Where is everyone?

Saucy_Jack

Usually the PTS has a ton of people on it, especially when it's a whole new zone rather than just a dungeon DLC. I would have thought there's be EXTRA people on the PTS since it's a zone that hasn't really been seen before in TES games. But it's been super quiet the last few days. Where is everybody?

ADarklore

I have to agree and was thinking about that myself... usually posts are fast and furious on PTS, but not much so far. Perhaps ZOS has finally managed to make enough people angry by completely ignoring PTS feedback or by implementing something in a chapter that the overwhelming majority do not want and never asked for, so they feel no reason to even test it.

aaisoaho

I personally try to avoid spoiling the content itself on the PTS, so I can fully enjoy the experience on the launch day. It is why I have only once visited High Isles (to check what the furnishers have to offer and then I went to check what the entrance to the new trial looks like). Rest of the time on PTS I spend in my house with aTransmute Station, an enchanting station, an aetherial well and some dummies.

Arthtur

I logged in, i checked new furnishing (or lack of them) and motifs, i left. Job done.
I cant test balance changes as im from EU and PTS server is always laggy for me.
I guess i will look around zone later. Im kinda lazy tho.

If i add that im not interested in this chapter so far and last PTS server testing where They ignored everything.... Maybe next year will be better...

ADarklore

Arthtur wrote: »

I logged in, i checked new furnishing (or lack of them) and motifs, i left. Job done.
I cant test balance changes as im from EU and PTS server is always laggy for me.
I guess i will look around zone later. Im kinda lazy tho.

If i add that im not interested in this chapter so far and last PTS server testing where They ignored everything.... Maybe next year will be better...

I really think ZOS needs to be more engaged with the players in directly ASKING what we'd like to see- but before asking- tell us what IS plausible. I mean, if they cannot add new classes, weapons, or other things, they should specifically say, "We'd like to know what you'd like us to add, but keep in mind 'x, y and z' are not possible at this time due to system constraints.

I don't recall hearing anyone specifically ask for a card game, perhaps 1000 people, maybe even 10,000 might like it, but MILLIONS may not. They say they wanted to add something that wasn't 'combat oriented' due to ESO being so combat-centric... but... that's what keeps the majority of players playing ESO! The quests, combat, dungeons, etc... a card game should not have been the focal point of an entire chapter IMO. A LOT of players use Companions so this should be a permanent addition to the chapters, but a card game?!? I don't even like cards IRL. I would like another weapon line, or class... perhaps they could FINALLY add Companion gear improvements and decon. If we cannot craft them gear, at least allow us to IMPROVE what they have. Would be nice to have Companions in gold gear!!

Cuddlypuff

Haha I clicked this thread expecting ESO's version of Fermi's Paradox. 20+ million players - so where is everyone?

RaddlemanNumber7

I logged in a couple of times for a few minutes. First to see if my Khajiits had gone bent, but no luck. Then to check on the new quickslot wheels, but the system looks as if it hasn't been completed yet. That was the general impression I got from looking around - it's not finished, some bits are clearly missing.

Both times when I logged out ESO v8.0.0 took down a lot of other programs with it and I had to reboot my PC. So, I'm going to stay out of it for now. Maybe have a look again when EU toons are on.

ADarklore

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

I logged in a couple of times for a few minutes. First to see if my Khajiits had gone bent, but no luck. Then to check on the new quickslot wheels, but the system looks as if it hasn't been completed yet. That was the general impression I got from looking around - it's not finished, some bits are clearly missing.

Both times when I logged out ESO v8.0.0 took down a lot of other programs with it and I had to reboot my PC. So, I'm going to stay out of it for now. Maybe have a look again when EU toons are on.

Myself and many others are hoping you're right about it not being completely finished. Too many people are reporting very EMPTY locations giving the impression of a very dead zone, but they have several more weeks to add more to it... hopefully.

Saucy_Jack

I know the first...maybe three days, there was a bunch of people in zone, mostly testing out Dreadsail Reefs and Tribute. But it's like a ghost town in zone right now.

robpr

Not many people has another 70GB to spare for PTS, but there should be always some people next to wayshrine dueling. The rest is either in houses parsing or in DSR. I found one person casually travelling around the zone.

xylena_lazarow

Too many years of completely ignoring balance feedback, especially regarding PvP.

Finedaible

Idk, but I have noticed an increase in ads for ESO lately. You can draw your own conclusions...

Dojohoda

I logged in a couple of times to have a look, but I didn't do anything other than open up some wayshrines.

Hymzir

I don't do unpaid beta testing. Especially not when all the feedback we provide gets ignored.

PTS seems to solely exist so that ZOS can have players find out bugs for free. Those are pretty much the only things they ever react to, as far as PTS feedback goes.

It also doesn't really help that there isn't anything of particular interest to "test." I don't care about the card game, and still maintain that it makes zero sense from lore perspective. CCGs require particular type of societal structures and cultural trends to be even remotely plausible things, and Tamriel has never been portrayed as having any of those. I joked, in an earlier thread, that it made as much sense as introducing a full blown golf simulator into ESO. The only difference having been, that I might actually have played that golf simulator on occasion.

So all that leaves is the story and exploration. If you intend to playthrough the thing for realsies at some point, it makes little sense to go and spoil the experience beforehand. Especially on a a PTS account where you wont get to keep any of the rewards, collectibles and mythics you might find along the way.

In a nutshell, they don't pay for the beta testing, and don't pay any attention to feedback either. So... Why bother?

Belegnole

Well, I was beta tester. But since they no longer listen I'm not interested in wasting my time testing for them. I do jump in to test a few things for myself then I leave. I guess that I prefer to play the zone the first time on my characters and enjoy it.

SantieClaws

This one has probably been in Test Tamriel more than usual but moving about less.

Trying to get the hang of the birdo pictures game.

Also it is hard to test half of the zone as it is an island you cannot swim to - this one tried.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Eormenric

I'm keeping my eye on this forum for the reveal of something unexpectedly fun. Haven't found it yet.

Honestly, after a certain MMO's reveal on the 19th, I'm seeing ESO's output as not worthy of my investment, nor $40 for this content. Would love for that to change, but it won't unless ZOS really puts the time, effort, and money into revitalizing this game. I don't see that happening.

Still waiting for boating or a new class/weapon/etc to make a big surprise appearance for this chapter. Then I'll hop into PTS to test that out.

P.S. Totally agree with the above pain points about player feedback being ignored anyway, whether on PTS or live.

SpiritKitten

After the AWA fiasco of ignored player feedback and the reported bugs going live anyway...why bother.

Elsonso

Belegnole wrote: »

Well, I was beta tester. But since they no longer listen I'm not interested in wasting my time testing for them. I do jump in to test a few things for myself then I leave.

I feel the same. Update after update, people post comments. The only people who seem to care are the other people in the forum. ZOS may read them, but there is zero indication that anything resonates with them. After a while, it feels like it is just the same people debating the same things. It's not like the players can do anything other than just talk amongst themselves.

It's not worth the time to download it. It's not worth the time to log into it.

DarcyMardin

I’ve finally learned that ZOS ignores our feedback, with the possible exception of major bugs. So I’m not bothering with the PTS anymore. Besides, there’s not much coming with the new chapter that I care about.

MashmalloMan

I'm dealing with college finals or else I'd be on there everyday, I imagine others are too.

Typically PTS population and feedback dies out around the weekend then a huge storm hits at the beginning of the week when notes drop again.

Nestor

I uninstalled the PTS a few years ago, around Summerset. Keeping it updated, is intrusive. Having effectively a shadow copy of the game takes up precious SSD space.

I dont play on the bleeding edge of MinMax, so most of the balance changes have little effect on my character. While playing new content during the quietness of the PTS is appealing, I would rather wait for live as most of the quest bugs are gone.

Then building a new character during the time we were not using copies is super tedious.

So, the cons of the PTS far outweigh the benefits.

SeaGtGruff

aaisoaho wrote: »

I personally try to avoid spoiling the content itself on the PTS, so I can fully enjoy the experience on the launch day. It is why I have only once visited High Isles (to check what the furnishers have to offer and then I went to check what the entrance to the new trial looks like). Rest of the time on PTS I spend in my house with aTransmute Station, an enchanting station, an aetherial well and some dummies.

^^^ This. I don't mind going to a new DLC or chapter zone on the PTS to get a glimpse of it, but I don't want to explore it in any detail, and I certainly don't want to do all of the quests.

This chapter is a little bit different for me, because this time I actually do want to do the Tales of Tribute tutorial and play a few hands against the NPCs so I won't be totally in the dark about how to play.

ADarklore

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I'm dealing with college finals or else I'd be on there everyday, I imagine others are too.

Typically PTS population and feedback dies out around the weekend then a huge storm hits at the beginning of the week when notes drop again.

But therein lies the problem, even when PTS hit... there was hardly any people posting. I'm used to people posting heavily on feedback posts immediately, but this time there were feedback threads that weren't touched for DAYS, even now some are only one page. It's the first 'chapter' PTS I've ever seen that has such low participation.

MashmalloMan

ADarklore wrote: »

show previous quotes

MashmalloMan wrote: »

I'm dealing with college finals or else I'd be on there everyday, I imagine others are too.

Typically PTS population and feedback dies out around the weekend then a huge storm hits at the beginning of the week when notes drop again.

But therein lies the problem, even when PTS hit... there was hardly any people posting. I'm used to people posting heavily on feedback posts immediately, but this time there were feedback threads that weren't touched for DAYS, even now some are only one page. It's the first 'chapter' PTS I've ever seen that has such low participation.

Idk about that, rage is what fuels the most feedback and discussion. The notes were pretty tame this patch and more general changes were made that don't effect specific classes or playstyles. Sets were barely touched. Meta's weren't shifted. We weren't given hybrid sets, skills or anything like that. Tales of Tribute doesn't effect most of the playerbase, it doesn't gate keep gear so it's just there as a recreational option.

Here's my take:

The biggest concerns I see are Warden nerfs, unhappy customers that don't want Tales of Tribute this year, the fact that DK remains in the same state from live, Oaken mythic and maybe PVP healing remaining untouched.

If a bunch of sets and classes were nerfed, we'd see the forums busy, but even ZOS said this patch would be largely just improving unused morph power and thats basically what they did.

• Warden complaints are buzzing in the right threads.
• People who don't want Tales of Tribute have already complained about it for weeks. Our voices are most likely heard and they're in other forums, unless you're playing Tales of Tribute, it doesn't make much sense to keep complaining about it here. Whats done is done - if you're unhappy about it, vote with your wallet and wait for next chapter.
• With nothing being done to DK and their intent this patch not being on nerfs, many have just given up, realizing we'll have to live with them until Fall 2022. I mean whats there to discuss here, what changes would actually pinpoint the problem when it's an issue that came about over 3 patches of improvements to them?
• Oaken has discussion going on, but it's hard to say if it's OP or not since it kills a bar. I think a lot of people still need to test this before they make valid arguements against or for it.
• PVP healing hasn't even been recognized as a problem from ZOS. They're not going to randomly come up with a way to reduce it or pinpoint the issue in the coming weeks if they haven't already(imo, it's off healing).

TLDR: If something wasn't changed in the first week that effects a large playstyle, people tend to give up and wait for the next DLC because we've grown to realize what you get in the first patch usually stays until release. I'd hope to see a lot of Warden discussion so they can revert those awful changes.

redspecter23

I've been on PTS the last few days, mostly playing Tribute to test for bugs and balance. I'm probably at about 200 games against the CPU and maybe 10 against players so far. I've reported numerous bugs through the bug report in game as well as supplied some feedback on the card game as a whole.

In addition, I did a loop around the islands just to have a look. I didn't notice the empty areas people are talking about, but it was just a quick look so maybe I missed it. I'll save the questing and trial to do once it's on live as I only plan on doing the quests once. I don't want it spoiled in advance.

I save the parsing and combat changes to the professionals and read what they have to say later. My amateur view on the new mythics and combat changes is that nothing seems especially egregious as far as nerfs go. The Mora shoulder will have players farming lore books on multiple toons. The overall annoyance of that will be much more apparent on live when people realize the massive grind that will be on up to 18 toons, especially the Cyrodiil exclusive books.

The one thing I'm always interested in testing, but can never actually test is the antiquities lead drops. They don't tell us the locations, probably for good reason, but that makes it impossible to test if they are actually dropping which leads to a broken lead in nearly every update as it's not something players can reliably test for bugs on PTS. ZOS, if you're reading this, please have someone internally actually go collect each lead on PTS to make sure they actually drop. You know the locations. You can do the testing. I'm not going to guess at drop locations.

James-Wayne

Been mostly playing Tribute but will explore other things after a few PTS patches, the zone itself is really dead of life but with WFH like last year that got updated in a few patches so will wait.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

aaisoaho wrote: »

I personally try to avoid spoiling the content itself on the PTS, so I can fully enjoy the experience on the launch day.

I’m the other way around. I’d rather go through the story on the PTS because then I’m not trying to dodge spoilers in zone chat or on the forums. It’s also much more immersive when there aren’t hundreds of people flooding the place.

Yes, it’s a buggy mess, but how is that different from live?

duagloth

Pts is basically just a heads up for what's going live. I'm used to beta testing on the live server, been doing it for years /s

Dark_Lord_Kuro

Many reason could explain
-The patch is not changing a lot of stuff as usual chapter patch, or even the last one for that matter so some poeple that the play style is unaffected wont bootter testing stuff they arrent affected with

- what few change seem to be controversial are contained whithin their own tread as it should be

-some people are still mad about awa even though that ship as sailed and isnt comming back. So i can see them not testing on pts or even playing on live for that matter

-some people seem to be angry that zos added a card game in eso, even tough tavern game where mentioned in the "what do you want added to eso" type of thread for year. Because they arent interested by it, they think ist a bad addition and arent testing it or are in the general discussion complaining they arent getting something else this year

-some people are in their house playing card or revitalizing there relation with their dummy

ADarklore

Or... the people who usually jump on PTS to test the upcoming DLC that they pre-ordered or intend to buy, have already decided they are not buying it so don't care to bother getting into it.