Enough is Enough.

jircris11

Attackopsn wrote: »

Things have just unhinged.

Before I rant, run my opinion into the dirt, or put negative energy into the room, I want to say that I care about the game. I remember being young and playing games like Morrowind and Oblivion and just hoping they took that world into the genre of something like RuneScape or World of Warcraft, which felt massive and overwhelming at the time.

I remember ESO being announced, and waiting years for it to be released, poking around in the beta at a friends house, and overlooking all the bugs for something I probably spent a decade just crossing my fingers to see come to fruition. Even counting down the final five seconds on the release screen with friends in a PSN party chat who were all eager to hop into this incredible game.

Things were never perfect, the game always had problems, but I think any veteran player will agree that we all just rolled with the punches, it was a big game, things were often rocky, but we all cared about it and stuck with it.

This last update is so different from iterations of the game when random bugs came to light that allowed people to desync people with emotes, or get into keeps, or even slay zergs and dungeons with camohunter. This last update had issues that were documented before release, widely known before release, acknowledged early within the PTS cycle, and then still released with the issues unchanged months later.

Some issues only relevant to end game such as minor slayer, some issues detracted enjoyment from a major portion of the player base such as the issues with light attacks in relation to their subsequent casted ability, some just blatantly surfaced as an extreme increase in error screens and performance drops within all areas of the game, not just the nearly unplayable performance wreck that is cyrodiil, ironically in a year named for performance fixes.

I’ve ran through the motions with this game from the very beginning, and I’ve seen problems arise, be frustrating, persist for too long and eventually receive a fix, etc, but this was just plainly disrespectful to your players.

As a player, you should feel disrespected, treated like your experience is unimportant as long as your money keeps coming in by a company that blatantly ignored bug reports and is not interested in solving performance issues.

Supporting this game with any money until that mistreatment is acknowledged is simply disrespectful to you, the player.
If we just allow this to happen in Markarth, expect this to happen in the future too.

If you really care about this game, cancel your sub, don’t buy any crowns, enough is enough.

I love eso and its world, the bugs are annoying but imo I think it has to die to the core code. They try fixing things but if the cire if the game is flawed it will generate more issues. It is also like many other products ,experiences differ per person. Personally on my ryzen 5 16gb ram 4gb (older gpu) I don't suffer many of the issues I see on here. Some days my ping is hellish but that could be Xfinity or the game. Where my friend who has a monster pc has lag, crashes and such. Finding a fix is not as easy as people think, but they are trying in the least. I have seen many MMOs just stop trying and its sad.

eovogtb16_ESO

Well I know I wont be supporting or buying anymore zenimax products in the future and I feel really bad for the people who they are going to take advantage of as customers on their next game.

TradoTheOne

Kinda painful to see so many likeminded players as myself who loves this game deeply getting less and less love back.

I think, I have been online 2-3 times for 1 and a half month, this comes from a player who was on daily for a loooong time.

I can't prove it; but im sure if this does not change for the better, then we are having a dead game on our hands.

Roztlin45

I think they would fix the game if they could..the real employees at eso. However my guess is that code changes are outsourced. Only art and design are done in house. All the key talent has moved on and they are left with people with little to no experience on the complexities of the base game code. Coupled with budget constraints and not wanting to damage the game further that cost them to fix, they limp along until the Microsoft but out is complete. The silence is simply a way of containment. I don't blame the devs , I blame the owners . They have soured the milk . Now I look forward the 2021 and the years ahead in eso because I have hope that when they are out of the picture real change will occure.

idk

It is not enough until I say it has been enough. I have not said it has been enough.

Ok, now it is enough.

Please continue.

Grianasteri

Cant really disagree with much in the OP.

I played Morrowind (still one of the best gaming experiences I have ever had), Oblivion, Skyrim and when ESO came out I was so excited, finally here was a game I could play with friends and disappear into a fantasy world I had come to know and love.

I am openly critical of ESO, when I feel its necessary, while also trying to remain realistic and understanding. There are too many that take to these forums to just scream at every little thing and I am also openly critical of undue negativity.

But, no one can deny that performance far from improving, has become significantly worse, and it was already bad. I have crashed every single time I try to play recently. I'm still trying to log in each day for a bit, but frankly its been weeks now since I engaged properly with ESO and performance is absolutely part of that reason. PVP had increasingly become my focus and I simply cant do it if I'm getting kicked, blue screened and desynced constantly with skills not firing for several seconds or often not at all and enemies pinging across my screen etc. Its pointless.

I do feel for the first time in 6 years, that ESO is in danger of collapse - ZOS cant expect the game to continue with such levels of performance, there will be a tipping point.

Tentatively, perhaps it is actually time for a complete reboot, an ESO2, rebuilding from the ground up to incorporate properly all the quality of life improvements, add ons and updates that have been welcome, and with the ability to redo everything better, so it looks great and works.
.

omegatay_ESO

Quote
" This last update had issues that were documented before release, widely known before release, acknowledged early within the PTS cycle, and then still released with the issues unchanged months later."

Goes to show that ZoS either does not read feedback, or ignores it. PTS is nothing more than a look/ad of future content for sales. Just my opinion.

Shantu

Game is beginning to feel like a used clothing store having "Going out of business sale".

Hexvaldr

I agree with the sentiments I see here coming from players who truly love this game who are really sad. For over two years I have encouraged others to give the company the benefit of the doubt, to be grateful for what we love about ESO, and to stay positive. I am not usually one to complain on forums.

But now I've reached the same "enough is enough" point as the OP. Especially since I believed in the performance update plans. During the past week and a half I've logged on less than usual (just to do a daily random or scheduled group run or to say hi to guildies) and have crashed or been kicked to login multiple times each day. I have unsubbed, sent my feedback email, and will be spending most of my game time playing another game until the time when/if ESO hopefully makes some real improvements.

furiouslog

virtus753 wrote: »

Jaraal wrote: »

Umbro100 wrote: »

Obviously money is all they care about, so some people believe if they cancel their subscription, it will hurt enough to make them act and change things for the better. I am afraid they are wrong, it feels like they are letting it die, god knows why. Hope not though ....

It's a nice sentiment, but unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

If a product starts losing money, then a company will shift resources away from it and put them into something more profitable.... like an upcoming AAA title. The more people that bail on the game (or start spending less while still playing), the less they will invest into keeping it running.

Which puts us in a catch-22: If we stop paying/playing, then they pull resources and the game dies out. If we keep paying/playing, then they don't invest further resources because the message is that it's, well, if not fine, then at least fine enough. So really there's only sticking around while the game tries to stay afloat or bailing.

The ties that keep people playing tend to be very strong: the Elder Scrolls environment and lore, the desire for an "online RPG" (rather than a game that hews more closely to the generic MMO standard), the power fantasy inherent in video games, the escapism, the dopamine hits, the social connections and expectations, the FOMO - and of course the understandable, often extreme reluctance to walk away from the virtual reality that represents a very real investment of time; money; and mental, social, and emotional energy.

What's disheartening for me is that, despite all those draws, there doesn't seem to be light at the end of the tunnel for those of us who want to keep playing and even paying but who find that increasingly difficult to justify. They'll almost certainly clean up the worst of the latest crash bugs in the next month or two, but this is just another in a long line of updates wherein major fundamental things break and have to be fixed. Frankly it's exhausting watching a game with such potential struggle so immensely with the task of living up to it.

And while on the technical front the game may in large part be "laboring under its own magnitude" (I won't say "greatness"), to borrow a phrase, what particularly baffles and discourages me are the completely arbitrary decisions that significantly reduce player morale (e.g. vet arena weapons, Rapids, recent changes to Cyro) dumped on us in the midst of these massive technical difficulties. Surely a company, no matter how profit-minded, doesn't stand to benefit from alienating consumers by implementing and attempting to defend such decisions amidst cycle after cycle of performance issues. And even if the next game they make doesn't have the same technical problems, who's to say it won't suffer from the same approach?

Ultimately the fact of the matter is that we can't drive improvements as customers of ESO, no matter how much time or money we spend. There's no pay to win here.

This post is excellent. I think that the root cause is that ZOS is just way behind the ball when it comes to consumer empathy - a customer management approach that is almost universally adopted by larger successful companies who make direct-to-consumer goods. For years, ZOS has had no oversight other than their board and investors who likely never looked much past the next quarter, as long as plans show frequent content releases representing a predictable revenue flow. I'm hoping that Microsoft's acquisition will steer them differently in the long run, but I think it's too late for ESO because those cultural changes can take years to implement effectively. To their credit, they do seem to listen and occasionally make beneficial QOL changes that address their player's value investment, (the gear sticker book being a big one), but like you, some of their decisions baffle me.

Really though, it's our fault for continually throwing more time and money into this and expecting different results. I'm probably nearing the end of my engagement with this game, but maybe that's by design. I'm probably one of their key cohorts, in that I'll stick it out until I really can't take it any more and then just go, and in the meantime, they drained my wallet pretty effectively. And if/when I go, there will be loads more suckers coming in who will find the game engaging, who put time in leveling up, buying costumes and crates. When they get good enough, they will want to do the hard content or get serious about PVP, and that's when they see all of the real issues affecting them. By that time, your sunk costs are huge, so it's harder to walk away, and you either just get used to the playability issues and work around it or you find something else to do.

It's a decent business model, but there are better ones. I've said it a hundred times, I just wish I didn't love the Elder Scrolls IP so much. Any other universe would have lost me by now.

ClawOfTheTwoMoons

I can't wait to see what the next chapter is! Man ZoS is killing it delivering us all this content during the pandemic! I hope they're some new crown crates too, I'm hoping to get an apex this time!

mb10

Harsh truth is ESO is like that young athlete in your favourite sport that never met his/her potential that you knew they had.
That’s exactly how I feel about ESO, I’ll still cheer that athlete on and a small part of me thinks there’s a chance of reaching that potential and showing the world how great they can be, but the reality is, it’s not going to happen and the ship has almost fully sailed, if it hasn’t already.

Such a shame honestly, could have been so much more. Bugs, balance, RP, PVP, repetitiveness the list goes on, on where they went wrong

ThePlayer

Apart from the countless bugs at the moment there is no logic in the releases of the new dlc or zones, in the sense that the game has no quests related to the new dlc or the new zones that lead to a grouping of players (it is always an online game ), not to mention the general abandonment of veteran players, no new CPs systems, no high level quests, etc etc.