Thought On The Game Since Beta

stonescorsa

WARNING! This is going to be long so please get the popcorn and beer ready.

Ok people my name is bravehorn and i have played pc na since beta, when i first heard about elder scrolls making an mmo i was buzzing and couldnt wait to play it, i love elder scolls games but loved mmos more and bringing them together meant i got to play something i have wanted for years. When the beta come round it was amazing i loved every minute of playing it, i loved the lore, the questing, the mobs to kill, i loved the skills of a mag sorc, i loved the surrounding areas i was playing in. The "if you see anything you can pick up do it" springs to mind because its all crafting or materials.

I was a completionist on my mag sorc for the longest time, i had all dungeons, all map completions all skyshards, lorebooks etc. I loved every aspect of the pve it was exactly what i wanted to see. Dont get me wrong even the pve areas and dungeons now are amazing and bring new ways and puzzles to the table.

Then being a pvp player for 4years in lord of the rings online being a rank12 was quite a high rank decided to go do pvp for the first time. Was eventful to say the least in a good way. The first time i logged into pvp (EP) you start at north morrowind wayshrine no clue what this is about, quest popping up all around, zone chat going bonkers guilds spamming "Join us now", zone recruiting people for raids and i was like wtf is going on what have i gotten into here. So not knowing anything i join a random group and ran with them for hours still not knowing what to do but it was a blast pressing buttons helping people running around on mounts from keep to keep. When i eventually had to log out at the end of the day i just wanted to just log back in and keep going. Eventually got into a guild called Caotic Minds (CM which is what zone spammed for invite). This group was different they were all in comms and having a blast and got on really well with the guild leader and became an officer really quickly. After about a week or 2 of playing the campaign, learning the map, seing how the opponents moved the map and how other classes skills worked i began to raid lead CM. After about a month of playing CM was widely known across the other factions as an EP force who worked the map and collaborated with zone and other raids. Eventually the guild became 200+ members in a short time because they wanted what i was giving, a Leader in comms to follow. Another guild who was more pve orientated was trying to get into pvp but didnt no really where to start so we collaborated to make the guild CM500 (which is what zone use to spam for inv) this then turned into a 500 guild member guild. Pvp was amazing we use to play games have fun, kill sh*t and take keeps and then do the same again tomorrow. The population back 4years ago was so strong no matter where in the map you went there was always players wether they were scouts or just random solo players, the map was so populated it was hard to even start sieging before you was spotted by a few players and this is what kept the challenege alive. After about 6months of the game i was raid leading properly, i had my mag sorc set up for cc, heals and leading and my group was set up for the rest. Because they knew my voice, understood how i raid and it became the most fun i have every had in an mmo, these people stuck to my but like they were wiping my behind. This felt amazing THE BEST TIMES OF ESO.

Eventually the guild was to big and had to many pvers in it to let other pvpers to join the guild so we parted the cm500 guild and made our own guild called Pride Of The Pact which then became more of a serious pvp guild. This guild is where alot of names you guys play with now come from, Aegon the conqueror, Crystalised, Shroud, Blake, Da Sandman, Mikedirtbike, Sirston, Tryonis, Lunch Box, Pixel, Blackdrath, Creamfraiche, Phaedrus wolf, and many many other Older Eso players all was apart of Pride before they became there own guild and so on. These were amazing people, the fights were outstanding we wasnt just a guild, we was a guild that had fun changed up a bit did new things tried new strategies and played drinking games, we was a community more then just friends who raided hardcore and the logged out. People logged in from work just to say hello and it felt great. I have many videos and Images of how good eso was back in 2014/ 2015. I also have so many memories that will not be forgotten.

I also use to stream on twitch everyday and we use to get 100s of people come and watch because again not only did they come to watch the good fights and a co ordinated guild, they came because it was a fun stream and wasnt taken to seriously like raids of today.

Im going to post an image which doesnt really doesnt say alot because its been downscaled by not only youtube but by imgur also so the pic is quite blurry but i can tell you now there was people all the way around full 360. there was people as far as your view distance could see. There was people sieging the walls while this was going on at this resource, this was stuff that i wanted in a game. https://imgur.com/a/YNdY1KU I no you cannot fully understand what/ how many people are on the screen here but take my word for it eso today is nothing what it use to be back in 2014/2015. The crazy thing was eventhough there is so many people on the screen at once there was not one slight hickup of lag nor latency/ ping issues or if there was it was very minimal but also no skill delay compared to today and this is where this story leads to now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFQYPKxaZl4&t=610s Again this is just a video of just how eso was and how big the fights were, this video is not showcasing amazing gameplay as this was literally the 1st 6months the game come out if you look at the date, this is just showing you how big the fights were and just how constant the flow of traffic was. Again i am not saying this is the best representitve of what the game was just showcasing how much more the game could handle back then then it can now.

In this video the build was seducer + warlock Full sustain mag sorc build for the impulse spam. In this video also at this time of eso the only real proc sets were the undaunted helms and shoulders, not many other sets in the game were proc sets or they were overlooked as being meh.

Since the game has been out i have taken nearly 2years away from the game, 1 full year away just before the cp system came out and a further 6months just before the warden patch dropped. The reason for these abscenses is purely for the game being in an unplayable state for pvp. Everytime i have come back and every year the game feels its getting deeper and deeper into a state where it cannot be fixed regardless of what zenimax says, i feel it is just a mask to make players feel something is being done but nothing ever happens or it goes smoothly in PTS and then when comes to live something is wrong with it or i just fails.

I have played since beta and some of you on here will not even no how good the game felt back then but honestly the game doesnt feel the same.

The thing that really changed the game and made 100s of pvpers quit was the pre lighting patch 1.3. When this patch came out the game completely changed which then started to become laggy. This patch was to change how the lighting was done and change the way the server handled it which in turn brought the ungodly changes to lag. Now many people complained on the forums and things did progress but it felt like it was never addressed and just like smoothed out but never fixed. Honestly i felt it should have just been reverted back to a previous state until they had a fix for it (wether you can do this i dont no).

Eso was full of wield any weapon or armour and become whatever you wanted this being very true at the start of the game for sure Hybrid classes were definately a thing it was amazing. For almost 3yrs of the game i played heavy armour magsorc with high sustain, good burst damage and really good heals, hard to kill close range mage, and people in the like of ali sabre who was a mag sorc in medium armour with c frag and endless fury vel curse. oh god these bring back memories. Now the game feels more pidgeon holed into running perfect stats or you will hinder yourself. Many times iv watched people in my discord try hybrid type classes and it just straights fails because there either lacking in damage not going full mag or full stam or just straight being nuked because most people you run into run just the meta.

Now today is why i am making this forum thread for you guys to express how you feel because at this moment in time iv given alot of chances to zenimax to forfill my pvp needs back to how 2014/2015 felt but it kinda feels more like it cannot be fixed regardless of what they try.

Proc sets to me feels like one of the main culprits of lag and also heal spam ball groups. Heal spam lag was a thing back in 2014/ 2015 but it was nowhere near as bad as it is now because you only really needed 2-3 healers in a 24man raid to be a great group. Whereas now it feels like everyone has heals or off heals to help with there group. But i feel proc sets are the main culprit and zenimax should have tried to address this by trying cryodil with no proc sets to see how it felt and addressed the sets or made sets purely for pvp and pve only. Or tried to address the sets so there was no % chance to proc only a flat number it procced and then went on cooldown, this would also mean that sets would have to be looked at again in terms of damage output and healing output but could be done.

This is my take on proc sets, you have a chance to proc - ok server has to work out after each heal/ damage when to proc per skill, per player, again most people run either 2-3-4 proc sets so per person thats several calculations the game has to do per player. Then you have skill sets like when you are within 28 meters........ again the server now has to calculate if you are in that area to get the effect or not. Then you have sets like After successfully blocking you have a 50% chance to........ again you think of a block tank how many people are beating on him every second and again how many calculations the server has to do per action just on that one player let alone all the other players using proc sets. Another one is Increase your max health to you and your group within 28metres - again this is rediculous because if they stand next to you they gain a buff but the server has to calculate if your standing in 28mtres or not. Then when you step out of it the game has to calculate how far away you are to see if you get the buff or not. These sets are just a few i picked out at random but there is over 300 sets in eso and most of them are a proc or a chance or a buff, all of these are calculations per person per action on hundreds if not 1000s of players.

Lag in cryodil has become such a thing zenimax took away all animals out of pvp because it was causing lag and also reduced the cap of player numerous times due to it causing lag but in my honest opinion this was never an issue in 2014/2015 and i feel the game was treble the population in pvp then it is now and fights were great and smooth as butter. Zenimax also added in more towns that can be fought at and took over which i thought was a great idea tbh but they also added in extra npcs and also volendrung spawn locations which also have npcs in it. I no and even most other people no NPCs are one of the biggest factors of lag because again all the calculations and movements they do. Lag in cyrodil is bad in a way that it takes 2 secs to mount your horse, 2 secs of spamming E to get inside a keep door. Siege doesnt fire off as soon as the arrow goes green almost like this has a delay or lag to. They also removed IC out of cyrodil to help with lag but again to no avail.

Then we come to skill delay, this has got to be one of the most frustrating things i have seen in this game, i feel i am spamming a single button about 5 times before the skill physically works and this isnt just a one off it happens on every occasion but again there is hundreds of pve / pvp players talking about this and ever since the patch of changing how block is handled by the server this is the worst iv seen it. In my opinion with it affecting both sides of the game surely you would revert the block change back until it was fixed properly (again not a coder so dont no if this could be done). Many times i have pressed a skill 5 - 6 times and swapped weapons or dodge rolled to find the skill didnt even work and have to swap bars again to spam it another 5 times for it to go off. I also have found in testing that this happens worse to some skills more then others.
Now i no some of you will say its lag causing you to have skill delay but how can this be so when we duel in someones house where it literally is 1v1 no other people around.

But lag is not just affecting pvp its also affecting pve because many times again duelling on the outskirts of towns lag happens and skill delay, its almost like you cannot get away from it regardless of where you are, surely this in my eyes would have been the 1st thing on zenimax list to fix.

I dont no if any of you have zoned into craglorn and ridden around for a bit but it has become one of the most buggiest of places in tamriel. floor glitching/ falling through world, sky glitching turning to all pink or blurry, terrain popping in and out constantly, graphical issues all over it not to mention the constant mini load screens like what the hell is this zenimax this is not a polished zone this is broke.

Which then leads me onto pvp again many times have i ridden north from brk to chalman, brk to arrius, Harluns to farra, farra to kings and all of ep territory is the most buggiet place i have been, again terrain popping in and out, sky glitching all over the place, mini load screens every 1 second like what is this. Me and a small man group that i run with we had a dc scroll and we rode upto some rocks close to kings mine so we had the high ground and kill people coming to get the scroll well we had about 10man group come and we went to drop down off the rock all 5 of us went into a load screen when we come out the load screen we were all dead. This should not happen! many times of gone to fight someone deep in ep territory and gone into a load screen come back out and im either dead or close to death. Also if you ride your mount deep through ep areas you will get load screen after load screen after load screen, maybe even 10x 1sec load screens before it stops.

I love ESO with all my heart and again i have played since beta i have been through almost every patch and i am still waiting for them to fix what is already broken, i feel we are not heard enough for them to sort it, i no pvp is a mere small % compared to pve but some of this is hurting pve to and you still let it go. This game could have been the top dog but i feel the more years that pass the more this engine will fail and bigger better games will take its place leaving it in the dust. If these things were fixed when they were broken this games player base could have been alot bigger then it is now because many pvpers and pvers have left due to the state of the game.

Thank you for sticking with me on this one and appreciate people reading and listening from an old time players sake we wished we could go back in time so you newer pvers and pvpers could experience how great the game truly was before the server became undone

Bravehorn

Coatmagic

Because I don't PvP, never pinpointed when it all began, but have watched it worsen as they add more and more 'fantastic visual effects' that we have no way of turning off

Pretty sure there's no way to unravel that either, or someone would have done so by now.

I mean, the ego of whomever thought it a good idea to literally force everyone to watch all this flashy BS astounds me...
and I feel really, really bad for all of us who love the game, because it's fairly obvious that... meh, dead horses.

stonescorsa

yeah visuals and uniqueness is amazing if your platform can withstand what your building and quite literally the ground that eso is built upon is sinking due to more additives and visuals and broken stuff is weighing it down. The engine that eso is built upon can withstand so much until it struggles which is where the lag / ping starts coming into effect and then it gradually gets slower and slower until it either starts kicking people out or straight crashes which it has done before. The more they lesson the population the better the server can handle which then means they dont have to turn visual effects down or even off and proc sets can still remain, but that is to me going the easy route of finding the real problem and sorting it because i feel that it will cost to much money for zos to physically fix it and by then the player base wont wait anyway