included Abnur, Sai or Lyris in any of their stories. But they did. They 100% did, because the whole 'Year of the Dragon' hype is about forcing players to buy all their DLCs. Want to see some more of your old friend Sai? Buy our new DLC! Want to see how his story ends? Buy our previous Chapter! Want to see how the hell that even happened? Buy our Wrathstone Dungeon DLC!

If they were concerned about new players not knowing what's happening, they should simply make standalone stories, so that the story makes sense no matter where they join. And if they were concerned about continuity, they wouldn't make their new content revolve around old characters that will cause timeline issues if players go back to play through those.

The 'people were confused' excuse is so obviously just to justify their new make-them-buy-as-many-DLCs-as-possible model, because the concerns they raised to explain it don't make any sense. 'Players told us they like that' is also just company speak, because it sounds better than saying 'we wanted to...'.

Aelorin

8

Wow, i am really surprised by this numbers. I wonder how many people that reacted are still playing the game?

> 50% gives a score of 4 or less.

For me N Elsweyr 7, and S Elsweyr a 9, so that is an 8 in total.

Looking back eso has me hooked since the release of N Elsweyr.

MyPrist

1

-10 or 0 if minus value is possible.

It was as bad, that i thought that i will run away from this game. Worst year ever i see. I even play ff game just becouse it was near impossible to play in what TESO starts to be for me.

A really hope that that trash stops happen and game becomes good again like before racial passive changes, like before all this trash, like in summerset and before.

mb10

3

Combat system and balance was better a year ago and even then it was bad, so what does that tell us now?

Iccotak

7

@bluebird

People who bought the Legion expansion were able to complete it, and didn't have to go back and play through The Burning Crusade expansion to find out what happens to Illidan.

Two different storylines almost ten years apart. We are talking about a storyline that takes place over the course of a single year.
Also in WoW expansion you have to play the story in order from the beginning of the expansion to the last content update for that expansion.

'the story makes more sense if you play it all in a linear fashion' is not the same as 'you can't finish this storyline if you didn't buy other DLCs before this.'

You can finish the story.
Elsweyr & Dragonhold have two different villains and two storylines
If you look at the wiki you'll see.
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Season_of_the_Dragon

Defeating Laatvulon is the Dragonguard story.
Defeating Kaalgrontiid is the Season storyline.

Players who bought and played CWC got more out of Summerset (lore-wise and build-up-wise) than players who only bought Summerset, but everybody had that choice.

And it consequently brought alot of confusion from New Players. Hence why they went with the decision to implement a system to make sure players go through the whole story arc before they finish it.

My problem with Dragonhold was that it had to cater to people who wanted access to everything even though they haven't done the other content. So ZOS had to remove characters to make sense for them. If you want to experience chapter 2 in a story then perhaps you should have to experience chapter 1.

This literally proves that this new multi-DLC-locked storytelling is worse.

No it didn't work because they were trying to let players do the story in any order they wanted without causing too much confusion. The beginning was great it was the middle that was "eh" because they couldn't write in the God empowered villain without confusing the player.
Sometimes it's better to just play it in the order of release/written in.

Having to work within the "Let players do this story arc in any order they want" is actually extremely restrictive for the writing team and doesn't let them do as much as they could.

Tell me; would it have made sense for players to see Abnur Tharn die in Dragonhold only to go to Elsweyr and he's fine?
It's the same problem with meeting him about the Wrathstone when you haven't freed him from Mannimarco yet.

When Lyris and Sai came back it was from a different storyline and they had an explanation for it.

In both cases of the Daedric War & Season of the Dragon we see that absolute player freedom can be a detriment to a coherent main story as it doesn't let writers take more risks or include characters because a player may or may not have met them yet.

Dragonhold's conclusion was retroactively locked behind an Elsweyr paywall

No - the end of the Dragonhold story is the Laatvulon boss fight.
Kaalgrontiid is the conclusion of the season.
You are complaining that you have to play the rest of the Season in order to finish the Season.

While Summerset's story wasn't literally locked behind Morrowind and CWC purchases. In a trilogy of movies, you can start on the last movie knowing that you probably missed out on some backstory but will still get a whole movie. The movie doesn't stop 3/4th of the way through and tell viewers that they have to leave and watch the prequels first, and only then can see the ending to the story.

That analogy doesn't work when applied to MMOs.
Why should you be able to complete the Season story arc when you haven't played the rest of it?

Previously ZOS included recurring characters - Raz, Naryu, etc. - in their future instalments without any issues. If players played old zones before and encountered them earlier, the NPCs acknowledge that; and if they didn't, that still doesn't take away from the experience and it was up to players' choices if they wanted to play through the backstory of that character or not.

Not entirely true.
As that is not the case if you started in the Chapter/DLC and went to the base game next. Still caused confusion among the player base.

Sotha Sil featured in Summerset for example, and that was completely fine for someone who hasn't played CWC.

Except the Clockwork story doesn't make sense after Summerset because Nocturnal is the main threat when you had beaten her is Summerset - leading to an impression that she's back. I have had to correct others when they thought this was the case.
Summerset is clearly a sequel to CWC & Morrowind. So much so that more often than not people generally recommend Not starting in Summerset because it is the conclusion to a 2 year story arc.
There is a reason why ZOS is no longer having 2 chapters in one story arc - starting a New Player off at the end of a story is not exactly the best move to show off your storytelling.

The old system worked fine. It provided an extra continuation and acknowledgement to players who've done previous content; without locking new players out of experiencing the current story ending, and without forcing players to buy previous DLCs.

Except it didn't because as I have said multiple times and as many others have complained on this forum, and on Reddit, the extreme freedom to do the Story Arc in any order with no direction led to much confusion and sometime disappointment. Which is why there is still an ongoing discussion about Tutorial start locations.

The Daedric War was a great story for people who had already been playing - it had 3 zones to tell a complete beginning, middle, and end when played in the right order otherwise it can be disappointing. It was clearly was not an ideal system as it was drawing out its story too long over 2 years and was muddled with things completely unrelated to what was going on in the main plot.

That is not to say that Season of the Dragon is perfect. It had a really strong start and a decent middle but it had a rushed ending. It clearly needed longer quest chains in both zones and/or another zone to fill out the map and pace the story.
I think 3 zones is the perfect story pace and if they could put that in a year then that'd be ideal.

This was even more pronounced in ESO, since the purpose is so clearly to push more people into buying all DLCs. Would you like a house in Elsweyr? You can only unlock 2 of its 4 rooms if you buy extra DLCs! MW allowed us to buy 2 whole houses with gold, and Summerset allowed us to buy 1 whole house, and gave away another 1 whole house for free. Players who have been subbed for the year played through Wrathstone, the Elsweyr Prologue, Scalebreaker and Dragonhold... but they can only see the ending if they also buy Elsweyr. Come on. It's clearly a moneygrab nothing more.

First it is an MMO it has to sell content. No way around that.
Second a subscription and an Expansion pack is the standard MMO format. You don't own the game - you have payed to have access to it.
So yes they are going to incentives players with housing and story.

ZOS did give stuff for free and they have to clearly do more in order to play the bills and make more content. Obviously giving out free stuff was not always a successful marketing strategy.
Season of the Dragon has been very successful year for them because of the changes they have made. IMO they only need to make a couple changes and a Year long narrative can be great.

This is not a single player game where each expansion is a self contained story. Expansions are truly a theme that is held over a year.

Not all of the DLCs are as self-contained as you are saying the Daeric War especially - Again. Heavily hints at Daedric Triad in each installment sets up Summerset.

Want to see some more of your old friend Sai? Buy our new DLC! Want to see how his story ends? Buy our previous Chapter! Want to see how the hell that even happened? Buy our Wrathstone Dungeon DLC!

Want to continue the Story of ESO? Buy the next DLC...
The Year "Season" is the relatively self contained story.
It's trying to perform to the level of a subscription based game and a major selling point that is successful is having a connected year long story.
Also you don't need to play Wrathstone to understand the Prologue which is free.

If they were concerned about new players not knowing what's happening, they should simply make standalone stories, so that the story makes sense no matter where they join. And if they were concerned about continuity, they wouldn't make their new content revolve around old characters that will cause timeline issues if players go back to play through those.

1. They want to tell bigger stories
2. They want to reward story to older players who have stuck around
3. They want to encourage New players to play the rest of the game as the Expansion accounts for a small sliver of what's available.

The 'people were confused' excuse is so obviously just to justify their new make-them-buy-as-many-DLCs-as-possible model, because the concerns they raised to explain it don't make any sense. 'Players told us they like that' is also just company speak, because it sounds better than saying 'we wanted to...'.

Except it was a problem. It's not an excuse as it was a valid concern that was especially brought up during Summerset among both old and new players - this includes me.

It's not a bad move to have all the Year focus on one theme and one villain. It's not just company speak as there has been requests to make the content including the dungeons more connected - since ZOS is doing that the main request has been to include a solo/easy mode just so players can experience the story.

It's not perfect and could use some adjustments but I think that telling players that they have to play the rest of the Season if they want to finish the Season story is reasonable.
If they just made the 3 quests into 6-8 then I would be fine with it. Would have been better paced out.
OR if they had made Q3 a Zone DLC so then we had 3 new zones total which would make a well paced story then that would have been great as well.
In fact I think I might take this to a different thread so then this one remains discussion free.

Haink

1

Nerfed werewolf to oblivion, constant combat change fatigue. Terrible server performance. I don't think these guys are listening to their players anymore. It sucks because this is without a doubt the best MMO I have played in a long time and the questing/storyline was very engaging when a lot of mmos didn't grab me there.

Hopefully, they will put the dumpster fire out before it starts raging.

MartiniDaniels

2

Check your internet connection -> you already logged in.

Mysanne

7

I love this game, but with many maintenances, repeated disconnections and very high ping (999+), I can almost never play.
So I would like this game, but playable!

bluebird

4

Iccotak wrote: »

@bluebird
My problem with Dragonhold was that it had to cater to people who wanted access to everything even though they haven't done the other content. So ZOS had to remove characters to make sense for them. If you want to experience chapter 2 in a story then perhaps you should have to experience chapter 1.
[...]
In both cases of the Daedric War & Season of the Dragon we see that absolute player freedom can be a detriment to a coherent main story as it doesn't let writers take more risks or include characters because a player may or may not have met them yet.
[...]
Having to work within the "Let players do this story arc in any order they want" is actually extremely restrictive for the writing team and doesn't let them do as much as they could.
[...]
Tell me; would it have made sense for players to see Abnur Tharn die in Dragonhold only to go to Elsweyr and he's fine?
It's the same problem with meeting him about the Wrathstone when you haven't freed him from Mannimarco yet.

ZOS didn't have to do that. They didn't remove Sotha Sil from Summerset to cater to people who didn't play CWC. And they didn't remove Raz from SS to cater to people who never played AD zones. They also didn't force players who wanted to play Summerset to play through MW and CWC to understand the whole backstory of the Triad that maybe they were completely uninterested in. The writing team wasn't restricted from writing a cool Razumdar storyline in Elsweyr, and they didn't require you to play through the AD zones, Dark Brotherhood, Summerset to do it.

So the Season of the Dragon introduced far more restrictions in storytelling and player freedom, while not addressing any of the issues they allegedly wanted to address. That's what I'm telling you. Did forcing players to play through Elsweyr if they wanted to see the conclusion in Dragonhold fix continuity? No. They should have locked Elsweyr and Dragonhold behind Wrathstone too (it's bad enough that quest and lore content is dungeon locked), and locked that behind Orsinium and the Main Quest to even start with.

So you provided the proof yourself: It makes NO sense to meet Abnur about the Wrathstone when you haven't done the Main Quest yet, and yet they did that, so you can't pretend that seeing Abnur die in Dragonhold and then going to Elsweyr would have ruined continuity when that's literally what happens if you do the Main Quest after Dragonhold. Clearly if their concern was continuity, they wouldn't have used recurring characters and an overarching story; but the Season of the Dragon was simply to recycle assets and force players into buying as many DLCs as possible.

Except it didn't because as I have said multiple times and as many others have complained on this forum, and on Reddit, the extreme freedom to do the Story Arc in any order with no direction led to much confusion and sometime disappointment. Which is why there is still an ongoing discussion about Tutorial start locations.
[...]
Not all of the DLCs are as self-contained as you are saying the Daeric War especially - Again. Heavily hints at Daedric Triad in each installment sets up Summerset.
[...]
Also you don't need to play Wrathstone to understand the Prologue which is free.

So which is it? Either MW and CWC are not needed to play SS, and neither is WS needed for EW (you don't need to know where the Wrathstone came from, the same way you don't need to know where Nocturnal came from), OR WS is absolutely needed to make sense of the EW story (it makes just as little sense to go back and find the Wrathstone pieces AFTER you kill Kalgrontiid, as it is to go back and free Sotha Sil in CWC after defeating Nocturnal in SS). Whichever answer you pick, the year of the dragon didn't improve on it at all.

If it was supposed to help with continuity, they should have locked Wrathstone-Elsweyr-Scalebreaker-Dragonhold behind the completion of Orsinium which they should have also locked behind the Main Story. But they didn't, and brought back recurring characters that ruin continuity and immersion. So not only did it not help with continuity, they also lost out on rewarding long-time players by locking recurring characters into the conclusion scenario to preserve this illusion of coherence that was doomed from the start.

(Btw that's what the Tutorial complaints are about. That it makes no sense to drop new players in Elsweyr when they haven't met Sai and Abnur before while they're busy during the Main Quest. So the Elsweyr and Dragonhold story-lock has no business pretending that it's a solution to continuity when they require both the Main Quest and Wrathstone to make sense too, and contradict the Main Quest chronologically.)

If they were concerned about new players not knowing what's happening, they should simply make standalone stories, so that the story makes sense no matter where they join. And if they were concerned about continuity, they wouldn't make their new content revolve around old characters that will cause timeline issues if players go back to play through those.

1. They want to tell bigger stories
2. They want to reward story to older players who have stuck around
3. They want to encourage New players to play the rest of the game as the Expansion accounts for a small sliver of what's available.

1) They already wrote a big story with MW-CWC-SS. The year of the Dragon is a smaller story than that.
2) They already rewarded story to older players who have stuck around. Varen's appearance in Orsinium, Raz's companionship with your character after doing the AD zones, Naryu's appearances, are all part of those. And you don't have to be forced to play through Deshaan before you're allowed to go through Morrowind.
3) There is a fine line between encouraging and forcing. Recurring characters that make it rewarding for people who played through earlier content is encouraging - we already had that. Locking current content behind previous DLC purchases is forcing. That goes against ESO's philosophy of an open world, and does what other MMOs do - i.e. you need to play through the Nazjatar intro to unlock Vision of N'zoth content, and you need to quest through Kul Tiras/Zandalar in order to be able to get to Nazjatar in the first place. That is forcing.

Except it was a problem. It's not an excuse as it was a valid concern that was especially brought up during Summerset among both old and new players - this includes me.

It doesn't hold up, because that excuse doesn't make sense. 'We wanted new players to be able to jump in wherever they wanted' they said, and created a story that makes 0 sense if a player joins at Dragonhold. They need to play through Wrathstone for the Year storyline to make sense, and they need to play through the Elsweyr Prologue and Elsweyr to see what's going on. That did nothing to improve the MW-CWC-SS model. 'We wanted to ensure contunuinty because stories out of order confused some people' they said, and made a story about recurring characters so that new player start in a totally anachronistic place without playing through the Main Story first. So as you can see, the 'Year of the Dragon' system did nothing to help these concerns, they are simply excuses that don't actually do what they are allegedly for.

Without Elsweyr and the Season Conclusion, Dragonhold has the least amount of content and story of any zone DLC. And no, Elsweyr and Dragonhold's stories aren't concluded with the defeat of the two dragon lieutenants, when the zone is under literal constant threat from the main villain. That's like ending Summerset after defeating the Sload and only allowing us to fight Nocturnal if we play through CWC. I'm not a fan of gutting DLC storylines in order to lock part of it behind a paywall.

@Iccotak I already made a discussion thread about the 'reasons' the 'Year-of-the-XYZ' is better, and none of them actually do what they claim to do. It helps from a drive-up sales perspective, it helps from an artists need to create less assets perspective, it helps with generating hype perspective - but it does NOT help new players, reward older players, or result in more continuity than other storytelling methods before it. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/487021/confirmed-more-year-long-story-style-content-coming-after-elsweyr-please-no-you-can-do-better/p1

Irfind

5

Story - 10/10

Performance - 3/10

Jaraal

2

Jenzi wrote: »

Considering they took away my stealth and my werewolf, two of my favourite things I like to play, it’s been a pretty bad year for me to say the least.

These are my biggest pain points as well. Followed closely by speed nerfs (Gutting Rapids, speed pots, Major Expedition sets, Swift jewelry, etc). Why? How is making people spam skills or potions to get around making the game better? Seems like making even more server calculations, ie: casting Rapids 4 times instead of once every 30 seconds x tens of thousands of players would only hurt performance. And there is absolutely no benefit to us, either.