Should ESO update its minimum requirements?

wolfie1.0.

Not taking sides on this but just want to get an opinion from people here on the forums. As we all know eso was released in 2014 and since then we have a new generation of game consoles as well as pc components available. It has been mentioned and hinted at by zos that older hardware is what seems to be holding ESO back from some QOL and additions to the game. That they may be holding the game back from reaching its potential. In light of this would it be worth it to stop supporting that equipment? When would it make sense? Why wouldn't it? I don't think we want the game to get stale or see features cut. But if older equipment will prevent that then would it be worth it?

DaiKahn

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

...It has been mentioned and hinted at by zos that older hardware is what seems to be holding ESO back from some QOL and additions to the game...

Isn't it older console hardware that's doing this?

wolfie1.0.

DaiKahn wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

...It has been mentioned and hinted at by zos that older hardware is what seems to be holding ESO back from some QOL and additions to the game...

Isn't it older console hardware that's doing this?

I yes but I also would add in older pcs as well.

Arunei

I'm not sure if it's hardware limitations or server limitations, but either way hasn't ESO's minimum requirements already increased? Or am I misremembering? I could have sworn it's already been increased for PC at least but I could be confusing it with something else.

kargen27

Way to early to start phasing out support for last generation consoles. The newest generation is still mostly in the early adaptor phase.

Amottica

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

DaiKahn wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

...It has been mentioned and hinted at by zos that older hardware is what seems to be holding ESO back from some QOL and additions to the game...

Isn't it older console hardware that's doing this?

I yes but I also would add in older pcs as well.

Zenimax has increased its minimum requirements for PC multiple times since its launch. It is why they have been able to improve graphics.

This has included dropping support for older DirectX as well as CPUs and more.

For consoles, it is a different issue since there are only two generations that are supported, Xbox One and PS4 along with the latest of each. It would greatly reduce the player population of each of the support for Xbox One and PS4 were dropped.

Sylvermynx

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

DaiKahn wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

...It has been mentioned and hinted at by zos that older hardware is what seems to be holding ESO back from some QOL and additions to the game...

Isn't it older console hardware that's doing this?

I yes but I also would add in older pcs as well.

This machine is 8 years old. That's ANTIQUE for a PC. But guess what? It runs ESO on ultra everything. The issues I personally have are all solely related to the lack of "real" broadband: I have two available connection here where I live: HughesNet satellite.... or dialup....

An 8 year old PC (in my personal experience) is not at all a barrier to playing ESO "as intended".

*waves at DaiKhan*

spartaxoxo

Absolutely not. The newest consoles are NOT available to just purchase and as a result the generational crossover is still behind.

Until such time as it's realistic and common for people to get their hands on a next-gen console, they should continue to support PS4 and XBone

I don't know how much of stuff you think they'd be able to develop when they lose like 1/2 to 2/3rds their playerbase depending on what they meant by roughly equal, but I can tell you that they wouldn't suffer that kind of losses and still be able to add a ton of new great things. That's a massive income loss.

Eta
It's not the last gen consoles holding anything back, it's the shortage

xclassgaming

Arunei wrote: »

I'm not sure if it's hardware limitations or server limitations, but either way hasn't ESO's minimum requirements already increased? Or am I misremembering? I could have sworn it's already been increased for PC at least but I could be confusing it with something else.

I think they did for greymoor?

colossalvoids

Fairly sure it's not consoles exclusively holding the game, eso popularity can surely be attributed to its low spec requirements and it would cut dare I say significant part of playerbase especially with components prices we have still in some regions, doubt many would just upgraded for their one side game they're playing for a week 2-4 times a year.

Pepegrillos

Old consoles memory capacity puts a limit to what can be added to the game. I think this was explained/mentioned by Firor in an interview at some point.

Tandor

Judging a PC by its age is rather like Trigger's Broom in Only Fools and Horses. Watch it if you don't know it, it's a classic.

My PC is 12 years old, but it's really only the case that is original. That's the beauty of PCs, you can adapt them very easily (and relatively cheaply) to advances in game development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAh8HryVaeY

Northwold

1. As another poster said, it's rather difficult to change the minimum until it's actually possible to buy the new generation of consoles.

2. At a certain point, for significant upgrades you would probably need a new game engine. I.e. You would need to rewrite the game's systems from scratch.

Sylvermynx

Tandor wrote: »

Judging a PC by its age is rather like Trigger's Broom in Only Fools and Horses. Watch it if you don't know it, it's a classic.

My PC is 12 years old, but it's really only the case that is original. That's the beauty of PCs, you can adapt them very easily (and relatively cheaply) to advances in game development.

True - but I haven't upgraded anything in mine - except the screens. And that includes running these screens off the GPU that's also 8 years old.... Still hoping my PC company will get back to me before long to say they can build my new machine now....

If I would be happy with an HP or Dell, sure I could get one now - but I don't want either brand thank you very much....

Khenarthi

My PC is 8 years old too, still 100% original parts, and runs fine on high/ultra settings. And PC minimum spec does increase from time to time, I do not think PC age/ageing is a problem - in any case you can always add more RAM, storage, upgrade the graphics card, whatever.

Expecting people to upgrade (replace) their consoles just to continue to play ESO is unreasonable.

etchedpixels

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Not taking sides on this but just want to get an opinion from people here on the forums. As we all know eso was released in 2014 and since then we have a new generation of game consoles as well as pc components available. It has been mentioned and hinted at by zos that older hardware is what seems to be holding ESO back from some QOL and additions to the game. That they may be holding the game back from reaching its potential. In light of this would it be worth it to stop supporting that equipment? When would it make sense? Why wouldn't it? I don't think we want the game to get stale or see features cut. But if older equipment will prevent that then would it be worth it?

The ESO minimum requirements are wrong anyway. I've reported it to them, I've reported their steam page but nothing ever happens. It will not run in 3GB of RAM. I tried it just for the lolz. The 1GB graphics card claim is also border line at this point.
So the ESO "minimum spec" claim is actually probably breaching consumer protection/advertising laws in many countries.

ESO has in fact moved on. If you compare the Elsweyr era ESO and graphics settings to the 2014 screencaps you can see just how far it moved on. Ditto on console they've updated graphically for PS5 recently and we've had things like DLSS and multi-threaded rendering on PC as well which better reflects the fact that 4 core PC is no longer the norm for gaming. They were doing graphics upgrades even back in 2016, and they still are,

IOW the only thing they've not actually updated for the improvements in hardware, is the spec claim. The game has moved on - lots.

Aardappelboom

DaiKahn wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

...It has been mentioned and hinted at by zos that older hardware is what seems to be holding ESO back from some QOL and additions to the game...

Isn't it older console hardware that's doing this?

What exactly are older consoles holding back? From what I have read, everything from graphic upgrades are client based and can be differentiated based on the console (xbox's smart delivery function is great in that regard) everything server side has nothing to do with the consoles themselves, so I am really curious to what exactly consoles are holding back.

rexagamemnon

I dont see ZOS doing that at least until some time in 2023 when supply chains and availability of labor return to pre-pandemic levels. As it stands, its harder than pulling teeth to get your hands on the latest gen consoles. Due to chip/hardware shortages. Same reason the US car market is completely out of whack!
If ZOS did stop supporting the previous gen consoles right now, they would be losing a lot of money in potential revenue from the crownstore and eso plus. IM NOT KNOCKING ON ZOS FOR MAKING MONEY, THEY ARE A BUSINESS AND IF THEY ARE GOING TO BE ABLE TO CONTINUE DELIVERING A PRODUCT, ENTERTAINMENT SERVICE, OR WHATEVER YOU WANT TO CALL THE GAME, THEY NEED FUNDING OF SOME SORT TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. All the new content, customer services, developers and designers, IT experts, overhead at the studio, software engineers, etc. the list could go on for days! All this stuff cost money! The employees at ZOS need to eat also. ZOS also has to justify the expenditures to bethesda, and bethesda to microsoft and microsoft to the shareholders. If they can not turn a profit the plug could be pulled on ZOS. Now before someone gets all political on me, Thats not a “greedy capitalism” issue, thats just reality.
I would love for ZOS to stop supporting the previous consoles it would open the door to way more exciting opportunities for ESO, but as it stands, it would plummet the current population of ESO as a whole due to lack of access. Neither I or ZOS want to see so many of our community vanish over night in this MMORPG. Remember, ESO is and MMO. Massive Multiplayer Online Games are meant to be played by a lot of people and have a huge community.
I live in the US and play on the European server, so when i login with the time difference there are lots of times when it seems like i am the only person in a zone. When i notice that, the game seems way more boring. (Yes i made a big mistake investing so much time and energy and crown store buys on euro server, but I've been playing since Dec.2015 so between over 1650+ champion points and crown purchases…..to late to go back until server transfers happen, which probably wont happen until after 2022 at the least with all the server improvements they hope to implement)

Hopefully this makes sense to the community, and the OP.


…. @ZOS YOU KNOW IVE RANTED ABOUT SERVER TRANSFERS NUMEROUS TIMES, SO JUST A FRIENDLY REMINDER FOR THE NUMEROUS REASONS IVE MENTIONED IN OTHER THREADS, PLEASE MAKE SERVER TRANSFERS A THING. THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN.

Tandor

etchedpixels wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Not taking sides on this but just want to get an opinion from people here on the forums. As we all know eso was released in 2014 and since then we have a new generation of game consoles as well as pc components available. It has been mentioned and hinted at by zos that older hardware is what seems to be holding ESO back from some QOL and additions to the game. That they may be holding the game back from reaching its potential. In light of this would it be worth it to stop supporting that equipment? When would it make sense? Why wouldn't it? I don't think we want the game to get stale or see features cut. But if older equipment will prevent that then would it be worth it?

The ESO minimum requirements are wrong anyway. I've reported it to them, I've reported their steam page but nothing ever happens. It will not run in 3GB of RAM. I tried it just for the lolz. The 1GB graphics card claim is also border line at this point.
So the ESO "minimum spec" claim is actually probably breaching consumer protection/advertising laws in many countries.

ESO has in fact moved on. If you compare the Elsweyr era ESO and graphics settings to the 2014 screencaps you can see just how far it moved on. Ditto on console they've updated graphically for PS5 recently and we've had things like DLSS and multi-threaded rendering on PC as well which better reflects the fact that 4 core PC is no longer the norm for gaming. They were doing graphics upgrades even back in 2016, and they still are,

IOW the only thing they've not actually updated for the improvements in hardware, is the spec claim. The game has moved on - lots.

Did you try it in Cyrodiil?

etchedpixels

Tandor wrote: »

Did you try it in Cyrodiil?

Windows 7 in 3GB couldn't even start the game properly.

belial5221_ESO

Minimum requirements are meant to run on low settings,and works fine.I played unltil recently on athlon x2 5600+ ,4GB ram and gtx650 1g and could play on medium/low fine.My cpu is phenom II x4 965,found 2 more GBs ram and can now turn things up higher,so minimum requirements are not breaching any consumer laws.

Also the game is worldwide,you cannot expect everyone playing to afford 800$ vidcards,400$ cpus,300$ ram,etc.They'd lose alot of money and customers if they cut lower end gamers out.I'm sure they know what hardware is being used mostly,and conform to upping specs a little at a time,as more customers upgrade.It's how some games stay around so long,and others that want higher end PCs and barely stay afloat or after a few years gone.

colossalvoids

etchedpixels wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Did you try it in Cyrodiil?

Windows 7 in 3GB couldn't even start the game properly.

Wasn't win7 dropped in elsweyr or greymoor? Might be the actual reason.

Tandor

etchedpixels wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Did you try it in Cyrodiil?

Windows 7 in 3GB couldn't even start the game properly.

It's quite interesting that if you look on the ESO Store page for High Isle (including base game and all previous chapters) the recommended Operating System for PC is Windows 7 !

precambria

An Atari 2600 has less input delay than ESO, I have the fasted consumer cpu and a 30 series gpu and this game still full on just starts delaying actions in a similar way to when I played Diablo 2 on rural dialup connection and a pc with almost no ram. I thought that the technology for having an online multiplayer game existed in 2022, zenimax might want to look into that because 4 out of the 5 last times I logged on to play it was not worth torturing myself with playing a broken game.

It's so poorly managed that you can see continual noticeable improvemenst in playability all the way up the hardware stack but it still bottlenecks on the code, I could virtualize multiple systems on my one that all easily can meet the requirments and yet with all that power devoted to just trying to play it doesn't work. They should include in the requirements that you be a masochist.