A dying Game - What will ZOS do?

KilianDermoth

Dawnblade wrote: »

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).

It looks that exactly this seems to happen right now.

Just Look at the last 3 (at best) mediocre chapter updates. This Looks like the investment in new content goes down. Then I have the feeling that the crown store is filled with more and more stuff to milk as much as possible and the predatory gambling boxes are even more and more pushed than before.

Also seeing how they changed the pace to 4 DLCs a year and knowing that they increased the DLC pace of elder scrolls legends just before they discontinued it (while saying that it isn't planned to be discontinued) it looks like they just right now try to milk it as much as possible.

Then the update 35 could be explained as a low effort solution (maybe because of a steady decline) it just looks like we reached this negative feedback loop right now.

Let's see

fizzylu

AvalonRanger wrote: »

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.

First problem with all of this; you're comparing FPS tank and gun games to a third person sword and magic game. While both can be PVP, they are completely different styles of combat. Some people like the tanks and guns, some people like the swords and magics. I also have always considered the "character building" aspect to be apart of the PVP. Funnily enough.... ZOS has destroyed the creativity PVP players (any player, actually) can have with class building due to the homogenization of abilities and addition of OP proc sets/mythic items over the years. Also, the so called "fake PVPers" you mention have been BEGGING Zenimax to add more PVP features and to improve upon it for years now. ZOS has and will continue to ignore them for the exact direction you claim they should go; casual. I mean, seriously haha the "shiny" new feature for High Isle was a card game.... I don't know how a game can get anymore casual than that. Which is extra funny considering PVP was the games original selling point. Almost seems like they should've thought out how pinching pennies on things like the servers and releasing on console would limit the games possibilities AND stability. But I do agree that PVP players here should go play something else.... but not for the reasoning you listed. Well, except maybe the part about ESO's engine.... the game does run like it needs to be on life support.

I_killed_Vivec

Is it dead yet? Coz I was intending to play over the weekend...

KilianDermoth

No and probably even not next year.

wolfie1.0.

I have 50 accounts... all active. None use steam.

The game will probably only die once I become 25% of the active player base.

Gargath

ESO has probably one of the best player-friendly models of free to play, which will make it to last forever.

I'm sure there is still a bright future for this game.

BlueRaven

Bat wrote: »

I think we should also consider that during July and August, many people go on vacations because of "height of summer" time.

As someone who is currently in the Arctic Ocean, I can confirm this.

BlueRaven

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

I have 50 accounts... all active. None use steam.

The game will probably only die once I become 25% of the active player base.

And I have inventory tracking issues on one account…

Elsonso

Amottica wrote: »

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.

Yes, it has been eight years. More precisely, it has been 3072 days since Early Access launch. I have been here most of those days.

Every update that I can remember, I have said some form of what Nestor said above. Until this year. This year, I will not say that. This year is a third major shakeup, and a mysteriously disruptive one, at that. Their stated goals are not supported by their actions. Their actions work contrary to their stated goals. In response, they have backed off on things, while repeating things that add to confusion. There is a red flag on the play, but it is too soon to tell whether the flag is on the players or on the developers.

The reason I don't know is because, in all of this, I keep remembering different things Lambert would say in his streams. One of those surfaced in his now famous Tweet, but he was full of one liners. I don't want to weigh in on them, but they are educational. They provide insight into the thinking that might be behind how decisions are being made.

My point is that key people at ZOS seem like they are getting into a mode where they are used to seeing the "check engine light", but the engine is running how they want it to run. They think they can ignore it, so they continue to ignore it. Big Bang Theory reference. We are the "check engine light" for ESO.

I think that at some level, this mentality has arrived us at where we are with Update 35.

Update 35 isn't going to kill the game, but it is also not making it undeniably better.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

I have 50 accounts... all active.

🙇 Respect.

PDarkBHood

No, very far from dying, why?, because we keep it going. I disliked many of the changes especially to oakensoul, but I can live with its current form. I'm a stam-templar based character and yeah it now takes more time to kill things, which can be annoying, but the opposite is also true, it took seconds to kill many creatures, which was unsatisfying. I have renewed my eso+ membership for another year and see what happens by then.

oli.j.reillyb16_ESO

Gargath wrote: »

ESO has probably one of the best player-friendly models of free to play, which will make it to last forever.

I'm sure there is still a bright future for this game.

Quality satire - F2P - player friendly. LOL

The game that pretends the sub isn’t mandatory while making everything as arduous as possible without one. Borderline P2W patches full of overtuned gear sets and mythics.

4 years and counting of aggressive and unfinished changes rarely wanted or understood. Changes which repeatedly show a lack of respect for player time dedicated.

So friendly …

Gargath

oli.j.reillyb16_ESO wrote: »

Quality satire - F2P - player friendly. LOL

Very friendly in comparison with other MMOs I was playing, like swtor for example or guild wars 2.

ArchangelIsraphel

While I sympathise with the sentiments of those who are affected by the issues brought about by update 35, and I hate the fact that the devs yet again have not listened to those sentiments (Just as they did with the account wide achievements fiasco, where they ignored so many of us..) I hardly think the game is dying. It was quite crowded last night, and has been every night since update 35. In fact, it felt more crowded than after the account wide achievements debacle.

Update 35 isn't going to kill ESO just as Account Wide Achievements didn't kill it, but it certainly isn't good for the game or the players, and I would say that the devs really need to shape up and stop treating the player base the way they have.

Amottica

notyuu wrote: »

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

This is why I go back to 2019 for a clean comparison.

UnabashedlyHonest

Dawnblade wrote: »

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).

High Isle convinced me that ZOS is already reducing their inputs into the game on several very significant levels.

hiyde

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

I have 50 accounts... all active. None use steam.

The game will probably only die once I become 25% of the active player base.

Only 50? It's like you're not even trying, Wolfie...

YandereGirlfriend

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 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.

Wait, what? You're saying that because the consoles are basically a captive market (e.g. they have no other alternatives for MMOs, especially on XBOX) that they are somehow MORE representative of the game's population?

Yes, on PC people have many options for MMOs - that is precisely why it IS a good indication of how well the game is doing relative to its competing options. If the game is losing long-time players to other MMOs (chief among them FFXIV...) then that should be setting off all sorts of alarm bells for ZOS because it is direct market feedback that, when you put the two products side-by-side, they are losing that competition.

Arrodisia

Steam actually isn't a good representation of the entire PC population since only a small portion of PC players use steam. Every summer we go through this same debate at update release time and 2-4 weeks later the population is through the roof again.

Face it. This game isn't in milking territory yet. If it were just being milked they wouldn't bother to release new content, add new features or upgrade servers... Was this patch a bit hit and miss yes but it's nothing that can't be improved upon.

Some of us will come and go but ESO isn't going anywhere any time soon.

Jaraal

UnabashedlyHonest wrote: »

Dawnblade wrote: »

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).

High Isle convinced me that ZOS is already reducing their inputs into the game on several very significant levels.

One thing that stands out to me in this regard is public dungeon fragments.

Remember when they started the cool 'collect all the pieces and put together your reward' mechanic in Vvardenfell? Every chapter after that had a variation, from training dummies to gates, gowns, outfits, etc. Well, they stopped bothering with that on the Deadlands release, and High Isle doesn't have it either. Whether they didn't have time to implement it or they are just putting minimum effort into the DLCs now we'll never know. But it's yet another sign of decline in the overall health of the game.

rexagamemnon

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

I doubt that they have less data than you do on this subject showing that it was a bad choice they made and they are still went with it and are sticking to it anyways. Maybe things will change when it goes live on consoles and they get more bad news. But as it stands….they are ignoring it/you

Arrodisia

I'm seeing a bit of misinformation being spread about in this thread.

That's actually not true about the collectible items in High Isle public dungeon.

In the High Isle expansion, you can unlock the Coral Haj Mota Pet by collecting 25 Coral Haj Mota Decoys from the Spire Of The Crimson Coin and 25 Coral Haj Mota Lures from Ghost Haven Bay.

wolfie1.0.

hiyde wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

I have 50 accounts... all active. None use steam.

The game will probably only die once I become 25% of the active player base.

Only 50? It's like you're not even trying, Wolfie...

I don't count the FTP accounts... and I keep getting distracted by shiny objects 😀

wolfie1.0.

BlueRaven wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

I have 50 accounts... all active. None use steam.

The game will probably only die once I become 25% of the active player base.

And I have inventory tracking issues on one account…

What do you think started me down this path? Be wary my friend for alternative accounts provide access to many storage slots and once you get to 10... tis very very easy to fall into the infinite void of personal guild bank territory.

Especially when it's cheaper to buy a base game ESO account when using IRL funds than it is to sub to eso plus for a month.

TaSheen

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

BlueRaven wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

I have 50 accounts... all active. None use steam.

The game will probably only die once I become 25% of the active player base.

And I have inventory tracking issues on one account…

What do you think started me down this path? Be wary my friend for alternative accounts provide access to many storage slots and once you get to 10... tis very very easy to fall into the infinite void of personal guild bank territory.

Especially when it's cheaper to buy a base game ESO account when using IRL funds than it is to sub to eso plus for a month.

I only have three accounts here, but I had 10 (or so, don't really remember now) in WoW and RIFT years back. I used spreadsheets to track inventory....

YandereGirlfriend

Arrodisia wrote: »

Steam actually isn't a good representation of the entire PC population since only a small portion of PC players use steam. Every summer we go through this same debate at update release time and 2-4 weeks later the population is through the roof again.

Face it. This game isn't in milking territory yet. If it were just being milked they wouldn't bother to release new content, add new features or upgrade servers... Was this patch a bit hit and miss yes but it's nothing that can't be improved upon.

Some of us will come and go but ESO isn't going anywhere any time soon.

Where is this "only a small portion of PC players use steam" claim coming from?

Personally, I don't know anybody who doesn't use steam to launch the game. But that won't make me infer that, because I don't know anybody who uses the other launcher, that somehow they are a tiny minority. I understand it to be what it is - subjective perception.

So unless you have an actual source for that claim then it would probably be most conducive to discussion to cease making it.

LalMirchi

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

Games are always dying according to to soothsayers predicting Doom and Gloom, most often they're comically wrong.

Perhaps some serious perspective is needed rather than stats from Steam which does not really represent even a fraction of the playerbase?

YandereGirlfriend

LalMirchi wrote: »

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

Games are always dying according to to soothsayers predicting Doom and Gloom, most often they're comically wrong.

Perhaps some serious perspective is needed rather than stats from Steam which does not really represent even a fraction of the playerbase?

Another poster who claims that steam users are a tiny minority without citing any sources. Please show your work!

kargen27

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.....

[edited to remove quote]

Account wide achievements isn't one of the worst things they could do to the game. Not allowing players to opt out of account wide achievements is one of the worst things they could do to the game. Maybe the worst.

LalMirchi

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

LalMirchi wrote: »

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

Games are always dying according to to soothsayers predicting Doom and Gloom, most often they're comically wrong.

Perhaps some serious perspective is needed rather than stats from Steam which does not really represent even a fraction of the playerbase?

Another poster who claims that steam users are a tiny minority without citing any sources. Please show your work!

Work? I am comfortably retired so I have time to play games.

Without any scientific analysis I only base my opinion on what I recollect from this and other forums, ESO players seldom start their session with Steam even if they have Steam, just like me.

I have Steam for many other games and hoped to take the Steam Deck on vacation with me before ChipZizlla

danno8

Why are people talking about Steam being a large or small part of the total player base? That's not the point.

It's about TRENDS. Steam is only used to deduce trends, not total player base, and for that it needs only to be a reasonable sample size, which it is with 10's of thousands of logins per day, with little reason for population attitude variance, which I can't really think of any.