The Costs of Performance (Using Performance as an Excuse for Feature Removal)

Stamicka

For a long time now, I’ve been seeing a trend where changes (often nerfs) are made in the name of performance. Unfortunately as players, we have no choice but to accept the changes or quit, but why should we be the ones that pay? Now I’m not talking about a monetary price (although we do pay in this way), but I’m talking about the price of our enjoyment. Many changes done to improve performance take away from the fun of the game. Worst of all, I have only seen performance decline since I’ve started the game in 2015. So where are these performance gains that we have “paid” for? Account Wide Achievements are just one example in a long list of these changes. Let’s list a few.

Account Wide Achievements
This is the most recent change that was done for the sake of performance. Personally, I think the addition of account wide achievements could be great if it were optional and better implemented. There are tons of complaints about this already, so I’ll focus on the purpose of this thread. One of the reasons given for the inability to opt out of this feature was: “long term maintainable database stability and performance”. Essentially, ZOS wants to reduce the amount of data stored for long term scalability of the game. This type of change should start with the databases themselves. This problem is not unique to Zenimax. As the world gets increasingly digital, we create more and more data. Data storage and efficiency is a huge focus of many programmers. That being said, there are a lot of ways to change how data is stored and searched through. Some ways are more efficient than others. So instead of making an un-optional change that make many players unhappy, why not find better ways to store the data? I find it hard to believe that even if collectively we have gained over 1 billion achievements, that it should take up tremendous amounts of space.

New Features
Yup, performance has costed us new features. Over time you may have noticed that the chapters have way less content. It started with Scrying, then it was Companions, now it will be a card game. One of the reasons they gave for the lack of new features is that the game just can’t handle it.

Cyrodiil Populations
If you’ve been around for several years you would notice that Cyrodiil holds 100s of less people than it once did. Instead of working towards a solution to allow for smooth large scale PvP battles, we see the population of Cyrodiil get dramatically reduced. It Is not uncommon for a pop locked server to only have 2 fights on the entire map (and it still doesn’t perform well). Cutting populations was only a blanket “fix” that costed the players more than it did ZOS.

Blocking and Barswapping
During the “year of performance” ZOS changed the way block and barswapping worked. It is significantly slower than it once was and it is very noticeable for endgame players. I have seen PVE tanks as well as PvPers complain about the clunkiness of block and barswap. This clunkiness only started occurring after the “performance improving” changes were made to these features.

What’s Next?
I’m sure there are many other examples I have forgotten about, but what’s next? Technology has progressed a lot since this game started development (it’s been over a decade). We have seen how taking the time to build support for these new technologies (like multithreading) can hugely benefit performance while not costing the players anything. Performance should not be getting worse over time and more importantly, THESE CHANGES SHOULD BE DONE ON YOUR END, NOT THE PLAYERS. Scalability of the game should be the focus of an MMORPG from the absolute start. Stop ruining our enjoyment for performance improvements that we never get to see.

Amottica

Stamicka wrote: »

but why should we be the ones that pay?

Who do you suggest deals with the changes to the game if not us? There is no other party.

Stamicka wrote: »

Blocking and Barswapping
During the “year of performance” ZOS changed the way block and barswapping worked. It is significantly slower than it once was and it is very noticeable for endgame players.

From what I understand it merely changed so the server was the central control, instead of our client telling us we had held up the block but it was not actually doing so yet. Some person named Gilian posted a video demonstrating this.

Just going off what I have seen. Not an expert.

Stamicka

Amottica wrote: »

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Stamicka wrote: »

but why should we be the ones that pay?

Who do you suggest deals with the changes to the game if not us? There is no other party.

ZOS is the other party. You can change behind the scenes implementation without having a direct impact on how the players experience the game. With the account wide achievements for example, they could work on a way to make achievement storage more efficient on their end and we would never have to know.

zaria

Well its two obvious elephants in the room, first is all the new motifs, styles pets and mounts you have to load, second is that client requirements has not updated for an long time.
Hint at launch ESO had an 32 bit client on pc, now 64 is required. PS4 is older than ESO.
Another option is to have different graphic settings and mods for overland and dungeon from Cyrodil, IC and trials who tend to generate most issues.
But obviously not showing all the store stuff players use is not an option.

Amottica

Stamicka wrote: »

show previous quotes

Amottica wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

but why should we be the ones that pay?

Who do you suggest deals with the changes to the game if not us? There is no other party.

ZOS is the other party. You can change behind the scenes implementation without having a direct impact on how the players experience the game. With the account wide achievements for example, they could work on a way to make achievement storage more efficient on their end and we would never have to know.

How would Zenimax "pay" (as you put it)?

Also, it is an assumption that the database section related to achievements was not already very efficient.

Regardless, it is past time to split hairs on this as it has already gone live. In a short period of time we will see how big a deal this really is.

Wolfpaw

It's ZOS product, art, job, etc...not ours.

I'm not excited about performance, the next dlc, or 1st chapter, and probably won't buy. I am looking forward to the combat changes and AWA though.

You can either keep playing, not, choose the stuff you like, & give feedback.

Jusey1

Stamicka wrote: »

New Features
Yup, performance has costed us new features. Over time you may have noticed that the chapters have way less content. It started with Scrying, then it was Companions, now it will be a card game. One of the reasons they gave for the lack of new features is that the game just can’t handle it.

This argument makes absolutely no sense because everything listed are new features. Actually, these new features are honestly much more heavy on the game than getting a new class or skill like we did in previous expansions...

-How so? Well, adding a new class/skill is mostly just a plop down and done thing. Sure, balance changes will happen but that happens to everything so let's ignore balance changes... You just plop a new class or skill into the game and it is done. Nothing else is needed. You either make one new skill or three new skills which all do have their own new effects and such, yes... But it isn't too much extra data to handle.

Compare that to the other new features:

1. The one from Solitude is a rather big one. Out of the gate, we have two brand new mini-games, one of which has several layers while the other has a bunch of fancy runes and shiny effects. Both have multiple tool with different effects, visuals, etc that all have been made. Plus, both mini-games has 3rd person animations that is played when someone is in one of these mini-game. So, right there is a lot of new stuff to render on the client as well as a few new data points for the server to manage. On top of that, the server also have to have ALL possible dig locations in every zone on standby for when a client calls for them to be rendered and used (both in the game itself and on the player's map)... We got a new quality type for items, and a bunch of mythics on top of that, as well as a lot of new furniture and stuff as well. Essentially, a rather huge increase of just new stuff due to the existing of this new mechanic. On top of that, new server RNG checks whenever you do tasks, kill stuff, etc to see if you get a lead or not...

2. Companions also have a lot of similar new additions to the stuff above, such as a few new visuals for the companion variation of abilities, new AI stuff, new mechanics, etc. Oh, and the UI stuff, quests, and companion recorded voice lines as well as new data checks for when a companion react to something (which even gets it's own new option to tune down or up on). Just a lot...

Oh and on top of that burst of stuff... Both above mechanics have to be routinely updated now as we are getting new companions and a new list of items to dig up in the new zones, meaning we are consistently getting more content added on top of the above new features from previously expansion packs unlike with Psijic Order or new classes.

3. The card game, while I haven't seen it myself yet or played it... Is also going to be a HUGE feature despite not seeming like it. That's a whole brand new mini-game with a lot of new graphics and gameplay of it's own, plus AI stuff when you play against the AI and so much more base on what we know of it, but we aren't fully sure on it's extent quite yet...

Really, we got way much bigger features, it's just side stuff and not part of the core gameplay loop of ESO, which is a whole different argument from what you are trying to make here.

Tornaad

The nature of the problem is one that from a business standpoint, would have been one that the developers would have had to have been able to prove it was not anything else. The different tests they ran were part of that effort.
From there, instead of being able to proceed full steam ahead, we got hit with a worldwide pandemic that has impacted everyone's ability to get some of the parts they need and that has caused massive delays because of the extra steps needed to keep everyone safe (something they could be sued for if they did not do). And together, that was a terrible one two punch that came at just the wrong time and massively slowed them down.

So while yes, it is a little frustrating, I can understand why and am willing to give them wiggle room. And thankfully, things are slowly returning to normal, so once that is done, we should be good.

Stamicka

Amottica wrote: »

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Stamicka wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

but why should we be the ones that pay?

Who do you suggest deals with the changes to the game if not us? There is no other party.

ZOS is the other party. You can change behind the scenes implementation without having a direct impact on how the players experience the game. With the account wide achievements for example, they could work on a way to make achievement storage more efficient on their end and we would never have to know.

How would Zenimax "pay" (as you put it)?

Also, it is an assumption that the database section related to achievements was not already very efficient.

Regardless, it is past time to split hairs on this as it has already gone live. In a short period of time we will see how big a deal this really is.

Let’s take Google for example. Yes they are a huge company with tons of resources, but it’s a good example. For a long time now, you can go to google.com and you can type something into the search bar and expect to see results. There’s been some slight changes to the appearance of the front page, but for as long as I can remember it’s been very similar to the way it looks now. Behind the scenes however, Google has grown and so has the amount of data they have. I’m sure they’ve implemented new search algorithms, more efficient ways to store their data, and all kinds of stuff to keep it scalable. I don’t need to know that. I just go to the website and expect it to work quickly and to give me good results. Their growth has not negatively impacted my experience using the search engine. This is what I mean.

In regards to your other point, this isn’t just about the achievements though. This is a trend, they make changes for performance and performance never increases.

Stamicka

Jusey1 wrote: »

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Stamicka wrote: »

New Features
Yup, performance has costed us new features. Over time you may have noticed that the chapters have way less content. It started with Scrying, then it was Companions, now it will be a card game. One of the reasons they gave for the lack of new features is that the game just can’t handle it.

This argument makes absolutely no sense because everything listed are new features. Actually, these new features are honestly much more heavy on the game than getting a new class or skill like we did in previous expansions...

-How so? Well, adding a new class/skill is mostly just a plop down and done thing. Sure, balance changes will happen but that happens to everything so let's ignore balance changes... You just plop a new class or skill into the game and it is done. Nothing else is needed. You either make one new skill or three new skills which all do have their own new effects and such, yes... But it isn't too much extra data to handle.

Compare that to the other new features:

1. The one from Solitude is a rather big one. Out of the gate, we have two brand new mini-games, one of which has several layers while the other has a bunch of fancy runes and shiny effects. Both have multiple tool with different effects, visuals, etc that all have been made. Plus, both mini-games has 3rd person animations that is played when someone is in one of these mini-game. So, right there is a lot of new stuff to render on the client as well as a few new data points for the server to manage. On top of that, the server also have to have ALL possible dig locations in every zone on standby for when a client calls for them to be rendered and used (both in the game itself and on the player's map)... We got a new quality type for items, and a bunch of mythics on top of that, as well as a lot of new furniture and stuff as well. Essentially, a rather huge increase of just new stuff due to the existing of this new mechanic. On top of that, new server RNG checks whenever you do tasks, kill stuff, etc to see if you get a lead or not...

2. Companions also have a lot of similar new additions to the stuff above, such as a few new visuals for the companion variation of abilities, new AI stuff, new mechanics, etc. Oh, and the UI stuff, quests, and companion recorded voice lines as well as new data checks for when a companion react to something (which even gets it's own new option to tune down or up on). Just a lot...

Oh and on top of that burst of stuff... Both above mechanics have to be routinely updated now as we are getting new companions and a new list of items to dig up in the new zones, meaning we are consistently getting more content added on top of the above new features from previously expansion packs unlike with Psijic Order or new classes.

3. The card game, while I haven't seen it myself yet or played it... Is also going to be a HUGE feature despite not seeming like it. That's a whole brand new mini-game with a lot of new graphics and gameplay of it's own, plus AI stuff when you play against the AI and so much more base on what we know of it, but we aren't fully sure on it's extent quite yet...

Really, we got way much bigger features, it's just side stuff and not part of the core gameplay loop of ESO, which is a whole different argument from what you are trying to make here.

Matt Firor literally has an interview where he talks about ESO’s performance limitations and why they haven’t added new classes or skill lines. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to share the link but it is searchable.

The new recent features mentioned are mini-games. Just because it appears to be a whole new system doesn’t mean it takes more development effort. Let’s take Companions for example. We have had pets in the game for a long time. We have also had quests where an NPC becomes sort of a temporary companion. With this in mind you would see that the ground work was already there to add this feature.

Kesstryl

Jusey1 wrote: »

show previous quotes

Stamicka wrote: »

New Features
Yup, performance has costed us new features. Over time you may have noticed that the chapters have way less content. It started with Scrying, then it was Companions, now it will be a card game. One of the reasons they gave for the lack of new features is that the game just can’t handle it.

This argument makes absolutely no sense because everything listed are new features. Actually, these new features are honestly much more heavy on the game than getting a new class or skill like we did in previous expansions...

-How so? Well, adding a new class/skill is mostly just a plop down and done thing. Sure, balance changes will happen but that happens to everything so let's ignore balance changes... You just plop a new class or skill into the game and it is done. Nothing else is needed. You either make one new skill or three new skills which all do have their own new effects and such, yes... But it isn't too much extra data to handle.

Compare that to the other new features:

1. The one from Solitude is a rather big one. Out of the gate, we have two brand new mini-games, one of which has several layers while the other has a bunch of fancy runes and shiny effects. Both have multiple tool with different effects, visuals, etc that all have been made. Plus, both mini-games has 3rd person animations that is played when someone is in one of these mini-game. So, right there is a lot of new stuff to render on the client as well as a few new data points for the server to manage. On top of that, the server also have to have ALL possible dig locations in every zone on standby for when a client calls for them to be rendered and used (both in the game itself and on the player's map)... We got a new quality type for items, and a bunch of mythics on top of that, as well as a lot of new furniture and stuff as well. Essentially, a rather huge increase of just new stuff due to the existing of this new mechanic. On top of that, new server RNG checks whenever you do tasks, kill stuff, etc to see if you get a lead or not...

2. Companions also have a lot of similar new additions to the stuff above, such as a few new visuals for the companion variation of abilities, new AI stuff, new mechanics, etc. Oh, and the UI stuff, quests, and companion recorded voice lines as well as new data checks for when a companion react to something (which even gets it's own new option to tune down or up on). Just a lot...

Oh and on top of that burst of stuff... Both above mechanics have to be routinely updated now as we are getting new companions and a new list of items to dig up in the new zones, meaning we are consistently getting more content added on top of the above new features from previously expansion packs unlike with Psijic Order or new classes.

3. The card game, while I haven't seen it myself yet or played it... Is also going to be a HUGE feature despite not seeming like it. That's a whole brand new mini-game with a lot of new graphics and gameplay of it's own, plus AI stuff when you play against the AI and so much more base on what we know of it, but we aren't fully sure on it's extent quite yet...

Really, we got way much bigger features, it's just side stuff and not part of the core gameplay loop of ESO, which is a whole different argument from what you are trying to make here.

All features that I'd rather live without if I could have my individual character achievements back and an AwA that was layered on top of them, not deleting my char info.

Jaimeh

I agree with you OP, they've been butchering combat and class uniqueness, and now player history, all in the name of performance, and in the end it has only hurt the game, and hasn't actually improved performance, at least on the player side. You'd think instead spending all their efforts in finding things they can chip away and delete, they'd instead invest that time and effort to fix the game's coding from the bottom up, and also invest in their hardware; it's a much better solution for the long-term instead of taking away game features. It's like when you're trying to hack at something to make it fit somewhere instead of making it anew so it fits from the beginning. I honestly despair at how they are treating their own game.

Vrienda

I completely expect this to continue until we eventually get vaulting like Destiny 2 and DLC such as Orsinium, Summerset and Clockwork City will be deleted from the game only to occasionally be reintroduced as if they were a big new thing.

That said, personally I love antiquities, compansions and will probably like the card game too. I prefer them over classes.

deleted221106-002999

If 'performance' truly was the main reason for awa they would have shouted it across the planet in their big reveal, rather than have us wait out a "q&a" for a fortnight on the pts feedback thread. Others with considerably more knowledge of database design than my virtual zero have called into question the implementation and yet others with technical knowledge have challenged that anything other than marginal, if any, performance gains would result.

As the OP has kind of said: we've heard it all before. Cyrodiil population has declined, pvp is laggy and bugs that have been around for years persist unfixed. Better communication has been promised repeatedly with silence or redaction as the only tangible results.

The new 'features' are, to me, trite and uninteresting and have little to do with elder scrolls. Look at the first dlc released for comparison (orisinium/wrothgar) before 'chapters' were a thing and compare it to the offerings we get now.

What it looks like from my perspective as a customer is that as the game population has grown, the server/hardware capacity hasn't grown or adapted to accomodate it. Instead what seems to be happening is that more and more players are being squeezed into the same hardware with inevitable results: the lag that was once the sole province of a diminishing pvp cyrodiil population is progressively felt throughout the game. We're told repeatedly stuff is being done or will be or whatever but we all see declining performance and arguably declining quality in chapter/dlcs where the depth and breadth of imaginative creativity seem to be getting replaced by gimmicks.

AWA, the latest example, is a paradigm shift for everyone. If you choose to continue you are left with a broken vestige of previous years of elder scrolls, where account is pre-eminent over character individuality and questing, story-telling and replayability are marginalised to the extinction point. I know that some prefer this, I know many loathe it.

But, as far as I know awa is the first time we've seen this level of direct impact on the entire customer base except, maybe, 1-tamriel. One-tamriel, though, was prototyped and tested exhaustively in Orsinium for ~6months prior to a smooth roll-out - and general acclaim - throughout the game.

For the first time awa takes away rather than adding content.

It begs the question, assuming it's believed to be for performance reasons: what will be next on the purge list?


edit:typos

alberichtano

Stamicka wrote: »

show previous quotes

Amottica wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

but why should we be the ones that pay?

Who do you suggest deals with the changes to the game if not us? There is no other party.

ZOS is the other party. You can change behind the scenes implementation without having a direct impact on how the players experience the game. With the account wide achievements for example, they could work on a way to make achievement storage more efficient on their end and we would never have to know.

How would Zenimax "pay" (as you put it)?

Also, it is an assumption that the database section related to achievements was not already very efficient.

Regardless, it is past time to split hairs on this as it has already gone live. In a short period of time we will see how big a deal this really is.

Let’s take Google for example. Yes they are a huge company with tons of resources, but it’s a good example. For a long time now, you can go to google.com and you can type something into the search bar and expect to see results. There’s been some slight changes to the appearance of the front page, but for as long as I can remember it’s been very similar to the way it looks now. Behind the scenes however, Google has grown and so has the amount of data they have. I’m sure they’ve implemented new search algorithms, more efficient ways to store their data, and all kinds of stuff to keep it scalable. I don’t need to know that. I just go to the website and expect it to work quickly and to give me good results. Their growth has not negatively impacted my experience using the search engine. This is what I mean.

In regards to your other point, this isn’t just about the achievements though. This is a trend, they make changes for performance and performance never increases.

I think this is a bit of "economics" here. See, in economy you always have a bit of a creep in prices, inflation. Even if nothing big happens, the cost of things tend to rise, if only slightly. Big changes, special events and the like can cause more inflation.

I imagine that there is something similar with big computer networks - even normal usage by an increasing amount of people or information (ie new alts, new motifs etc) take a toll on the existing resources, slowly bogging it down bit by bit, just like inflation. Now new, big changes, like a whole new area, or entirely new minigames will have a larger effect.

That would mean that ZOS could very well be fighting this inflation, this slow strangulation of available resources, and still just stand at status quo from the users perspective. They may very well have had a lot of work done with lag - compared to what we would have had without that work, and getting new features.

LostHorizon1933

Solution for PVP:

• Get rid of all combat calculation and just treat any attack as 3d6, and any defense as 2d6. If attack > defense, you die. To make it more realistic, you get an extra die on each side for every year you've spent in Cyrodiil.
• Replace classes in Cyrodiil with "Here for Combat" (rules above apply) and "Just Doing Quests". No real difference, but a sad little angel drifts toward the heavens if the latter dies on a mission.
• Additional combat classes "Runaway Turkey" for the people who like to jump around in keeps, "Highway Patrol" for people who hide and attack (all their dice go to attack, no defense), "Kentucky Derby" with extra horse speed for doing those recon missions.
• Effects still animate as if the real math was going on, except for DK, who get the special class "Windows Task Manager" because they often can't close.

Jonathan Swift thanks your for your attention!

peacenote

Jaimeh wrote: »

I agree with you OP, they've been butchering combat and class uniqueness, and now player history, all in the name of performance, and in the end it has only hurt the game, and hasn't actually improved performance, at least on the player side. You'd think instead spending all their efforts in finding things they can chip away and delete, they'd instead invest that time and effort to fix the game's coding from the bottom up, and also invest in their hardware; it's a much better solution for the long-term instead of taking away game features. It's like when you're trying to hack at something to make it fit somewhere instead of making it anew so it fits from the beginning. I honestly despair at how they are treating their own game.

I agree with the sentiment of the OP and also Jaimeh's post here. It certainly feels like we have been hearing that many, many changes have been done in the name of performance, for far too long, and too many of those changes have felt like a 'loss' to a portion of the community. It has gotten to the point where it feels as if we are standing on quicksand. Change and evolution are good, but it is almost scary to actively enjoy anything in the game because it could be ripped away at any time in the name of performance, and once "performance" is mentioned as a reason... it's just over. It's become almost... a religion.

To help out the OP, I'll mention a few things I remember were "performance" issues. I will admit though that the line sometimes becomes blurred between what was officially performance and what the community assumed was performance. Nevertheless, here are some other examples:

• Deletion of historical mails, along with a shortened timeline before new mails were deleted. On a sentimental level, members of the community asked to keep original mails. Many ended up using screenshots to save their memories. On a more practical level, some of us used mail as a way to combat the inventory mini-game, and this feature was rolled out without any more storage, which was annoying. While it was transparent that this was for performance, I feel it still was sold as "this is what you wanted" - somewhat like AwA and giving people account-wide titles - because the focus was on the change for immediate mail delivery. Which I'll admit was nice, but not as helpful as the extra storage my mail used to provide.
• Cast time for ultimates. This was done during all the experiments for Cyrodiil, and as a result I associate it with performance improvements. Players explained how they loved ESO for its lively fighting, to no avail.
• Group size reduction. This suspiciously was rolled out with Companions, and I am unsure if it was confirmed or just guessed to be related to the PvE performance hit because essentially rendering doubled if everyone had a companion and ran around killing anchors. It also was experimented with in PvP. It was extremely detrimental to all kinds of collaborative activity, mostly in PvP but also for large guild events in PvE.
• Healing. There have been so many changes that negatively impacted the healing role under the banner of "reducing calculations." Many sets ruined because they were changed from applying to all allies to members of your group only. The loss of being able to strategically place multiple Healing Springs removed a whole level of planning and skill from the healing role. Skilled healers make a huge difference in all fights, but are harder to identify as being important because you don't see bosses running loose or low DPS numbers if a healer isn't doing their job well. So fewer people stand up for the role and as a result healing just keeps taking hits. The role becomes less versatile and less useful with each performance nerf.
• Standardized Abilities. Some hoped the sacrifice of dumbing down abilities so they all lasted the same amount of time, did things all the same way, would ultimately result in getting spellcrafting into the game. But many have theorized that it's about simplifying calculations for performance. Class identity was significantly impacted by these changes, and during this time non-class skills often became BIS. Besides performance, many cynically believed this was because those could be purchased so it was part of monetization.

However. I wouldn't say that it's so much a debate of "players" vs. "ZOS" paying. In some cases, architecture limitations keep technology from expanding even if you were to throw 8 billion dollars of hardware at it. Things aren't always so simple.

Additionally, this is a complex problem and I would argue that this means there are multiple, complex issues at play here contributing to this perception and outcome. In no particular order, here are the main reasons I think we are now here, talking about how we've had enough with the performance justifications already.

1. There is no one looking at game continuity across the entire game, or whoever is supposed to be doing so thinks it isn't as important as it actually is, or doesn't have the power to override/influence other decision-makers. I've made other posts about this, so I won't elaborate too much. However. In order to feel excited for patches and new content, one must not have fear that what they love most about a game could disappear at any moment. If a game world has consistent rules and changes follow those basic rules, this isn't an issue. But the existence of Account Wide Achievements combined with character-specific reputation levels with Companions illustrates that we do not have consistent game decisions across the platform, between releases, or different teams making decisions at ZOS.
2. For a company that frequently asks for feedback from its community, there seems to be a weird stubbornness when a creative direction is determined which undermines the sincerity of the feedback gathering. I get that when you're running a company or have a vision for your product that you can't change directions for every squeaky wheel. But there have been times where ZOS could have 100% proven it listens to feedback and instead it dug its heels in. And they were things that weren't even that impactful!! The Bosmer stealth thing, and to a lesser extent the poison thing with Argonians. ZOS could have showed that they listen and care about feedback by reversing or adjusting those racial passive changes. They could have said, hey, we hear you, and there would have been much rejoicing. Instead we still have people complaining about this, and distrusting that ZOS listens because of this event, years later. Another example was the vMA weapons debacle. We even found out that this all supposedly happened because of the strong beliefs of one person. That's great, I understand creative direction... but showing that you listen and care is also a good trait to have. I've also seen ZOS justify many changes under the banner of "well this aligns with this policy we now have" but they are completely ignoring the fact that people play their game for fun, and that they sometimes eliminate fun things to adhere to rules that can also have exceptions!
3. Inconsistent communication and transparency. In other words, no active community engagement. I can't take credit for this in any way; someone else (I'm sorry I forget who) brought this up in the AwA PTS thread. But it's completely true. Removing things from the game and then adding others under the banner of performance is the best way to divide your community and disillusion loyal players. If you're going to say something was frequently requested, show numbers and percentages. Survey all active players consistently and reveal the data on a regular basis. Now, I'm not a newborn. I know why this may not be done. But if you're not going to do the second half of the equation, which is directly address feedback with follow ups as to why you went a certain direction, performing just the first half is worse than not doing it at all. We can accept a creative vision. We can accept that something was done to improve performance. We can accept that something was widely desired. What we can't accept is.... when you take one thing away, and there's a landslide of feedback, and you add something else, which seems to be not broadly desired, and you lay it all at the feet of performance... that you are listening to any of the feedback you've gone out of your way to gather. Either show us the other half of the equation, or don't take things away. But saying we want something in the face of lots of feedback, saying it is for new content, is gaslighting and pitting the community against each other. Either you care about feedback and are following it carefully (show us the numbers) or you have a creative direction and it's not based on what we want (then stop telling us it's what we want). We've seen this for years in the PvE vs. PvP debate, when an issue is only addressed from one perspective, and now we're going to see it exacerbated further as every new feature will rub salt in the wound of the many players who begged for AwA to not remove character data from the game. You should have addressed the feedback or said outright that you feel new features are more important than keeping this data (instead of saying, well this was requested and as a bonus it will allow us to add new stuff.) We get detailed descriptions about a small ability change but only a "party line" for anything majorly controversial that ZOS isn't willing to reverse. Good engagement would do the opposite.
4. No organized place for everyone to review the company's current stance on major topics. There is so much angst in the community because things we "think" are repeated. Sometimes it's a comment in a forum. Sometimes it's a video interview. But finding out where things stand is like looking for a needle in a haystack, and ZOS is doing itself a disservice, because it's tough to cut through the noise. There would be less noise if official stances were documented with one place to reference, so only new ideas and new problems were actively in conversation. Hiding this with strict moderation on the forums is not the solution.

The fact that engagement for tough issues doesn't really exist (communication is slow and one way, and there are never any reversals in decisions that generate the most feedback), it is difficult to find and follow official ZOS feedback, very strong community opinions are ignored without detailed explanations while simultaneously seeking feedback elsewhere, and game logic is inconsistent and unpredictable, have all added up to the fact that it feels like the players are losing things for the sake of performance without a care or a say for how they really feel. The reality is probably much more nuanced, with limitations on the back end resulting in a picture of inconsistent and uncaring decision-making to customers. But unless ZOS addresses one or more of the above points, more and more customers will feel this way, especially as performance keeps being cited as the reason for change, without giving the community a say for whether the changes are worth the performance gains and how game-breaking the changes are for them.

Stamicka

peacenote wrote: »

show previous quotes

Jaimeh wrote: »

I agree with you OP, they've been butchering combat and class uniqueness, and now player history, all in the name of performance, and in the end it has only hurt the game, and hasn't actually improved performance, at least on the player side. You'd think instead spending all their efforts in finding things they can chip away and delete, they'd instead invest that time and effort to fix the game's coding from the bottom up, and also invest in their hardware; it's a much better solution for the long-term instead of taking away game features. It's like when you're trying to hack at something to make it fit somewhere instead of making it anew so it fits from the beginning. I honestly despair at how they are treating their own game.

I agree with the sentiment of the OP and also Jaimeh's post here. It certainly feels like we have been hearing that many, many changes have been done in the name of performance, for far too long, and too many of those changes have felt like a 'loss' to a portion of the community. It has gotten to the point where it feels as if we are standing on quicksand. Change and evolution are good, but it is almost scary to actively enjoy anything in the game because it could be ripped away at any time in the name of performance, and once "performance" is mentioned as a reason... it's just over. It's become almost... a religion.

To help out the OP, I'll mention a few things I remember were "performance" issues. I will admit though that the line sometimes becomes blurred between what was officially performance and what the community assumed was performance. Nevertheless, here are some other examples:

• Deletion of historical mails, along with a shortened timeline before new mails were deleted. On a sentimental level, members of the community asked to keep original mails. Many ended up using screenshots to save their memories. On a more practical level, some of us used mail as a way to combat the inventory mini-game, and this feature was rolled out without any more storage, which was annoying. While it was transparent that this was for performance, I feel it still was sold as "this is what you wanted" - somewhat like AwA and giving people account-wide titles - because the focus was on the change for immediate mail delivery. Which I'll admit was nice, but not as helpful as the extra storage my mail used to provide.
• Cast time for ultimates. This was done during all the experiments for Cyrodiil, and as a result I associate it with performance improvements. Players explained how they loved ESO for its lively fighting, to no avail.
• Group size reduction. This suspiciously was rolled out with Companions, and I am unsure if it was confirmed or just guessed to be related to the PvE performance hit because essentially rendering doubled if everyone had a companion and ran around killing anchors. It also was experimented with in PvP. It was extremely detrimental to all kinds of collaborative activity, mostly in PvP but also for large guild events in PvE.
• Healing. There have been so many changes that negatively impacted the healing role under the banner of "reducing calculations." Many sets ruined because they were changed from applying to all allies to members of your group only. The loss of being able to strategically place multiple Healing Springs removed a whole level of planning and skill from the healing role. Skilled healers make a huge difference in all fights, but are harder to identify as being important because you don't see bosses running loose or low DPS numbers if a healer isn't doing their job well. So fewer people stand up for the role and as a result healing just keeps taking hits. The role becomes less versatile and less useful with each performance nerf.
• Standardized Abilities. Some hoped the sacrifice of dumbing down abilities so they all lasted the same amount of time, did things all the same way, would ultimately result in getting spellcrafting into the game. But many have theorized that it's about simplifying calculations for performance. Class identity was significantly impacted by these changes, and during this time non-class skills often became BIS. Besides performance, many cynically believed this was because those could be purchased so it was part of monetization.

However. I wouldn't say that it's so much a debate of "players" vs. "ZOS" paying. In some cases, architecture limitations keep technology from expanding even if you were to throw 8 billion dollars of hardware at it. Things aren't always so simple.

Additionally, this is a complex problem and I would argue that this means there are multiple, complex issues at play here contributing to this perception and outcome. In no particular order, here are the main reasons I think we are now here, talking about how we've had enough with the performance justifications already.

1. There is no one looking at game continuity across the entire game, or whoever is supposed to be doing so thinks it isn't as important as it actually is, or doesn't have the power to override/influence other decision-makers. I've made other posts about this, so I won't elaborate too much. However. In order to feel excited for patches and new content, one must not have fear that what they love most about a game could disappear at any moment. If a game world has consistent rules and changes follow those basic rules, this isn't an issue. But the existence of Account Wide Achievements combined with character-specific reputation levels with Companions illustrates that we do not have consistent game decisions across the platform, between releases, or different teams making decisions at ZOS.
2. For a company that frequently asks for feedback from its community, there seems to be a weird stubbornness when a creative direction is determined which undermines the sincerity of the feedback gathering. I get that when you're running a company or have a vision for your product that you can't change directions for every squeaky wheel. But there have been times where ZOS could have 100% proven it listens to feedback and instead it dug its heels in. And they were things that weren't even that impactful!! The Bosmer stealth thing, and to a lesser extent the poison thing with Argonians. ZOS could have showed that they listen and care about feedback by reversing or adjusting those racial passive changes. They could have said, hey, we hear you, and there would have been much rejoicing. Instead we still have people complaining about this, and distrusting that ZOS listens because of this event, years later. Another example was the vMA weapons debacle. We even found out that this all supposedly happened because of the strong beliefs of one person. That's great, I understand creative direction... but showing that you listen and care is also a good trait to have. I've also seen ZOS justify many changes under the banner of "well this aligns with this policy we now have" but they are completely ignoring the fact that people play their game for fun, and that they sometimes eliminate fun things to adhere to rules that can also have exceptions!
3. Inconsistent communication and transparency. In other words, no active community engagement. I can't take credit for this in any way; someone else (I'm sorry I forget who) brought this up in the AwA PTS thread. But it's completely true. Removing things from the game and then adding others under the banner of performance is the best way to divide your community and disillusion loyal players. If you're going to say something was frequently requested, show numbers and percentages. Survey all active players consistently and reveal the data on a regular basis. Now, I'm not a newborn. I know why this may not be done. But if you're not going to do the second half of the equation, which is directly address feedback with follow ups as to why you went a certain direction, performing just the first half is worse than not doing it at all. We can accept a creative vision. We can accept that something was done to improve performance. We can accept that something was widely desired. What we can't accept is.... when you take one thing away, and there's a landslide of feedback, and you add something else, which seems to be not broadly desired, and you lay it all at the feet of performance... that you are listening to any of the feedback you've gone out of your way to gather. Either show us the other half of the equation, or don't take things away. But saying we want something in the face of lots of feedback, saying it is for new content, is gaslighting and pitting the community against each other. Either you care about feedback and are following it carefully (show us the numbers) or you have a creative direction and it's not based on what we want (then stop telling us it's what we want). We've seen this for years in the PvE vs. PvP debate, when an issue is only addressed from one perspective, and now we're going to see it exacerbated further as every new feature will rub salt in the wound of the many players who begged for AwA to not remove character data from the game. You should have addressed the feedback or said outright that you feel new features are more important than keeping this data (instead of saying, well this was requested and as a bonus it will allow us to add new stuff.) We get detailed descriptions about a small ability change but only a "party line" for anything majorly controversial that ZOS isn't willing to reverse. Good engagement would do the opposite.
4. No organized place for everyone to review the company's current stance on major topics. There is so much angst in the community because things we "think" are repeated. Sometimes it's a comment in a forum. Sometimes it's a video interview. But finding out where things stand is like looking for a needle in a haystack, and ZOS is doing itself a disservice, because it's tough to cut through the noise. There would be less noise if official stances were documented with one place to reference, so only new ideas and new problems were actively in conversation. Hiding this with strict moderation on the forums is not the solution.

The fact that engagement for tough issues doesn't really exist (communication is slow and one way, and there are never any reversals in decisions that generate the most feedback), it is difficult to find and follow official ZOS feedback, very strong community opinions are ignored without detailed explanations while simultaneously seeking feedback elsewhere, and game logic is inconsistent and unpredictable, have all added up to the fact that it feels like the players are losing things for the sake of performance without a care or a say for how they really feel. The reality is probably much more nuanced, with limitations on the back end resulting in a picture of inconsistent and uncaring decision-making to customers. But unless ZOS addresses one or more of the above points, more and more customers will feel this way, especially as performance keeps being cited as the reason for change, without giving the community a say for whether the changes are worth the performance gains and how game-breaking the changes are for them.

@peacenote Thank you. Great Addition to the thread. Thank you for bringing up how we only see part of a picture that is probably very nuanced. I do want to bring up Matt Firor's "ESO PvP Update-January 2022" post though. It is difficult to see nuance when the posts says: "In short – just like we did for the client a year or so back when we introduced multithreaded rendering to increase client frame rates – we are going to rearchitect our server." The year is 2022. Why is rearchitecting the server happening AFTER all of the negative changes made for performance? This should be the first thing looked at. This is admitting that they would rather change how we can play the game before they change stuff behind the scenes, and that is a problem.

FluffWit

I don't really care about the global achievements stuff but using the servers as an excuse for forcing it through isn't right. And Gina's " Q&A" sticky topic where she just asks herself questions is.... silly would be the polite way of putting it. ITS NOT A Q&A WHEN YOU JUST MAKE UP QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF.

Then you've got Rich's wife telling PvPers them to stop crying when they had the audacity to ask about Cyrodiil performance and the response that came from that and.... I just don't trust them- the people who are responsible for managing this game- anymore.

And no mods, I'm not baiting. She literally made baby noises and told them to stop crying. Literally.

James-Wayne

Sadly I have to agree with you but I also need to put performance first because we are never getting a Oceanic server but I wonder at what cost to the game of ESO that I have loved since 2014, how stripped back will it be in a few years time.

Microsoft buying them out was the only thing that gave me hope, hope that maybe the megaserver tech can move to Azure one day... ZOS over the last few years definitely has not given me any hope that this games future is bright.

I recently started playing Elden Ring... WOW!! The grinds are actually fun and rewarding, I wish ESO was like that again.

peacenote

FluffWit wrote: »

ITS NOT A Q&A WHEN YOU JUST MAKE UP QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF.

In spite of everything I completely cracked up laughing reading this because it's just... so... TRUE!!! Should be a meme if it isn't already.

Self? Do you have an opinion on the upcoming changes? Oh, you like them? Well (looks around), that settles that then. Good chat. 🤣🤣🤣🤪🤪🤪

Nothing against Gina....I think Gina has been great and just follows instructions.

zaria

FluffWit wrote: »

I don't really care about the global achievements stuff but using the servers as an excuse for forcing it through isn't right. And Gina's " Q&A" sticky topic where she just asks herself questions is.... silly would be the polite way of putting it. ITS NOT A Q&A WHEN YOU JUST MAKE UP QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF.

Then you've got Rich's wife telling PvPers them to stop crying when they had the audacity to ask about Cyrodiil performance and the response that came from that and.... I just don't trust them- the people who are responsible for managing this game- anymore.

And no mods, I'm not baiting. She literally made baby noises and told them to stop crying. Literally.

Performance will have minimal to no impact here, you have one or more tables for achievements and similar, they hold track on stuff like quests you have done, locations discovered and skyshards collected.
This has to be kept track of anyway.
Some of this counts towards achievements like doing an dungeon in vet hard mode, doing the dungeon quests does not but it rewards an skill point and is an quest so it must be logged.

Now some achievements are aggregate like killing 100 nightblades in PvP, stealing and selling for one million gold or doing 30 quests in an zone. Others rely on other achievements like doing the two dlc dungeons in veteran.
Here we might se an tiny benefit as the achievement is done it does not need to be updated anymore, however I assume its logged anyway to keep track on that players are doing.
The only performance benefit I see is a bit faster character load as you do not need lo load the achievements again.

But here I have an idea for ZoS, I assumes most players has an home base, usually an city or an house they use for all their alts, so keep the zone and instance in memory while on character select. If in the same zone just pop the other character in and update position. No it would not reduce server load that much, but it made is faster to do crafting writs

What_In_Tarnation

Stamicka wrote: »

What’s Next?
I’m sure there are many other examples I have forgotten about, but what’s next? Technology has progressed a lot since this game started development (it’s been over a decade). We have seen how taking the time to build support for these new technologies (like multithreading) can hugely benefit performance while not costing the players anything. Performance should not be getting worse over time and more importantly, THESE CHANGES SHOULD BE DONE ON YOUR END, NOT THE PLAYERS. Scalability of the game should be the focus of an MMORPG from the absolute start. Stop ruining our enjoyment for performance improvements that we never get to see.

Well, they change weapon enchantments & status effect in this patch, so they can't proc sets anymore. And also these changes aren't included in patch notes afaik which is really weird to me.

xXSilverDragonXx

I kind of feel bad because we are all upset and complaining and yet, I don't think for a minute anyone that works on ESO has much of a say in it. And I think, like the rest of us with regards to their jobs, they have to pick their battles. I think this is all ZOS being greedy MFers. And I think that they care very little about upgrading anything. In fact, I think from early on, ESO was a game that was meant to be not much more than a cash cow riding on the coat tails of TES and meant to be a TES substitute for probably a very much predicted and planned gap between TES installments. I mean, think about it. ESO comes out just a few years after Skyrim which was a massive TES hit. (probably started work right around the time they saw skyrim was a massive hit and dollar signs filled their eyes)

It's been OVER a decade since Skyrim. A DECADE! You think for one minute they hadn't deliberately decided to temporarily shelve development on TES so that people would be indirectly driven toward ESO? They know that once the next TES comes out, ESO logins and profits would drop off dramatically at least for a year or two. So what does bethesda do? They ANNOUNCE a TES is in development. When will it come out? Near the end of ESOs full lifecycle, probably . Meanwhile, they sell us retextured mounts for $30-50 bucks a pop. They sell us $50 game houses. They sell us on the idea that they are working to improve performance while performance seems to continue to degrade. They sell us on crappy expansions just to keep bringing in the cash but that seem to lack any actual innovation. They sell us on crown crates (my god that was the beginning of the end!) and other silly goodies. But actual gaming and performance? Well let's see, if we consolidate this whole system we can squeak a little more life out of these hamsters before they die, and if we remove that feature we can get a little more life before those other hamsters die. It's comical really.

Here we are, shouting into the abyss, and I guarantee nobody really cares until it hits them in the wallets. You wanna tell them how you feel? Unsub. If that many people are pissed about it and don't buy expansion or crowns or anything from the crown store and don't sub, THEN they will listen. Speak with your wallet after you have used up your words. You will be heard much better and the responses are usually more in line with what you want because it's all about the benjamins.

xclassgaming

Stamicka wrote: »

For a long time now, I’ve been seeing a trend where changes (often nerfs) are made in the name of performance. Unfortunately as players, we have no choice but to accept the changes or quit, but why should we be the ones that pay? Now I’m not talking about a monetary price (although we do pay in this way), but I’m talking about the price of our enjoyment. Many changes done to improve performance take away from the fun of the game. Worst of all, I have only seen performance decline since I’ve started the game in 2015. So where are these performance gains that we have “paid” for? Account Wide Achievements are just one example in a long list of these changes. Let’s list a few.

Account Wide Achievements
This is the most recent change that was done for the sake of performance. Personally, I think the addition of account wide achievements could be great if it were optional and better implemented. There are tons of complaints about this already, so I’ll focus on the purpose of this thread. One of the reasons given for the inability to opt out of this feature was: “long term maintainable database stability and performance”. Essentially, ZOS wants to reduce the amount of data stored for long term scalability of the game. This type of change should start with the databases themselves. This problem is not unique to Zenimax. As the world gets increasingly digital, we create more and more data. Data storage and efficiency is a huge focus of many programmers. That being said, there are a lot of ways to change how data is stored and searched through. Some ways are more efficient than others. So instead of making an un-optional change that make many players unhappy, why not find better ways to store the data? I find it hard to believe that even if collectively we have gained over 1 billion achievements, that it should take up tremendous amounts of space.

New Features
Yup, performance has costed us new features. Over time you may have noticed that the chapters have way less content. It started with Scrying, then it was Companions, now it will be a card game. One of the reasons they gave for the lack of new features is that the game just can’t handle it.

Cyrodiil Populations
If you’ve been around for several years you would notice that Cyrodiil holds 100s of less people than it once did. Instead of working towards a solution to allow for smooth large scale PvP battles, we see the population of Cyrodiil get dramatically reduced. It Is not uncommon for a pop locked server to only have 2 fights on the entire map (and it still doesn’t perform well). Cutting populations was only a blanket “fix” that costed the players more than it did ZOS.

Blocking and Barswapping
During the “year of performance” ZOS changed the way block and barswapping worked. It is significantly slower than it once was and it is very noticeable for endgame players. I have seen PVE tanks as well as PvPers complain about the clunkiness of block and barswap. This clunkiness only started occurring after the “performance improving” changes were made to these features.

What’s Next?
I’m sure there are many other examples I have forgotten about, but what’s next? Technology has progressed a lot since this game started development (it’s been over a decade). We have seen how taking the time to build support for these new technologies (like multithreading) can hugely benefit performance while not costing the players anything. Performance should not be getting worse over time and more importantly, THESE CHANGES SHOULD BE DONE ON YOUR END, NOT THE PLAYERS. Scalability of the game should be the focus of an MMORPG from the absolute start. Stop ruining our enjoyment for performance improvements that we never get to see.

What a conspiracy theory.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

xXSilverDragonXx wrote: »

I kind of feel bad because we are all upset and complaining and yet, I don't think for a minute anyone that works on ESO has much of a say in it. And I think, like the rest of us with regards to their jobs, they have to pick their battles. I think this is all ZOS being greedy MFers. And I think that they care very little about upgrading anything. In fact, I think from early on, ESO was a game that was meant to be not much more than a cash cow riding on the coat tails of TES and meant to be a TES substitute for probably a very much predicted and planned gap between TES installments. I mean, think about it. ESO comes out just a few years after Skyrim which was a massive TES hit. (probably started work right around the time they saw skyrim was a massive hit and dollar signs filled their eyes)

It's been OVER a decade since Skyrim. A DECADE! You think for one minute they hadn't deliberately decided to temporarily shelve development on TES so that people would be indirectly driven toward ESO? They know that once the next TES comes out, ESO logins and profits would drop off dramatically at least for a year or two. So what does bethesda do? They ANNOUNCE a TES is in development. When will it come out? Near the end of ESOs full lifecycle, probably . Meanwhile, they sell us retextured mounts for $30-50 bucks a pop. They sell us $50 game houses. They sell us on the idea that they are working to improve performance while performance seems to continue to degrade. They sell us on crappy expansions just to keep bringing in the cash but that seem to lack any actual innovation. They sell us on crown crates (my god that was the beginning of the end!) and other silly goodies. But actual gaming and performance? Well let's see, if we consolidate this whole system we can squeak a little more life out of these hamsters before they die, and if we remove that feature we can get a little more life before those other hamsters die. It's comical really.

Here we are, shouting into the abyss, and I guarantee nobody really cares until it hits them in the wallets. You wanna tell them how you feel? Unsub. If that many people are pissed about it and don't buy expansion or crowns or anything from the crown store and don't sub, THEN they will listen. Speak with your wallet after you have used up your words. You will be heard much better and the responses are usually more in line with what you want because it's all about the benjamins.

This was a very good response, but just need to clarify one thing.
Development for ESO started in 2007, 4 years before Skyrim.
Just letting you know.
Huzzah!!

BlueRaven

Just wanted to add the reduction to group sizes was also done for performance, yet had no noticeable performance effect.

RisenEclipse

I think this decision to not fully explain themselves to the community has bit them pretty hard. I'm not talking about the actual implementing of AwA. I'm talking about them not explaining why they had to push AwA. Adding new things to the game that not everyone might have wanted? Sure, it's their game, they don't need to explain themselves on that one. I can at least understand that one.

But this severely impacted other people's accounts. It effected how some people just play the game. This was not something they should have been silent about and just left a footnote explanation on. They should have gone into detail with the player base on why AwA fixed performance, what this will mean for us in the future, what are they doing to ensure more things in the game don't get reduced in the name of performance, give us every detail on the why's and how's, so we can understand a change that dramatically effected people's game experience.

But because of who know who's choice to handle this, it really has fostered distrust and even resentment to ZOS. Which for a company, you DON'T want that to happen with your customers. I really hope that they see what the players are saying and at least talk to their customers. It's baffling the way this was handled.

Amottica

Stamicka wrote: »

show previous quotes

Amottica wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Stamicka wrote: »

but why should we be the ones that pay?

Who do you suggest deals with the changes to the game if not us? There is no other party.

ZOS is the other party. You can change behind the scenes implementation without having a direct impact on how the players experience the game. With the account wide achievements for example, they could work on a way to make achievement storage more efficient on their end and we would never have to know.

How would Zenimax "pay" (as you put it)?

Also, it is an assumption that the database section related to achievements was not already very efficient.

Regardless, it is past time to split hairs on this as it has already gone live. In a short period of time we will see how big a deal this really is.

Let’s take Google for example. Yes they are a huge company with tons of resources, but it’s a good example. For a long time now, you can go to google.com and you can type something into the search bar and expect to see results. There’s been some slight changes to the appearance of the front page, but for as long as I can remember it’s been very similar to the way it looks now. Behind the scenes however, Google has grown and so has the amount of data they have. I’m sure they’ve implemented new search algorithms, more efficient ways to store their data, and all kinds of stuff to keep it scalable. I don’t need to know that. I just go to the website and expect it to work quickly and to give me good results. Their growth has not negatively impacted my experience using the search engine. This is what I mean.

In regards to your other point, this isn’t just about the achievements though. This is a trend, they make changes for performance and performance never increases.

Google processes 3.8 million searches per minute which is 5.6 billion per day. Only 15% of searches have never been searched before on Google. The more popular searches are cached to reduce the load on their system.

This is something Zenimax cannot utilize for character or even account achievements since each one is very unique.

Additionally, Google's search engine is designed for a single solitary purpose which allows for efficiencies that cannot be obtained with a server system designed to do dozens to hundreds of different functions.

In other words, comparing Google to ESO is like comparing apples to oranges. Better yet, it is like comparing apples to Zucchini.

peacenote

xXSilverDragonXx wrote: »

Here we are, shouting into the abyss, and I guarantee nobody really cares until it hits them in the wallets. You wanna tell them how you feel? Unsub. If that many people are pissed about it and don't buy expansion or crowns or anything from the crown store and don't sub, THEN they will listen. Speak with your wallet after you have used up your words. You will be heard much better and the responses are usually more in line with what you want because it's all about the benjamins.

Well, a few things on this.

I don't think, in and of itself, it is a shameful thing for a company to be about profit. You can believe in what you are doing AND make money, but without the money most companies would fold. Even things that can sound altruistic -- "the customer is always right" or "we care about our team" is about profit. It is more expensive to get new customers and hire and train new staff than it is to retain current ones. So yes, those initiatives help the customers and workers but they are still about profit.

Therefore I think words and voting with wallets are important here. The words will have influence on current customers and its reputation, which is not good for ZOS. There are people who come back to the forums all the time to say "Hey, how are things? Should I come back?" People who might just take a break will leave for good. Plus we got a tiny bit of media attention... perhaps with a continued rally there could be more? No one wants to be the company that doesn't listen to their customers! I am doing both... I have sworn off the Crown Store because of this. Nothing that's left for me in the game (mostly my dungeon and raid teams) require any cosmetics.

However it also can happen that companies become short sighted or accidentally adopt the wrong strategy that prioritizes short term profit but sacrifices long term goals. That may have been the case here... more of a complete miscalculation (bad data gathering, would you like this yes or no type of thing) without the agility to adapt. The communication... there's really no excuse for that though. But I digress. My other point was this:

Somewhere on this forum, someone posted about how the person whose role it is to handle monetization got filled by someone who was known for extreme monetization tactics. And that after this person came on board, that's when we started seeing the shift away from a nice balance of customer experience and things done for income, to get this all crown store, all the time thing. I don't know where to find that thread anymore but it was really interesting. It absolutely did track... the extremely invasive Crown Store pop up and "daily login behavior changers" oops I mean "rewards" all were rolled out after the change. I WISH I could find that topic but basically I don't think ESO was conceived to be a cash cow only. They clearly added a lot of things to the game later to make players happy and they do listen and respond to a lot of feedback. That's what made this whole thing so unbelievably odd. You absolutely can tell when we are being fed a party line (or at least, not the whole story) vs. a real, detailed explanation about a change. It literally is like we are hearing from two completely different companies when that happens. What concerns me about AwA and how badly this was done, in every aspect... is that it may be that monetization has won, for good.

Amottica

RisenEclipse wrote: »

I think this decision to not fully explain themselves to the community has bit them pretty hard. I'm not talking about the actual implementing of AwA. I'm talking about them not explaining why they had to push AwA. Adding new things to the game that not everyone might have wanted? Sure, it's their game, they don't need to explain themselves on that one. I can at least understand that one.

But this severely impacted other people's accounts. It effected how some people just play the game. This was not something they should have been silent about and just left a footnote explanation on. They should have gone into detail with the player base on why AwA fixed performance, what this will mean for us in the future, what are they doing to ensure more things in the game don't get reduced in the name of performance, give us every detail on the why's and how's, so we can understand a change that dramatically effected people's game experience.

But because of who know who's choice to handle this, it really has fostered distrust and even resentment to ZOS. Which for a company, you DON'T want that to happen with your customers. I really hope that they see what the players are saying and at least talk to their customers. It's baffling the way this was handled.

@RisenEclipse

Gina's explanation for the change in group size had nothing to do with performance. They said they like the change in behavior.