Will 2022 be better?

cyberjanet

Here we are in November, the final DLC released. When I look back on the year 2021 in ESO, all I feel is disappointment.

Serious, deep disappointment.

There were so many lovely ideas, that were just so badly done.

Companions. Aargh. Lovely idea, so badly done. I guess they'll make nice houseguests.

Armory. Argh. Lovely idea, so badly done. Like the outfit system. Aargh. Well it did get me to redesign the crafting areas to fit it in, and the extra crafting stations, but I just don't care any more. I knew they were going to overcharge on armory slots, just like they did with outfits, but it's still disappointing to be right.

Curating system. Aargh. Lovely idea, doesn't work. A guildie mentioned you're supposed to have a higher chance of getting something you don't have, but anything multiplied by zero always gives zero.

New servers promised. Aargh. They weren't going to give better performance anyway.

I'm not much of a PvP player, so I can't Aargh much about that.

OK, the new storyline in Blackwood was quite interesting, and I haven't played the one in Deadlands yet, but ... other than that...is there anything to look forward to in 2022, genuinely?

LyraEmber

I find it fascinating that the entire community forgot to ask them about the new servers during the "Ask Me Anything" segments.

Hurbster

In 2022? I would imagine we get to save the world...again.

colossalvoids

A long year story about saving the world. Maybe some fixes. A niche feature. Some qol.

Maybe having low expectations will actually benefit us one day 😂

cal50

I'm wondering why you guys so unsatisfied? Companions, armory station etc. all good features. It's not a new released game and they still improving everything like a new game.

Maya_Nur

cal50 wrote: »

I'm wondering why you guys so unsatisfied? Companions, armory station etc. all good features. It's not a new released game and they still improving everything like a new game.

One can have own reasons, but as I have wrote in a neighbour topic, I unsatisfied with low-quality questing/writing. It is nothing to compare with older (pre year-long story) content.

Freakin_Hytte

cal50 wrote: »

I'm wondering why you guys so unsatisfied? Companions, armory station etc. all good features. It's not a new released game and they still improving everything like a new game.

I think the more important question is why are you satisfied with such a low effort year and quality? Don't you think you deserve more than this for the money you pay?

Luke_Flamesword

I find it fascinating that the entire community forgot to ask them about the new servers during the "Ask Me Anything" segments.

They asked and there was even a answer on stream. Rich told that there is delay because as some of you probably know it - there are huge production problems in whole world (thx covid) and they must wait with their order. Sadly new servers don't grow on trees...

deleted220614-000183

I'm always criticizing a lot BUT in this case I don't agree.
You forgot to mention one BIGGEST aspect.
ESO is still a huge PVE MMORPG and it is still FREE to PLAY (more or less)
It is NOT PAY to WIN or PAY to PLAY like many others RPG created by the competition.
Yeah, they are greedy (want a companion - buy a chapter), they make questionable decisions and if they introduce anything worth it, it is a grind OR paid feature OR both.

Even if I close both my eyes and overlook grinding and paying aspects, I still tend to hate 40percent of ESO content, really.

I really hate PVP part because it is missmanaged, delapidated, annoying, unbalanced, bugged, poorly coded, poorly tested or not tested at all, twisted, rigged with uncompetent changes and utterly unattractive. Really not worth my time.

But the rest 60 percent of the game can easilly occupy me more time I can actually spent.
They have some questionable obsessions like justice system and clickable traps everywhere.
They have underdevelopped parts which must be saved by addons, especially GUI and trading system is the worst GUI and trading system in the world.
They are doing everything they could to make 3rd party addons saving this game not working and they are poorly communicating.
But despite all that problems they somehow managed don't ruin the core and it is a lot of interesting PVE content.

Lady_Galadhiel

.

Maya_Nur

trpajzla wrote: »

I'm always criticizing a lot BUT in this case I don't agree.
You forgot to mention one BIGGEST aspect.
ESO is still a huge PVE MMORPG and it is still FREE to PLAY (more or less)
It is NOT PAY to WIN or PAY to PLAY like many others RPG created by the competition.
Yeah, they are greedy (want a companion - buy a chapter), they make questionable decisions and if they introduce anything worth it, it is a grind OR paid feature OR both.

Even if I close both my eyes and overlook grinding and paying aspects, I still tend to hate 40percent of ESO content, really.

I really hate PVP part because it is missmanaged, delapidated, annoying, unbalanced, bugged, poorly coded, poorly tested or not tested at all, twisted, rigged with uncompetent changes and utterly unattractive. Really not worth my time.

But the rest 60 percent of the game can easilly occupy me more time I can actually spent.
They have some questionable obsessions like justice system and clickable traps everywhere.
They have underdevelopped parts which must be saved by addons, especially GUI and trading system is the worst GUI and trading system in the world.
They are doing everything they could to make 3rd party addons saving this game not working and they are poorly communicating.
But despite all that problems they somehow managed don't ruin the core and it is a lot of interesting PVE content.

ESO is not free, it has buy-to-play model. And the "buy" part is becoming unjustified (lower quality) lately.

Grandchamp1989

Maybe its just me but I find that more and more cost.. quite a lot of crowns. The prices are definitely not cheap.. IMO.

_Zathras_

cal50 wrote: »

I'm wondering why you guys so unsatisfied? Companions, armory station etc. all good features. It's not a new released game and they still improving everything like a new game.

I came back to see how they were going to manage the Companions. I loved the similar system in EQ2. So far, loving it. Lots of room for customization, and they are pretty useful for what I do in the world.

Haven't played with the Armory system yet.

Artim_X

IMO I enjoyed this year's story and appreciated the variety of terrain given to us in Q4.

Once smart loot works properly it'll be one of the best quality of life changes that continues to make ESO one of the least grindy games.

ZOS added multi-threaded rendering, which for me at least boosted my performance.

The Armory system does things that add-ons can't like creating a curse free build, a build with completely different morphs, a build with CP slotted in different areas (don't need a crazy amount of CP especially in relation to the green tree), etc.

Companions are quite the grind, but helpful for the lowbies who need that tiny bit of assistance. If they were capable of pulling levers, stepping on plates, and interrupting boss mechanics then they'd be interesting for the experienced player thatbwant to solo dungeons. I agree that they need to be worked on a bit more.

Hymzir

2022? LOL, no. Same old same old, just in a different colored package. And with heftier price tags attached, [snip]

[edited for inappropriate content]

Reverb

After the mess of 2020 I had high hopes for this year. I’m am going into 2022 with no such disillusionment.

We will see the finalization of the transition to Microsoft, and start to get a peek at how hands-off they’ll end up being, so that holds some interest to me, but more from a business perspective than a gameplay interest.

cyberjanet

cal50 wrote: »

I'm wondering why you guys so unsatisfied? Companions, armory station etc. all good features. It's not a new released game and they still improving everything like a new game.

Because I went to a Michelin store restaurant expecting a great meal, and got undercooked food.

LeonAkando

Are you a pirate? I think I read "Aargh" more times there, than I had at any point in my life.

This year has been good, ultimately but there have been some disappointments.

Companions are an amazing idea, but they're ultimately too weak to be worth anything. My Scamp literally does more dps than a fully maxed our archer Mirri. They need a serious tuning overhaul.

Armory is great. I love it. My main complaint is that it doesn't save mundus. Why should I buy the assistant when I need to teleport back home to swap Mundus anyway? The complaints about monetization are fair but ultimately way too overblown.

Curating system is awesome, and it's working fine for me. I heard some people are having some issues? Sometimes a patch releases with bugs, I'm certain it will be fixed.

Performance? I've never really had any performance issues in the 5-4 years of playing this. I know its a prevalent issue for other people, so I have no input because I haven't noticed any changes.

Ultimately what did get in 2021 was good content wise. Rockgrove is easily on the best trials and the new dungeons are outstanding as well.

The zone of blackwood was okay. Have yet to play deadlands.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

All I can say is that there was a bit too much peer pressure from our producer to buy into Blackwood, which for me wasn't a success in my entourage. No one truly uses a companion in my friends list. Some tried for a while and got experience on them, but they found the experience to be rather dulling, hence I still don't have Blackwood.

From what I notice in some raid groups I join:
VRG (Rock Grove)
Is the kind of raid that doesn't particularly attract Veteran players (They farmed it, but don't seem interested to progress)

Others:
-Armory system is essentially an amalgam of addons which already exist in game
-Scrying is farming
-Sticker Book (=+/- farming in the long run -> Transmutation crystals)

All in all, I believe there has been too much content in these recent years and it's served luke warm (mediocre quality) with a hefty bill at the end.

They also seem to believe that MMO/RPGs (WOW included) are casual games with hardcore farming and I think this is starting to get a bit old/tiresome after 20 years or so, right?

(I'm trying Deadlands and I even subbed for a month to see it; it's pleasing to the eye, let's see the content now)

coletas

As a only PvP player for me was great... I was able to delete the game and discover others lol i wish rimworld guys learn something from zos too and i can delete it before i loose all my friends lol

Sylvermynx

I thoroughly enjoyed this year's content so far, and I'm sure I'll be mostly happy with the DLC (I'm not really thrilled with adventuring in the Deadlands - not much interest in Daedra and lava etc); I do want to finish the story this year.

merpins

Here's hoping for a beach episode where the quests are about getting drunk and everyone is chilling and having a good time, and the most tense quest is about figuring out who keeps stealing people's lunches from the communal fridge. I've got a bit of crisis fatigue.

Gleitfrosch

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Here's hoping for a beach episode where the quests are about getting drunk and everyone is chilling and having a good time, and the most tense quest is about figuring out who keeps stealing people's lunches from the communal fridge. I've got a bit of crisis fatigue.

Lyranth in a Bikini?
Wonder, how deadric beach fashion looks like.

Remathilis

MovesLikeJaguar wrote: »

Here's hoping for a beach episode where the quests are about getting drunk and everyone is chilling and having a good time, and the most tense quest is about figuring out who keeps stealing people's lunches from the communal fridge. I've got a bit of crisis fatigue.

Add on dozens of fanservice swimsuit costumes and motifs and I'm sure it would sell.

Destai

cyberjanet wrote: »

Here we are in November, the final DLC released. When I look back on the year 2021 in ESO, all I feel is disappointment.

Serious, deep disappointment.

There were so many lovely ideas, that were just so badly done.

Companions. Aargh. Lovely idea, so badly done. I guess they'll make nice houseguests.

Armory. Argh. Lovely idea, so badly done. Like the outfit system. Aargh. Well it did get me to redesign the crafting areas to fit it in, and the extra crafting stations, but I just don't care any more. I knew they were going to overcharge on armory slots, just like they did with outfits, but it's still disappointing to be right.

Curating system. Aargh. Lovely idea, doesn't work. A guildie mentioned you're supposed to have a higher chance of getting something you don't have, but anything multiplied by zero always gives zero.

New servers promised. Aargh. They weren't going to give better performance anyway.

I'm not much of a PvP player, so I can't Aargh much about that.

OK, the new storyline in Blackwood was quite interesting, and I haven't played the one in Deadlands yet, but ... other than that...is there anything to look forward to in 2022, genuinely?

I think it was a better year than 2020, at the very least.

That being said, I agree a little. Companions are completely pointless to me. I have them for one toon and I just don't see the value in them. Too much grind for too little reward. And with only two, it feels like it was a rushed attempt to pilot a new feature as another marketing point - another "look what we did" just for the sake of having that talking point to the media.

I'm waiting to see how Armory on the consoles, but I think the only disappointment is the lack of Mundus stones. I am happy we have something and I can live with it as-is, incomplete though it may be. I was pleasantly surprised that they gave us two slots for free, I'm just sad that outfit and armory slots are character bound. Feels greedy to me - especially after all the feedback asking for otherwise. Fortunately, I have 12 characters so I won't need to buy any armory slots for the foreseeable future.

Storywise, I dunno. I'm lukewarm on it. I'm more excited about it than I was for Greymoor, but not like Morrowind or Summerset excited. I'm just trying to take things as they are and find excitement in them. Even Greymoor, now that I've gone back, I actually find myself enjoying it somewhat. So my advice is to give things a chance and temper your expectations, there's a lot of good to be had in the game, despite all the wanton monetization.

As for 2022, I expect more FOMO crown store offerings and things tucked in the crown crates. I expect another world-saving story and hopefully some more QoL adjustments that myself and many others have been clamoring for on these forums.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

I think the problem for a lot of us is that the monetization aspect of ESO has over taken the pleasantries of discovering new content as they don't really go hand in hand these days.

kojou

The only system I really don't like is Antiquities (technically 2020, but they keep adding more). I will do it to get the shiny things, but I don't like it at all.

The stories have been pretty much on par with other years (except Wrothgar they need to get whomever wrote that story back). I tend to prefer the side quest stories because they can be more random and fun.

Companions have their uses. Once I got Mirri leveled and geared up she is a pretty good healer. I use her instead of Pale Order, so I can go full damage when fighting more difficult things.

I don't have any experience with the Armory. I have an add-on that does what I need, and I will probably continue to use it. It wasn't a selling feature to me anyway.

Curating is working pretty well for me, with only a few exceptions. I'm not sure what your issues with it are. I've been filing bug reports whenever I get something I already have and feel like I shouldn't have. It has been really rare though.

Cyrodiil performance hasn't been good for a long time. It will be interesting to see if new servers fix anything, but it isn't really a 2021 thing. My performance in the rest of the game has actually improved a lot with the new multi threading features. I haven't tried turning DLSS on yet, but I may do that for trials.

LyraEmber

Luke_Flamesword wrote: »

I find it fascinating that the entire community forgot to ask them about the new servers during the "Ask Me Anything" segments.

They asked and there was even a answer on stream. Rich told that there is delay because as some of you probably know it - there are huge production problems in whole world (thx covid) and they must wait with their order. Sadly new servers don't grow on trees...

Ok well covid was last year, and hasnt halted production on pretty much anything worldwide in 2021. Furthermore, when theres a setback, a new potential date is released, as a "we will get them closer to 2022, or later" type thing. I guarantee that the company they are "buying" these servers from gave them an ETA. Not that any of this matters because logic dictates that they are using the datacenters server architecture and that thus it seems like more of a "we planned to pay for better servers, but changed our mind" situation. They mentioned in an interview for another game that they were using Amazons servers. Amazons datacenters dont just let you come in with a bunch of computers. They lease you data space on their servers. I will quote you from AWS website.

"Media storage devices used to store customer data are classified by AWS as Critical and treated accordingly, as high impact, throughout their life-cycle. We have exacting standards on how to install, service, and eventually destroy the devices when they are no longer useful. When a storage device has reached the end of its useful life, AWS decommissions media using techniques detailed in NIST 800-88. Media that stored customer data is not removed from AWS control until it has been securely decommissioned."

As you can see from that, they own, install, maintain, and eventually decommission their own servers. They have tiers of servers that you can buy. ZOS is clearly not using their top tier, or thus they wouldnt be able to say "we plan to upgrade."

Slyclone

I am grateful the game exists. No other game can sway me. I will continue to give my support, because it's a good game. Every game I have ever really loved got shut down or smoked out by the community.

It's not perfect, but so close I want to fix it myself.

Thanks for the efforts.

93 gigabytes of art.

Sorry about the current "times".

I know how it feels to be smoked out.

Finedaible

For those wondering why players aren't satisfied with the current state of the game, this is why:

The bar was set the highest it has ever been with the conclusion of the Daedric War storyline in Summerset. It was an intriguing and epic quest overarching 3 major dlc zones which let them flesh out the characters and story a lot better than they do now. After that was done, they announced the new year-long story format they would be using going forward. This new format has led to worse and worse quality in terms of main story writing and gameplay content; the writing hasn't even been as good as the Wrothgar DLC which came long before Summerset. In more recent dlcs we don't even have a chance to get emotionally invested in the characters, so it just feels weird when they try to make a character we've barely just met die in some tragic manner for what I can only assume is supposed to provoke shock (cue eyeroll). Not only that, but the stories have become exceedingly dumbed down for the game's intended audience (M rating, LOL, more like kindergarten reading). Sure, every update there are new dungeons with sets to chase after but honestly people have started to not care anymore when the team is obsessed about upsetting the meta every 2 months or whatever by continuing to balance the game around the top % of players/guilds.

The only relatively good things to come from these last two years are the Stickerbook and Curated Drops. Companions are marginally helpful, but not really helpful where you would actually need help. Armory is kind of the same way, marginally useful with too many limitations. I'll be using it to switch between pvp and pve (on the rare occasion I actually care about pvp) but it still hogs inventory space, and it sucks for people who want to switch between tanking, healing, and dps.

What players really want to see are good stories with expansions to combat skill lines. The last time they added something to combat (which wasn't Necro class) was the Psijic skill line which only has like 1 single offensive skill which nobody uses because it is cumbersome. People want a new weapon skill line.

dinokstrunz

Honestly 2021 has been a year to forget as it was filled with blunders and emptiness. The Dungeon DLCs were in my opinion the only decent piece of contents to come from this year. I enjoyed Dread Cellar and Black Drake Villa a lot to be fair, very nice instances and the boss fights were quite cool.

Story wise I just wasn't interested with the characters and I felt like there was too many returning who really were overused and lets be honest weren't really that interesting from the original stories. I've yet to play Deadlands storyline but what I've seen so far Mehrunes Dagon only felt like a serious threat right towards the end of this Blackwood storyline. I've not really been in the mood to continue this story line given the other issues going on with the game currently.

Balance has felt fine in most parts of the game but then you just had to go and introduce idiotic power creep sets to PvP like Dark Convergence (the whole mess has probably done more damage to the ESO playerbase than the rather lack of things to do in 2021). It's just awful how these sets were released on the live servers in the state they were in. Then comes the rather pointless changes that nobody asked for like the hybridization of stats on gear. I just feels like the game is being more and more simplified and streamlined has the game sluggishly goes on.

2021 has done absolutely nothing for the PvP portion of this game except dismantle & mangle whatever was remaining. No proc Cyrodiil is boring and nobody wants it (sure it's fun for a few days but becomes incredibly stale). I was just honestly expecting ZoS to pull the plug on Cyrodiil at some point it's become that much of a joke. I'm not expecting anything different for 2022 either.

I really doubt much will change by next year and it would have to pull out something extraordinary to get back on it's feet again but I do hope ZoS can find a way back after this years complete and utter flop of a season. Has to be said sadly.