How would You rate year 2022 in ESO? PvE edition.

Araneae6537

2/10

I haven’t played High Isle and Galen yet. I went from being really into the game and playing a lot every day to really feeling betrayed with accountwide achievements (AWA), especially as it felt like I was loosing something to make room for some card game (ToT) shoehorned in that I couldn’t care less about.

I had felt generally positive about ESO at the end of 2021 and felt there had been some great quality-of-life improvements and I enjoyed last year’s dungeons.

In any such game there will be changes I like and changes I don’t and reasons I’ll take a break for a while, but this year is the first I cancelled my subscription and didn’t hardly log in for several months. The way AWA was handled, not only the implementation, but not addressing the concerns of the playerbase. I realize many will not understand why I felt so strongly about it, but the one comfort from the seemingly ignored feedback thread was seeing others who felt as I did, knowing I was not the only one.

Anyway, a level of trust, for me, was broken there, but still I missed the game, world, characters, friends. So I am easing back in, gradually… Maybe some level of trust can be regained next year, but I will contain the hope and enthusiasm I want to feel until I see…

Indriks were brought back, bringing much needed options for event rewards (especially since this year’s were very lackluster IMHO) and I got the Luminous Indrik I’d long wished for and hopefully the Dawnwood next quarter. So that gives +1 to my rating.

Dr_Con

If we remove all the bugs as a factor, I quite enjoyed Graven Deep and Coral Aerie, however I do feel that Vet Graven Deep needs a 650-700 CP req minimum for matchmade queues and the DPS I've been matchmade with typically agree. The Euphotic Gatekeeper wasn't much of a gatekeeper, it's when you get to the skeleton boss (Verzunon?) that the dungeon gets gatekept, as you can't damage him if the dps are too slow or he gets too big. Groups who respect mechs but lack dps can't complete that dungeon, so while I have faith that some groups can complete the final boss, it's the second boss that prevents matchmade groups from completing. All the side bosses were great though.

Coral Aerie was done very well, the bosses got progressively harder as they should in a dungeon and there was even a hidden final boss that you got access to after completing the dungeon. I like this format a lot. It contrasts with the previous dungeon (Graven Deep), which has a strict dps check on the second boss.

Not a fan of vDSR, I think they used Siobhan Finniss for the final boss as a voiceover but I could be wrong, either way I liked the voice acting. I mostly don't like all the running around, this trial can take forever.

Overland was nothing to write home about. There were many great sights and I think the public dungeon for the crimson coin was pretty cool. The prison island of Amenos was alright but they could have done more with the foot solder antagonists being the prison gangs of Amenos rather than the spooky sea elves (tbh I kind of hope they retcon the sea elves and make it seem like alchemy turned people into sea elves to start a larger conflict with pyandonea, while the next chapter distracts and makes EP look at Akavir, and DC eventually has to look to the north and the west for threats).

Overall, I rate Coral Aerie very positively, DSR neutral to negative, and graven deep mostly positive with the exception for the second main boss. The overland content just fills me with doubt to be honest so I rate this negatively.

On the flip side, older content seems more difficult which isn't so bad, until you realize that a lot of the difficulty of the game gets blamed on bugs. The current team needs to be more careful with core combat mechanics and push updates to PTS for people to test. Broken block shouldn't be that big of a deal in 2022, but it is.

Caligamy_ESO

3/10

I enjoyed the new vet dungeons.

Kiralyn2000

7/10

AwA was the main negative for me.

Lucozade85

1/10

As an endgame player I'd say this has been a terrible year.

Constant bugs - honestly too many to list
Bugs taking far too long to fix
U35 & 36
Card game? Why?
AwA
With the bugs, changes and lack of content there have been a large number of end game players leave, meaning the small endgame community got even smaller, making it more difficult to fill teams

It's now to the point that if my trial teams disband, I'm done with the game.

Destai

4/10

The new zones were really pretty and I liked the druid themed things like motifs that came with it. I also think the dungeons were pretty cool.

Aside from that, it was a sub par year for me.
1. Beginning early this year, I started noticing skills were taking more pushes to activate, if at all.
2. U35 has had a negative impact on the guilds I have been in for some time, as well as group finder
3. U36 further worsened the negative sentiment following U35
4. How the Q&A has been ignored.
5. ZOS leadership behavior on social media.
6. The zones, while pretty, felt very empty. Very little usable doors and chairs make it feel like it was rushed.
7. No earnable houses in the new content.
8. Both new zones suffer from AWA bugs on the skyshard hints. This was reported, a fix was supposedly made in U36. It was not and forum management has yet to clarify if they’ve seen this, 2 months later.

So overall, I enjoy the game but am increasingly frustrated with how the game is managed and concerned with release quality.

Everest_Lionheart

4/10

I’ve been replaying more base game content than playing newer content. I’m not interested in the card game. Still got through some hard mode content in spite of U35 and U36 bugs.

Mythic items don’t exactly feel mythical anymore, this has to be a balance issue between PvE and PvP. I don’t PvP myself but what I’ve read about the most promising item in the game, Oakensoul, and having theory crafted with it a bit myself taking a 25-30K DPS loss for the ease of use in the content that I run will never work. Does it raise the floor for lower tier? Absolutely. Does it raise the floor enough to make vet DLC trials and dungeons accessible to those same players? I’m going to give it a no. It’s missing a bit of damage to make it truly viable for the mid tier and endgame players and could use more survivability by adding major evasion which would probably wreck PvP again. Unless you are a NB or running daggers you have no other way to access this buff. Lots of endgame is already in daggers so the buff would be redundant but the people who need major evasion more than us endgamers are the low and mid tier or high ping players that don’t react as fast to the ground AOE’s that often kill them.

As for the good, I generally liked the story, extra companions, new assistants and new inventory pet (even if they cost crowns). I also appreciate that more mechanics were introduced in dungeons and trials though I feel like those should be implemented differently through an encounter like with the sigils in unhallowed grave or the boxed in Moongrave Fane. Trials going forward need similar introductory mechanics that should be skippable for seasoned players and those pushing trifectas. This would have been a better use of time than changing the length of dots and tweaking game mechanics like empower. Teaching mechanics through the game will do more for accessibility than adjusting any other numbers.

Overall the updates leave me felling kind of “meh” this year. Nothing particularly great, and other than bugs nothing particularly awful. There’s hope in the future that the developers really listen and interact more with the players. Not all of our ideas are good, but for sure the player base genuinely cares about the long term health of this game.

Necrotech_Master

7/10

Dr_Con wrote: »

If we remove all the bugs as a factor, I quite enjoyed Graven Deep and Coral Aerie, however I do feel that Vet Graven Deep needs a 650-700 CP req minimum for matchmade queues and the DPS I've been matchmade with typically agree. The Euphotic Gatekeeper wasn't much of a gatekeeper, it's when you get to the skeleton boss (Verzunon?) that the dungeon gets gatekept, as you can't damage him if the dps are too slow or he gets too big. Groups who respect mechs but lack dps can't complete that dungeon, so while I have faith that some groups can complete the final boss, it's the second boss that prevents matchmade groups from completing. All the side bosses were great though.

Coral Aerie was done very well, the bosses got progressively harder as they should in a dungeon and there was even a hidden final boss that you got access to after completing the dungeon. I like this format a lot. It contrasts with the previous dungeon (Graven Deep), which has a strict dps check on the second boss.

Not a fan of vDSR, I think they used Siobhan Finniss for the final boss as a voiceover but I could be wrong, either way I liked the voice acting. I mostly don't like all the running around, this trial can take forever.

Overland was nothing to write home about. There were many great sights and I think the public dungeon for the crimson coin was pretty cool. The prison island of Amenos was alright but they could have done more with the foot solder antagonists being the prison gangs of Amenos rather than the spooky sea elves (tbh I kind of hope they retcon the sea elves and make it seem like alchemy turned people into sea elves to start a larger conflict with pyandonea, while the next chapter distracts and makes EP look at Akavir, and DC eventually has to look to the north and the west for threats).

Overall, I rate Coral Aerie very positively, DSR neutral to negative, and graven deep mostly positive with the exception for the second main boss. The overland content just fills me with doubt to be honest so I rate this negatively.

On the flip side, older content seems more difficult which isn't so bad, until you realize that a lot of the difficulty of the game gets blamed on bugs. The current team needs to be more careful with core combat mechanics and push updates to PTS for people to test. Broken block shouldn't be that big of a deal in 2022, but it is.

i definitely agree with the 2nd main boss in graven deep, the hitbox becomes super wonky once it reaches "max size" and makes it very difficult to target with direct targeted attacks (aoes/cones still work fine, but it basically blocks use of all spammables outside of the templars jabs)

FluffyReachWitch

There were definitely some issues this year.

• Account Wide Achievements made exploring zones on multiple characters less rewarding, but those characters still need their skill points from quests and skyshards to be versatile. (At least for my goals.)
• The combat rebalance had too many sweeping nerfs rather than accomplishing the stated goal of reining in inflated high end DPS, and as a result endgame combat is more tedious.
• Special mention for making frost magic better but restricting the new buff to Wardens. I'm enjoying my frost Wardens now, but I would really prefer this to be accessible on all classes through a Destruction staff passive.
• The reports of bugs galore delayed my initial exploration of High Isle, and I still encountered hindering bugs specific to the zone when I finally got there. Some of them were not fixed until months after launch. Similarly, I haven’t set foot in the Firesong DLC yet because I’m waiting for things to settle down.
• Lead drop rates. How many times do I have to teach you this lesson, Gravelight Sentry?

As for the positives:

• The new dungeons were beautifully designed and fun to explore. I think there are some balance issues with a few of the bosses, especially given the combat nerfs, but they were still fun.
• It was wonderful that the hidden bosses in the dungeons were not locked behind an arbitrary headcount, like the hidden bosses in 2021. It would be great if they revisited the 2021 dungeons and removed those headcounts.
• High Isle has nice environments and feels like a good combination of Summerset and Glenumbra in terms of atmosphere.
• It was great to see some elaboration on the Druids of Galen Breton background lore from the ancient era of TES.

Mesite

8/10

If I didn't read the forums I would have had very little idea that AWA or U35 had happened. I have enjoyed the last couple of months as much if not more as I enjoyed the game 3 years ago.

tomofhyrule

3/10

I feel like the best way is to break it down piece by piece.

Dungeons:
Excellently done, as always. Honestly, I don't think the dungeons team has really had a bad one yet - some have been a bit irritating (Lair of Maarseslok), but the DLC dungeons are consistently a lot of fun. Kudos also to the art teams there, as the outfit styles and looks for those are always incredible. Those teams are always knocking it out of the park.

Trial:
As with the dungeons, Dreadsail was a definite banger. The encounters team is doing well. The one issue I have is that it's definitely the hardest of the DLC trials - groups that can clear other DLS trials with no issue can struggle in Dreadsail. It almost feels like some of the vDSR bosses are intense on the level of some earlier HMs.

Zones:
Both gorgeous, and I do find the druidic stuff interesting. It was especially fun to go somewhere where no mainline games hadn't explored. I was a bit disappointed that the so-called "year of the Bretons" did so little with the Breton nobility culture we know of and instead delved into the druidic areas, which did feel like it had a bit of overlap into the nice Reach delving we got two years ago. I would have also liked more on the Maormer (they could have an entire story to just themselves)

Story:
One word: Atrocious. Granted, I still need to do the Q4 line (I've noticed Q4 stories tend to be better than the Q2 one, so I hope that holds at least), but I cannot overstate how disappointed I was with the storyline. The story made no sense in the first place, and everyone's motivations fell apart with the least bit of thought. I was also disappointed that we were told the story would be 'political' like Orsinium and not a Daedric world-ending catastrophe, and we got something that, had the antagonist succeeded, would have affected the world as much as any of the Daedric plots from before. I would have preferred something much smaller-stakes and local, more like Orsinium.

Without going into too many spoilers, it was also obvious that ZOS favored one of the three alliances (or at least severely disfavored another of the three - two of the three got fancy costumes and we met recurring sea captains, whereas the third had only generic assets. I get some of that may be due to VA availability, but the result was that the story was completely nonsensical and relied too heavily on great leaps in logic had the villain succeeded.

Spoiler thoughts about the story:

Okay, really? So if the Ascendant Lord, who's foreshadowed ridiculously with the "it's always the one you least suspect" trope by making one character hitting everyone over the head with a sledgehammer about how much he 'hates violence', really got his way, he'd kill Ayrenn, Emeric, and... Jorunn's son? What, that's supposed to make Jorunn just abdicate? I mean, it's not like Jorunn's said to be on his deathbed, it's stated in game that he's literally just shacking up with some woman in Riften. Don't tell me that killing his son is going to do anything less than make him angry and then push even harder to take over.

Second, the last time they had a peace conference was on Stirk, during the Main Quest. What, we had to repeat part of the actual main quest here? And now, they're not even doing it on neutral territory! I get the whole "the All-Flags Navy launched from High Isle" angle, but you remember why they chose Stirk in the MQ? Because that was where the All-Flags Navy was founded. It's the same story! And guess what happened during the peace talks in the MQ - it was attacked by the main antagonist because he had all the alliance leaders in one place! In High Isle... they tried the same thing, but in Breton territory, and they didn't even have all three leaders! So Main Quest but worse.

Third, what's with the character choices? Kaleen as Emeric's captain makes sense, but Za'ji? He doesn't have a history with Ayrenn. She does have a history with Jimila, who was relegated to a side-quest on Amenos. It'd have fit a lot better with Jimila being the Dominion captain and Caska/Za'ji taking her and Oblan's place in the Skulltooth Coast objective. And Tsuzo... you had to give the Pact a new character? I get it that the Pact doesn't have any captains beyond One-Eye (who may or may not be a skeleton consigned to Coldharbour by then), but the Pact had great characters in Holgunn, Walks-in-Ash, and Vicecanon Heita-Meen, any of who could have filled that role. Again, I still don't understand why the leaders were there if they couldn't all have been there. It would have made it interesting if it had been close relatives invited after they were all burned during the Stirk conference - Irnskar along with Alwinarwe and Maraya.

Fourth, what, you give Ayrenn a beautiful new dress and Emeric a gorgeous robe, but Irnskar ends up with his default armor? He was even in the low-res Nord Armor for most of the story until he finally got the nicer Ancestral Nord for the battle, and then he went right back to the low-res one. Also Kaleen got the new pirate costume, Za'ji still has his unique one, and then Tsuzo is just thrown in defualt EP armor? Don't let your disinterest of one of the alliances show too hard, ZOS...

I will say that I was happy that our guide character(s) did not force us to follow them and check in once a quest stage like Eveli in Blackwood. I was also happy that we were not dumbed down to 'literally brainless' level like we had to for that line either, so that's a plus. Small comfort, but comfort nonetheless.

Tales of Tribute:
It's actually fun. I enjoy it as a diversion and it's nice to get a bunch of different goods in the reward boxes, but I don't like to play the PvP matches.

New Companions:
Meh, Basti's still my favorite. I have to say that Isobel reminds me a little too much of my ex, and I don't really need her around.

But where's the love for the old ones, ZOS? Isobel/Ember both got 3 quests apiece and gave us a physical letter as a furnishing. Basti and Mirri only had two quests and emailed me their letters, which was deleted by the mailbot 30 days later. I want to be able to display his letter to me as well. And Mirri got a bit more new dialogue, but Basti... It's been hard to shake the feeling that ZOS hates Basti particularly as much as many of the people on this forum do. Don't worry, bro, you can still hang with me.

I would like some Companion-specific levelling scrolls. We got the guild levellers in the Impresario, could we get something like that for standard levels? Getting them to 20 is painful.

Also as a sidenote, the new Companions in High Isle makes it so that Blackwood technially didn't have a unique 'Chapter Feature' like the other Chapters did...

Mythics:
Nothing special here. There are some OP ones that get nerfed because the players found out how to use it in ways that were unintended, and then are promptly nerfed in the next update. The most infuriating part of that is that players on PTS tend to call out OP items, are ignored, and then it promptly breaks meta until the next update where it is ever nerfed to or way past the same suggestions players on PTS originally made. Sometimes it would be nice if the developers would interact more with the PTS and listen to their concerns, as 90% of the time the problems found on PTS are then problems on Live.

I would say that it was nice that there are only two leads in treasure map chests instead of 14 like we normally get, but...

Other:
I love the fashion endgame, and I'm noticing that we got a lot fewer crafting motifs this year than we did previously. We've been getting more for events, but that's concerning for two reasons: 1) we only get one armor weight instead of three, and 2) the corresponding arms pack tends to be sold for Crowns.

I don't mind cosmetic monetization - definitely not as much as others on the forums - but that definitely feels like a step in the wrong direction.

U33:
I was highly disappointed by Account-wide Achievements. I got over that, but it really did hurt replayability of things on alts, especially with the zone completion. I cannot play without the 'Character Zone Tracker' addon at this point so I can still feel like my alts can complete zones. One thing that it did get me to do was try to get certain alts to get achievements for themselves, so at least I can say that they did something specific to their character. Still, I would have liked if they had allowed us something that was more like the Account Achievements addon rather than the combined mess it turned out to be. It's also disappointing that that was done destructively, as there is no way to revert that and fix zone completion on alts without deleting all zone completion data and asking us to redo it bit by bit.

U34:
Thank you for the Mundus in Armory, that really helped. I also am enjoying the quickslot wheel, but I do wish they would fix that bug where it can get stuck on screen during combat (yes, there's an addon for that). It would also have been extremely nice to get a PvP-specific wheel for the numerous siege, camps, repairs, tortes, etc. since the 8 slots is a bit small for the general wheel only.

U35:
Oof. Ok, so I only play tank in high-end content so the DPS nerfs didn't affect me directly, but they were catastrophic to the endgame community. I get it - DPS was getting out of hand very quickly and needed to be reined in, but the way it happened was miserable for all involved. Yes, when we have achievements like "Clear Rakkhat in under two lunar cycles" when now people can burn him in vMoL without going to the backroom one, it's a problem. People don't even know that Lunar Phase is a thing anymore - it may as well just be a room wipe DPS check since most leads will call a wipe if he's not dead by pad 6.

But still, the way it came out felt like the Combat Team has never spoken to the Dungeons/Trials team. Each successive new PvE thing that's come out has been tuned for the highest end of DPS, so Graven Deep and Dreadsail Reef were significantly harder than other dungeons or trials. And then it felt like most groups were kneecapped, almost like ZOS was intending that only 1% of the 1% should be able to do those.

The worst part is that it was intended to hurt the top and leave the lower-mid level alone, and the reality is that the top recovered quickly and the lower-mid level players are still struggling to get their damage back up.

Also the healing nerfs, while needed in PvP, are majorly problematic for PvE. In group content, there's only one or two healers pumping out heals, which now is significantly less healing over a longer time (since the DPS is lower), but the incoming damage is still the same. It was at the point where it was down to RNG whether your ground HoT would tick before Falgravn's room-wide DoT killed the players (since the boss' DoT still ticked with the old frequency, but the new HoTs ticked slower).

The way ZOS addressed this was also unhelpful. The problem was encounters were not lasting long enough. They nerfed the health of bosses by 10% and that's it - yes, now they could die faster (but not as fast as before since DPS loss was around 15-25%), but that only made the bosses die faster, which was the opposite of the goal. If anything, they should have nerfed the boss damage output instead of their health to keep the fights longer but also make it so the longer fights wouldn't lead to wipes due to the new healing ticks.

Accessibility is another buzzword that came out frequently - how accessible is the group content to players who don't play in groups. And all U35 did was force many of the endgame players to leave (after taking away their incentives to replay in U33), giving us fewer raid groups and leading endgame content to be much less accessible than it was before.

Again, my damage nerf was irrelevant since I tank. But I still feel the effects. It's harder to find people for runs, harder to find fills, people seem to care less about raiding... I have a prog group for vKAHM that I want to do so bad, and it was borderline before and now is struggling. I don't want to have to buy a carry for that just because my group gets tired of it and I can't find a group that can do enough damage.

U36:
Another oof. We were told that U36 would address some of the problems with group content inaccessibility by alleviating some PvE healing problems or rebalancing boss damage output, and all we got in terms of combat changes was pigeonholing Wardens into being frost mages.

But the biggest problem here was the bugs. Block is still bugged, and it had been since Firesong dropped on the 1st of November. We should hopefully getting a fix on Monday, but what if that's bad? No fix then for another three weeks due to the holidays. We should not have a core game mechanic bugged for over a month when the endgame community is already on its last legs from the 1-2 punch of U33 and U35.

Overall:
I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed by this year. There were a lot of times that it felt like the playerbase was being driven off, and the forums were exceptionally negative, even knowing what the forums are usually like.

I'm not leaving since there' sso much I can do. But I know so many people who, between bugs, lost DPS, apathy, the feeling that ZOS doesn't care, and other things, they're really only playing for a single reason. And once that single reason goes... so will they.

AllegedParadigm

5/10

My magcro remains pretty stable but the nerfs to my stamplar hurt pretty bad. I'm not the type to make more alts when the going gets rough so with combat changes being meh I've done less end game stuff and more questing.

FluffyBird

2/10

tomofhyrule wrote: »

It's been hard to shake the feeling that ZOS hates Basti particularly as much as many of the people on this forum do. Don't worry, bro, you can still hang with me.

Many, but not everyone! I love Bastian, he's not only my favorite companion, but one of my favorite ESO characters in general.
I can't stand Mirri though, but many adore her. Guess, that means that ZOS did a good job here, making companions such different people.

Also, great summary on story problems.

Anhedonie

1/10

2nd patch in ESO history that makes all of my endgame guilds to disband and quit. With me taking extended, maybe permanent break from ESO. How else would I rate it?

Treselegant

3/10

FluffyBird wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

It's been hard to shake the feeling that ZOS hates Basti particularly as much as many of the people on this forum do. Don't worry, bro, you can still hang with me.

Many, but not everyone! I love Bastian, he's not only my favorite companion, but one of my favorite ESO characters in general.
I can't stand Mirri though, but many adore her. Guess, that means that ZOS did a good job here, making companions such different people.

Also, great summary on story problems.

Not to go too far off topic here but yeah, I wish Zos would understand that people taking about their favourites and having discussions means that that the characters are engaging. No companion should be getting preferencial treatment where content is concerned because players have varied preferences. Part of my disatisfaction with this years content has been this feeling that player diversity in companion preference hadn't been respected and that a decision was made up top that 'everyone prefers female companions anyway' leading to a female majority companion roster and a complete lack of updates for our one male companion.

Basically, there's been a lack of thought here. Something that permiates the entire years content.

Tornaad

10/10

While there were certainly some bumps along the way, I was able to finally clear both Vet Maelstrom and Vet Vateshran Hallows so, I am excited.

AvalonRanger

4/10

ESO is forever 4/10 for me. Because I don't want to play 80's retro combat game like the ESO in 2022 year.
All of combat of ESO is extremely shallow and cheap compared with contemporary AAA game title.
I really hate every combat phase of ESO seriously.

But...It's OK.

Most important thing of ESO is traveling all of the Tamriel for me.
ESO combat is just "decoration".

kieso

5/10

5 😐

BahometZ

4/10

The narrative content was poor, questing not engaging, events average, frustrating grinds, despicable monetisation, combat changes were out of touch, endless bugs, bad patch after bad patch, but pretty art design and lots of resources put into selling colourful pixels to us. Lots of raiding friends left the game, had a guild and several raid teams collapse but enough good people held on that I could enjoy myself enough to stick around. I still like veteran trials and dungeons despite the constant bugs.

I have spent more time in other games this year than the last five, and notice play time is down in all my eso circles.

FluffWit

3/10

u35's combat changes made stuff a lot less fun for me.

Zone dlcs were good I guess.

Housing got really screwed with no town house we could buy with gold and only two new crown store houses added.

Dojohoda

1/10

A big ole goose egg. I still don't like awa, or cards, or wheels, or bugs, or innuendo. Whose idea was it make everyone touch glans to loot a volcano vent? Good story behind that or what? Did someone think that was funny? I don't what to hear it.

FakeFox

3/10

Dungeon and Raid content were pretty good, I especially liked Dread Sail Reef. Overland content was relatively uninteresting to me. The story was acceptable, but the "follow the arrow" quest design and non existent combat difficulty, as always, ruined it completely for me. Dailies and Companions were just a time gated grind with barely any reward. Combat balance reached an all time low, in my opinion. Scaling hybridization and DoT/HoT rework, completely removed what little class identity was left and dumbed down combat even more. Performance issues and bugs made endgame content absolutely unbearable for weeks at a time.

FluffyBird

2/10

I wonder whether we actually have a statistically representative sample of community here.

In the sense, is the average forum member the same person as average ESO player? Same PVE/PVP balance, same level of satisfaction with different aspects of the game? Or, if it's usually unhappiness of some sort that brings people here, there will be bias. Same if there are more burnt out vets than fresh excited Vestiges.

Treselegant

3/10

FluffyBird wrote: »

I wonder whether we actually have a statistically representative sample of community here.

In the sense, is the average forum member the same person as average ESO player? Same PVE/PVP balance, same level of satisfaction with different aspects of the game? Or, if it's usually unhappiness of some sort that brings people here, there will be bias. Same if there are more burnt out vets than fresh excited Vestiges.

The forum does skew heavily negative and it does have something of a reputation which likely keeps the less angry players from even coming here in the first place. Want to share some happy content? You're probably not going to come here to do that unless you're already comfortable posting. Then you've got the kind of things that get discussed here as big issues that I suspect barely flicker on the radar of the average player. I sometimes wonder how many average players are even aware of things like spellcrafting or vet overland as topics?

However, I will say that there does seem to have been a consistent malaise spread across all levels of the players in the last year. I've even seen usually happy casual players that normally roll though content minding their own business while making their own fan-content suddenly join the ranks of dissatisfied which is quite the feat. The writing quality appears to have been a huge sticking point for a lot of people.

The comments I've seen of very happy players are from those who either started very recently, with High Isle being their introduction to ESO, or longer term players who have a particular playstyle which has been unaffected by anything in the last year.

blktauna

4/10

While High Isle is beautiful, the furnishings nice and the layout nice, the story wwas really lame. So much potential there with all the leaders in one place yet...

Lady Arabella got old quick. I thought I'd enjoy her at the beginning but she was insufferable less that halfway through. I thought the two characters in the prologue were much more interesting and I'd have like to see more of the newly promoted Knight and that whole association.

The villain was stupid. That whole plot had so much potential and that's what they came up with. Seriously.

I learned basically nothing about Bretons from a chapter that was supposed to be all about them.

I know they've sort of sneakily switched to quests etc not opening up until you've done the main quest of the area, or some major portion of it, so 'I need to troll around on the on girl thats finished High Isle but it really seems quite sparse.

On a different note, I'm now getting lag spikes and rubberbanding in pve. No Bueno. I'm not seeing leads drop and I was getting a lot of enemies just full healing and resetting. ( no they were not tethered out to the end of their areas).

The card came is crap and I literally had to get an addon to shut up the shill.

I do like Ember and she compliments my stam toons nicely. I haven't unlocked Isobel yet.

The number of undealt with bugs is horrific. The number of pts reported bug that were released after being pointed out is horrific, U33-U36... horrific.

This offering just seemed to be a lot of wasted potential to me.

FluffyBird

2/10

Treselegant wrote: »

However, I will say that there does seem to have been a consistent malaise spread across all levels of the players in the last year. I've even seen usually happy casual players that normally roll though content minding their own business while making their own fan-content suddenly join the ranks of dissatisfied which is quite the feat. The writing quality appears to have been a huge sticking point for a lot of people.

Thanks, that's what I suspected. The writing quality was my point too. I'm here more for ES than O, so if stories get bad, then I'm not bothering with the rest.

Sailor_Palutena

2/10

This chapter was so bad, they couldn't even come with a good description for the zone.

You travel to Auridon and get a good description of how "the isle was a buffer between the continent and Summerset Isles, with the altmers hardened by years of repelling invaders, pirates and plagues"

Or maybe Rivenspire (my favorite), detailing the towering flinty crags, windswept moors, narrow canyons and how the people find the enviroment oppressive.

"if High Isle is the heart of business and politics, Galen is the archipelago's soul"
it does nothing for me, to picture the place.

KlauthWarthog

3/10

Lackluster storyline, terrain designed more to annoy than to impress, re-heated world bosses and dolmen mechanics, and we finally learned that, when the Prophet called the protagonist a "Vestige", he was talking about the protagonist's intellectual capacity on the upcoming stories.
Graven Deep and Shipwright's Regret were nice, Earthen Root was meh, Coral Aerie was, again, designed more to annoy than to entertain.
DSR was... eh. Mechanics were fine-ish, but story? I was more engaged and concerned with the consequences on Sanctum Ophidia, and that was... uh... 7 years ago?
So... yeah. Bad overall, but it could be worse. Somehow, I am inclined to believe that it will get worse.

dinokstrunz

2/10

Forgettable, bland, questionable balancing and dull [snip]

[edited for profanity bypass]

jtm1018

1/10

Eso 2022.

So very disappointing, in my xp.