We need a quality and bug fix update WAY more than any new dungeons or zones

worhello

Regardless of the differing opinions on U35's combat changes, I think it is fair to say that it also brought in a few new bugs in combat, and this latest update (U36) has brought in even more (DK buff stacking just a prominent one among many). In fact, the whole reason I'm making this post is because block has been broken.

This seems to me to be a result of a particular vision of how combat "should be", without enough resources to properly test all those changes, as new content (new zones, new dungeons, new trials) is constantly being pushed as well.

I, for one, would be completely happy with no new DLC dungeon in Q1 of next year, if U37 focused purely on bug fixes, stability, fixing performance issues (hiding pets/companions in towns is a good start, but trials and busy Cyro fights still tank FPS), and generally improving the Quality of Life for the players.

I would love to know the breakdown of how many players have actually finished any of the last 4-6 new dungeons even on normal, there's an achievement tracking it, so it's almost certainly data that ZOS has access to. Given the stories I see in other forums of people just leaving group if their random dungeon is a DLC one, I wouldn't be surprised if it's a very low percent of the active playerbase.

All of this is to say, we have LOADS of content as-is. We don't need more right now, we just need a game that's reliably playable.

To finish, in case you're thinking I'm some hater who just loves complaining about this game, I love ESO, I've spent a lot of time playing it! BUT, I won't be playing much at all for the next while...

Why play a game whose core features don't even work as intended?

Soarora

I totally agree. I’d be fine with missing 2 dungeons, a story dlc, even a chapter… if it meant the game was going to be fixed.

nina_skydancer

considering this is the second time in a month I have had to reinstall the game because of a zos patch. yes take an update off and fix the damn game

DMuehlhausen

Different teams that basically don't even communicate.

Please understand how companies like this work before saying we don't need something. These dungeons and zones were probably being drawn out during Greymoor or earlier. I wouldn't even be surprised if the story we are going through now wasn't thrown around at one point as being in the base game.

Bugs pop up all the time smack in the middle of development. You can't prepare for them you don't know where they are coming from. Especially now with the spaghetti code mess ESO (and any game that has been in development this long) is going to have. You change text or reward in a base game quest and it could potentially break current content.

Again though the development team making the new content and the team that fixes the issues aren't the same and there probably is almost no crossover.

worhello

This is really more of an executive question rather than development. There could easily be an executive move to stop or slow new content work for 3-6 months, in favour of quality. Or move devs from the content team to the quality team?

DMuehlhausen

worhello wrote: »

This is really more of an executive question rather than development. There could easily be an executive move to stop or slow new content work for 3-6 months, in favour of quality. Or move devs from the content team to the quality team?

That won't happen simply because they have said there will be X amount of new content each year. The part of the playerbase that wants fixes would be happy. The overwhelming majority of rremaining players that understand nothing is broken really (I don't consider the current issue as broken since it's created by a 3rd party app and it works fine if you turn it off) will then yell and scream they aren't getting the promised amount of content. You will see posts talking about legal action to sue ZoS cause they aren't keeping their promise of new content.

We could keep going down the rabbit hole, but it's just not worth it. You know what would happen, how it would go as it does over the slightest tweaks and changes. Just imagine it on a grand scale.

worhello

I'm more bothered by the block bug than the node detection one. As you say, you can disable the addon and those issues mostly go away). With the block bug though, you can end up looking like you're blocking, but you're not blocking. That's game-breaking, and will be fixed in 2 weeks. So in the meantime we're left with a game that has a core mechanic that's not working reliably...

At the same time, they've been consistently delivering that same cadence of content for the last 5+ years. If they made an announcement saying something to the effect of "we're doing a base game only update to improve everyone's lives, rather than doing a DLC dungeons pack, and then returning to our previous cadence", then I would be of the opinion that it would really help the game and its playerbase as a community.

DMuehlhausen

worhello wrote: »

I'm more bothered by the block bug than the node detection one. As you say, you can disable the addon and those issues mostly go away). With the block bug though, you can end up looking like you're blocking, but you're not blocking. That's game-breaking, and will be fixed in 2 weeks. So in the meantime we're left with a game that has a core mechanic that's not working reliably...

At the same time, they've been consistently delivering that same cadence of content for the last 5+ years. If they made an announcement saying something to the effect of "we're doing a base game only update to improve everyone's lives, rather than doing a DLC dungeons pack, and then returning to our previous cadence", then I would be of the opinion that it would really help the game and its playerbase as a community.

See though this is impossible. It can't happen, if they stopped putting out content on their cycle we would go 1 or 2 years a minimum without a new chapter, or other DLC content. There are people right now working on 2 or 3 chapters out. It's all based on timing. If you stop one then everything behind it is slowed.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wm-pZp_mi0

Watch the above video and imagine the cars as content updates. When they all move as they should it's fine, one slows down and chaos starts. That's why also adding lanes on highways doesn't reduce traffic.

The only way to fix the game, to what most people would want, would be to make ESO 2. Where you can rebuild all the systems from the ground up. That though would mean all the systems are redone and like Everquest to Everquest 2 the two games wouldn't be compatible and you would have to start all over. I think people would be more upset over that, than what they have now.

worhello

Projects can ALWAYS be de-/re-prioritized. That's normal practice in business. Yes it would be annoying for teams working on content to have to park it, but if a decision is made to prioritize quality, the team backlogs will be adjusted to fit that.

Alternatively, any capacity scheduled for 2024 Q1 DLC dungeons (picking a date a little further in the future so that it would probably only be starting development now), could be reassigned to a bug-fix update.

I disagree with you on the idea that the only way to fix the game is to make a new one. I see where you're coming from, but I don't think there's enough broken with the system to justify a completely rewrite, taking the game systems as they currently are. It's impossible to please everyone, but it should be possible to make sure that the game's systems work as intended reliably.

DMuehlhausen

worhello wrote: »

Projects can ALWAYS be de-/re-prioritized. That's normal practice in business. Yes it would be annoying for teams working on content to have to park it, but if a decision is made to prioritize quality, the team backlogs will be adjusted to fit that.

Alternatively, any capacity scheduled for 2024 Q1 DLC dungeons (picking a date a little further in the future so that it would probably only be starting development now), could be reassigned to a bug-fix update.

I disagree with you on the idea that the only way to fix the game is to make a new one. I see where you're coming from, but I don't think there's enough broken with the system to justify a completely rewrite, taking the game systems as they currently are. It's impossible to please everyone, but it should be possible to make sure that the game's systems work as intended reliably.

You're wrong. Trust me on this. The stuff that is coming out next year has been in development for at least 3 years. No it would create a backlog that would take literally years to recover from. Whatever the 23 Chapter is would probably be pushed to 24, and 24 to 25, then you might get a chapter at the start and end of 26 to catch back up.

Even zones like like the new one for Firesong took well over a year of development. This is even more true in todays world where everything has to be "perfect" which isn't possible or companies get destroyed for it. Look at Cyberpunk..it was in development for what 10+ years and it was still a buggy mess when it came out.

I'm sorry, but anybody who thinks game development is a quick 1 year cycle for stuff should have to go through mandatory training or something to understand game development.

Lets just look at a recent AAA title (to most). Diablo 3. It's development started 03 - 04 and was announced 06 or 07. Bashiok was doing weekly updates for almost a year. Then Blizzard split apart and Blizzard North was let go. Those people mostly went on to make Hellgate London. Jay Wilson took over on Diablo 3 and blew up most of it, but they launched May of 2012. The game was good, but all the hate for the RMAH and what not forced them to start "fixing the game". There were a couple updates, but mostly nothing new for 2 - 3 years to "fix the game" Reaper came out and basically everyone was happy. However, due to the delay and lack of new content the player base massively shrunk. they canceled the second expansion that was i the works and the game went into maintenance mode like 2019.

So to fix a game as small (comparatively) to ESO a 2 year delay killed the game. If they didn't launch anything new, and yes it would take more than 2 or 3 years to fully fix this game, people wouldn't stick it out. They would go find some new shiny MMO or game like Diablo 4 and play it. Maybe when ZoS announces a relaunch or something much like FFXIV did people come back but maybe not.

So yeah no, keep on the cycle they are on. Deal with issues as the come up and players need to understand how it works and you can't just "stop releasing content" to fix issues.

Tandor

So ZOS have to stop all development work while they wait for third party authors to update their addons? Meanwhile ZOS are implementing hotfixes for various issues at their end, and there's no reason to suppose that transferring art and story staff from the content team would result in any faster or even reliable fixing of bugs. Totally different skillsets.

worhello

Then what would be your solution to the fact that nearly every patch seems to introduce some major bug (defined as: function within the game does not work as intended, regardless of the presence or absence of third-party components), which takes a long time to be resolved (if ever)? If you were in charge of zos for a day (or however long it would take), to fix the quality of the product, how would you do it?

I want to try and be as constructive as possible. Changing the order of stuff in a backlog is a doable task, even if the timescale from the backlog change to customer delivery is longer than I would like. There are probably thousands of other options which I'm either unaware of, or discounting incorrectly

worhello

Tandor wrote: »

So ZOS have to stop all development work while they wait for third party authors to update their addons? Meanwhile ZOS are implementing hotfixes for various issues at their end, and there's no reason to suppose that transferring art and story staff from the content team would result in any faster or even reliable fixing of bugs. Totally different skillsets.

I'm not talking about the addon bug. I'm talking about block being broken. And ideally, these bugs should be caught by internal testing before it gets to customers. It should be a big deal if something like blocking is broken or working unreliably, rather than something that's nearly expected given that a new patch just dropped.

Tandor

worhello wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

So ZOS have to stop all development work while they wait for third party authors to update their addons? Meanwhile ZOS are implementing hotfixes for various issues at their end, and there's no reason to suppose that transferring art and story staff from the content team would result in any faster or even reliable fixing of bugs. Totally different skillsets.

I'm not talking about the addon bug. I'm talking about block being broken. And ideally, these bugs should be caught by internal testing before it gets to customers. It should be a big deal if something like blocking is broken or working unreliably, rather than something that's nearly expected given that a new patch just dropped.

That's already been acknowledged and is being worked on. Nothing would be gained by stopping development work in the meantime.

worhello

Tandor wrote: »

That's already been acknowledged and is being worked on. Nothing would be gained by stopping development work in the meantime.

For that bug no. But that's one bug among many, most of which are things people get annoyed by and don't report, or do report and get no answer for. A while spent working on the quality wouldn't go amiss I think

Grizzbeorn

worhello wrote: »

Or move devs from the content team to the quality team?

That would be like moving a pastry chef over to refrigerator repair.
They aren't the same things.

worhello

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

worhello wrote: »

Or move devs from the content team to the quality team?

That would be like moving a pastry chef over to refrigerator repair.
They aren't the same things.

Depends on the type of content. Combat is a type of content? My general thought was "devs who write code to add features, could be moved to write code to fix bugs"

UnabashedlyHonest

DMuehlhausen wrote: »

worhello wrote: »

I'm more bothered by the block bug than the node detection one. As you say, you can disable the addon and those issues mostly go away). With the block bug though, you can end up looking like you're blocking, but you're not blocking. That's game-breaking, and will be fixed in 2 weeks. So in the meantime we're left with a game that has a core mechanic that's not working reliably...

At the same time, they've been consistently delivering that same cadence of content for the last 5+ years. If they made an announcement saying something to the effect of "we're doing a base game only update to improve everyone's lives, rather than doing a DLC dungeons pack, and then returning to our previous cadence", then I would be of the opinion that it would really help the game and its playerbase as a community.

See though this is impossible. It can't happen, if they stopped putting out content on their cycle we would go 1 or 2 years a minimum without a new chapter, or other DLC content. There are people right now working on 2 or 3 chapters out. It's all based on timing. If you stop one then everything behind it is slowed.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wm-pZp_mi0

Watch the above video and imagine the cars as content updates. When they all move as they should it's fine, one slows down and chaos starts. That's why also adding lanes on highways doesn't reduce traffic.

The only way to fix the game, to what most people would want, would be to make ESO 2. Where you can rebuild all the systems from the ground up. That though would mean all the systems are redone and like Everquest to Everquest 2 the two games wouldn't be compatible and you would have to start all over. I think people would be more upset over that, than what they have now.

I would be totally fine with no new content for a year if ZOS actually did work on bringing cyrodiil back, performance and bug fixes for both PvE and PvP and bringing back 24 man group size and increasing the population caps in cyrodiil back to at least 150-250 players/faction.

I might even resub if they focused more on fixing these things rather than needless things like companions, card games, housing, costumes, reskinned mounts and emotes.

Oh, and putting a great deal more into customer relations and respectful customer support would go a long way as well. When people put the time in on the PTS to provide feedback they should be listened to rather than ignored.

deleted221106-002999

If we keep paying more for less that's exactly what we will keep getting.

Triplesixtyson

The anount of people who have completed the new dungeons on normal (ps/na) is less then 3%. So yeah, they could focus their time and energy on fixing/improving things and forget about new dungeons.

worhello

Comrade_Ogilvy wrote: »

If we keep paying more for less that's exactly what we will keep getting.

There's definitely a certain truth to this, but I'd like to try and encourage change positively (suggesting things), rather than negatively (not paying or even playing potentially). It's always an option though, and might even be needed!

Triplesixtyson wrote: »

The anount of people who have completed the new dungeons on normal (ps/na) is less then 3%. So yeah, they could focus their time and energy on fixing/improving things and forget about new dungeons.

That's probably not quite representative as that's probably including all people who own ESO, but it's still a really poor statistic...

ZOS_Suserial

Greetings,

We understand that people will not always agree and have their own opinions they want to express, but we also want the forums to be a constructive platform for ESO and its community. It’s all right to disagree or even debate with each other, but provoking conflict, baiting, inciting, mocking, antagonizing, trolling, etc. Is never acceptable in the official The Elder Scrolls Online community. This is a friendly reminder to remain on topic and civil when posting.

Thank you

YandereGirlfriend

I would imagine that, for a game as profitable as ESO, adding significant additional staff to the QA team would be a slam-dunk decision after the recent launch debacles.

That's also something that can be done without otherwise interrupting the flow of new content into the game.

Arthtur

Triplesixtyson wrote: »

The anount of people who have completed the new dungeons on normal (ps/na) is less then 3%. So yeah, they could focus their time and energy on fixing/improving things and forget about new dungeons.

So u just checked those achievements.
Lost Depths - 4.88% on normal, 2.35% on vet.
High Isle - Champion of High Isle - 5.35%, Savior of High Isle 3.75%.
Ascending Tide (dungeons before HI) - 8.49% on normal, 4.03% on vet. - more popular than chapter

Anyway... Only 1/20 of the playerbase even plays this game. Time to close it i guess. /s

Seriously, dont post % achievemenst without comparing it to other % achievements. 90% of players who own this game doesnt play anymore.... just because something has low % numbers doesnt mean only few players do it...

There are diffrent numbers too in "diffrent" category of the same game:
Lost Depths - 12.55% on normal, 6.52% on vet
High Isle - Champion 14.84%, Savior 8.95%. Trial in HI 10.68%
Ascending Tide - 20.14% on normal, 9.73% on vet.
Deadlands - Main story 19.93%, Hero (Savior) 15.21%

No matter the numbers, everywhere is the same - number of players doing zones and dlc dungeons is almost the same.

tonyblack

Be careful what you ask for. This year already light on content because of fixing cyrodiil, same was with greymoor, which was released in year of “performance” (while by the end of the year it became even worse than before). If past shows us anything it’s that less content doesn’t equal to better performance or less bugs.

redspecter23

Up until this point, I would have said that it wouldn't matter. ZOS has different teams on bugs and content. After U36? I've changed my mind. Get this game sorted, like yesterday. U36 was an absolute embarrassment in quality control in so many ways I lost count. Stop everything and get the game fixed, then keep people on top of it. It's starting to fall apart. If you can't release an update without breaking numerous things in the process including the ability for players to even log into the game for up to 2 weeks, you need to get that sorted.

Trobaka

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

I would imagine that, for a game as profitable as ESO, adding significant additional staff to the QA team would be a slam-dunk decision after the recent launch debacles.

That's also something that can be done without otherwise interrupting the flow of new content into the game.

Yes please!

worhello

Even with U35, it took a week or two for the Maelstrom Arena staff to be fixed. There definitely seems to have been a noticeable increase in patch-day bugs in the last few months

kargen27

Triplesixtyson wrote: »

The anount of people who have completed the new dungeons on normal (ps/na) is less then 3%. So yeah, they could focus their time and energy on fixing/improving things and forget about new dungeons.

The team that designs content isn't the same team that debugs and troubleshoots the game. They often do not even have the same skill sets. It isn't a matter of just switching them over to a different task.

Necrotech_Master

i dont think they should stop content output entirely, but put more meat into the content updates

i believe they could probably put the dungeon dlcs mixed in with the zone content

so instead of 2 dungeons separated from the chapter and from the dlc, they should be included

there should still be major patches where those dlcs were released, but should be QoL, bug fixes, stability etc

i would also kind of prefer them not doing the year long content updates, the small zone dlc and the chapter dont have to be part of the same story, as it feels like the same amount of content in say summerset is just getting divided out between 2 releases (not to mention this also causes an issue when playing content chronologically, if you have eso+ but didnt buy the chapter, you get the 2nd half of the story accessible before the first half and cant even finish it until the first half is available due to the epilogue quests)

Roztlin45

It is not out of the question to have new content/ added content to the existing areas AND bug fixes. A new focus on this game and IP would be a start. Apparently, ESO is on the back burner. A mostly useless card game, disaster updates, and botched patches over a two years period are starting to show. While ESO is not without merit, I would love to see it restored to summerset glory.