Is Greymoor an all time low for ZOS with the amount of Negative Feedback?

Destai · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

This is as bad as I've seen it. Could be just my memory though!

I remember a lot of people feeling disenchanted with things like Craglorn or race changes or veteran point changes. But this feels different. This is everyone peeved. A lot of people are either new or returning to the game, along with being in quarantined. More people have to deal with these issues than before.

I think we're seeing a lot of contentious changes colliding with deep technical problems. Cyrodiil lag, leashing bugs, combat clunkiness, quest bugs, and now desyncs are all colliding. Even logging out has bugs now. Logging. Out. The performance patch should have fixed it. It didn't and they're not taking ownership of the issue. They're not communicating and 6 years into this game's life, it should be better. They should be better.

On top of it - they still push Greymoor. It's hard to get excited about new skill lines and not think, "What bugs will that have too?". Especially when I literally cannot run in combat without my skills failing. It doesn't deserve hype until these things are fixed. It's coming from a place of love - I've sunk north of a 1000 hours into this game and hundreds of dollars - I want this game to succeed. If that takes coming here and complaining, or submitting bug tickets every single time I get them, so be it.

Vietfox · May 17

Elsonso wrote: »

Outside of the forums, people are not so openly negative.

Cyro zone chat wants to have a word with you.

Casterial · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

Khenarthi wrote: »

Were you around when Craglorn came out?

At least Craglorn was hard and a true end game at the time hahahaha, sure it didn't work well, but 90% of the game didn't at the time.

Universe · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

If I was in ZOS shoes I would have delayed the launch of Greymoor by at least 2 weeks so I could get it polished enough in all its aspects.
Currently, there are far too many issues, both on Live servers and with the chapter on PTS.
Delaying a scheduled launch for the Chapter is the lesser of two evils.
I will not complain if it will be delayed for a month and ZOS will re-think the Vampire skill line and address many other issues.

colossalvoids · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

Since elsweyr dropped I'd be glad to return to wrathstone after each patch at any given possibility but with greymoor I'm not even sure about wasting any more time.

Elsonso · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

Vietfox wrote: »

Elsonso wrote: »

Outside of the forums, people are not so openly negative.

Cyro zone chat wants to have a word with you.

Is Cyrodiil still a thing?

Shantu · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

I think for me it feels worse because of the attrition of enjoyment created by the endless cycle of disappointing combat changes. It's not like these devs are stupid. If fact they are likely highly intelligent. But in their obsession to modify (nerf) combat to some idealistic paradigm of mathematical balance they've surely lost their sense of what makes combat fun (Iceheart?). Sometimes it feels like they're just looking for something, anything, to modify to their standards, with little regard to entertainment value. No matter what players say or how much they protest, it seems to fall on closed and detached minds. Very discouraging...which carries over in feelings about Greymoor.

Destai · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

Universe wrote: »

If I was in ZOS shoes I would have delayed the launch of Greymoor by at least 2 weeks so I could get it polished enough in all its aspects.
Currently, there are far too many issues, both on Live servers and with the chapter on PTS.
Delaying a scheduled launch for the Chapter is the lesser of two evils.
I will not complain if it will be delayed for a month and ZOS will re-think the Vampire skill line and address many other issues.

I think they'd be better served launching it as a Halloween-season title. Goes well with the Vampire/gothic theme and gives them the entire summer to fix this.

Destai · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

Shantu wrote: »

I think for me it feels worse because of the attrition of enjoyment created by the endless cycle of disappointing combat changes. It's not like these devs are stupid. If fact they are likely highly intelligent. But in their obsession to modify (nerf) combat to some idealistic paradigm of mathematical balance they've surely lost their sense of what makes combat fun (Iceheart?). Sometimes it feels like they're just looking for something, anything, to modify to their standards, with little regard to entertainment value. No matter what players say or how much they protest, it seems to fall on closed and detached minds. Very discouraging...which carries over in feelings about Greymoor.

I may be wrong, but I think any feature should be developed with the most impatient gamer in mind. Asking themselves, does this feature hold up when someone's cruising through a zone for the 1000th time. Fun and convenience trump anything to do with balance in my opinion.

Bradyfjord · May 17

There needs to be a choice for, "How would I know?"

Because how would I know?

Deathanubis · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

Lets be honest. The only reason it was "hyped" if any is they marketed it heavily as an online "skyrim" experience and charging a way higher price for it as a DLC. They may attract some new players who loved skyrim and also due to current lockdown.

But they are losing veteran players fast. The game is only suitable for some casual gaming. Regarding the vMA and vDSA regrind for ppl who already put their time and effort in, it is insulting. along with some changes like vampire and set changes, just show how far they are from player base

Starlock · May 17

Something else was worse

Bradyfjord wrote: »

There needs to be a choice for, "How would I know?"

Because how would I know?

The kicker is nobody knows.

We don't have any objective assessments for any of this whatsoever. It's internet hearsay and rumor milling. Which happens every... single... patch. Every single one.

And the game goes on...

Ratzkifal · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

Although it is an all time low, Greymoor would have been so much worse if the changes to heavy and light attacks had gone live as well.

There are things I am looking forward to next patch. The better feeding animations, some cheese vampire builds and the whole antiquities system (which I suppose I am the target audience for), the new BRP dualwield set being able to replace the vMA Bow.

But it's very telling to me that the devs pretty much only made one week of changes and then stuck with that.
Week 1 changes
Week 2 nothing
Week 3 nothing
Week 4 nothing
Week 5 was announced to contain nothing as the Devs are content already.

Exactly what is the point of making a balance pass for all the arena weapon sets and then nerfing a very niche set to oblivion that's quite literally among the hardest of all the arena weapons to get? Don't they want to increase the number of viable setups? The way I see it for magicka dps there is only one viable staff now, the same one as it has always been.

But hey, at least sale numbers are high and the roleplayers are going to pay for everything anyway!

I still have not purchased Greymoor yet and I might never. The trial rewards are bad, PvP is not going to be better next patch than before, questing is a joke especially if we are bringing back dead characters without explanation left and right.
The changes to Imperial City are good, but there is no reason to go there again with no new rewards, so who even cares about what they changed.
Oh and don't forget about that horse they wanted to put in the game as a reward but then put it in the crown store instead!

What is this ZOS? Are you trying to win an award for mismanagement here?

Thanks for listening to my TedTalk

#ZOS_out_of_touch #tonedeaf #returnBosmerstealth

Runefang · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

This does happen every patch. But for me the lag/bugs are now too much to both playing. Combined with no new BiS gear from the trial or antiquities, no class balance changes and a terrible vampire skill line that doesn’t work for how I want to play it means it’s not a chapter I intend to play.

Grey17 · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

I'm seriously concerned.

If they can't fix glitchs like running on top of your horse, or weapons graphics disappearing, what hope do we have for the serious issue that plague this game, let alone the new ones that will be released next week with Greymoor.

Vaoh · May 17

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

Starlock wrote: »

Bradyfjord wrote: »

There needs to be a choice for, "How would I know?"

Because how would I know?

The kicker is nobody knows.

We don't have any objective assessments for any of this whatsoever. It's internet hearsay and rumor milling. Which happens every... single... patch. Every single one.

And the game goes on...

“The game goes on” is not the same as “the game is getting better”. And yes we can objectively assess ESO but not using exact numbers (only ZOS has the relevant stats for actual population, crown sales, etc).

If you compare ESO combat today, to ESO combat back in a patch like Orsinium, you’ll notice a lot of things.

Combat was much more fluid in the past. No gameplay crippling bugs were causing mechanics like stamina recovery or block to fail and skills all casted perfectly reliably. So the game has become far more clunky. You can see it in the broken animation of every NPC and many bosses too.

Riding around on my mount, every player is a black silhouette. Most players riding mounts are doing the running animation while mounted. NPCs are invisible for 30sec+ in more crowded areas on my PS4 Pro. Plants, scenery, textures, all fall to load until you are within 1 meter of them and even then oftentimes fail to load. This stuff used to be far less of an issue. Also all non-synergy ground-targeted effects+many channeled single target effects+many ally skill audio sounds have been removed from our games to support against the degrading performance.

Cyrodiil Campaign population was significantly larger... on my server there used to be 3 full campaigns with 4+ half full campaigns. Nowadays, Cyrodiil is doing so poorly there is only 1 full campaign. ZOS is trying to get people in there through making it the best sources of Transmute Stones and (next patch) endgame PvE Spell/Weapon pots in the game. It will likely cause a second campaign to almost fill. This strategy is actually the only reason that people enter PvP now, otherwise it’d be a pure ghost town. It used to be enough reward to just have fun when the game worked. And if we go even farther back than Orsinium, each campaign a really long time ago actually held more players (could be wrong but I’m pretty sure it went from something like 600v600v600 to 120v120v120).

Endgame PvE population has shrunk dramatically. This can be seen from the leaderboards. Well over a year ago we could see everyone on the leaderboards (not the the top 100 or so). The numbers started shrinking drastically so ZOS limited the leaderboard count since it was embarrassing. I recall there used to be 3-4K players on Craglorm leaderboards every patch and that shrink to about 200-400 players. However, you can still see when a patch drops how long it takes for vMA classes to fill up with players. Whereas in the past they’d fill in 1 day, now it can take months. Also it’s troubling when every single top endgame Guild on my server has to merge just to reach a 12 person raid team because so many of their members quit the game due to game performance related issues. It’s also troubling that on console, only two groups across the four servers have completed a Godslayer run..... this is due to almost all groups avoiding that progression due to game performance issues/severe bugs. The groups that completed had to do a phenomenal job and have good rng (instance bugs, NPCs being invisible, etc) just to get the achievement.

In terms of dungeons, Murkmire was the final patch my PS4 Pro could enter and play dungeons with perfect performance (stable 30FPS, smooth combat, etc). After this, I began experiencing the same issues as I would in trials. It’s only gotten worse.

On the Forums, ZOS has publicly addressed how bad Cyrodiil performance was a long time ago. They also put up a Performance Improvement Plan. You know things are very bad when you see stuff like that occurring. Things is, game performance has only gotten much worse ever since they publicly acknowledged how bad it was at the time.

So in terms of game performance and bugs, when the Forums AND Ingame chat AND Discords are literally flooded with complaints about this game which didn’t used to happen, and you compare that to a patch like Orsinium where the only legit game performance complaint was about Cyrodiil during primetime.... it’s pretty objective to say things have gotten much worse. If you’ve played this game for years, you know this very well. The only thing we are missing are literal numbers which only ZOS has access to and would never share.

It’s not saying that people hate the game btw. On the contrary, players stick around because they like this game enough to stay despite how much more unstable/broken it is. All the complaints you see are done in hopes that ZoS will actually fix things.

Aristocles22 · May 17

I'm actually concerned about Mor Khazgur getting woke. From what I've seen, they put a female orc in charge of the stronghold, when, according to the code of Malacath, it's supposed to be a dominant male who is replaced by one of his sons who kills him in ritual combat. Considering that this law is enforced by a daedric prince and in ESO, this is not a matter of faith but of fact (there is no doubt that that Aedra and Daedra exist and can do terrible things to you if you defy them when you had a duty to obey), this sanctuary should be punished at least as badly as Largashbur was in Skyrim when Chief Yamarz angered Malacath by letting giants defile his sanctuary. Not only that, but he's supposed to have several wives in order to have as many children as possible. For obvious reasons involving where baby orcs come from, this doesn't work if done the other way around. Like lions. If they wanted to put a female in charge of a band of orc heretics, that would be one thing, but this is a stronghold, one which we know (much) later follows the code of Malacath, as all strongholds do. Remember, this isn't a matter of faith, it's a matter of a deity who can and WILL punish you for breaking his code. Malacath doesn't forgive. Malacath doesn't forget. Malacath doesn't play games.

Now, there was one female orc in charge of a tribe in Valenwood (you have to kill her and she isn't really much of a character), but this was likely an error on the part of whoever designed that area, given that a lady orc had to fake being a male in the Wrothgar expansion in order to have a prayer of being in charge. Malacath isn't politically-correct, after all.

If they kick her out of the chief's position, it wouldn't be the first time they removed a questionable green woman from a position of power. Just look at Sees-All-Colors. Replaced by a man.

Hurbster · May 18

Something else was worse

I'm looking forward to the overland stuff. Not particularly looking forward to miles and miles of bloody Uberwa....er Blackreach.

Elsonso · May 18

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

Hurbster wrote: »

I'm looking forward to the overland stuff. Not particularly looking forward to miles and miles of bloody Uberwa....er Blackreach.

Lots of glowy mushroom things. Blood isn't really a problem down there.

idk · May 18

Something else was worse

People have complained about this game since the day before it launched. While some complaints are very valid and provide well thought constructive feedback most complaints are more about complaining that there is a change or the change is not differs than what they want.

It really is that simple.

Anhedonie · May 18

NO. Morrowind was worse

Morrowind was worse in terms of patch quality, but the performance wasn't this bad. So I'd say to an extent it's a tie.

NyassaV · May 18

YES. This is an all time low for ZOS. Negative Feedback is worse than ever

I still played and enjoyed the game after Morrowind. I haven't really enjoyed the game much since Murkmire.

FakeFox · May 18

NO. Morrowind was worse

Greymoor seems to be worst in terms of outcry, but Morrowind was a lot worse in what it actually did. It was the first step in constantly completely reworking the game instead of actually improving and building on what was there. Homestead was in my opinion the best the game ever was and since then everything has been going down hill with constant "fixes" to things that didn't need fixing.

Glurin · May 18

idk wrote: »

People have complained about this game since the day before it launched. While some complaints are very valid and provide well thought constructive feedback most complaints are more about complaining that there is a change or the change is not differs than what they want.

It really is that simple.

Also it's just plain trendy these days to be negative. Has been for a good while now. And not just negative either. You have to be Comic Book Guy negative.

Jaxious79 · May 18

Something else was worse

Wow super original. An mmorpg getting ready to release an xpac/large dlc and the forums warriors rehashing "this game is the worst it's ever been."

Every mmorpg forums has this crap every xpac I wouldnt be surprised if some of you just jump from forum to forum complaining.

tomofhyrule · May 18

I don't know. I only started playing around June or July last year, so I haven't been around for too many other major updates.

I will say that the way I play isn't really too affected by anything. I play casual PvE, and I'm really more interested in the Elder Scrolls aspect of the game than the MMO part. I'm still going through the quests and normal dungeons, so I'm not really getting hit badly with a nerfhammer or anything. The only real thing I've noticed is lately it seems some of my abilities lag a bit in the overworld, but not to the extent that it makes a difference in anything at all. I've basically chalked that up to a lot more people being online since a lot of us are stuck at home now.

A lot of the changes they're making are targeted at casuals like me who are coming to ESO as their first ever MMO because of the relation to Skyrim. I don't see a problem there - that's also the group most likely to spend money in the crown store, so I'm sure there's a major financial incentive to cater to the casuals. I don't know how many endgame PvP or PvEers are really into buying cosmetics, so I'm sure that catering to them would not bring in anywhere near the same amount of funds.

I think one of the big problems is that people just don't like change. That's one of the major problems in any MMO once there's a big change, like a new expansion or a level cap increase - everyone has to farm their gear again. I can't say I necessarily agree with the Maelstrom arena change, but it doesn't affect me either way. I'm not a fan of so many things being RNG gated, but I accept it. I have no problem with not getting a monster helm or whatever until I get good enough to run vet dungeons, but I don't want to have to find groups to keep spamming the same vet dungeon just to get a helm in a certain weight.

The vampire change on the other hand is completely understandable - vampirism was basically required for almost every endgame build solely for the recovery passives, so every other person was running around as a stage 4 vampire (and avoiding feeding) so they could play their class but better. Now they're changing vampirism to be something that pushes you to play as a vampire and use the vampire skills rather than just get it for pale skin and passives. Now, someone who wants stage 4 needs to actually go out and be a vampire and suck blood. Sure, it means that only the people who want to play vampire and RP as a vamp will play it, but that's the point - vampirism in lore is not some common blessing, it's a rare curse to be feared.

Again, I avoid PvP, but I can see from the forums it's in a bad shape. A lot of that again probably has to do with the team's focus on the casual base, and I'm sure Fallout 76 has something to do with this - that one released as a PvP-in-a-wasteland game and tanked hardcore. They seemed pretty shocked that Fallout fans wanted a Fallout-style game in Fallout online. As such, the addition of NPCs is giving it new life. Similarly here, they're seeing that Elder Scrolls online has a decent influx of Elder Scrolls fans who haven't had a main series game since that one game that won literally every award came out in 2011. And they're used to Elder Scrolls gameplay, not World of Warcraft. It seems most of the people who have complaints about the gameplay are MMO fans who don't like that ESO is turning into an Elder Scrolls game.

I will say it's getting a bit disappointing to be on the forums and seeing all of the negativity. But a lot of the arguments tend to conflict as well - some people want things easier so they can get the high-end sutff, some people want things harder so they can be on top of the world, some people want every expansion to have new BiS gear so they have to work for it, some people want no new gear in the expansions so there's no whiff of p2w, some people want everything to magically get 'better' without explaining how that could work, and some people just want the game to be in eternal stasis so they can get their top-tier build from Alcast and never worry about nerfs. I'm sure the pandemic is not helping the negativity at all, and the news that people will have to either play as vampires or lose their recovery (or even worse, RP in their RPG) is just getting people riled up. Maybe a month after release, once the Alcasts of the game put out their new lists of BiS gear, let's see how people feel about everything.

Klad · May 18

max_only wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

People get upset when their comfort zone gets challenged. Lots have used the vamp passives because the pros out weighed the cons with no work needed. Now those "free" passives will have to be worked for. As for the vMA weapons, ZOS could have avoided all that by just giving the "perfected" version a new name and sold them as a completely new weapon.

Mostly it is just the trophy generation crying about having to work for something.

carlos424 wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

People get upset when their comfort zone gets challenged. Lots have used the vamp passives because the pros out weighed the cons with no work needed. Now those "free" passives will have to be worked for. As for the vMA weapons, ZOS could have avoided all that by just giving the "perfected" version a new name and sold them as a completely new weapon.

Mostly it is just the trophy generation crying about having to work for something.

Actually, it’s the trophy generation that is being catered to, and given something. Everybody else has already worked for what they got.

Don’t be so hard on boomers, they didn’t inherit their parents’ stiff upper lip.

Ugh why dose everyone have to be so damn Tribal.... Honestly Humanity needs a reset.

max_only · May 18

Something else was worse

Klad wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

People get upset when their comfort zone gets challenged. Lots have used the vamp passives because the pros out weighed the cons with no work needed. Now those "free" passives will have to be worked for. As for the vMA weapons, ZOS could have avoided all that by just giving the "perfected" version a new name and sold them as a completely new weapon.

Mostly it is just the trophy generation crying about having to work for something.

carlos424 wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

People get upset when their comfort zone gets challenged. Lots have used the vamp passives because the pros out weighed the cons with no work needed. Now those "free" passives will have to be worked for. As for the vMA weapons, ZOS could have avoided all that by just giving the "perfected" version a new name and sold them as a completely new weapon.

Mostly it is just the trophy generation crying about having to work for something.

Actually, it’s the trophy generation that is being catered to, and given something. Everybody else has already worked for what they got.

Don’t be so hard on boomers, they didn’t inherit their parents’ stiff upper lip.

Ugh why dose everyone have to be so damn Tribal.... Honestly Humanity needs a reset.

Tell me about it! Here we are discussing a video game and 2 (two!) people have to blame it on some kind of generation divide. It was weird the first time.

Glurin · May 18

max_only wrote: »

Klad wrote: »

max_only wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

People get upset when their comfort zone gets challenged. Lots have used the vamp passives because the pros out weighed the cons with no work needed. Now those "free" passives will have to be worked for. As for the vMA weapons, ZOS could have avoided all that by just giving the "perfected" version a new name and sold them as a completely new weapon.

Mostly it is just the trophy generation crying about having to work for something.

carlos424 wrote: »

Ackwalan wrote: »

People get upset when their comfort zone gets challenged. Lots have used the vamp passives because the pros out weighed the cons with no work needed. Now those "free" passives will have to be worked for. As for the vMA weapons, ZOS could have avoided all that by just giving the "perfected" version a new name and sold them as a completely new weapon.

Mostly it is just the trophy generation crying about having to work for something.

Actually, it’s the trophy generation that is being catered to, and given something. Everybody else has already worked for what they got.

Don’t be so hard on boomers, they didn’t inherit their parents’ stiff upper lip.

Ugh why dose everyone have to be so damn Tribal.... Honestly Humanity needs a reset.

Tell me about it! Here we are discussing a video game and 2 (two!) people have to blame it on some kind of generation divide. It was weird the first time.

Yeah, no kidding. It's ridiculous to point fingers at generation gaps when we all know who's really to blame for all this.

Canada.

They went and got everyone hooked on maple syrup and now look at what has happened.

technohic · May 18

Something else was worse

Update 25 with what it did to performance makes this not matter to me. I could give 2 *** about balance or how anyone feels about their Edward vs Jacob experience. Worthless when the high-end content just doesn't work. I mean how many things in the op listed the "still ongoing?"