Not gonna lie, I'm pretty heartbroken

GoldenHero3422

I've been playing ESO since Summerset dropped (yes, I'm still a young'un to many), and I've gotta say, I have never seen the community backlash this hard against ZOS. I'm not saying the community is to blame, though: My heart is broken because of the actions of the studio. [snip] I would say Elsweyr or Greymoor were the last chapters I wholeheartedly enjoyed, maybe Blackwood. And the fact that for three weeks, the devs have allowed the servers to run at this level of bugginess... wow. I havn't played for a couple months, so when I heard of this, it came as a surprise. But now, I have a stomach full of anger. Many dev teams try to make their customers happy, and ZOS did that for a while, but now? what are they doing? And... a card game as the "highlight"? What ridiculousness!? ZOS is on the edge of letting ESO die... however much I would hate for that to happen, it is a reality. [snip]

[edited for bashing]

ShawnLaRock

S.

RealLoveBVB

GoldenHero3422 wrote: »

ZOS is on the edge of letting ESO die... however much I would hate for that to happen, it is a reality.

Zenimax, you better get your gears running again, cause I promise you, this game will not make it otherwise.

~ESO players since 2014

Norith_Gilheart_Flail

Heart broken (adjective) : suffering from overwhelming distress

This is a ViDya GaeM.

Sri Lankan collapse, Australian flooding, Ukrainian War. Those are heartbreaking.

Not this. Find another word.

Lysette

I play in 2 other MMOs, which are both about 19 years old - launched in 2003 - and they were declared to be dead pretty much right from the very start. They changed over time and anytime a major change happened, there were those doom-sayers again, declaring it to be dead soon - they will continue to do so during the next decade, but those games will still be there. Both MMOs have been streamlined and made more accessible for casuals, reduced requirements, increased QoL. One of them runs like a charm, the other more or less works most of the time, as in something is failing every day, but it is the home of a lot of players, who are using/playing it for more than a decade and this is not likely to change in the upcoming decade.

TL;DR "there is life in the old dog yet" - it's not going to die anytime soon.

Jaraal

The dysfunction does seem to be snowballing. Update 33 was a turning point, in many ways.

I’m not optimistic.

RisenEclipse

Zavijah_Arventi wrote: »

Heart broken (adjective) : suffering from overwhelming distress

This is a ViDya GaeM.

Sri Lankan collapse, Australian flooding, Ukrainian War. Those are heartbreaking.

Not this. Find another word.

I mean using over dramatic wording has basically been the thing for the forums... my favorite is when anyone suddenly declares that they speak on behalf of every player and say things like "everyone hates this!" or "we all wanted this!" and "everyone will leave eso forever and ever! The player base all wants this thing! No one likes this thing!"... I don't remember being included in the vote...

But I think that's more to do with an attempt to inflate their points then anything else. The idea that using way too strong of words and declaring they speak on behalf of everyone will somehow make their argument appear stronger. This thing RUINED MY LIFE! ... no it didn't. Also using all caps in titles.

blktauna

Lysette wrote: »

I play in 2 other MMOs, which are both about 19 years old - launched in 2003 - and they were declared to be dead pretty much right from the very start. They changed over time and anytime a major change happened, there were those doom-sayers again, declaring it to be dead soon - they will continue to do so during the next decade, but those games will still be there. Both MMOs have been streamlined and made more accessible for casuals, reduced requirements, increased QoL. One of them runs like a charm, the other more or less works most of the time, as in something is failing every day, but it is the home of a lot of players, who are using/playing it for more than a decade and this is not likely to change in the upcoming decade.

TL;DR "there is life in the old dog yet" - it's not going to die anytime soon.

Note the runs like a charm section. Of course that is still active and healthy. And in the sometiimes failing one, is there communication? Are these games trying to get new people? Everyone complaining here is doing so because we enjoy this and want to continue enjoying it. It is reaching the point where we can not.

My beef is crap keeps failing here and nothing is seen to be done about it. Most of the time the players call out everything in pts and there is no acknowledgement or fix. Its got so bad the loss of performance has crept into PVE, so more people are complaining. What are we paying for here?

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Jaraal wrote: »

The dysfunction does seem to be snowballing. Update 33 was a turning point, in many ways.

I’m not optimistic.

Agree. Dysfunction is a great description.
I'm not gonna say that the game is dying, as that has been said since beta, but....
After 13khrs and 8+years, I have to say that the UD33, AwA and Matt and Rich's complete silence and refusal to at least respond to the thousands of feedbacks is disheartening. All the respect, trust and goodwill has gone to Oblivion for me.
I will still give High Isles a chance, even with the anticlimactic features, but unless the storyline and writing and questlines are at least as awesome as Wrothgar, well, I just don't know about playing ESO going forward.
Just my 2 drakes...
Huzzah!

Lysette

blktauna wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

I play in 2 other MMOs, which are both about 19 years old - launched in 2003 - and they were declared to be dead pretty much right from the very start. They changed over time and anytime a major change happened, there were those doom-sayers again, declaring it to be dead soon - they will continue to do so during the next decade, but those games will still be there. Both MMOs have been streamlined and made more accessible for casuals, reduced requirements, increased QoL. One of them runs like a charm, the other more or less works most of the time, as in something is failing every day, but it is the home of a lot of players, who are using/playing it for more than a decade and this is not likely to change in the upcoming decade.

TL;DR "there is life in the old dog yet" - it's not going to die anytime soon.

Note the runs like a charm section. Of course that is still active and healthy. And in the sometiimes failing one, is there communication? Are these games trying to get new people? Everyone complaining here is doing so because we enjoy this and want to continue enjoying it. It is reaching the point where we can not.

My beef is crap keeps failing here and nothing is seen to be done about it. Most of the time the players call out everything in pts and there is no acknowledgement or fix. Its got so bad the loss of performance has crept into PVE, so more people are complaining. What are we paying for here?

When I said something is failing every day in that MMO - it is not critical - a teleport is failing, I try again and it works, it just means it isn't perfect - in the other I mentioned I have not experienced a bug in years - there might be some somewhere, but the company running the game is very good at fixing stuff in a timely manner - so yeah, they are running well, both of them.

Both are as well healthy because they have a strong social component - players with a social tendency tend to keep a game alive for as long as there are enough others in the game to socialize with or to build teams, corporations, alliances and empires with. Both are sandbox like, where the content is created by players with a lot of freedom. One is a pvp game, the other is a world for socializers and creators.

Grizzbeorn

Your perception is distorted.
First off, people have been saying the game will soon die since Launch Day in 2014.

Secondly, there have been updates since Summerset (I started playing right around that time, myself) that were equally badly received and caused major meltdowns on the forums.

I want to say it was Update 25 that was just as bad for awhile after it dropped.

UntilValhalla13

I'm sure the card game will make everything right.


Right?

Lysette

UntilValhalla13 wrote: »

I'm sure the card game will make everything right.


Right?

Like they described it, it is prone to fail - but eventually they haven't described it correctly.

Roztlin45

It is hard.to.see something fall from grace ,especially something that you care about. Venting here does no good. I suggest that we all ask Microsoft gaming for help. Maybe funding is the issue? But either way a major quality update and fix must take place , fast. I am unable to play eso, like many others ,in a normal manner after update 33. Just waiting and hoping. This is not bashing , baiting or anything other than personal observation/opinion.

Jaimeh

I'm with you OP: I've played this game since 2015, I love it to bits, but I absolutely blanch at the way it's managed. They have systematically chipped away combat, homogenized classes, changed group size, among a myriad of other things in the name of performance, instead of finding sustainable ways that don't involve taking things away from the game. I also love playing with my alt characters and the AwA system was a nail in the coffin for my preferred playstyle, and what bothered me the most was how little consideration they've shown to our concerns with AwA, given its enormous implications. Finally, a dev stream a while ago, which became notorious and for good reason, demonstrated that they do antagonize the community, which is absurd because we are the heart of the game, instead of listening in a respectful way what were legitimate concerns over years worth of frustration with performance problems in PvP. A few free XP scrolls will not established good faith with the playrebase because I don't know if they care about it beyond generation of revenue.

Mushroomancer

Honestly, I don't think ZOS is letting the game die. They know exactly what they are doing.
They know most of the playerbase is made up of hypercasual players who are never going to regularly, if ever, engage with any content outside of overland, questing and, maybe, housing. Of course there's nothing wrong with that, everyone is free to engage with the game as they see fit; the issue is the fact that ZOS is throwing the rest of the players in the trash because I'm guessing they don't bring in as much money. As for those players who keep playing the game regularly and doing more "advanced" content, I'm starting to think most of them are just stuck in the sunk cost prison. I don't think I have seen any endgame PvE players I know be enthusiastic about the game lately, and PvP is genuinely a joke, even though it's getting old by now.

What really annoys me though is the absolute lack of transparency on the side of ZOS. I don't think I have ever seen a company be this incompetent at communication. At the same time though, I don't think the disaster that communication is can be completely chalked up to incompetence, that would be way too easy of an excuse to let them off with. No, I think they are genuinely being malicious with how much they ignore player feedback, lie to our faces, and act like nothing wrong is even happening. I mean, I know that ZOS is a company, money should be their main interest, but holy ***, are there any actual humans working at the company, or just corporate speech bots disguised as such?
I'm not asking for the staff at ZOS to be our best buddies, but seriously, they could at least try to show they care. Everyone seems so detached from the in-game community, hell I'm not even sure anyone plays the game besides Rich. And there lies the problem, it is genuinely impossible to feel like the staff at ZOS understands what the community wants and/or needs because they are not part of the community, they are an outsider looking it, and that is becoming more and more apparent.

As I have been saying in a bunch of posts already, all I want from ZOS is to at least try to make the game fun for most if not all subsets of the in-game population. Stop catering to the lowest common denominator, start showing that you care about your game and all of your players, not just their wallet, and how you can directly transfer money from them to yours.

And of course, the usual "provocation" if you will. You are welcome to snip this comment to oblivion, dear ZOS forum manager, you are just proving my point if you do.


Edit: just a couple of considerations to add after reading some of the comments here.

@Zavijah_Arventi, wow, I never thought I'd see an actual dictionary-quoting pedant in the wild, congrats sir. In all seriousness though, sure a game not doing well is not a humanitarian tragedy, but it's all a matter of perspective, someone can be heartbroken over events which hold personal significance to them, even though they may be irrelevant to other people or to the world at large.

@Lysette, of course ESO is not going to die tomorrow, and I hate the "[insert game name] is dead" spam as much as the next person, as I think it's so overused it has lost any value even as an obviously hyperbolical statement. The thing is, the way ZOS is treating the game and a part of the community could maybe, possibly, eventually lead to a large dip in players, and players are what make and break an MMO. As cherished as the memories someone makes playing with friends in an MMO are, if the game happens to fail on a fundamental level, players are gonna move on regardless.

@Roztlin45, as much as funding might alleviate some performance issues, I don't think those are the actual major problems with the game and ZOS at large. The main problems, as I see it, are bad communication and lack of touch with the playerbase. And those are problems that you cannot solve with funding, outside of shuffling employees. ZOS fail at their job on the more "human relations" levels of their tasks, funding has nothing to do with it.

Hymzir

I got my beta monkey, so... Been here a while.

The things you describe are pretty much the norm for the most part of the games run.

The performance has always been sketchy, and it has always been "being looked at." The actual day-to-day performance goes up and down with the seasons, but it never is "good."

ZOS has also a track record of ignoring most of the feedback and just doing their thing. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they don't. The only constant is that they will do it the way they decide, regardless of what sort of feedback their customers provide. They do listen to suggestions though, in that they add stuff to the game that lot of players ask for. The way they add it though, the way it is implemented... Well that is not really open for feedback. They'll do it the way they want, and if it works, then great! Players will be happy and devs can move on to the next thing on their list. If it sucks though... If people warn them that it's going to suck during PTS... Well, them's the breaks, it gets implemented as is anyway, and the team just shrugs at the fallout and moves to the next thing on the list.

Partly due to the above two issues, and partly due to the ever borked game balance and constant beta-like design changes, the end of this game has been prophesied since 2014. It's still chugging along. Largely due to the strength of the IP. I mean, I don't believe it would've survived past 2015 without the Elder Scrolls brand. By now it has become its own thing, and can exist without the clout of the brand it is associated with. There's a fair number of people who have "invested" in the game quite heavily personality wise. That is, it is an important facet of their daily lives. And those players are quite happy to keep spending money on Crowns. And where there is a market, there is a product to be sold.

And finally, the thing is, that the base game is decent. Not great, but certainly one that provides plenty of entertainment. It is also immensely formulaic. Always has been. This is in part due to the fact that this is an online game, with multiple players galavanting about the world. It restricts the available structures that work for quests, and you can't really have anything happen that has a meaningful impact on the world itself. That would just screw up the shared game space experience.

Most quest default to some rando standing by the wayside complaining about some problem, which leads you to running around the area pressing E key to activate/collect/destroy/examine/or some other random action, while killing mobs until you've done it X times, and the the big bad appears for you to kill. Then the quest gives re-appears and pats you on the back and tells you that you did great and "rewards" you with a useless bit of gear you immediately vendor away. Rinse and repeat.

This is further compounded by the fact that for the past 4 years they've been super formulaic with their offerings. That is, every new zone has come with a calamitous evil rising to threaten the world, that somehow never seems to interact with anything beyond the boundaries of the new zone. (Like why did all those dragons decide to stick in Elsweyr? Tamriel is pretty big continent. Plenty of space to roam about. But we can't have that, 'cause it would muck up the narrative of the other zones, so it's all taking place in Elsweyr.) You'll also get a standard number of delves and world bosses to fight. The same type of dailies to collect the local style item and motifs, and at some point bit later some structural furnishing plans following the zones style. And there will be a multipart collectible in public dungeons, and you can do a "museum" type treasure hunt thing. Oh, and the zone will have the standard ligh-med-heavy trio of overland sets, and three new craftable set stations to discover.

It gets repetitive, and and starts to feel samey. If you joined with Summerset, I'm not surprised you feel that things are not "progressing." 'Cause they really aint. They're staying the same. Before Summerset, things were bit more fluid, with more varied additions to the game. They were still looking for their "best selling formula." With Summerset they found it, and that's what they've been doing for years now, while churning the latest cool bit of bling for people to buy in the cash shop. It works, and it makes them money, so that's what they're doing.

But you are right on that it wont last. Eventually the stream of new players who pick the game up, play for a year or two and spend some money in the cash shop, will dry up. Newer and cooler things will emerge for them to play. At some point TES6 will be released and will become the main focus for TES fans. At some point even the most ardent ESO fan gets bored with the static and never changing nature of the world.

But when that is going to happen is still open for guessing. It's impossible to say when this ride will end. Might be in a couple of months, might be in couple of years. And when it does happen, I think it'll be rather sudden, and due to several things happening at once. A disastrous launch of a new chapter, the release of a competent alternative, a sudden cultural shift in gaming, emergence of some new tech or some other event, all taking place close to one another and then suddenly people will just move on. ESO itself should still survive, it has build large enough a following to be worthwhile to run in support mode for several years after active development has ended.

The thing with collapses is, that they are almost always impossible to predict with any kind of certainty. You can asses the probabilities, and you can isolate factors that point towards it or against it, but when things actually go over the brink so to say, is impossible to tell before it actually takes place. The end of ESO is a thing, and signs are not super positive at the moment, but they are not enough on their own to make any meaningful predictions about this games demise.

As for the immediate future... Well the recent tech troubles don't make things better, and the next chapter doesn't sound all that promising either, and I doubt the addition of a CCG will mean a whole lot to most of the players, and then there is the recent AwA debacle... So it's not looking good, but TES6 is still years and years away, and there isn't a real alternative for ESO as an MMO either, so... I see no reason to predict this thing to end in the next year or two. And think it's perfectly possible for the game to continue for 5 or 6 more. It depends on things I have no way of predicting - like the emergence of a new decent competitor. If that should happen, then things can go south and fast for ESO. But if no such game appears in the next year or two, I see no reason why EOS wouldn't continue as it has always done for several years to come. The active players numbers might go down, and go down a fair amount (this game is getting old you know), but not to the point that i would make to stop active development. And as long as the one's that stick around are willing to pay for Crowns, no reason to stop catering to them.

Of course the summer season of new game reveals might bring forth a piece of information that will change that assessment, but for now any such things are still unknown. Only time will tell.

In view of all that, as a final thought on this matter, it might seem prudent for ZOS to re-asses their "formula" and re-think things as on how to go forward. But there's an additional catch there - it might not be worth the effort. As I said, this game is getting old. And it has layers and layers of code, it has gone though several radical re-works, and is ultimately based on outdated tech. ZOS might be nearing the point, where doing anything too drastic with the thing, might bring it all crumbling down. So from their point of view, the smartest thing might be to just ride this thing for as long as they can. Just keep adding more formulaic zones, keep churning new cosmetics for the coin store, and do it for as long as people are willing to pay for it, while also at the same time laying out ground works and plans for ESO 2 to be released sometime after TES6 has released and completely revamped the identity of the TES brand.

Who knows? With ZOS it's always impossible to tell, for the only thing they are more notorious than ignoring player feedback, is their utter inability to communicate anything to the their customers.

MasterSpatula

Hymzir wrote: »

I got my beta monkey, so... Been here a while.

The things you describe are pretty much the norm for the most part of the games run.

[snip]

Who knows? With ZOS it's always impossible to tell, for the only thing they are more notorious than ignoring player feedback, is their utter inability to communicate anything to the their customers.

I also have my beta monkey, and...

Every.
Word.

robwolf666

OP - What platform are you talking about? I have to say that I'm not really noticing anything overly annoying on Series X, except, maybe, that the brightness keeps resetting every time you start the game. But, that's just 10 seconds to adjust.

ADarklore

I see a lot of arm-chair quarterbacks saying how ZOS should do 'this or that' instead of what they're doing... when they have NO IDEA how the game works or what goes into the million miles of coding. So many claim that ZOS isn't working on performance, when in fact they've made several statements towards doing exactly that... but just because they don't make a statement every week, somehow that's ignoring the players. I'll leave it to the game developers to understand their own coding and have optimism that they are trying to make the game better.

Further, people complain about "community backlash" somehow believing that the majority of players are here on the forums, when that is FAR FAR from the truth. The players here on the forums are a hyper-minority of the players, and if the majority believed there were major issues we would be seeing a flood of new players to the forums- but we're not; it's mostly the SAME people complaining that are always complaining here on the forums. While the AwA thread went on for numerous pages, it was typically the same players responding and keeping the thread going... and even with so many pages... people still disregard the numerous players who SUPPORT AwA. Just because a thread goes on for many pages doesn't mean that indicates everyone is unhappy with it. Reality is, so many players look for ANY topic to jump on the anti-ZOS bandwagon. You know the, "I stopped playing years ago..." and yet here they are still on the ESO forums complaining but supposedly not actually playing the game anymore.

I will say that AwA has taken some time to get used to... a few things that I always looked forward to re-completing on a new character are just GONE now. It's sad... and I think we should still have the option to complete certain objectives without it being tied to an achievement. Like Kari's Hit List, Peacemaker, etc. I always looked forward to those.

Also, as they've stated before, they are looking at hardware upgrades and other things, but everything is going to be done OVER TIME. Also keep in mind that the game engine they are using was OUTDATED before the game even launched, so they are doing their best to 'make a silk purse out of a sow's ear'... and I think they've done a very good job of making due with that they have and trying to be creative in their improvements... but also being cautious about trying to do too much too quickly. Well, except for the Update 33 launch fiasco that Rich stated in his "Update 33 PC Launch Postmortem" post.

ZOS_Lunar

Greetings everyone,

As this thread has run its course and is no longer constructive, we are now going to close it. We always encourage sharing opinions, but we ask that they are respectfully stated when doing so. We would like to specifically highlight bashing. We do not permit the bashing of individuals (including ZeniMax employees), groups, or other companies on our forums. We believe that doing so is neither constructive nor in spirit of our game and community.

Thank you for your understanding, and please keep the Community Rules in mind when posting on the forums.