A dying Game - What will ZOS do?

ATomiX69

Its not dying its just the usual ups and downs post expansion when a controversial patch hits. Theres plenty of casuals and roleplayers who are keeping eso profitable dont worry.

lardvader

Narvuntien wrote: »

*sigh* the dying game rhetoric is back [snip]

I am having flashbacks to the Morrowind patch.

So much this! Been playing the game for about a month now after a good 18 months break. The outcry on the forums brought some flashbacks from the Morrowind release.

I decided to install the game because of AwA. Apparently that is one of the worst things zos have done to the game.....

This community.....

[edited to remove quote]

nb_rich

I play on playstation NA so i did not get a chance to experience the update yet but I can definitely agree it feels like the game is dying for people that like to do group activities like trials and PvP. On playstation NA Craglorn is now always dead. Mid day or afternoon pug groups cant even fill dps spots and it feels like ive played with everyone that be in Craglorn lol. Now what people are doing on playstation is creating huge party chats and messaging on there to form groups.

I feel like ESO is trying to go the FFXIV route and be more focused on the story and solo play instead of group play. On playstation Craglorn and trial groups and PvP does not have as many people as it did a couple of years ago, but no matter what zone you go to or what quest you are doing, someone else is there doing it to. Seems as if more of the community likes solo play and maybe lowering our damage makes it more fun for those people that like solo since they can’t run through all the enemies as fast.

Im probably wrong but I just don’t want to see the game die lol and im curious to see if they will make any updated before it comes to console and what impact it will have on the console community since we a smaller community compared to PC

JKorr

lardvader wrote: »

Narvuntien wrote: »

*sigh* the dying game rhetoric is back [snip]

I am having flashbacks to the Morrowind patch.

So much this! Been playing the game for about a month now after a good 18 months break. The outcry on the forums brought some flashbacks from the Morrowind release.

I decided to install the game because of AwA. Apparently that is one of the worst things zos have done to the game.....

This community.....

To be fair, for those players with alts, who actually want to do the content with those alts, AwA *is* one of the worst things ZOS has done to the game.

I made a new alt. The instant she steps into the game she is a grandmaster crafter, hears "You were there to stop Thallick opening the portal", "You were at Faldar's Tooth when..." For Divine's sake people, she still has her coldharbor pjs and isn't sure which end of a weapon to hold, why on Nirn do you think she's some kind of exalted champion...oh. AwA. Right. And that doesn't cover the quests that AWA borked to Oblivion and back. New alt went to rescue Tharn from Mannimarco's jail in coldharbor. Know the daedra that are supposed to appear out of the portals on the path up to Tharn? Yeah. If *any* of your characters has completed that quest before, the portals will appear, but no daedra show up. Other quests can't be done by alts at all because you've completed them once. That really sucks for those of us who actually want to do the quests again, either for completionist's sake or to pick a different dialog this time around.

[edited to remove quote]

lardvader

JKorr wrote: »

lardvader wrote: »

Narvuntien wrote: »

*sigh* the dying game rhetoric is back [snip]

I am having flashbacks to the Morrowind patch.

So much this! Been playing the game for about a month now after a good 18 months break. The outcry on the forums brought some flashbacks from the Morrowind release.

I decided to install the game because of AwA. Apparently that is one of the worst things zos have done to the game.....

This community.....

To be fair, for those players with alts, who actually want to do the content with those alts, AwA *is* one of the worst things ZOS has done to the game.

I made a new alt. The instant she steps into the game she is a grandmaster crafter, hears "You were there to stop Thallick opening the portal", "You were at Faldar's Tooth when..." For Divine's sake people, she still has her coldharbor pjs and isn't sure which end of a weapon to hold, why on Nirn do you think she's some kind of exalted champion...oh. AwA. Right. And that doesn't cover the quests that AWA borked to Oblivion and back. New alt went to rescue Tharn from Mannimarco's jail in coldharbor. Know the daedra that are supposed to appear out of the portals on the path up to Tharn? Yeah. If *any* of your characters has completed that quest before, the portals will appear, but no daedra show up. Other quests can't be done by alts at all because you've completed them once. That really sucks for those of us who actually want to do the quests again, either for completionist's sake or to pick a different dialog this time around.

Yes I can understand the frustration but I also have the point of view from an altoholic with 18 maxed out characters on my main account. AwA has been a blessing for me because now I can use any alt and still have achievement progression not feeling forced to play my main. All those hours grinding for monster trophies or long queues as DD for dungeons is finally over.

You do have valid points and I can understand that it is less desirable. But like Tamriel One I think it is more qol to it than not.

[edited to remove quote]

CombatCoati

It is of course exaggarating to say the game is dying by the numbers one can see in steam charts.

What can be seen imho is that ZOS did not manage to keep all those customers they gained at the beginning of 2020, especially the huge boost in April 2020.
I think it is safe to say that a good portion of that gain was due to the pandemia and the resulting lockdowns, so it can be expected that the effect won't last forever and numbers will inevitably drop again, no matter the further development of the game.

So not everything that can be seen in the chart lies in the hands of ZOS - but nevertheless I wonder what the chart would have looked like if

- we got an implementation of AwA that did not alienate a huge bulk of the playerbase
- got an expansion with a new class and/or a new weapon as a main feature instead of a card game
- got a well thought out and skillfully executed balancing patch in Q3 with a profound and well explained reasoning behind the changes having players say "Yes, I see the point and the necessity for those adjustments and thus can live with the changes, even if I am impacted negativly by some of them to a certain degree"

Hvíthákarl

Aside from the fact that this report is unreliable due to only taking account of Steam-bound accounts (which others have pointed out), it has been a minor loss.

Still won't defend this *** update, tho. But facts are facts

Elsonso

Nestor wrote: »

Every Patch the Game "dies"

So this game has died 35 times now. Yet here we are still playing.

Every major combat patch puts a hit on DPS. And DPS floats back up over a few weeks as things are corrected on the backend and players use different skills and gear.

I used to think this way, and on some level, it is accurate. However, my concern is that the development team becomes accustomed to the "crying wolf" and subsequently doesn't notice that they actually did do something that "kills" the game.

It was that Tweet from Lambert that made me start thinking this way, coupled with the less than optimal manner by which they handled communication in this update.

Death by 1000 cuts...

sbr32

Tenthirty2 wrote: »

I play mostly in the evenings, PC\NA EST and each night this week my home zone of N. Elsweyr has been very busy.
Last night shockingly so, both the crafting area and dragon fights were claustrophobic lol.
High Isle also, a LOT of ppl at vents and WBs.
I have no idea why as I'd expected much quieter zones, especially during weeknights when it's not terribly busy.

"Dying Game" more like Dramatic Hyperbole

Every zone, except the PvP zones, have multiple instances. You won't notice any population changes in the open world until the number drop so far that they can't even fill a single instance, which is extremely unlikely even if the general population falls dramatically.

kringled_1

DreamyLu wrote: »

Those figures tells about players using ESO via Steam (and on a side note, there are cycles: in 2019 it was even less than now). They are far away from global ESO figures.
Think about it: 15 millions ESO copies in 2020... here we see numbers in range of 15k... A droplet in the ocean... Nothing concrete can be taken out of those re health of the game.

On my opinion, those figures reflect the known fact that many ESO users were unsatisfied playing ESO via Steam and did quit Steam in order to play ESO as a standalone. Alone in this forum, there were many - many - threads about the issue.

I don't really have a good reason to think the Steam subset of players is not representative of the PC population as a whole. While there were certainly lots Steam specific login issues in the past (2018), that hasn't continued.

Mik195

kringled_1 wrote: »

DreamyLu wrote: »

Those figures tells about players using ESO via Steam (and on a side note, there are cycles: in 2019 it was even less than now). They are far away from global ESO figures.
Think about it: 15 millions ESO copies in 2020... here we see numbers in range of 15k... A droplet in the ocean... Nothing concrete can be taken out of those re health of the game.

On my opinion, those figures reflect the known fact that many ESO users were unsatisfied playing ESO via Steam and did quit Steam in order to play ESO as a standalone. Alone in this forum, there were many - many - threads about the issue.

I don't really have a good reason to think the Steam subset of players is not representative of the PC population as a whole. While there were certainly lots Steam specific login issues in the past (2018), that hasn't continued.

I don't think Steam is a good representation of the entire population and if I was reporting on this in a study, I'd be including heavy caveats and limitations.

If you quit ESO on PC, you can pick up WoW or that Star Wars MMO or New World or any of the other big MMO-type games, but console doesn't have all those options. So Steam doesn't give good insight into the console decision process and ZOS has said in the past that the 3 platforms have roughly the same number of players.

Dark_Lord_Kuro

Some stuff is happening in the mmo scene this week.
Ff14 received its 6.2 patch this week many are going back for new raid, new dungeon difficulty, story quest and the island sanctuary.

As we know eso is launching 2 dungeon with some questionable at best ballance change

Gw2 also lauched on steam so at least some steam player could be trying it out and i heard they were celebrating their 10th anniversary

In a few day wow wotlk classic prepatch event will start i could see some people being in prep mode this week

On top of that the steam data doesnt represent the majority, as it exlude all eso launcher player, stadia player and console player

Vevvev

Tandor wrote: »

I'd be surprised if Steam logins accounted for more than 10% of PC players, who in turn are believed to account for about a third of the overall playerbase. Any moving trends in the Steam charts don't really tell us anything about the state of the game.

It doesn't represent all possible ways to play ESO, but is a good way to follow trends and popularity. Don't believe the numbers as is of course, but if you start seeing growth and decline, especially if the decline is during a time it just wasn't steam dying causing people to get kicked out, it means something good or bad happened.

It's more a tool to gauge popularity on PC.

Auldwulfe

lardvader wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

lardvader wrote: »

Narvuntien wrote: »

*sigh* the dying game rhetoric is back [snip]

I am having flashbacks to the Morrowind patch.

So much this! Been playing the game for about a month now after a good 18 months break. The outcry on the forums brought some flashbacks from the Morrowind release.

I decided to install the game because of AwA. Apparently that is one of the worst things zos have done to the game.....

This community.....

To be fair, for those players with alts, who actually want to do the content with those alts, AwA *is* one of the worst things ZOS has done to the game.

I made a new alt. The instant she steps into the game she is a grandmaster crafter, hears "You were there to stop Thallick opening the portal", "You were at Faldar's Tooth when..." For Divine's sake people, she still has her coldharbor pjs and isn't sure which end of a weapon to hold, why on Nirn do you think she's some kind of exalted champion...oh. AwA. Right. And that doesn't cover the quests that AWA borked to Oblivion and back. New alt went to rescue Tharn from Mannimarco's jail in coldharbor. Know the daedra that are supposed to appear out of the portals on the path up to Tharn? Yeah. If *any* of your characters has completed that quest before, the portals will appear, but no daedra show up. Other quests can't be done by alts at all because you've completed them once. That really sucks for those of us who actually want to do the quests again, either for completionist's sake or to pick a different dialog this time around.

Yes I can understand the frustration but I also have the point of view from an altoholic with 18 maxed out characters on my main account. AwA has been a blessing for me because now I can use any alt and still have achievement progression not feeling forced to play my main. All those hours grinding for monster trophies or long queues as DD for dungeons is finally over.

You do have valid points and I can understand that it is less desirable. But like Tamriel One I think it is more qol to it than not.

[edited to remove quote]

I see both sides, but every time my new alt opens a chest and gets the hidden Mirri bag, because my main got her favor thing..... well, it kind of does destroy the immersion.... why am I getting extra treasure from someone I don't even know?

Auldwulfe

Elsonso

Vevvev wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

I'd be surprised if Steam logins accounted for more than 10% of PC players, who in turn are believed to account for about a third of the overall playerbase. Any moving trends in the Steam charts don't really tell us anything about the state of the game.

It doesn't represent all possible ways to play ESO, but is a good way to follow trends and popularity. Don't believe the numbers as is of course, but if you start seeing growth and decline, especially if the decline is during a time it just wasn't steam dying causing people to get kicked out, it means something good or bad happened.

This. Accounting for situations unique to the platform, like a big new game, it certainly indicates trends over time.

danno8

Mik195 wrote: »

kringled_1 wrote: »

DreamyLu wrote: »

Those figures tells about players using ESO via Steam (and on a side note, there are cycles: in 2019 it was even less than now). They are far away from global ESO figures.
Think about it: 15 millions ESO copies in 2020... here we see numbers in range of 15k... A droplet in the ocean... Nothing concrete can be taken out of those re health of the game.

On my opinion, those figures reflect the known fact that many ESO users were unsatisfied playing ESO via Steam and did quit Steam in order to play ESO as a standalone. Alone in this forum, there were many - many - threads about the issue.

I don't really have a good reason to think the Steam subset of players is not representative of the PC population as a whole. While there were certainly lots Steam specific login issues in the past (2018), that hasn't continued.

I don't think Steam is a good representation of the entire population and 8f I was reporting on this in a study, I'd be including heavy caveats and limitations.

QIf you quit ESO on PC, you can pick up WoW or that Star Wars MMO or New World or any of the other big MMO-type games, but console doesn't have all those options. So Steam doesn't give good insight into the console decision process and ZOS has said in the past that the 3 platforms have roughly the same number of players.

Steamcharts is probably a good representation of PC trends. There is no reason to think that attitudes and sentiment on ESO Steam version is somehow different than ESO -non-steam launcher.

For consoles the effect is probably muted somewhat in magnitude, for the reasons you give. But likely the same general direction.

This all being said, I have looked at the chart pretty hard and do not see any real trend from the last few days at all. I very dislike the update, but I will not make up data interpretations that are just not there. The game has been declining from the covid boom for about a year, but other than that, not much change from U35...yet. We would have to see weeks or months of consistent downward trend from 8/22 to really draw any conclusions.

xthrshx

ESO has been dealt a deathblow. Will it die this year? No. It will bleed out slowly over time. But when people look back, this patch will absolutely be remembered as the beginning of the end for this game. I suspect it will go down in gaming history as one of the most egregious examples of shunning customer feedback.

Anyone who is in any guild can see this plain as day right now. I’m in both end-game raiding guilds getting trial trifectas and casual social guilds that do stuff like hunt world bosses and collect skyshards. They’re all dead. Side chat is dead. Discord is dead. Events aren’t filling up. Obviously core teams are dissolving. Call this “anecdotal” and dismiss it out of hand if you want, but the truth will bear out.

Kingsindarkness

xthrshx wrote: »

ESO has been dealt a deathblow. Will it die this year? No. It will bleed out slowly over time. But when people look back, this patch will absolutely be remembered as the beginning of the end for this game. I suspect it will go down in gaming history as one of the most egregious examples of shunning customer feedback.

Anyone who is in any guild can see this plain as day right now. I’m in both end-game raiding guilds getting trial trifectas and casual social guilds that do stuff like hunt world bosses and collect skyshards. They’re all dead. Side chat is dead. Discord is dead. Events aren’t filling up. Obviously core teams are dissolving. Call this “anecdotal” and dismiss it out of hand if you want, but the truth will bear out.

See statements like this can be laid out and there is no way to prove it right or wrong...that is why forum folks use this with such abandon.

This is what I know...ESO has been delivered about a jillion death blows since 2014, and Daggerfall and Riften are still packed on the weekends...my guild is still really healthy (Celebrating our 7th year anniversary this Thanksgiving!) and the forum community is completely different from the in game community.

I just feel like ESO is going to be around for a long time...I hope the end game community stays healthy, but even if it dosen't there is a lot to do and eventually I think the devs will restructure instead of just letting all that gorgeous content lie empty...I mean it would be in keeping with Zenimax moving away from the term MMO, but hey who really knows.

I know this is the second MMO I play that is suppose to be dead, and honestly I'm not worried a bit.

katorga

Since they consider the players "tiresome and disappointing", they are probably happy if the population declines.

kwinter

To me the first sign that eso is dying is when they don’t do a yearly chapter. I don’t really trust steam numbers.

Memory_In_Motion

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

MaraxusTheOrc wrote: »

I play on PC. I play directly through the ESO launcher.

Does Steam Charts reflect my play?
What about the people playing on Xbox?
The PlayStation user base?

A lot more people than 12,000 people play ESO. If anything, the steam chart is evidence of how few players play directly through Steam than “a dying game.”

The Steam Charts mean nothing as far as how a MMO is doing. Most people who play MMOs like ESO, WoW, BDO, etc, use the game's own launch to reduce lag and connectivity problems. Also many people will test out a MMO on Steam and if they like it, will dump Steam's version and use the MMO's own launcher.

starlizard70ub17_ESO wrote: »

MaraxusTheOrc wrote: »

I play on PC. I play directly through the ESO launcher.

Does Steam Charts reflect my play?
What about the people playing on Xbox?
The PlayStation user base?

A lot more people than 12,000 people play ESO. If anything, the steam chart is evidence of how few players play directly through Steam than “a dying game.”

The Steam Charts mean nothing as far as how a MMO is doing. Most people who play MMOs like ESO, WoW, BDO, etc, use the game's own launch to reduce lag and connectivity problems. Also many people will test out a MMO on Steam and if they like it, will dump Steam's version and use the MMO's own launcher.

Show me your proof of what many people do please. Thank you.

BalticBlues

ESO still is much too strong to die.
U35 is pure poison, but ESO will survive even this.
It is like in a band - even if the new lead guitar sucks, the songs are still beautiful.

KlauthWarthog

The game itself is not dying anytime soon.
My own interest on it, however, is on life support, and if u36 fails to deliver on the combat situation, I´m out for good... which won´t have any impact whatsoever on the game itself.

Dawnblade

Dying? Doubtful.

Decline? Certainly, and has been for several years according to every data point available.

The real question is has the game passed (or will it pass anytime soon) a threshold where the decline creates a negative feedback loop between revenue and new content such that they do not invest as much in content / maintenance, precipitating further declines, precipitating further cuts to content investments / maintenance, leading to a game that carries on in name only for the truly addicted to continue to play (and get milked in the cash shop).

alanmatillab16_ESO

The (same?) players were claiming the game was dead just after the patch that removed the stealth passive from Bosmer, there is always someone claiming the game is dying, some other game is going to kill ESO yadda yadda.

Then you have the ones posting Steam statistics as "proof" for a game that isn't just launched via Steam and is still available for purchase independently to Steam. They might as well say they read it in Tea Leaves, it would be just as accurate.

Arrodisia

Steam log ins are not the majority of the PC population. The same comments are in other game forums too.
Players have been saying the game is dying for years.Yet the game is still full of players, the devs are releasing new content, PC NA got new hardware and PC EU is getting new hardware as well.

Is everything optimal? No, but they haven't given up either. ESO always ends up back in the top 5 multiple times each year.

We're all human and humans adapt to the changes. Not all changes were bad. The nerfs were mostly reduced. It just seems like some people are making mountains out of molehills.

We can probably use some more bug fixes and possibly a couple more events towards the end of summer and early fall or maybe even only weekends. Maybe something with random fun buffs and each weekend could have 1 or 2 activities highlighted giving 2x's xp and double rewards. So everyone eventually gets a little something and maybe a portion of the players will try something new.

It's 2022 we have more capabilities to adapt than ever. Fun activities and more new friends lurk around every corner in this game whenever we have the desire to experience it all.

francesinhalover

MajorSnakeFox wrote: »

Steam's statistics show us a dying game. A new update and fewer players? Is this a warning signal for ZOS or do they continue to pretend that everything is fine?

What will ZOS do about it?
When will players get a statement about all the problems?
When will the community that funds this game be heard?

STEAMCHARTS: https://steamcharts.com/app/306130

Less players on march and may than this month.
Maybe 50/100 players left, thats it.

Amottica

Elsonso wrote: »

Nestor wrote: »

Every Patch the Game "dies"

So this game has died 35 times now. Yet here we are still playing.

Every major combat patch puts a hit on DPS. And DPS floats back up over a few weeks as things are corrected on the backend and players use different skills and gear.

I used to think this way, and on some level, it is accurate. However, my concern is that the development team becomes accustomed to the "crying wolf" and subsequently doesn't notice that they actually did do something that "kills" the game.

It was that Tweet from Lambert that made me start thinking this way, coupled with the less than optimal manner by which they handled communication in this update.

Death by 1000 cuts...

I think it has been eight years since this game launched. I recall checking out the forums back then and from time to time and would see threads claiming the game is dead or is dying. It seems ZeniMax has not managed to kill the game yet.

Eventually, the game will close down, but it does not seem to be anytime soon.

AvalonRanger

ESO is not dying game now, but I think that most of zealot MMOver have already left from ESO.
That's so predictable. ESO is more casual single action RPG rather than pure MMO game.
Because, it's a one of Elder Scrolls series. So developer can't ignore original "TES fan" people.

Personally, I think that ESO PVPver is more mysterious marketing than MMO zealot.
They regard themselves as true PVP lovers. But it's very doubtful. I think ESO PVPver
is "fake PVPver". Actually say, they're grinding game maniac rather than PVP zealot.

True PVPver will love Apex-Legend or Battlefield PVP type of game. Not like ESO.
Because, those type of game is NOT "character building only game".

According to youtube clip of Battlefield PVP, There're tremendous amount of diversity of
playing style has much of environmental passive effect. (Vehicle, Stealth tech, Clearing,
high strategy Field-Crafting, Weapon mech.) At least, not like boring Cyrodiil PVP.

Is it really meaningful to increase more cloning Cyrodiil PVP zone in this game?
From business view point, it's a nonsense idea. Because ESO engine doesn't have capability
to realize Battlefield quality sword and magic version combat game in ESO.
And moreover, most of TES fan are not interested in those contents.

Consider marketing situation, I think going casual direction of ESO will make sense.
Not best, but better.

notyuu

https://mmo-population.com/r/elderscrollsonline/stats

the population is considerbly lower than this time last year, but then again this time last year we still had full on covid lockdown so you have to factor that in and the population is still lower than pre-covid but not dying game levels of low, at least not yet, sure hope zos fixes this