All servers have now been upgraded - what is next?

React

We've been told time and time again that replacing the servers hardware was the first priority, and that this needed to be completed before we would see things like the code rewrite come to fruition. As of this week, all servers have completed their hardware upgrades.

It has been 19 months since the code rewrite was announced, and at the beginning we were told it would take up "most of a year". We were also told that there would be "no pvp content" until the work on the code rewrite was complete.

We're nearing 5 years now since the last PVP content was added to the game, which was one single BG map. With this in mind, I think most PVP players would love to know; What is the state of the code rewrite, and when can we expect genuine PVP content to be added to the game?

It would be really great to have some clarification on this. As of right now the information available on the project is sparse, and we haven't even received confirmation on whether the recently updated "server multithreading" project is actually the code rewrite project under a new name.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_BrianWheeler

Tyrant_Tim

What do you mean?
We got Tales of Tribute last year. 🫠

CameraBeardThePirate

Inb4 this gets moved to the ghost town that is the PvP section of the forums.

A 5 year content drought for PvPers is unacceptable. PvP has been hemorrhaging players the past year because of it. Our once thriving PvP guild now has ~10 players on at any given time - not even enough to make a full 12-man.

Endgame PvE has seen a similar drop in players - imagine if in addition to the questionable balance changes in U35, there were no dungeons, trials or arenas added for the 4 years prior to that.

We need to have a roadmap. The content drought has gone on far too long.

Aardappelboom

I applaud this thread.

While I think there's nothing planned, based on the latest thread (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/637691/server-multithreading-update-july-2023#latest) there's no reason to think the code rewrite and this are seperate things.

It's high time to at least move on and start rethinking PVP, if you can't fix it (let's be honest, what else are they going to try) just rethink it and add to what's already there.

Some statement on this is very welcomed.

Bashev

Are the rankings even working for BGs right now? I see some strange ranks and numbers there.

CameraBeardThePirate

Bashev wrote: »

Are the rankings even working for BGs right now? I see some strange ranks and numbers there.

No, they are not. They've been broken since at least 2 updates ago.

Even if they were fixed, BG leaderboards are laughably bad. All they amount to is the number of games played. You can lose 100 games and be number 1 on the leaderboard pretty easily just because you played the most that week.

There's also a number of medals that are bugged (and have always been bugged) and give more medal score than they should. This just makes the leaderboard even more meaningless because it means some builds will just happen to earn more medal score than others (e.g., high crit builds).

The BG leaderboard is just another example of the lack of care/attention given to PvP by the developers.

React

Aardappelboom wrote: »

I applaud this thread.

While I think there's nothing planned, based on the latest thread (https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/637691/server-multithreading-update-july-2023#latest) there's no reason to think the code rewrite and this are seperate things.

It's high time to at least move on and start rethinking PVP, if you can't fix it (let's be honest, what else are they going to try) just rethink it and add to what's already there.

Some statement on this is very welcomed.

The confusing part is that in the post you linked, Matt states that "If you remember back at the end of last year, we (announced the server multithreading work that would take place)". The code rewrite was announced in the January 2022 posting, and the only update we had on that was Gina's November comment stating it would roll out in Q2 of 2023. Thus, there is some confusion as to what he is referring to since there was no update on the "code rewrite" project specifically in December 2022.

Regardless, the recent update on the "server multithreading" project was that there has essentially been no observable progress, and there was extreme vagueness about the timeline for the project moving forward. They said they'd "continue to work on it", but no timeline was given. If we're to assume this is the same project announced in January of 2022, that does not bode well for the future of performance, or PVP content in TESO.

Honestly, I agree with your sentiment that they should revisit PVP as a whole. The game obviously cannot handle cyrodiil performance, but imperial city, battlegrounds, and dueling all perform flawlessly. If cyrodiil is the roadblock preventing them from doing anything at all in terms of adding new content or even balancing PVP, then I'm all for putting it aside.

wolfie1.0.

The upgrade was completed in such a timely manner that it's time for the next server upgrade.

laniakea_0

yes. please, ZOS. give us some clarification. we would all really appreciate it if we could get a list of the improvements that are planned, how well they are coming along and when we can expect to see some of them making it into the game.

laniakea_0

hmm... it's only 3 days until U39 launches. perhaps they are going to make an announcement then. kinda weird that they didn't already show of that they completed the upgrades.

Four_Fingers

What's next?
Seems to be trying to keep them working. lol

laniakea_0

of course. but what improvements are they still working? what bigger content updates are planned after?

SandandStars

Roadmap: New PvE & Crown Store content.

Monetization.

Tyrant_Tim

Adding new PvP content would be as simple as making dueling arenas that you queue into, that are no-cp; no proc, and have the same amazing ranking system that was implemented with Tales of Tribute. With it being no-cp no-proc, it would be incredibly easy to balance, and prevent the standard over-performing proc builds we’re all used to from ruining the experience for new players.

Nothing performance related would hinder that, and it would get us duelists out of town.

Edit; to continue this, new PvP content doesn’t need to be extravagant, and there are so many assets already available to pull from, I’m sure most people would be happy with some new Battlegrounds maps and game modes.

I personally wouldn’t mind some two team options instead of what we have now, as getting third partied is infuriating, especially when you’re in 2nd or 3rd place, as it feels like you’re just getting grieved.

Pelanora

I gather they started planning for the new arcanist class some four years back. There must be plans, and bearing in mind the usual constraints, id really like to see some kind of five and ten year statement of intentions.

laniakea_0

hmm. could it be that they are trying to stack announcements? when do they normally announce what exactly comes with Q4? perhaps, they'll tell us something then.

TaSheen

Q4 will be the "endless dungeon" probably in the current chapter area. We might see the new crafting station.... though we were supposed to have it in this quarter.

There won't be any new zone.

laniakea_0

yeah, those are the rumors and teasers, I mean the actual reveal.

barney2525

what's next?

Pizza

Jaimeh

We should definitely be asking these questions, rewriting the code would benefit the entirety of the game, but PvP is in especial need for a performance boost, given its current state, and hopefully afterwards we can get new content as well. I don't know if they will go into any specifics before the end of the year and the director's letter, but I wish we had some confirmation that the rewrite is at least in the pipeline. It would go a great way for the morale of the community.

Aardappelboom

laniakea_0 wrote: »

hmm. could it be that they are trying to stack announcements? when do they normally announce what exactly comes with Q4? perhaps, they'll tell us something then.

They've never done this, server related stuff is mostly never talked about on an announcement. Q4 has already been announced in the global reveal as the endless dungeon.

There's a very small chance we get something in the patch notes but the statement was clear, there hasn't been any progress on this.

I don't expect PVP content next year either since the AMA earlier this year stated as much, we do see a bit more love for PVP (and combat) in recent months, although nothing anyone's been asking for, so you never know.

I love PVP in this game so it's sad to see it slip away, but I'm no longer holding my breath either.

laniakea_0

I also don't mean they'll make it part of a live stream or video. I'm suggesting they may make a posting around the same time. or put in into the official news article

and the exact nature of the Q4 update has not been revealed. they said there would be something like an endless dungeon but to my knowledge they haven't actually told us yet what is in Q4

SkaraMinoc

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Bashev wrote: »

Are the rankings even working for BGs right now? I see some strange ranks and numbers there.

No, they are not. They've been broken since at least 2 updates ago.

The BG leaderboards have been broken since June 2022 because it was High Isle release date that they stopped working.

Cloudrest

You know, honestly, I don't even know at this point if new PvP content with good performance would be enough to draw me back into ESO becoming my main game again if the current state of the meta remains the same. I still play here and there-- rarely deciding to venture into Cyrodiil once every few weeks to see if anything has changed, just to quickly leave once I've confirmed it's the same unenjoyable mess yet again. I'm content to log in and chat with people and decorate my houses and be social, and little more.

I'm kind of at the point where I fully expect the next update on the code rewrite will be "oh crap we forgot about this, btw it's cancelled". New content is wishful thinking.

valenwood_vegan

Given that they delayed what was probably the most anticipated feature for this already very light quarter (the all-in-one attunables), and major bugs are taking months to be addressed, I wouldn't get my hopes up for anything to happen this year.

Granted, I'm not much of a pvp'er, but I really do feel for you all, getting no new content or real updates for years now. Unfortunately, that pattern is starting to slip into pve as well, so I think the truth is that it's only going to get worse. I don't want to get myself in trouble by speculating about the reasons, but I think it's clear that their ability to engage in any serious development of ESO is evaporating and the team is stretched too thin. I do hope they have some sort of plan to share with the pvp community, but my expectation is more along the lines of silence followed by another vague and non-committal end of the year letter.

Aardappelboom

laniakea_0 wrote: »

I also don't mean they'll make it part of a live stream or video. I'm suggesting they may make a posting around the same time. or put in into the official news article

and the exact nature of the Q4 update has not been revealed. they said there would be something like an endless dungeon but to my knowledge they haven't actually told us yet what is in Q4

It's a good suggestion of course, you're right that it hasn't been fully revealed but they told in an interview that they'd release class sets along the dungeon, I wouldn't expect anything more than that.

laniakea_0

what interview?

TaSheen

laniakea_0 wrote: »

what interview?

It was one of the last couple of live streams I think. At least that's when something popped up in a post - shortly after a live stream. I can't say for positive, because I don't listen to stuff like that.

Here's the post I remember:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/638861/class-sets#latest

Note that this is in the Combat and Character Mechanics forum....

HeavyMetalHippie420

React wrote: »

We've been told time and time again that replacing the servers hardware was the first priority, and that this needed to be completed before we would see things like the code rewrite come to fruition. As of this week, all servers have completed their hardware upgrades.

It has been 19 months since the code rewrite was announced, and at the beginning we were told it would take up "most of a year". We were also told that there would be "no pvp content" until the work on the code rewrite was complete.

We're nearing 5 years now since the last PVP content was added to the game, which was one single BG map. With this in mind, I think most PVP players would love to know; What is the state of the code rewrite, and when can we expect genuine PVP content to be added to the game?

It would be really great to have some clarification on this. As of right now the information available on the project is sparse, and we haven't even received confirmation on whether the recently updated "server multithreading" project is actually the code rewrite project under a new name.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin @ZOS_MattFiror @ZOS_BrianWheeler

It's still an issue to this day. PvE and especially PVP performance has downgraded. I'm not sure what happened or what's going to happen. I want to love this game again. This isn't an insult to the team or anything. This is the first year out of the three I've been playing where I got repeated loading screens in pve and fps reduction and extreme latency spikes in PVP, making it to where my skills wouldn't go off.

I believe ESO needs to hire more people specifically for PVP, as they only have one person hired for PVP. I hope they can take this constructive criticism and improve game functionality. It's a great game with huge worlds to explore. And we pay for it.

Oh that brings me to my last point. I wish everything in the crown store was cheaper. They are crazy high. Ll

RMW

Since we are getting a new PvP system in U44 that would indicate that the server rearchitecture/code rewrite is done or close to being finished - maybe @ZOS_Kevin knows?

ProudMary

RMW wrote: »

Since we are getting a new PvP system in U44 that would indicate that the server rearchitecture/code rewrite is done or close to being finished - maybe @ZOS_Kevin knows?

We already have the best PvP system ever implemented in a video game. ZOS has decided not to support it with dedicated devs or sufficient servers, despite the very high popularity of the system.