2023 Community Perception - Most Desired Aspect

Defending

With consideration to the various 2023 feature speculation threads, I made this poll in an attempt to provide a more higher-level visibility to both community and developers alike.

Instead of delving into the exact specifics, the question is:


In your personal opinion, which aspect of the game should rightfully deserve the most attention in 2023?


Some sub-examples for each of the aspects:

Content
• New class or skill lines
• More dungeons and trials
• More PvP content
• More exciting questlines and zones
• More furnishings and pets
• New Companion

Performance
• Smoother Cyrodiil Experience
• Rectification of gameplay related bugs
• Quality of life changes (for instance furnishing bag, guild finder text search box, etc)
• Improvement of Combat Animations and Sound Effects
• More "QA Testing" and feedback acknowledgement from alpha-beta


Reward Structure
• More cosmetics, mounts and furnishings from purely in-game efforts
• More exclusive appealing rewards (for instance only through fishing, % rare drop from bosses, or clearing the hardest group content)
• Recognition for veteran players (for instance more similar concepts like the year-specific Jubilee Cakes)
• More ESO Plus Benefits

Difficulty
• More competitive elements to suit player needs (for instance harder overland difficulty)
• More gold sinks (for instance some players have 9-digit gold figures with no challenge and nothing to look forward/spend on)
• More balanced PvP experience (for instance ranked PvP to prevent casual players from matching with the most experienced)
• In Game Tutorial for various game mechanics (for instance light attack weaving)

Feel free to list your additional thoughts in the comments.

Wishing you a great 2023 ahead.


Edit: Thank you for the responses. Added more examples from the comments below.

There is obviously work to be done, but hopefully this will facilitate gradual prioritization. Ultimately we are all here because of the love for the game.

Sarannah

Content

Have no real issues with anything, so the only thing I want is for the game to expand. More content is always welcome!

If I had to choose which type of content:
1: Companions... absolutely love these!
2: Classes... very refreshing to the gameplay(would also need more character slots)
3: Zones... As I love playing through zones.
4: More guilds/groups similar to fighters guild/psijjics/etc, including a specific skillline for them: Would love "The Blades", or morag tong, maybe different ashlander factions.

TaSheen

Content

Followed by performance for those who definitely face issues in pvp and pve endgame (neither of which is a thing I do, but it certainly needs to be improved for others!)

As for content, I'm really only interested in quests and story lines.

Elsonso

Content

Content. 2023 does not have a lot of meat on the bones, so we will see what they do. My expectation is that the Chapter will be pretty average for a Chapter, in terms of content, so 2023 will be a net reduction in content.

VaranisArano

PVE: Content

PVP: Performance, as there's no point to more content if it doesn't work.

Ashryn

Content

content...
But really, this was hard, because we unfortunately need all that was mentioned as all these issues have not been addressed for such a long time.

Fata1moose

Difficulty

Overland content isn’t engaging with the current difficulty so Vet overland is needed. After that I’d pick combat animation/sound overhaul. No not changing numbers arbitrarily combat team I mean actual improvements to combat. Make light and heavy attacks and skills convey more impact. Have characters turn towards the target instead of being off angle. Completely re-do the bow’s dinky animations to have more force behind the shots, arrows that actually impact the environment and make sound. Overhaul the sound design so not everything is just woosh noises, metal on metal, crushing blunt weapons, reverberating fireballs, crackling lightning, etc. Magic has unique death animations to humanoids, do the same for melee and bows, beheadings, arrows toppling opponents, etc (gore toggle for those that don’t want it just like Blade of Woe). Finally add new weapon types that carry forward combat improvements to impact. Namely spears, crossbows and spellsword (melee plus destruction in one hand).

After they make the game more engaging and feel better than going into delves, dungeons and overland content will be more fun and feel more rewarding.

The_Titan_Tim

Content

Small scale PvP content works and we definitely need more of it, if Cyrodiil isn’t going to get fixed, we at least need more alternatives.

Tandor

Content

The poll options can and should all be addressed, although if I have doubts about any one option it would be "Difficulty". Pursuing them all should not, however, be at the expense of content - which I fear is what is planned.

Elsonso

Content

Elsonso wrote: »

Content. 2023 does not have a lot of meat on the bones, so we will see what they do. My expectation is that the Chapter will be pretty average for a Chapter, in terms of content, so 2023 will be a net reduction in content.

I might have to revise this comment. I just started on the Firesong content this week... and... yeah... maybe ZOS does need to take a nice long break from quest content.

LadyLavina

Performance

Defending wrote: »

Performance

• Quality of life changes (for instance furnishing bag, guild finder text search box, etc)

They could even call it a Furnishing Warehouse. I'd kind of gripe about this if they monetized it, but I guess they could sell size increases for it as long as the initial one is at least like 500-750. Maybe tie it to ESO+ in regards to space doubling.

chessalavakia_ESO

Content

I'd lean strongly towards content as many of the other options could easily end up showing no significant benefits for most players.

SilverBride

Content

New content keeps things fresh.

katanagirl1

Performance

Mostly in Cyrodiil, but other content that is combat-heavy suffers from skills that don’t fire and from failed bar swaps. Gameplay need to be smooth and reliable.

BretonMage

Content

Content is the most desirable, as performance should be a given.

Sallymen

Reward Structure

Would love for their to be a new class thrown into the mix. Whether it be "Bard", "Monk", etc

Hopefully they will have more time to balance a class now that they are not worried throwing out four new dungeons a year.

Lumenn

I Can't really say which one is more important. As was said earlier they've all been ignored for so long. Whats more important? Your axle or your starter? Until they're both fixed you're SOL.

Rewards? A better system (possibly earned in game rather than crown store) could help the growing discontent about the ever expanding monetization of the company.

Performance? Game breaking bugs and flat out ignoring/mocking pvp issues for years with unmet promises always met with more "working on it" is.. questionable at best. 7 years and stuck in combat is still a thing. Same with housing/furniture/crafting. Too often a drop is bugged, it'll be the same bug as last chapter, reported, goes live anyway, and months later fixed. Just to be repeated next round. The whole thing needs help.

Content? Without it you're treading water at best. More options on class/race/skills. But that means more CONTENT and not a reskin of the old skill/skin/furniture. We don't need yet another banner. Let us make our own.

As was also said earlier difficulty might be the only one that isn't a priority. Many may want it, but I also don't think it should come at the expense of other issues.

This game, at it's core, is too good and has too much potential to be set back by such things.

merpins

Reward Structure

To be fair, all of these options are important for the game to succeed in the long-term. It needs a good chunk of new content with new systems to interact with that give you the ability to earn desirable rewards in-game, including but not limited to cosmetics. And in order to enjoy those things, performance needs to be good. It's simple. That's why WoW is still popular and online to this day. They do exactly that regularly, maybe not new systems to interact with but absolutely new content every year that adds more cosmetics you can earn.

I voted cosmetics because I think, out of the three options listed, it's the most detrimental to the game's health. There's a new video from Josh Strife Hayes that goes into detail about the practices that games like ESO are using, and why they are bad for a game's longevity. It's not designed to make the game better for players, but to make the game better for investors, that's why ESO doesn't have any meaningful cosmetics available in game without a year grind to get them. but I digress, I think a cosmetics and cash shop overhaul would be very good for the game's health, moreso than even a ton of content. Cause they could add a ton of new content, but that doesn't add long-term retention time to the game like going for cosmetics is, like in WoW as an example.

Elsonso

Content

I voted "Content"... major mistake. 10/10 would go back and change that vote, if I could.

After finishing Firesong and bringing the Legacy of the Bretons to a close, my one desire for 2023 is that they release stuff after it finishes beta and has been fixed instead of before. I did the whole Firesong main quest on Saturday, and that was even fighting numerous quest bugs and problems. For a bit, I thought I was going to have to give up and throw in the towel. I managed to force the main quest to progress by just doing the obvious and hoping someone at ZOS built enough slack in the quest that it would catch up. Twice.

In the end, I was happy that they gave away Firesong for free to people. The zone is great. The writing, predictable but also acceptable. The execution. Pttttthhhhhhhtttttt.

No more new content for me. Done with that ***. Nothing here for me until Fall of 2023, after y'all have alpha and beta tested it and they have delivered on at least a few Chapter patches and the thing is 50% off or better.

SilverBride

Content

I'm not surprised by the results so far.

DreamyLu

Can't vote, none of the options match for me, and I will repeat the same than in several other threads (sorry for that):
- Integration of the main addons into the game content
- Bugs fixing

Lady_Galadhiel

Reward Structure

I like shiny things.