How would You rate year 2019 in ESO ?

CAB_Life

5

A steady 5/10 for me. Necromancer bugs/ growing pains/ lacklustreness and performance issues marred an otherwise okay year for content delivery. Also, Guild Finder and other QoL stuff was nice—but way more social tools are needed.

Knightpanther

8

Putting aside the issues with the server and some nerfs that I didn't agree with (does anyone ever?), the game is still the best out there and the content does get better and better.

Be safe

bluebird

4

FierceSam wrote: »

bluebird wrote: »

Pyr0xyrecuprotite wrote: »

I can't vote in a poll that doesn't explain the scale, i.e. indicate whether 1 is good or bad (and 10 the opposite).

I'm pretty sure that rating something on a scale of 1 to 10 means that 1 is the worst. The only way 1 would be 'better' than 10 is if it was a ranking, not a rating, but that can't really apply to this question.

Except being ‘pretty sure’ isn’t a good look for a survey. Especially when it’s laid out with 1 at the top. It’s why proper surveys have rather long winded questions like “how would you rate the following on a scale of 1 - 10, where 1 is utter failure and 10 is complete perfection”. Then you are ‘sure sure’ what the scale means.

I was being polite when I said 'pretty sure'. What I meant was 'I'm absolutely sure and you have to be a special kind of challenged to not figure it out, it's obvious what OP means' that's how forum polls have always worked.

'How would you rate this game', with an option of choosing 1 to 10, is clearly a scale with 10 being the best. Scales with the highest number being the best are incredibly common to rate things, be that game reviews or women or whatever else. Should we also put warnings on every kettle that you shouldn't bath your pet kittens in it because they mail boil to death? I mean, it wasn't clear, right, there's no way we could figure that out with common sense!

JinMori

3

2 or 3, the fact that i'm not playing the game should tell you everything you need to know.

It's not a 1, but not good in pretty much anything.

So far, if you take the 1 to 6 votes, it's about 70 % of the votes, so on the forums so far, people generally think this game is at best decent, at worst pretty much unplayable.

And i agree honestly.

Tatanko

5

I give it an even 5 / 10. The content was awesome, but the continually degrading performance in spite of the promised opposite is really hard to swallow sometimes.

rei91

5

Out of ten (really, 1-5 would be enough) it's 5 for actual land/story content. -5 for battle redesigns and EU performance so horrible that even I started to notice it with my anti-peak play hours (tried peak hours few times - left horrified), not to mention all the blackouts.

FierceSam

1

bluebird wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

bluebird wrote: »

Pyr0xyrecuprotite wrote: »

I can't vote in a poll that doesn't explain the scale, i.e. indicate whether 1 is good or bad (and 10 the opposite).

I'm pretty sure that rating something on a scale of 1 to 10 means that 1 is the worst. The only way 1 would be 'better' than 10 is if it was a ranking, not a rating, but that can't really apply to this question.

Except being ‘pretty sure’ isn’t a good look for a survey. Especially when it’s laid out with 1 at the top. It’s why proper surveys have rather long winded questions like “how would you rate the following on a scale of 1 - 10, where 1 is utter failure and 10 is complete perfection”. Then you are ‘sure sure’ what the scale means.

I was being polite when I said 'pretty sure'. What I meant was 'I'm absolutely sure and you have to be a special kind of challenged to not figure it out, it's obvious what OP means' that's how forum polls have always worked.

'How would you rate this game', with an option of choosing 1 to 10, is clearly a scale with 10 being the best. Scales with the highest number being the best are incredibly common to rate things, be that game reviews or women or whatever else. Should we also put warnings on every kettle that you shouldn't bath your pet kittens in it because they mail boil to death? I mean, it wasn't clear, right, there's no way we could figure that out with common sense!

Except it wasn’t clear. Just because you think something is obvious, doesn’t mean other people do. The fact that there are people saying they are confused about it should be reason enough to wish that the poll had been clearer.

Anyone who designs surveys to attract meaningful data will tell you you need to be precise, both about the way you phrase the questions (so you don’t inadvertently inject bias into responses) and the meaning of responses.

Thankfully it’s a totally moot point as most voters are leaving some kind of explanations of why they voted the way they did, which are far more interesting than any number (however flawed) the survey may generate.

Jenzi

3

I still can’t believe they haven’t reversed some of their truly terrible decisions like taking away Bosmer stealth and killing Werewolf.

The combat team have been on drugs the last couple of patches, they have truly ruined the game for some people. Class identity is at an all time low with everyone using the same generic skills.

The story for The a year of the Dragon has been ok, I’ve enjoyed it overall.

The performance is the worst it’s ever been, and until they decide to actually spend some money on upgraded or new servers, it will just continue until the game dies. There is only so much the player base will take before enough is enough.

Rake

3

3.
Lagfest
Disconnects
player unfriendly balance changes that made ton of players to either leave or take a break

Ydrisselle

3

FierceSam wrote: »

bluebird wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

bluebird wrote: »

Pyr0xyrecuprotite wrote: »

I can't vote in a poll that doesn't explain the scale, i.e. indicate whether 1 is good or bad (and 10 the opposite).

I'm pretty sure that rating something on a scale of 1 to 10 means that 1 is the worst. The only way 1 would be 'better' than 10 is if it was a ranking, not a rating, but that can't really apply to this question.

Except being ‘pretty sure’ isn’t a good look for a survey. Especially when it’s laid out with 1 at the top. It’s why proper surveys have rather long winded questions like “how would you rate the following on a scale of 1 - 10, where 1 is utter failure and 10 is complete perfection”. Then you are ‘sure sure’ what the scale means.

I was being polite when I said 'pretty sure'. What I meant was 'I'm absolutely sure and you have to be a special kind of challenged to not figure it out, it's obvious what OP means' that's how forum polls have always worked.

'How would you rate this game', with an option of choosing 1 to 10, is clearly a scale with 10 being the best. Scales with the highest number being the best are incredibly common to rate things, be that game reviews or women or whatever else. Should we also put warnings on every kettle that you shouldn't bath your pet kittens in it because they mail boil to death? I mean, it wasn't clear, right, there's no way we could figure that out with common sense!

Except it wasn’t clear. Just because you think something is obvious, doesn’t mean other people do. The fact that there are people saying they are confused about it should be reason enough to wish that the poll had been clearer.

Anyone who designs surveys to attract meaningful data will tell you you need to be precise, both about the way you phrase the questions (so you don’t inadvertently inject bias into responses) and the meaning of responses.

Thankfully it’s a totally moot point as most voters are leaving some kind of explanations of why they voted the way they did, which are far more interesting than any number (however flawed) the survey may generate.

People living in the sane parts of this world would think that 10 is the best and 1 is the worst. Yes, I know that there are always the insane parts...

Katahdin

5

I originally said 5 but after this week, I should have said 2 or 3.

bluebird

4

FierceSam wrote: »

bluebird wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

bluebird wrote: »

Pyr0xyrecuprotite wrote: »

I can't vote in a poll that doesn't explain the scale, i.e. indicate whether 1 is good or bad (and 10 the opposite).

I'm pretty sure that rating something on a scale of 1 to 10 means that 1 is the worst. The only way 1 would be 'better' than 10 is if it was a ranking, not a rating, but that can't really apply to this question.

Except being ‘pretty sure’ isn’t a good look for a survey. Especially when it’s laid out with 1 at the top. It’s why proper surveys have rather long winded questions like “how would you rate the following on a scale of 1 - 10, where 1 is utter failure and 10 is complete perfection”. Then you are ‘sure sure’ what the scale means.

I was being polite when I said 'pretty sure'. What I meant was 'I'm absolutely sure and you have to be a special kind of challenged to not figure it out, it's obvious what OP means' that's how forum polls have always worked.

'How would you rate this game', with an option of choosing 1 to 10, is clearly a scale with 10 being the best. Scales with the highest number being the best are incredibly common to rate things, be that game reviews or women or whatever else. Should we also put warnings on every kettle that you shouldn't bath your pet kittens in it because they mail boil to death? I mean, it wasn't clear, right, there's no way we could figure that out with common sense!

Except it wasn’t clear. Just because you think something is obvious, doesn’t mean other people do. The fact that there are people saying they are confused about it should be reason enough to wish that the poll had been clearer.

Anyone who designs surveys to attract meaningful data will tell you you need to be precise, both about the way you phrase the questions (so you don’t inadvertently inject bias into responses) and the meaning of responses.

Thankfully it’s a totally moot point as most voters are leaving some kind of explanations of why they voted the way they did, which are far more interesting than any number (however flawed) the survey may generate.

Unless specified otherwise, a scale of 1 to 10 will feature the higher and better ratings at 10. So the fact that no special directions were given ought to have given a hint that this Forum poll also uses the usual 1-10 scale with 10 being the best, which most people here commonly encounter in their every day lives without any written explanation.

'A scale of one to ten, or scale from one to ten, is a general and largely vernacular concept used for rating things, people, places, ideas, and so on.[1][2] The scale has 10 as a maximum score, as a denotation of exceptionally high quality or of another attribute, usually accompanying 1 as its minimum, although some common variants have a minimum of 0. Such a scale is similar in function to other rating scales, such as star ratings which are typically out of five. Net Promoter scores are often based on a zero to ten scale.

Ratings below 1 or above 10 are common hyperbole. The "up to eleven" idiom is an example of this.

The "Perfect 10" score in gymnastics is an example of 10 on such a scale being used to indicate perfection.'

For rating a year in a game how would it make sense that 1 is the best? 'That game is a solid 1' 'I gave it a 10, it doesn't deserve a perfect 1!' None of those would fit, it's clearly a 10 point scale, with higher ratings being better.

We're discussing a Forum poll (one that uses a very popular format), not a scientific experiment where everything has to be specified, and people should be able to use common sense to default to the most common use of the 10-point scale - that is 10 being the best. People love to nitpick of course, but most people don't need a 'Caution - contents may be hot' warning on their hot beverages either.

I_killed_Vivec

Frustrating.

Northern Elswyr is no Wrothgar, but it isn't a bad DLC - and bonus points for re-introducing Cadwell.

Dragons are, well, dragons! But they do tend to sit on the floor and die - and the rewards are proportionately poor.

But the problem that just won't go away is the EU server. RIP

xxthir13enxx

1

I’ll just say [/snip] cause Mods would likely edit out anything I’d really like to say about this last year

phairdon

7

Adapted to changes. Most in game issues effecting me, were fixed.

5cript

3

The technical issues and lag are the biggest reason my vote is so low.
I bring in lots of people, but they give me a lot of ***: how can I recommend something so unplayable?
I don't think Zenimax can positively suprise me anymore, the hope is gone.

But I liked the race rebalance, I liked the Elsweyr DLC and the Necromancer, even Dragonhold
The drastic balance changes were less of a hassle for me, but the DOT meta patch had me bummed out a lot.

Sylvermynx

9

For me personally, 9/10. Because I have ZERO use for the necromancer class.... Rebalance etc. - I adapt. I'm sorry so many of you have so many horrible issues (EU server, pvp problems etc) but I don't have any of that (minor problems logging into EU a couple weekends back).

For the New Year, I hope all of you with the major issues get the fixes needed.

almightyalfo

5

A complete and utter disaster.

JumpmanLane

2

========ZERO!!!!!============

Can’t get the lunar champion title because the quest is bugged and the ghost cat won’t appear!!!

A YEARLONG turd-of a story ends with a fizzle...what a joke!!!!

validifyedneb18_ESO

1

you failed to specify if 1 is high or low. bad data collection practices are bad.

That said ESO had some good updates either this year or just before, the racials where particularly great.
The community is slowly dieing, old systems are not being improved and remain ***, new content just adds more of the same *** to do. And I cant return to the game even for a day without paying because my bags are so full of crafting *** across all 8 characters.

heaven13

bluebird wrote: »

I'm sorry that there are so many issues with ESO, which is a game that I love, but this year was a total letdown... and since I didn't receive a survey, I'll have to vent here (lol).

1) Lower quality and quantity of content that was sneakily passed off as 'year-long story woohoo dragons'

If Dragonguard had been better, I may have given a 5. But this year's Q4 DLC was an absolute travesty. Dragonguard offered no new trial or arena - while previous zone DLCs always had some PvE content (Murkmire had BRP, CWC had AS). The DLC zone itself was a copy-paste and lazy recolour of Elsweyr - while Clockwork City and Murkmire had unique new assets and architectural styles. Dragonhold also added no furnishing blueprints - not even more Elsweyr style stuff -while CWC and Murkmire both offered new schematics. The Grappling Bow's 'unique traversal mechanic' that devs drummed up in one of the livestreams as a new feature for Dragonhold is not new but simply ripped straight from Murkmire's Tamed Vine-Tongue mechanic.

Add that to the fact that the year's Chapter itself already had less content than previous years' Chapters. Players could only unlock 2/4th of a single house through gameplay (while they could get a whole house in Summerset and 2 whole houses in Morrowind with ingame gold), and the rest of the house was locked behind 2 further DLC purchases. The story of Elsweyr also ended on a cliffhanger with Kalgrontiid (it really didn't need to, we could have fought him at Jode's Core instead of his no-name lackey), so they locked the Chapter's major villain and story conclusion behind the purchase and completion of another DLC (that's as if we had to buy and complete Murkmire before we get to defeat Nocturnal in Summerset's story). Not to mention the clunky as hell and borderline broken state of the Necro when it launched.

If you want to write 'year-long stories', write them like you wrote Morrowind-CWC-Summerset; with all DLCs and Chapters standing on their own as a complete adventure, while still having an overarching narrative. But this year's 'Year of the Dragon Hype and Ripoff Content' model was just insulting, honestly. It failed to deliver the quality and quantity of content that ESO has been known for so far, and was instead focused on forcing players to buy every DLC while reducing production costs by reusing assets and cutting tons of content compared to previous Q4 DLCs.

2) Performance issues even after the alleged updates

The LFG toon was allegedly reworked for Q4's Update 24, and according to the ZOS performance update article, I quote 'is now functioning well and is holding up to the player load'. We know that this isn't the case. The server load during the Undaunted Event completely broke the EU server, not just the LFG tool. But even outside of events, it still produces the same issues during peak hours. Add that to the recurring issues with lag and connection issues (mostly EU, and you can't even blame it on Steam this time), and we have a frustrating unplayable mess that almost regularly breaks, especially during events and after maintenance.

3) Nonsensical nerfs and balancing changes

It's hard to have faith in the combat design team when they regularly make changes that contradict each other, going back and forth on the buff and nerf cycle. Starting with the in random out-of-nowhere buff to generic DoT abilities (like Mages Guild's Entropy, and Soul Magic's Soul Trap - buffs which suspiciously coincided with the introduction of selling these Skill Lines for Crowns I might add) that lead to a massive loss of class diversity since everybody and their mother was running OP DoT builds. And then the 'fix' to the problem that they created was an insane nerf to all DoTs making them a nearly useless drain on resources with so much less damage that they're barely worth casting anymore. The impact of both these buffs and nerfs was discussed extensively on the PTS, cautioning ZOS against such extreme changes, and the feedback was ignored.

There are also other signs of aimlessness, such as taking away Minor Berserk and Minor Endurance from Grim Focus 'because it's a damage skill and it does too much in one button', but then giving Bound Armaments a Grim-Focus-esque triggered damage component on top of the bonus Stamina and Light Attack damage it already had. Also removing Major Sorcery from Surge and then adding it back again. These sudden and dramatic changes with seemingly very little logic do not engender the trust of the playerbase in ZOS's ability to oversee and balance the combat changes in their game. The Elsweyr-Scalebreaker-Dragonhold back-and-forth was such a rollercoaster of 'WTF-why?'s that the game's combat direction is a rudderless ship drifting from insane iteration to insane iteration. And we thought Murkmire was bad, lol.

This pretty much says it all for me. As I write this, I am stuck in an infinite "requesting character load". Performance is abysmal, combat changes directionless and exhausting, events piled on top of events (many that are extended or canceled because performance is abysmal), increased monetization, etc. I do enjoy playing when I can and have great friends that make it better, but I cannot ignore all of the issues.

ZOS_Adrikoth

Hey folks, we appreciate you all providing your feedback here. It helps us really understand what has made your experiences great, along with some of the frustrating things that you encountered.

@heaven13 For a "requesting character load" error we recommend this support article. If the error persists or you need any additional technical support, please submit a support ticket at help.elderscrollsonline.com and a member of our support staff would be happy to assist you.

Roztlin45

3

Played for nearly 2 years, got so tired of the bugs, lag, and unbalanced PVP, so I took a year off from ESO. Recently I gave ESO another chance. Shocked to find that not only has nothing been fixed but the state of the game is worse than ever.
As always ESO is a beautiful game . The story is great and little nuances make the game apart from others. However, none of the design matters if I can not actually play the game. The server issues are my main complaint. At this point makes the game painful and unpleasant.

Dear Zos, If you want to make more money from this IP, please consider a Performance and optimization "season" update. Fallout 76 is a lost cause, concentrate your efforts and servers here where the real money is! thanks

Juhasow

Roztlin45 wrote: »

Played for nearly 2 years, got so tired of the bugs, lag, and unbalanced PVP, so I took a year off from ESO. Recently I gave ESO another chance. Shocked to find that not only has nothing been fixed but the state of the game is worse than ever.
As always ESO is a beautiful game . The story is great and little nuances make the game apart from others. However, none of the design matters if I can not actually play the game. The server issues are my main complaint. At this point makes the game painful and unpleasant.

Dear Zos, If you want to make more money from this IP, please consider a Performance and optimization "season" update. Fallout 76 is a lost cause, concentrate your efforts and servers here where the real money is! thanks

For the record ZoS is not responsible for Fallout 76. It's bethesda product.

Kingslayer513

5

It was just okay. Last year was better. Some cool new content this year though.

Seems like performance issues have become more apparent. And don't even get me started on those god awful combat changes over the year.

NinchiTV

1

Horrible performance, arguably one of the worst metas ever (necro bash/dots) disappointed by necros in general. This year is the least ive played in pvp for sure. And playing less and less as I DC from the big fights zos intends us to play in.

Karivaa

Lag

baltic1284

1

For various reason
number one no point in a playing a game that has login errors or lag issues so bad makes playing un fun so I stopped for a while. Just to return and still the errors I reported still and I do mean still in the game doing the same thing killing the fun in the game.
2. Graphics need a lot of work many issues with anything that is round or any shape past a straight line for that manner. Sad for me to get a half way decent graphics settings I had to go to Nexus Online and get a ReShad mod and use it just to get some decent light emersion in the game.
3. The grind has gotten so bad that all a player does is grind till his fingers are bloody stump's f former fingers, many ideas came up to fix this issue and not a single one that I know was acted on or even tested. Guilds are starting to dry up on just about everything except metal ingots, Thieve players still have near impossible chances to get chalk to make armor for there character as a motif.
4. Faction and character pride as far as role has ended for characters faction died a an faster death on launch of the game. I don't mind a view of well less character restrictions but making Nords good at Tanking and passible as a DPS character an horrible at everything else isn't how to open characters to other roles this should be determined by which options you as a player choose and of which guild you join like the fighters guild or mages guild and so on.
5. The lack of size in your maps and accuracy to lore locations on those maps is also very very very very sad for a company hat is working alongside the source of all Elder Scrolls Bethesda it isn't that hard to ask hey what about this or that. Be amaze at times the community itself is more accurate and faster with it at times. Alinor the main island of the Altmer was much bigger than what the game itself shows.
6. Those are the only top 5 and trust me if I keep going the list will keep getting longer and longer.

mgk

4

fear when a new update, new event, new everything, all is fine for a 5 year game. some people got money atm to work on this game ?

edit : yes mine money, like a monkey i got almost 200 day of eso + left. Anyway thx zenimax, i learn from you incompetence in this capitalist system.

Pourekos

1

I started playing properly in Summerset, so my opinion counts for as much. I was a casual (ESO plus) player that absolutely loved the game, even with its faults, all they way until the current expansion when I eventually dropped it. The reasons for doing so and giving this year the lowest score available are:

1) Combat: I am beating a dead horse here, but it cannot be emphasised enough that having such major changes to abilities/passives/sets every 3 months is probably the fastest way to kill a game, other than making the game literally unplayable, especially for casual players. Contrary to popular belief, we DO care about our performance, but instead of aiming for an absolute min-max built and performance, we just pick what gameplay/fantasy our character is meant to full-fill FOR US, what content we want to tackle and then try and build and play accordingly. We also don't spend that much time, or spend that time as efficiently, as others, because we like to enjoy multiple aspects of the game. Why that matters? Because 3 months is usually not enough time to grind new abilities/farm new sets with ideal stats and all/try new builds and rotations/make adjustments and THEN enjoy what we have created. As such, what's the point and why bother? And if we don't bother, we leave the game like a number of us did.

2) Story: Contrary to the popular request that dungeons get a solo version for people that actually want to enjoy the story without rushing, this has been the year that ZOS went the exact opposite way and started putting story elements directly linked to the main story behind new/DLC dungeons. You know, the ones that the majority of casuals/pugs can't do, especially when their characters have been turned inside out with the combat changes implemented at the same time as the dungeons were released. I am struggling to see what ZOS was thinking with this and before anyone comes here saying "git gud", I will refer you to the whole circus that occurred in WoW during the Cataclysm expansion where the lead dev said so and their player numbers plummeted so much that they had to nerf all dungeons to the ground AND bring story mode to their raids WITH a LFG tool for it.

3) BGs: I get the whole obsession with the 3-faction war and pride, but with BGs you don't have the original factions but rather placeholder ones to just get 4 players each allocated to them. There have been many suggestions to try and fix a number of the issues at level 50, including going with 2 sides with more players in each side and limiting the number of premades per side, while playing in bigger maps to allow for more roles and build-diversity into this game-mode. Instead, ZOS doubles down on the 3-side mantra where the maps push everyone on top of each other and as such they just amplify the existing problems with BGs and in effect killing it for most players at lvl50.

4) Performance: others have covered all my points here, no reason to repeat them.

In the end, due to the great time I had with the game last year, and only because of that, I will come back when they announce that the game is ready to be re-downloaded as part of the efficiency changes (or whatever they are called) they said they would do. If the above points still hold true, especially 1,2 and 4, then I am done for good with the game. I hope that won't be the case because I really did enjoy my time in ESO not so long ago.