ESO - is it on life support?

Brakkish

I LOVE ESO to death. I play it daily, it's how I wind up before work, and how I wind down after. Been doing this for years.

Playing the last few months I've had to come to terms with longer Queue times and less and less of the player base to interact with. It's finally starting to impact my experience having less people to interact and enjoy aspects of the game with.

I'm looking for some positive thought for the outlook of the game. Should I be expecting a turnaround for the near future... or should I consider ESO to be in the digital version of hospice right now.

Tandor

You ask about "ESO" but I suspect you mean "PVP on console".

TybaltKaine

It's fine. You most likely ran into those issues because most folks are in the event zone, playing the event.

Brakkish

Tandor wrote: »

You ask about "ESO" but I suspect you mean "PVP on console".

A fair assumption given my sig.

While that's one part yes. However I do spend a large amount of time with ESO fashion, showing off my outfits to others. Chatting at the wayshrines, in between Queues, browsing traders (a much slimmer inventory now due to low pop), and general people interaction.

For clarity, I'm at VG wayshrine in Auridon right now, Sunday 215pm my time, there are 6 players. Where this time on average 6 months ago, easily would have been 40+ players just hanging out.

I miss it.

Auberon1983

TybaltKaine wrote: »

It's fine. You most likely ran into those issues because most folks are in the event zone, playing the event.

Yup. I'm on PSNA, and just about everyone is in Leyawiin or Fargrave right now. I have "event fatigue" so I just get my tickets and daily craft, and bounce.

PvP GH was totally locked last night. I actually ended up running a quick PUG in Icereach, when I didn't even intend to (I was just there for basic training), and even there there were plenty of battles and players.

Erickson9610

I certainly hope that this game won't sunset anytime soon. We've been promised that there are still many years of stories left to tell in ESO, but there's been a noticeable drop in the number of balance changes these past few updates...

I'm looking forward to the next major update in Q1 of 2024, though. Maybe the 10th year anniversary of ESO will bring people back to the game and will revitalize this game's balancing, fix long-standing bugs, and add meaningful quality of life changes? It's a long wait from now, but only time will tell.

Tyrant_Tim

@Tandor, PvP on console is a lot more lively than on PC and that’s not saying much, coming from someone who plays on both Xbox and PC. The culture on console is skewed more towards competitive than cooperative whereas on PC players just find another MMO to PvP on.

Regardless, both aren’t doing the best, and any time the Cyrodiil population is on decline, the capacity on the servers goes down to accommodate the fewer players.

Just a few weeks ago we went from one-bar in each for Grayhost to miraculously now three per at the exact same time of day, and same day of the week. I can say with certainty that there wasn’t an influx of Cyrodiil activity for all three factions, there would be only one explanation for it.

ArchangelIsraphel

I think that the impression that ESO's population isn't doing very well might be coming from two factors in your case- the platform you are on (PS5 has a lower population than other platforms overall) and the fact that we have had multiple events in fairly close proximity to one another. People are likely focused on the event areas and concentrated there.

This tends to cause event fatigue in the population. The end of the year events tend to be some of the best grinds- EXP event in October with the Witches Festival, then another EXP event in December with the New Life Festival. Even on PC/NA which is the platform I play on, I notice a yearly drop off in population during November- additional factors effect this.

-On US Server, people traveling for the thanksgiving holiday.

-Black Friday sales on games, which means many people are playing other games at the moment

-Overall, this has been a good year for gaming, with many popular games released- people are taking a break from ESO and will return.

-Event fatigue- people are taking a break so that they're fresh for the yearly December EXP grind.
(I've personally been doing this- I log in daily and play, but I've been spending a lot of time doing other activities so that when the New Life Festival comes out, I wont be burned out and can have fun grinding. I know a lot of people who do the same.)

The population in PVP zones is always concerning however- I imagine more so on consoles than on PC, but the PVP population isn't indicative of the games overall health (Though trust me, as someone who enjoys PVP, I do worry about its future)

Now- this is purely my experience on PC NA. NA has a healthy population even if I've seen it flagging a bit now and then. On consoles, I do know the population is generally much lower, but I don't think ESO is going anywhere any time soon.

I've seen a lot of dying games that really were on life support-and believe me the state of things in them is always much, much worse. They feel like you're walking through abandoned shopping malls where only the ghosts of past events still linger. (On one memorable occasion in a dying game I used to play, they left the Christmas event there deep into July...people were doing illegitimate things with gold and items without repercussions, and the only maintenance were a weekly server restart. It was actually scary to log in, because hacks and glitches were rampant. We definitely are not in that state in ESO, even if we do have a few problems!)

Tandor

I suppose it's also possible that a lot of people are running the Endless Archive given that it's the latest shiny new thing in ESO, although I'm not sure its appeal is a broad-based as it ought to be.

Lexalious

Yeah patch after patch they killed the the playerbase. So many groups/guilds that were playing from the start, providing a haven for many people from beginner to experienced are no more because of all the decisions devs made. Not here to bash anybody it is how it is, plus they don't need some rando telling them which patch lost them how many players.

Araneae6537

Others have covered the major points I feel. I suspect there may also be fluctuations with time of year, when more people might be busy with travel or other things or just have enough time to log in for the event. Whether that or event fatigue are the primary cause, this event feels less active to me than Necrom, but that is anecdotal and I spent a lot more time in Necrom. When I have time to play, I often want to challenge the Endless Archives, and it’s not a bad thing that there are lots of choices of activity in game. And just the other day I came across a dance party at the Rimmen wayshrine.

So I am hopeful that ESO has many more years in its future, and that future changes will be in tune with the playerbase, as some patches have indeed seemed to have a negative impact (again, my anecdotal observations, and I was for a time disaffected myself last year).

Grizzbeorn

No.

DUTCH_REAPER

Beta player here. I have found that the “old” meet up places are obsolete for the most part as the DLC zones are saturated with the player base now.

ArchangelIsraphel

Araneae6537 wrote: »

Others have covered the major points I feel. I suspect there may also be fluctuations with time of year, when more people might be busy with travel or other things or just have enough time to log in for the event. Whether that or event fatigue are the primary cause, this event feels less active to me than Necrom, but that is anecdotal and I spent a lot more time in Necrom. When I have time to play, I often want to challenge the Endless Archives, and it’s not a bad thing that there are lots of choices of activity in game. And just the other day I came across a dance party at the Rimmen wayshrine.

So I am hopeful that ESO has many more years in its future, and that future changes will be in tune with the playerbase, as some patches have indeed seemed to have a negative impact (again, my anecdotal observations, and I was for a time disaffected myself last year).

Agree with you completely! The Blackwood event has a decent population, with most people frequenting Fargrave, but it's definitely quiet compared to the Necrom event.

Now that you mention it, Rimmen has become a sort of player hub lately- I see tons of players there daily dancing and chatting on PC NA. Not sure if its the same on other servers, but it's been bustling with people every evening these days! Lots of Khajiits in interesting outfits.

MasterSpatula

With no new story content, there's nothing to distract me from the fact that gameplay just keeps getting worse and worse. Meanwhile, there's multiple single-player games in recent release with engaging new worlds to explore, characters to get to know, plots to unravel, mysteries to solve, and even pointless items to fetch.

Half a year with nothing for story lovers to sink their teeth into was a colossal mistake, and the wasteland that is my guild rosters and friends' list shows it.

Tyrant_Tim

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Now- this is purely my experience on PC NA. NA has a healthy population even if I've seen it flagging a bit now and then. On consoles, I do know the population is generally much lower, but I don't think ESO is going anywhere any time soon.

How do you “know” the population is much lower on console? Consoles are much cheaper than PCs, and there is much less competition in the MMO market on that platform.

My personal experience on PC, is that whenever I load up the game, it’s quite literally a ghost town.

You don’t have people socializing in towns due to the lack of native voice support, you spend much longer in queue for Dungeon Finder and Battlegrounds than you do on Xbox, there are far fewer areas that players meet up to duel, with the one and only area on PC being DC Undaunted… an area not even filling with people like it used to.

So while you might believe your choice platform to be more populated, my experience playing both is quite the opposite.

Edit; I will concede that perhaps ESO has a population problem on PlayStation due to Final Fantasy, but make no mistake, Xbox NA trounces PC NA for visible player population.

ArchangelIsraphel

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

Now- this is purely my experience on PC NA. NA has a healthy population even if I've seen it flagging a bit now and then. On consoles, I do know the population is generally much lower, but I don't think ESO is going anywhere any time soon.

How do you “know” the population is much lower on console? Consoles are much cheaper than PCs, and there is much less competition in the MMO market on that platform.

My personal experience on PC, is that whenever I load up the game, it’s quite literally a ghost town.

You don’t have people socializing in towns due to the lack of native voice support, you spend much longer in queue for Dungeon Finder and Battlegrounds than you do on Xbox, there are far fewer areas that players meet up to duel, with the one and only area on PC being DC Undaunted… an area not even filling with people like it used to.

So while you might believe your choice platform to be more populated, my experience playing both is quite the opposite.

That's good! ^_^ I'm glad your experience on your own platform has been more positive that that of others I have spoken to who tried various consoles and left because they either found open voice chat extremely unpleasant, or found that the servers were not as full as they would like. Reading multiple sources on the topic has lead me to the conclusion that some consoles have worse populations than others, and that many people leave console due to a preference for PC, where they can have add ons. Its nice to know that Xbox, at least in your personal experience, has a good population.

As we have discord and other voice chat options on PC, there's a lot of socializing going on under the hood of the PC version of ESO- there was a fairly recent thread discussing open voice chat on PC, and while some PC players liked the idea, others who play on PC felt that it would be an awful change. While the forums may not be indicative of player sentiment as a whole, many of the unpleasant factors described concerning open voice (hearing people argue with families, hearing people eat randomly, peoples music disrupting conversation) were considered a detriment by many on the forums.

There is definitely a separate player base mentality when it comes to PC v.s. Console.

In any case, the intent of this thread is not to discuss whether you or I think our various platforms are more populated, and seeing as it seems we both have the intent to reassure the OP that ESO is not dead on either platform, it seems we have accomplished our goals Your post is a positive prognosis for consoles, which is very good to hear.

PC, in my experience, is quite full- I see players in all of the major hub towns, and we're flooded during events.

Mathius_Mordred

I'm not sure what game you're playing, to be honest, but I can only speak of PC on the EU server. Each evening I go in there are tons of folks, if I queue as a DPS it sometimes takes a few minutes to pop, occasionally it can take up to an hour but usually it pops within 5 minutes. As others have said the events concentrate people in event areas and many are in the Endless Archive.

For those complaining there is no story content, you have got to be joking. I also play Star Trek Online and THAT game really is in near maintenance mode with 3 hours of stories a year and that's it. Here we get two big content drops a year plus dungeons, probably 30-50 hours of playtime. I've been playing since closed beta and there are plenty of quests I haven't done. Plus starting a new character I can go back and play quests I haven't done for ten years and so feel new to me.

This game is far far away from sunset, but remember that people have real lives too, holidays, Christmas, Halloween, thanksgiving, and people being burnt out having to work extra hours for the cost of living crisis amongst a ton of other things means that sometimes gaming takes a back seat. I've been playing games since 1976 and to date, this is by far my favorite MMO and one of my most favourite games overall, I have no problem recruiting for my guild either.

Maybe it's very different on console I don't know, but sometimes where you expect there to be 40 people and there are only 6 it could be because it's instanced and the 40 people are in a full instance. The game is doing well in my humble opinion and the devs do a great job keeping us busy with things to do.

YetAnotherLinuxUser

All i can say is lag fest in pve. Since update 40 pc eu i get lagamania with a scoop of lag on the side. Even doing basic pve content while gathering mats or even in delves i see no animations, delyaed animations that happen after everything has already died. doesnt matter time of day or night. my ping is 140 or less most if not all the time and so it shouldnt so bad with animations. So yah i think ESO is about to call it quits. Their so called server upgrade and update 40 are only making things worse. they add more stiuff for the servers to do like the endless archive and events the servers are clearly strained even for pve. Dont know what else to make of it.

Mathius_Mordred

YetAnotherLinuxUser wrote: »

All i can say is lag fest in pve. Since update 40 pc eu i get lagamania with a scoop of lag on the side. Even doing basic pve content while gathering mats or even in delves i see no animations, delyaed animations that happen after everything has already died. doesnt matter time of day or night. my ping is 140 or less most if not all the time and so it shouldnt so bad with animations. So yah i think ESO is about to call it quits. Their so called server upgrade and update 40 are only making things worse. they add more stiuff for the servers to do like the endless archive and events the servers are clearly strained even for pve. Dont know what else to make of it.

I have a very powerful gaming PC in my Studio but in the evening I play on an Alienware 17(R1with a GTX860m, so pretty crap). My internet connection is wired and at 550 mbps, I can honestly say that I see lag very rarely even on this 9 year old laptop. So If I can play ok at 40-60 fps (1080p) on this dinosaur, unless you are on dial up or running a 286 then there must be an issue with your internet or routing. I would qualify by saying I am on PC EU, perhaps it's different on different servers and machines.

Tyrant_Tim

For anyone wondering, this is my experience when playing both Xbox and PC, both of these screenshots were taken within 5 minutes of each other.

PC/NA Craglorn on Sunday at 4:00PM PST



Xbox/NA Craglorn on Sunday at 4:02PM PST



Now, if this isn’t as straightforward as it gets, I’ll elaborate. Whenever I get on PC/NA this is consistently the population ratio I experience when comparing to Xbox/NA, almost 2:1.

I’m sure we can sit here and make up a million excuses to why this is, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that this is what people see when they log in.

Tyrant_Tim

Now, it’s unfortunate OP that the game feels dying to you, but I’ve seen it spiral back from worse conditions.

Back before One Tamriel, players in Caldwell Silver and Gold would sit around for hours waiting for another player to arrive to help them with a delve boss, and when that update released, it completely turned the game around.

What we need, is another One Tamriel-esque update to kickstart the game, and it will be fine.

Luckily ESO’s 10-year anniversary is right around the corner so fingers crossed that brings what the game needs to save us from the downward spiral of Update 35.

LunaFlora

no ♥

TaSheen

I popped into Belkarth today at 3 pm MST on PC NA. I couldn't even SEE the ground around the wayshrine - I estimate there were about 50 people plus their mounts etx. There were about 30 people at the indrik vendor, and more at the Impressario tent. There were also about 20 or so at Rolis.

You have to remember that sometimes you're going to wind up in a recently spun up instance that will be releatively "bare".

And I LOVED U 35 personally, thank you very much.

katanagirl1

The start of the Deadlands event caused the Cyrodiil population to drop significantly at the start, but it has slowly been increasing and today it was pop locked.

I think people are tiring of the daily events and going back to their usual activities.

Tyrant_Tim

TaSheen wrote: »

I popped into Belkarth today at 3 pm MST on PC NA. I couldn't even SEE the ground around the wayshrine - I estimate there were about 50 people plus their mounts etx. There were about 30 people at the indrik vendor, and more at the Impressario tent. There were also about 20 or so at Rolis.

You have to remember that sometimes you're going to wind up in a recently spun up instance that will be releatively "bare".

And I LOVED U 35 personally, thank you very much.

Consistently I end up in worse instances then, because it’s always a 2:1 ratio, and I’ve been playing PC for a few months now.

madman65

I don`t think ESO is on life support because it`s a business, like most business` if the product stops making money then it will be axed. Who is on life support? The players that are really in deep with the game, I have personally heard from these gamers that are frustrated with the bugs go from calling them bugs to "it`s a new feature" and that is sad. They are hanging in there but some have gave up and moved on to other games. If I would state anything, the recent rise in new players has helped but if there is no one around to show/help them then they will leave as well. So ESO future doesn`t look good but it`s not on life support as of now.

LunaFlora

as there's the Gates of Oblivion event i've seen dozens of people at once at world bosses(sometimes so many people that i can't loot the boss), in Fargrave, and in Leyawiin.

i also loved update 35, it had a lot of awesome stuff.

TaSheen

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

I popped into Belkarth today at 3 pm MST on PC NA. I couldn't even SEE the ground around the wayshrine - I estimate there were about 50 people plus their mounts etx. There were about 30 people at the indrik vendor, and more at the Impressario tent. There were also about 20 or so at Rolis.

You have to remember that sometimes you're going to wind up in a recently spun up instance that will be releatively "bare".

And I LOVED U 35 personally, thank you very much.

Consistently I end up in worse instances then, because it’s always a 2:1 ratio, and I’ve been playing PC for a few months now.

In actual fact, I play PC NA off peak - so you would assume there would be many fewer people around. That's not now, nor has ever been the case in my experience. I can't say for anything after 2 pm MST, because that's when I quit playing.

This is not only in Vivec btw, or in whatever the current event area is - today I left Vivec, went to Blackwood for a delve for tickets, and then headed to Glenumbra to see if I could get another lead for Oakensoul from ore nodes. Everywhere I went (over the whole darn zone), there were people doing dolmens, questing, dancing at wayshrines.... and of course, getting to nodes just ahead of me (I have really bad luck that way).

I can't account for your experience - unless there's something about the time at which you play that causes it. For me, in the last couple of years, the game has gotten a LOT busier during my play hours - to the point where it can be exasperating in fact.

nebula3832

"Urghh....people "

ImmortalCX

New World was/is eso like. But eso has 20x the content and !ore. Is New World dying?i cant imagine anyone picking that over eso.

I wonder what new ppl trying eso for the first time experience? What are the turn offs?

Wow is the biggest most successful mmo, and what eso lacks in comparison is vertical progression. If they could figure out how to create vertical progression, it would have a more serious feeling end game. Every expansion in wow added a ton of new raid content.

My gut feeling is that alot of ppl play eso like a sp game and have fun for a few weeks. But its a casual experience and they evertually quit because not enough carrots.