Every now and then I see the youtube algorithm putting someone like Nefas in my recommended and it makes me go "Oh yeah, there was this MMO I used to play. I wonder if they fixed anything." Then I go to the forums and check in and see that nothing has changed and rather than making me upset like it used to, I just think it's funny now.
Update 36 should have reverted update 35 [snip]. At this point I doubt even if update 37 fixed it all that people would return to the game because the momentum is just gone. The people that quit have mostly moved on and because ESO isn't exactly a new game it's going to be very tough to grow back that audience. Back in Morrowind, ESO was still relatively young so it only took two years to regrow the people it had lost at the end game level. Now I wonder if ESO will ever have more players than it had in the past. [snip] But even whales will stop whaling if all their nonwhale friends are quitting, so unless ZOS can pull a 180° and do what Final Fantasy did, I am only seeing "doom and gloom" for this game.
When I think back on ESO, all my good memories are from 4 years ago or earlier and I doubt I am alone on this. As a company this should be a major red flag to you because it means all that hype, the investments and all your exciting updates utterly failed to improve the game experience. Rather than living in this twitter ESO fam echo-chamber ZOS should have listened more to the unhappy customers, but instead they ignored feedback and censored the word "PvP" from twitch chat and pretended like everything was alright and communication means talking at the players, not to the players.
This is definitely a valuable case-study for other game companies, like Riot when their MMO drops.
NettleCarrier wrote: »I think people are forgetting that there's more to this game than just endgame trials. While I have done all vet trials, if this were my core focus in an MMO I would not have picked ESO to be my primary game for it. The bulk of the content in ESO is in collecting, questing, housing, etc. I think the only way to make trial players happy is to give a flat 20% damage increase across the board and call it a day. In a non-linear scaling game though this is a terrible thing to do.
NettleCarrier wrote: »I think people are forgetting that there's more to this game than just endgame trials. While I have done all vet trials, if this were my core focus in an MMO I would not have picked ESO to be my primary game for it. The bulk of the content in ESO is in collecting, questing, housing, etc. I think the only way to make trial players happy is to give a flat 20% damage increase across the board and call it a day. In a non-linear scaling game though this is a terrible thing to do.
SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »Housing is not for everybody and even then it's just a pay-to-win thing because all the good furniture is crownstore exclusive.
Have to heavily disagree with this. Love Housing but rarely buy anything from Crown store. All those in guilds who create amazing houses do so by using their imagination not money.
And as have said elsewhere, doing more vet progs than ever. So Update 35 had no effect.
But yes, has been a slow decrease in players in one of my guilds but this is mainly because people have real life to deal with, and so can’t necessarily focus on a game. And also being the first year people could go out & properly enjoy life after lockdown. Don’t know anyone who has left due to Update 35.
SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »Housing is not for everybody and even then it's just a pay-to-win thing because all the good furniture is crownstore exclusive.
Have to heavily disagree with this. Love Housing but rarely buy anything from Crown store. All those in guilds who create amazing houses do so by using their imagination not money.
And as have said elsewhere, doing more vet progs than ever. So Update 35 had no effect.
But yes, has been a slow decrease in players in one of my guilds but this is mainly because people have real life to deal with, and so can’t necessarily focus on a game. And also being the first year people could go out & properly enjoy life after lockdown. Don’t know anyone who has left due to Update 35.
First of all, when was the last time ZOS released a manor you could buy with gold? All of them are crownstore exclusive. The only gold options are the medium sized ones released once a year. Oh and then you need ESO+ to even get the full furnishing limit. Did you know that all the good fires for your fireplaces are crownstore exclusive with no craftable alternative that actually burns and lights your home? Free to play options are just smoldering, are too large to fit into the fireplace or are so thematically charged that they clash with your house's theme unless your house matches their theme. Housing revolves around the crownstore and ESO+. You can make most houses look alright without paying money but it won't look great unless you pay up.
doesurmindglow wrote: »I mean, there's a lot of actual data points for people interested in them. This is a pretty damning one:
But this isn't a thread I intended to be about the larger context of data. It's just offering my anecdotal perspective as a guildmaster who's struggling to keep my guild alive, and a plea for developers to make that job just a little bit easier by recognizing and addressing actions that appear to be driving players away from their game.
SPR_of_HA_community wrote: »A lot of people make reviews 2-3 years ago and did not rewrite it.
In 2019 TESO was best MMO on market, now it is in very pure state ... (
So as example if my review is good, because I made it 3+ years ago, now I do not really think so after 2020+ year and U35 as example.
NettleCarrier wrote: »The bulk of the content in ESO is in collecting, questing, housing, etc.
I think, and correct me if I'm wrong here @doesurmindglow, the point was that the recent reviews haven't been mixed for a considerable time, but have been a stable positive (either "Very Positive" or even "Overwhelmingly Positive") for many years. You are also able to change a review of a game you've reviewed, so this mixed rating is from over 1000 reviews all being made within the past 30 days, possibly with some rewrites of reviews that were positive prior to this. If Steam reviews are any yardstick by which we can measure the game's health (and it could be, on account that it isn't the forums, or that's how the logic usually goes afaik), then those might be somewhat troublesome recent developments.
Darkstorne wrote: »Anecdotal, but yes, I'm only logging in for the luxury vendor every now and again since U35. Haven't run a single dungeon since that update, and have no intention of getting back into the game until a future update that corrects the mistakes made in U35. I keep up to date on the forums and PTS patch notes, hoping that day will arrive, because I really enjoyed this game.
If no future update arrives, that's fine. I won't resub, and won't start playing again. Guild Wars 2 and FF14 are providing my MMO fix now, and I'll be tempted to check out WoW again for Dragonflight sometime over the next year. New World is also beginning to shape up nicely. So it's not like the genre is struggling. It's just ZOS actively driving players away from their game and into the arms of their competition.
SPR_of_HA_community wrote: »A lot of people make reviews 2-3 years ago and did not rewrite it.
In 2019 TESO was best MMO on market, now it is in very pure state ... (
So as example if my review is good, because I made it 3+ years ago, now I do not really think so after 2020+ year and U35 as example.
I think, and correct me if I'm wrong here @doesurmindglow, the point was that the recent reviews haven't been mixed for a considerable time, but have been a stable positive (either "Very Positive" or even "Overwhelmingly Positive") for many years. You are also able to change a review of a game you've reviewed, so this mixed rating is from over 1000 reviews all being made within the past 30 days, possibly with some rewrites of reviews that were positive prior to this. If Steam reviews are any yardstick by which we can measure the game's health (and it could be, on account that it isn't the forums, or that's how the logic usually goes afaik), then those might be somewhat troublesome recent developments.