Elder Scrolls Online won’t end until the players leave

allhailskippy · May 2021

SilverBride wrote: »

allhailskippy wrote: »

It's crystal clear that nothing will change unless people speak with their wallets. And I hope I'm speaking loudly that the current status quo is not acceptable.

What exactly is the current status quo? I don't lag. I encounter few bugs. My current status quo is a fun playable game. I use few addons which may be why I have few problems. That can be the cause of a lot of the problems players encounter.

I may not agree with every tweak and change that is implemented, but I don't expect to because they can't please everyone. But it in no means diminishes my ability to have a good time and enjoy the game.

ZoS does as good a job with ESO as any other MMO out there.

Console is the issue (at the moment),

Essentially every time you are in a menu, you're stuck using a "workaround". Merchants are bugged. Guild trading is bugged. Player trading is bugged.

And the fix for it is projected at around 2 months from the time they broke it.

Prior to that, the bank was almost unusable due to it taking up to 30 seconds to remove any item.

Plus the back to back full day outages during events for updates.

Maybe PC doesn't have these issues, so you don't see them. But it's become unbearable on console. And the community managers have all but told us to just sit tight and deal with it while they get the things that will make more money done first.

ThorianB · May 2021

Wolfpaw wrote: »

allhailskippy wrote: »

Odovacar wrote: »

We will NEVER LEAVE

I thought so too, and yet here I am. Offline for the longest amount of time since I started playing with my auto-renew turned off on my ESO+.

Everyone has their breaking point.

Yup, with some great looking PvP mmorpg's on the horizon players are waiting to jump ship with their guilds.

You know a very large majority of ESO players are PVE focused right? Even ones who do pvp also spend a large chunk of time willingly doing PVE. The players who leave for PVP games won't even make a noticable impact on game numbers.

I really don't understand what pvpers in this game act this is some huge pvp game. PVP is a small portion of the game world with a tiny portion of dev time spent on it. When we have MM, the amount of players flooding campaigns more than triples and that isn't even a decent portion of the PVE player base.

Personally, i think they should give up on PVP all together and do something useful with Cyro and IC. If they want to keep PVP do something like decent battlegrounds instead of the generic ones we currently have. Maybe even do some guild cities/guild wars in pocket planes of Oblivion. But the PVP we have now is terrible and i really don't understand why it has such diehard fans.

doesurmindglow · May 2021

Goregrinder wrote: »

That's players using the steam version of the client. That doesn't include all ESO players, and does not account for players who still play but stopped using the steam client because it causes problems. Steam charts only tracks steam user's playing a game.

This is a very inaccurate way to measure if a game is dying, especially a game that only marginally exists on steam.

Lol @ the argument the growth in Steam users playing the game is somehow irrelevant because a lot of players don't use Steam.

Sure, but it seems unlikely the Steam playerbase would be growing while everything else is shrinking. Steamcharts just provides some numbers we can verifiably know, and they generally show it's doing fine.

If you have some other data available to suggest that the Steamcharts' obvious trendline isn't representative of the game as a whole, please do share it I guess. Until then, this is the data we have and the data we have provides no reason to doubt the game's longevity at this point tbh.

ForeverJenn · May 2021

There's still some old farts playing Ultima Online.

This game ain't going anywhere.

ealdwin · May 2021

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Goregrinder wrote: »

That's players using the steam version of the client. That doesn't include all ESO players, and does not account for players who still play but stopped using the steam client because it causes problems. Steam charts only tracks steam user's playing a game.

This is a very inaccurate way to measure if a game is dying, especially a game that only marginally exists on steam.

Lol @ the argument the growth in Steam users playing the game is somehow irrelevant because a lot of players don't use Steam.

Sure, but it seems unlikely the Steam playerbase would be growing while everything else is shrinking. Steamcharts just provides some numbers we can verifiably know, and they generally show it's doing fine.

If you have some other data available to suggest that the Steamcharts' obvious trendline isn't representative of the game as a whole, please do share it I guess. Until then, this is the data we have and the data we have provides no reason to doubt the game's longevity at this point tbh.

IMO, the problem with looking at a Steam-usage chart, is that while it gives an idea at how many current players of ESO through Steam there are, that's the only information it gives. It's not really enough to provide any in-depth analysis about the health of the game's population over all. For a more comprehensive look, we would need to know more data, such as:

What are the general "gains" per month:
- How many new accounts are created each month
- How many new ESO+ subscriptions are there each month.
- What is the average length of time between account creation and ESO+ subscription (ie. how well are people being "hooked")
What are the "lifespans" of players:
- How long are players typically playing over consecutive days without missing: 2-3 days, a week, a month?
- How long are players typically maintaining their ESO+ subscription without stopping it.
- What is the average retention duration of players, how long do accounts stay active before they stop playing
General Engagement:
- What does dungeon participation look like? Vet dungeon participation? Trial participation?
- What percentage of players is typically spending their time in PVP?
- What do the numbers of players who mainly quest vs. those that engage in end-game activities look like?

The number of players through Steam is like asking how many people walked into a store each day over the years. Sure, increased foot traffic is great, and can be a good indicator of a store's health. But it doesn't really mean anything significant or meaningful. High foot traffic just indicates a good number of people were curious and walked in the door. What would be more useful is knowing how many people walked in and bought vs. walked in and didn't. And of those that bought, how many got a membership card. Or, how well is the store retaining customers, and ensuring that there is an ever increasing number of "returners". ESO could be doing really well if it's generating high traffic. But, if that high traffic isn't translating into subscriptions, continuous players, or even players that participate beyond the surface level, ESO might not be doing as well. ESO's entire financial model relies on not only generating traffic, but turning that traffic into repeat customers who continuously spend their money on the product. The Steam charts just don't tell us how well that is working.

Goregrinder · May 2021

doesurmindglow wrote: »

Goregrinder wrote: »

That's players using the steam version of the client. That doesn't include all ESO players, and does not account for players who still play but stopped using the steam client because it causes problems. Steam charts only tracks steam user's playing a game.

This is a very inaccurate way to measure if a game is dying, especially a game that only marginally exists on steam.

Lol @ the argument the growth in Steam users playing the game is somehow irrelevant because a lot of players don't use Steam.

Sure, but it seems unlikely the Steam playerbase would be growing while everything else is shrinking. Steamcharts just provides some numbers we can verifiably know, and they generally show it's doing fine.

If you have some other data available to suggest that the Steamcharts' obvious trendline isn't representative of the game as a whole, please do share it I guess. Until then, this is the data we have and the data we have provides no reason to doubt the game's longevity at this point tbh.

it's like judging the entire electronics store company, based on the performance of single location. Like if their Irvine, CA was suddenly dropping in sales or customers, that means the entire company must be tanking too. Correlation and causation are not equal.

Data presented with no context or no positioning is useless data. The picture you post shows how many people played ESO using steam in the past 30 days...that's about it. It does not show how many human beings in total played ESO in the past 30 days on all platforms.

And as it's been answered before, ZOS has not posted active player numbers, only total accounts create since launch. Not even Blizzard really announces current active players, so it's all a "best guess" based on various factors. But there is not evidence available to suggest that ESO is "dying".

amapola76 · May 2021

CSose wrote: »

I find it interesting that you think $1000 plus is not an investment

I just paid well over $1,000 for a new refrigerator, that doesn't make me an investor in Maytag, either.

sean.plackerb14_ESO · May 2021

I think this is true of the large majority of players, but I tend to play very little ESO until a new "chapter" comes out. Then I sub to ESO+ for a month or two, and play ESO almost exclusively until I finish the new content. Then I taper down un sub and don't log in that much till the next one. I think this is pretty common with MMO's. You will def see the steam numbers rise sharply when Blackwood releases, then taper down to it's normal levels over time till the next one.

As for the title "Elder Scrolls Online won’t end until the players leave". That's a no brainer. They won't keep putting money into ESO when it stops being profitable.

doesurmindglow · May 2021

I mean what the Steamcharts tell us is that the game ranks highly in its genre on that platform, and that generally speaking, the number of active players on that platform has been growing.

Outside of that, sure, we know nothing. But that's exactly my point: this is all the data we have, and it does not support the argument that the player base is in decline or that the game is otherwise at risk. If such data exists to support this common and apparently unassailable forum speculation, I'd love to see it. I'm sure the developers have plenty of access to that data, and for whatever reason they've decided to continue making significant investments in the game, whether we agree with those investments or not.

It's absolutely fair to say it's a bit of a black box, and certainly that's somewhat by design. But the few data points that do exist and are available don't provide evidence of a "dying game." If anything at all, it's the opposite.

Scallan · May 2021

ThorianB wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

allhailskippy wrote: »

Odovacar wrote: »

We will NEVER LEAVE

I thought so too, and yet here I am. Offline for the longest amount of time since I started playing with my auto-renew turned off on my ESO+.

Everyone has their breaking point.

Yup, with some great looking PvP mmorpg's on the horizon players are waiting to jump ship with their guilds.

You know a very large majority of ESO players are PVE focused right? Even ones who do pvp also spend a large chunk of time willingly doing PVE. The players who leave for PVP games won't even make a noticable impact on game numbers.

I really don't understand what pvpers in this game act this is some huge pvp game. PVP is a small portion of the game world with a tiny portion of dev time spent on it. When we have MM, the amount of players flooding campaigns more than triples and that isn't even a decent portion of the PVE player base.

Personally, i think they should give up on PVP all together and do something useful with Cyro and IC. If they want to keep PVP do something like decent battlegrounds instead of the generic ones we currently have. Maybe even do some guild cities/guild wars in pocket planes of Oblivion. But the PVP we have now is terrible and i really don't understand why it has such diehard fans.

No offense, but maybe a PVE player like yourself shouldn't be giving recommendations on what to do with PVP in this game. You're obviously not a fan of it, and it's not really your area of expertise.

People play PVP in this game because the gameplay is incredibly fun, and when it works, it works. They've got some really awesome systems in this game that I really appreciate and there's nothing really like Cyrodil out there right now in the MMO world. Besides being great fun, I've met so many cool people playing PVP. It's another avenue of social play, which is really important for MMO's.

Anyways, almost every MMORPG like ESO has more PVE players than PVP, what you're saying isn't new, or enlightening, or really even that relevant to the conversation. Just because it's not as prevalent doesn't mean it's not a pillar of the game.

I actually was a strict PVE player until 2017 when the first Midyear Mayhem happened. I straight up would not touch it. But that event completely opened my eyes to a whole other side of the game I was actively ignoring. Nowadays I dabble in everything, but if they were to get rid of PVP I would legitimately think about not playing anymore, as would many.

To wrap up, the PVP in this game isn't 'terrible', it just needs some good TLC, and there's nothing wrong with people who prefer it as their main gameplay avenue.

Amottica · May 2021

Wolfpaw wrote: »

khyrkat wrote: »

Alurria wrote: »

khyrkat wrote: »

"Game is dead!" "People are leaving!" "ESO will lose majority of players!"
blah blah blah all the time, not only with this game. I remember when particularly rough patch hit Neverwinter Online, game is still there even though they introduced yet another patch that is simply a nope. Still people playing and it will be like that here. Until they decide to close the servers entirely like Wild Star did, the game is not goin' away. Which is good because frankly I am addicted despite many times I am simply so pissed off with how ZOS manage things... But it's a corpo. As long as money is incoming, they will stay. And despite being really salty, I will stay too.

That brings me to this point of how much does this forum full of negative threads influence people's thinking towards this game? I always see lots of these threads that are nothing but complaints instead of suggestion and debate. Sometimes I walk away after reading the forums and think why do I subject myself to much negative and I remind myself I am looking for that one person who has a actual good suggestion for fixing whatever issue is at hand. Or a positive thread I mean everyone on this forum should be playing and if they are it can't be that bad can it? Who keeps playing a game they are fed up with? Do they like being miserable? Just some thoughts on these threads. The game will shut down when it is shut down and not before then. Play have fun and quit being so serious. Remember why you are here.

Most people come to forum to complain, to point out something. Rarely to praise (and really, there are so many things to be praised in ESO). But forum does not contain majority of players actively playing, yes? So anyone taking any game forum as an indicator of general game community mood is misleaded.
I do enjoy the game. A lot. Despite its flaws. It let me overcome my anxiety in a way I can again talk to people. This is precious.

So you joined in 2020 and play content that rarely has game breaking performance.

Why not add some empathy to your toolkit towards the players that supported this game for years that have had their content performance tossed in the garbage for your playstyle.

Trust me the pvp community mood on the these forums is not misleading.

Something to think about.

I think he was merely making a point about the state of the forums. What seems to be a valid point at that. I do not think it reflects empathy or the lack of but merely making stating an opinion based on their observation.

kojou · May 2021

Wolfpaw wrote: »

allhailskippy wrote: »

Odovacar wrote: »

We will NEVER LEAVE

I thought so too, and yet here I am. Offline for the longest amount of time since I started playing with my auto-renew turned off on my ESO+.

Everyone has their breaking point.

Yup, with some great looking PvP mmorpg's on the horizon players are waiting to jump ship with their guilds.

Because such a high % of ESO players like PvP...

Chips_Ahoy · May 2021

CSose wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

CSose wrote: »

...the people who have more than 5 years of ESO plus on their records are investors. They've paid literally thousands of dollars to play ESO over the years.

Not necessarily. If someone subbed for 5 years, they spent approximately $900, less if they did 3 month periods or longer. If they didn't sub, that cost would be $0. If they purchased chapters and dlcs for 5 years, they spent approximately $100 - $200. This at most would total approximately $1100, not thousands. I am not counting crown store purchases because they are not necessary to play the game, and someone choosing to spend extravagantly does not make them an investor.

Players are consumers, not investors.

Do you realize that ZOS refers to everyone who posts on this forum as "content creators"? I find it interesting that you think $1000 plus is not an investment or a significant value.

LOL, wtf.

If things worked out that way and considering the amount of money I have spent on beer in 20 years, I deserve to be on the directive board of Corona beer company.

EnerG · May 2021

allhailskippy wrote: »

Odovacar wrote: »

We will NEVER LEAVE

I thought so too, and yet here I am. Offline for the longest amount of time since I started playing with my auto-renew turned off on my ESO+.

Everyone has their breaking point.

Yet you still visit the forums so you must at least be a little interested in how the game is going. So you havent technically left.

barney2525 · May 2021

Wolfpaw wrote: »

allhailskippy wrote: »

Odovacar wrote: »

We will NEVER LEAVE

I thought so too, and yet here I am. Offline for the longest amount of time since I started playing with my auto-renew turned off on my ESO+.

Everyone has their breaking point.

Yup, with some great looking PvP mmorpg's on the horizon players are waiting to jump ship with their guilds.

The grass is always greener ....

ESO puts out trailers and Ads that are just as good and beautiful as any game currently being hyped.

And then you play it ....

And here we are.

Cadbury · May 2021

Humanity won't end until everyone dies.

tenor.gif?itemid=16069986

...but yeah, that's how most MMOs are.

SilverBride · May 2021

If you like the game, play it. If you don't, don't. But coming to the forums and bashing everything about it is not constructive.

ThorianB · May 2021

Scallan wrote: »

No offense, but maybe a PVE player like yourself shouldn't be giving recommendations on what to do with PVP in this game. You're obviously not a fan of it, and it's not really your area of expertise.

[snip] No doubt i have pvped more on accident in Eve Online( subbed since 2008) than you have in your entire life. I might actually have more hours logged in PUBG than you have in total pvp. I started murdering people in video games in the late 90s by the way. I have pvped in more than a hundred games. Hell i probably have pvped in nearly two dozen games just between Aeria Games and Bigpoint games.

People play PVP in this game because the gameplay is incredibly fun, and when it works, it works.

PVP in ESO is terrible. They tried 3 different times to add PVP. Not a single attempt did they throw their full effort into. All 3 pvp areas are half working messes that have a severe lack of originality and enjoyment. But i guess if you only been pvping 3 years and this has probably been your main pvp sink then your bar for what is fun is incredibly low.

They've got some really awesome systems in this game that I really appreciate and there's nothing really like Cyrodil out there right now in the MMO world.

[snip] Are you playing on console or something? You have a really low bar for what is "good" in pvp. ESO ranks in my bottom 5( out of more than a hundred games) for good pvp.

Just because it's not as prevalent doesn't mean it's not a pillar of the game.

It's not a pillar. It's barely an afterthought. You could remove all PVP from this game tomorrow and it would actually make the game better not worse. In order for PVP to be a benefit to ESO, they would need to throw the resources they spend on a chapter behind it or at least a zone DLC worth of resources into fixing what we have. It is not going to happen unless they bring in another team that works on that concurrently with the current development team.

Nowadays I dabble in everything, but if they were to get rid of PVP I would legitimately think about not playing anymore, as would many.

Not near as many as you think.Removing PVP from ESO wouldn't even have a noticeable affect on the population numbers when you consider the amount of new players added a month, it would just be like a slow month. If they did it during the anniversary event, wouldn't even be a slow month.

[snip]

and there's nothing wrong with people who prefer it as their main gameplay avenue.

Never said there was. My comment was about the implication that guilds full of pvpers will leave ESO in droves when new pvp "competitors" are released. I remember the same exaggerations were made in my alliance in EVE when world of tanks came out. It turned out not that many people went to world of tanks. Just the ones who did were very vocal about it. Also that PVPers leaving would have a significant negative impact on ESO. It wouldn't.
[edited for baiting]

Roztlin45 · May 2021

The dev's and all members of the decision making process should be required to play eso on the live server. They should play for a min.of 12 hours per.week. Anonymous if you will. I feel that the abovementioned is out of touch and has no.clear direction. Knee jerk decision based on a vocal minority turns the nerf wheel around here, not from experience.
The top.3 issues in game should be addressed before anything eles. Performance, bug elimination, and quality of life changes. Then determine what the player base wants or.needs based of experience in game, not sitting around a meeting table. Balance with cost, marketing and quality and you have a winner every time from a.business aspect. Larger corps and I guess down to.gaming studio become complacent and fall out of.love with their product . I hope is that zos loves the game as.much as we the players do.

ArchMikem · May 2021

dinokstrunz wrote: »

Blackwood is a nothing chapter, I wouldn't be shocked after a week people will probably turn off this game for a good while.

Quests to run and land to explore. Thats not nothing to me. I dont need any more.

Nyladreas · May 2021

allhailskippy wrote: »

Odovacar wrote: »

We will NEVER LEAVE

I thought so too, and yet here I am. Offline for the longest amount of time since I started playing with my auto-renew turned off on my ESO+.

Everyone has their breaking point.

Same. I've not been actively playing for over a year now. I'm Always logging in on patch days to check the new atrocities and then I'm off again.

Sarannah · May 2021

ThorianB wrote: »

Scallan wrote: »

Nowadays I dabble in everything, but if they were to get rid of PVP I would legitimately think about not playing anymore, as would many.

Not near as many as you think.Removing PVP from ESO wouldn't even have a noticeable affect on the population numbers when you consider the amount of new players added a month, it would just be like a slow month. If they did it during the anniversary event, wouldn't even be a slow month.

I feel removing PvP would actually benefit the game. So much time and effort has been spend on Cyrodiil, the game could have been twice the PvE-size it is now. Besides that, PVP has been making the gamebalance a mess. Where PvE is massively hit, by choices made for PvP balance. Skills, item sets, monster sets, tanking, etc... all took a massive PvE hit due to PvP.

Now ofcourse I do not want them to remove PvP, as quite a few players enjoy it. But PvP did have a negative impact on the game as a whole. Atleast, the way I see it.

Lugaldu · May 2021

AzuraFan wrote: »

I predict a significant population drop when Elder Scrolls VI is released. I think that's one reason Bethesda is taking so long with it. They know it will affect ESO in a bad way.

It will probably have some effect, but the question is whether it will be relevant in the end. I only started ESO in 2018 because there was still no TES VI - but meanwhile I've been so hooked with ESO that I wouldn't give it up even if TES VI was finally released. ESO is different, but I dont´like it less than the other parts, and as long as new content comes in, it stays interesting. Every new ESO chapter is like a little TES.

PrimusTiberius · May 2021

Wolfpaw wrote: »

SilverBride wrote: »

I don't understand why people continue to participate in something they have only negative comments about. I enjoy this game and I will keep playing as long as I do.

Investment of time and money.
Guilds and friends that want to move/play together.
Limited options as games are in development.

and the sliver of hope that performance improves

Iccotak · May 2021

SilverBride wrote: »

I don't understand why people continue to participate in something they have only negative comments about. I enjoy this game and I will keep playing as long as I do.

I don't have only negative things to say about ESO and I don't think that is the case for many here - and I will at times defend what I think is good about the game. But the forums are not a place of constant praise imo, official forums are a place for immediate feedback, both good and bad.

(some) people communicate the bad first and prioritize that because they want the bad addressed and fixed.

Think of the mindset like this: "What's good is good, so why bother talking about it? It's fine the way it is - its the points of criticisms that have to be addressed"

This of course does not cover those who trash on a game simply because they think they have nothing better to do, that is a whole other thing.

regime211 · May 2021

Sarannah wrote: »

ThorianB wrote: »

Scallan wrote: »

Nowadays I dabble in everything, but if they were to get rid of PVP I would legitimately think about not playing anymore, as would many.

Not near as many as you think.Removing PVP from ESO wouldn't even have a noticeable affect on the population numbers when you consider the amount of new players added a month, it would just be like a slow month. If they did it during the anniversary event, wouldn't even be a slow month.

I feel removing PvP would actually benefit the game. So much time and effort has been spend on Cyrodiil, the game could have been twice the PvE-size it is now. Besides that, PVP has been making the gamebalance a mess. Where PvE is massively hit, by choices made for PvP balance. Skills, item sets, monster sets, tanking, etc... all took a massive PvE hit due to PvP.

Now ofcourse I do not want them to remove PvP, as quite a few players enjoy it. But PvP did have a negative impact on the game as a whole. Atleast, the way I see it.

No pvp isn't the reason why sets took a hit, I can recall countless times that zos did NOT want people soloing hard dungeons and people were doing just that on mag sorcs and other classes, so pvp isn't the driving point for the nerfs, I'm pretty sure zos doesn't want people hitting over 125k or more parses finishing their content back to back within a week, that is why keep releasing more grindy content.

Minyassa · May 2021

This is supremely promising to those of us who love housing and questing and taking their time exploring things. If a lot of the player base does jump ship to newer games, that leaves more room for the rest of us and maybe ZOS will finally increase furnishing slots for us!

Lugaldu · May 2021

Minyassa wrote: »

This is supremely promising to those of us who love housing and questing and taking their time exploring things. If a lot of the player base does jump ship to newer games, that leaves more room for the rest of us and maybe ZOS will finally increase furnishing slots for us!

Housing is definitely something that TES VI will never be able to offer (Skyrim Housing was just useless) - so there is no direct competition in some points.

WiseSky · May 2021

ESO wont die IP too big

ZOS_Lunar · May 2021

Greetings!

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