Creative Director Message regarding U36 Disaster - We want to hear about the code rewrite.

React

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_MattFiror

It has officially been 10 months since the "January PVP update" post regarding the state of the game. In this post we were promised that zenimax would undertake a massive project to rewrite the base code of the game, that would allow them to actually make changes to the combat system and "fix" the performance problems that have plagued us for years. This was estimated to take "most of 2022". It is November, and the only comment we have received on this was from @ZOS_Kevin one month ago, essentially telling us that the development team did not have an update to share as of yet.

We want to know the progress that has been made on this project. We want to hear, from the developers or from our creative lead, where the project is at and when the projected completion date is.

Firesong was such an insanely minor patch compared to most eso patches - there were almost no changes made to combat, and very little content added to the game. Despite that, this launch was seemingly one of the most catastrophic in history. Siege breaking and making cyrodiil unplayable, dragonknight standard allowing 500k+ DPS, budding seeds healing exponentially, block bugging out in MULTIPLE ways as a result of a minor bugfix, and probably the most crash-laden patch we have seen to date.

These issues are evidence that the code rewrite is absolutely necessary.

I know I'm beating a dead horse with this section of this post, but PVP needs representation somewhere and this needs to be mentioned. We were told there would be zero PVP content added to the game while this project was underway, and by the time the Q1 2023 patch releases it will have been four years since our last PVP content came out in the form of one single BG map. This is so beyond unacceptable. We are in arguably one of the worst PVP meta we have had in years, and coupled with the lack of content on the horizon, the population is rapidly dying. Even on PC NA where the performance improved significantly with our server improvement, we are seeing some of the lowest populations we've ever seen. Amidst all this, zenimax made the decision to cancel the imperial city event, one of the only 3 PVP events we get yearly.

Almost every PVP player that I know has either quit, or is at their wits end with the state of the game. We need updates on this project, and we need to know what 2023 holds for PVP so we can decide where to go from here. We are customers and loyal supporters of your game, and we deserve better than we have been given.

Drammanoth

Uh... forget about it?

Amrite, aren't I...

LordxSaura

Very well said. I don`t know if there is anything that can be added to this post. I think it truly speaks to the PVP community.

I am going to say this, people who love to pvp in ESO, loves the game. For years, with ups and downs, they constantly played and support the game no matter what. I have never seen an any other mmo where the pvp had this many performance issues for exceeding amount of times and population stuck around this patiently for years. PVP`rs love this game so much that they have been still supporting and playing the game hoping for the better.

But I think those days are also coming to an end. PVP population became alarmingly low and game is bleeding players. Even the most passionate, biggest lovers of the game starting to quit.

However I dont think its too late yet..

I think clear communication with the pvp community would go a long way. Mainly, people started quitting because they feel super neglected and not seen in most cases.

Like React said, not having any communication about something that was initially promised can just be the final nail in the coffin.

We are not sure what is the future in ESO pvp is going to look like, but if there is one thing about MMOs, people will stop investing into something that does not promise any kind of future. Not communicating about the code rewrite which is directly related to the future of the game might be final nail in the coffin for most people.

Lets help each other, lets communicate, lets work for the common goals that we all want.

Marto

What exactly do you want to hear?

That sort of development is absolutely surrounded by NDAs, and everything they say might infringe or violate confidentiality agreements between Bethesda and other companies that provide middleware, hardware, or software.

And even if they could get authorization from dozens of people to actually detail the work being done, do you know enough of the technical jargon to understand half of their sentences? I'm sure some do, but I don't, and neither do most players.

A lot of that work is also released gradually. Don't expect it all to come in at once. It's not straightforward, and not even ZOS knows what effects it will have until it's properly tested in a variety of situations.

WiccaWitch

Marto wrote: »

What exactly do you want to hear?

That sort of development is absolutely surrounded by NDAs, and everything they say might infringe or violate confidentiality agreements between Bethesda and other companies that provide middleware, hardware, or software.

And even if they could get authorization from dozens of people to actually detail the work being done, do you know enough of the technical jargon to understand half of their sentences? I'm sure some do, but I don't, and neither do most players.

A lot of that work is also released gradually. Don't expect it all to come in at once. It's not straightforward, and not even ZOS knows what effects it will have until it's properly tested in a variety of situations.

You're missing the point.
We need SOME KIND of answer. it doesn't have to be in full details about their software adjustments in depth etc.
Something like "We are aware of the PvP state and we are still working on it, our apologies" is more than enough.
But ZoS is COMPLETELY ignoring whatever is left of our pvp community. and this is the problem.

KKolly

Marto wrote: »

What exactly do you want to hear?

That sort of development is absolutely surrounded by NDAs, and everything they say might infringe or violate confidentiality agreements between Bethesda and other companies that provide middleware, hardware, or software.

Be careful, speculation is against forum rules.

Marto wrote: »

And even if they could get authorization from dozens of people to actually detail the work being done, do you know enough of the technical jargon to understand half of their sentences? I'm sure some do, but I don't, and neither do most players.

Ah yes, the community that thrives on coding addons is collectively too stupid to understand technical jargon.

Marto

WiccaWitch wrote: »

You're missing the point.
We need SOME KIND of answer. it doesn't have to be in full details about their software adjustments in depth etc.
Something like "We are aware of the PvP state and we are still working on it, our apologies" is more than enough.
But ZoS is COMPLETELY ignoring whatever is left of our pvp community. and this is the problem.

You mean like when they said they were aware of the poor state of PVP and their inability to release new PVP content until performance is improved, and based on that they announced widespread code rewrites which would take a year or more of work?

ZOS 100% agrees with you when you say "These issues are evidence that the code rewrite is absolutely necessary", which is why they are working on a rewrite.

You're not asking for an update. You're asking for an acknowledgement of the issues. An acknowledgement we already got.

Amottica

There is already another active thread about this very same question and it seems to come up weekly even though Zenimax responds.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

I did answer this in another thread a few weeks ago, but I'll answer here as well. We don't have any updates to share at the moment regarding the re-architecture. However, when the team has more concrete info to share, we will. As you may know, this is a delicate process that takes time to make sure we get this right. So while we don't have any updates now, we hope to share more in the future.

But we are passing on that players are asking for updates around the re-architecture.

React

Marto wrote: »

You're not asking for an update. You're asking for an acknowledgement of the issues. An acknowledgement we already got.

I'm asking that they clarify the progress that has been made in 10 months on a projected year long project. Whether that is technical jargon, or "we estimate we're halfway/30%/etc done", most of the players like myself are looking for a definitive answer on how this project is going.

Marto, I don't know how long you've played eso for, but there was a year several years back that zenimax dubbed "the year of performance". They released a detailed roadmap about how they were going to fix performance during that year. Not only did most goals end up being pushed back patch to patch, but we ended that year with far worse performance than when we began and it has continually degraded since then. The only thing that has improved performance in the 7 years I've played ESO was the recent replacement of the PC NA servers, which we were also directly told by developers was not the problem, and would not improve performance.

It is not sufficient anymore to just accept that "they're working on it".

Amottica wrote: »

There is already another active thread about this very same question and it seems to come up weekly even though Zenimax responds.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

I did answer this in another thread a few weeks ago, but I'll answer here as well. We don't have any updates to share at the moment regarding the re-architecture. However, when the team has more concrete info to share, we will. As you may know, this is a delicate process that takes time to make sure we get this right. So while we don't have any updates now, we hope to share more in the future.

But we are passing on that players are asking for updates around the re-architecture.

I did cite this in the original post. Kevin's comment is one month old as of today, and we're only two months away from the 1 year mark since the original code rewrite post was released.

Rich's post today regarding the U36 disaster seems like exactly the appropriate time to request a real update on this project, as this disaster was evidently caused by the base code they are presumably working on.

Stridig

Meh.... just take the free pets and move along.

Amottica

React wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

There is already another active thread about this very same question and it seems to come up weekly even though Zenimax responds.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

I did answer this in another thread a few weeks ago, but I'll answer here as well. We don't have any updates to share at the moment regarding the re-architecture. However, when the team has more concrete info to share, we will. As you may know, this is a delicate process that takes time to make sure we get this right. So while we don't have any updates now, we hope to share more in the future.

But we are passing on that players are asking for updates around the re-architecture.

I did cite this in the original post. Kevin's comment is one month old as of today, and we're only two months away from the 1 year mark since the original code rewrite post was released.

Rich's post today regarding the U36 disaster seems like exactly the appropriate time to request real update on this project, as this disaster was evidently caused by the base code they are presumably working on.

Great. Considering Kevin's message about 20 days ago you are up to date on what Zenimax has to share with us. The next update with new information is likely to come in December.

Again, there is already an active thread requesting an update.

DMuehlhausen

There is absolutely no way a code rewrite will happen or even possible. the only option would be for ESO 2 and nothing carries over.

Destai

Marto wrote: »

What exactly do you want to hear?

That sort of development is absolutely surrounded by NDAs, and everything they say might infringe or violate confidentiality agreements between Bethesda and other companies that provide middleware, hardware, or software.

And even if they could get authorization from dozens of people to actually detail the work being done, do you know enough of the technical jargon to understand half of their sentences? I'm sure some do, but I don't, and neither do most players.

A lot of that work is also released gradually. Don't expect it all to come in at once. It's not straightforward, and not even ZOS knows what effects it will have until it's properly tested in a variety of situations.

I'm sure @ZOS_MattFiror could muster up a quarterly post here if he really wanted to. They don't need specifics or deeply technical jargon, just something showing they value communication, being held accountable, and are actually in fact working on it. They seem resistant to being held accountable, as evidenced by this here.

They can treat us like any other business stakeholder - respect us to have a list of open items and update them more reasonably. Across the board, that need isn't being met by anyone from ZOS that I can see.

Kingsindarkness

React wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_MattFiror

It has officially been 10 months since the "January PVP update" post regarding the state of the game. In this post we were promised that zenimax would undertake a massive project to rewrite the base code of the game, that would allow them to actually make changes to the combat system and "fix" the performance problems that have plagued us for years. This was estimated to take "most of 2022". It is November, and the only comment we have received on this was from @ZOS_Kevin one month ago, essentially telling us that the development team did not have an update to share as of yet.

So...asking for a friend.

What are your plans if they don't acquiesce to your demands?

React

Kingsindarkness wrote: »

React wrote: »

@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_MattFiror

It has officially been 10 months since the "January PVP update" post regarding the state of the game. In this post we were promised that zenimax would undertake a massive project to rewrite the base code of the game, that would allow them to actually make changes to the combat system and "fix" the performance problems that have plagued us for years. This was estimated to take "most of 2022". It is November, and the only comment we have received on this was from @ZOS_Kevin one month ago, essentially telling us that the development team did not have an update to share as of yet.

So...asking for a friend.

What are your plans if they don't acquiesce to your demands?

To continue asking for the updates that the community deserves, and to reflect how we're being treated when I speak publicly about the game on my stream. I know that you're trying to bait me into saying "I'll quit the game!" or some other bogus threat, but the reality is that any PVP player who is still here in 2022 loves the game and only wants what is best for it.

Katheriah

Amottica wrote: »

React wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

There is already another active thread about this very same question and it seems to come up weekly even though Zenimax responds.

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

I did answer this in another thread a few weeks ago, but I'll answer here as well. We don't have any updates to share at the moment regarding the re-architecture. However, when the team has more concrete info to share, we will. As you may know, this is a delicate process that takes time to make sure we get this right. So while we don't have any updates now, we hope to share more in the future.

But we are passing on that players are asking for updates around the re-architecture.

I did cite this in the original post. Kevin's comment is one month old as of today, and we're only two months away from the 1 year mark since the original code rewrite post was released.

Rich's post today regarding the U36 disaster seems like exactly the appropriate time to request real update on this project, as this disaster was evidently caused by the base code they are presumably working on.

Great. Considering Kevin's message about 20 days ago you are up to date on what Zenimax has to share with us. The next update with new information is likely to come in December.

Again, there is already an active thread requesting an update.

There's no update. 'It's in progress' is not an update.

An update is 'we're spending 50% of our dev capacity on it, are 80% done and we're hoping to get it live in Q2.' Or 'we have 2 people in the basement spending their spare time on it, but it's a mess so expect it no earlier than the 12th of April in 2035.' Or anything in between.

'It's in progress' means nothing.

spartaxoxo

They gave an update a month ago and said they'll break down what they can when they release it. I'm sure any update now would look exactly the same as it did then. I noticed you mentioned quarterly updates as being reasonable. The next one would be in a couple of months under that timetable.

Psiion

Greetings all,

As there is already an active and open thread on this subject, we have closed this thread down as a duplicate. Please refer to the currently open thread here to continue discussion on this topic.