ESO - is it on life support?

Tyrant_Tim

Tandor

Cooperharley wrote: »

<snip> Another, slightly more negative reason, is that the reward structure in ESO is notoriously bad. While the game itself is pretty incredible, a whole half of end game (cosmetic collection) is negligible or not even present due to over-monetization. Update 40 and Necrom have surely improved on this by offering in game earnable mounts, but there’s only so many reasons to run content - people many times in all MMOs continue running content for achievements and cosmetics, but all of the cosmetics are just in the store. <snip>

Not to mention the reduction in repeat runs with different characters as a result of account-wide achievements.

RebornV3x

Tyrant_Tim wrote: »

RebornV3x wrote: »

Speaking on the console side of this game manly the Xbox Series X/S version this game is basically dead the only thing keeping TESO alive on the Xbox is its on Gamepass and we don't have WOW or Final Fantasy 14 I really hope that someday soon they will allow us to port our stuff to PC kinda like Elite Dangerous did awhile back its needed.

Are you speaking on Xbox EU? Because yeah, that’s like playing on your own private server.

Xbox NA is great population-wise. Maybe not the best if you compare it to when One Tamriel dropped years ago, but there’s always stuff going on still. Have to say though, if your hope is that the grass is greener on PC, it’s absolutely not, outside of add-ons, the game looks and feels similar to a Series X on a high end rig, with less noticeable population than console.

Cross-Save would accomplish not even a fraction of what Cross-Platform would.

mostly talking about NA the endgame scene is barely non existent and not really active , Cyrodill PVP is at an all time low, BGs you play with roughly the same 6 or 7 people for hours maybe the matchmaking is wierd idk but this game pop wise is probably the worst its been in years plenty of people in new zones and just doing normal dungeons and casual stuff sure Riften is always busy with hooligans.

Brakkish

There were several mentions of Rimmen in this thread, so I thought I'd check it out. Was nice to meet some new players.

Ulfgarde

There is a decent amount of people who play, though lower than most other MMOs. The problem is we are isolated from each other based on location and/or console. If we all played on the same server concurrently, the population (especially Cyrodiil) would feel like it's booming. It's quite a shame.

Warhawke_80

Don't understand why anyone would play ESO on Steam...the Cache/ subsystem issues causes a endless amount of problems....it's much more stable to run the game on it's own launcher

Gray_howling_parrot

Tandor wrote: »

Cooperharley wrote: »

<snip> Another, slightly more negative reason, is that the reward structure in ESO is notoriously bad. While the game itself is pretty incredible, a whole half of end game (cosmetic collection) is negligible or not even present due to over-monetization. Update 40 and Necrom have surely improved on this by offering in game earnable mounts, but there’s only so many reasons to run content - people many times in all MMOs continue running content for achievements and cosmetics, but all of the cosmetics are just in the store. <snip>

Not to mention the reduction in repeat runs with different characters as a result of account-wide achievements.

I feel the opposite about this. I never wanted to play multiple characters because I don’t want to repeat monotony. Research, mount training, outfit slots, getting hundreds of Skyshards, etc is NOT fun to me and it severely pushed me away from doing all that. I’m a huge achievement junky so that was another HUGE thing. I started playing alts when they came around because I didn’t feel like I was at ground zero all over again. This game has thousands of hours of content for one character easily.

I wish the game would be much more account wide - like the stuff I mentioned. It’s silly if I purchase an armory slot, mount training, or zone Skyshards that that’s not an account wide thing. There’s a lot of stuff in the game placed to waste our time that has the solution sold in the crown store. Just sayin 🤷🏻‍♂️

Jimbru

I play on PCNA. I've been a MMO player and beta tester since the early days of UO and EQ, including the ESO beta. I've been in dying games, some of which had their death forecast before they even made it out of beta, Wildstar and Jumpgate being two unfortunate examples.

Meanwhile in ESO, at least on PCNA:

- I log into Vivec City every day and there are always plenty of people.
- I see new players joining and asking questions every day.
- ESO still has a large, healthy online community on Youtube, Twitch, fan pages et al. I don't see a ton of "jumping ship" videos and other signs that a game community is dying.
- I can drop an Elder Scrolls reference anywhere on social media and people instantly get it. ESO and ES games in general are well known.
- My main guild doesn't recruit in chat because we don't have to. We have more than enough new people joining every week that we stay full or nearly so. This goes along with the constant flow of new players.
- Even during events that crowd players into a few maps, I can still go to any map and find other players via zone chat to help do things like world bosses.
- I've heard secondhand that ESO is one of Bethesda's biggest moneymakers, and ZOS certainly has plans for at least a few more years to come, so they aren't planning on going into maintenance mode any time soon.

So NO, ESO isn't dying. Not even close. There are certainly plenty of ways it could get better, but overall, it's in better shape than many other games out there.

Jimbru

Ulfgarde wrote: »

There is a decent amount of people who play, though lower than most other MMOs. The problem is we are isolated from each other based on location and/or console. If we all played on the same server concurrently, the population (especially Cyrodiil) would feel like it's booming. It's quite a shame.

THIS. I don't know why anyone would want to play the game on any platform other than PC using the launcher. It's the most versatile, universal platform for gaming, not subject to the proprietary crap of companies outside ZOS. If we could bring all of ESO's players together in the same world, it would be HUGE. Spreading players across multiple platforms just fragments the player base, and ESO is long overdue to implement cross platforming and account movement to change that.

Tyrant_Tim

@RebornV3x, those areas are more scarce, not unpopulated, but scarce because ESO is run as a revolving door, and it’s no different on any platform.

Throughout this games lifespan, more money has been funneled into advertisement than actual in-game development. When you’re focusing on pulling new players in without giving veterans anything to do outside of once or twice a year, they move on, and why not? New players spend more money in the Crown Store because veterans have bought everything already, who cares about us, right?

You can only run the same trial so many times in a given year, especially when you consider that we had a double drop event for it almost immediately after Necrom released, creating a massive burnout and PvP hasn’t truly changed since launch. You have the same objective, being the six inner keeps, and the map is the same outside of a few structural changes made that I still hate to this day, like when the three towns became capturable and completely destroyed the new player Cyrodiil experience.

Lately I’ve been getting tons of new recruits to our guild and we always vet them and the most common claim they make is that they saw the advertisement for Endless Archive or Necrom and thought the game looked great and wanted to give it a try, while every other week we’ve been making room for them by removing players last online months ago.

xclassgaming

No.

maboleth

No. It's on extended maintenance.

Idelise

I think it depends? I mean, the game has sharding. Might be that it kicked you to an emptier shard so you see fewer people...? I can't say I share the same experience. PC/EU and every location I go to is filled with people.

Rohamad_Ali

If you lived in Ali'kirr and rode in the 5AM dolmen traffic to go harvesting every day, you would have no doubt it's not on life support.

Mathius_Mordred

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

If you lived in Ali'kirr and rode in the 5AM dolmen traffic to go harvesting every day, you would have no doubt it's not on life support.

Agreed, since I first saw this post I've been leveling up various skill line on my Arcanist so of course I used the dolmen run. Each evening I've stood by and counted the players as they've ran back to the way shrine, there are between 40 and 60 people on the map, some of whom have companions out so this means probably 20-30 players at any one time. Occasionally there are so many I can't count them and have to guess around 100 people. And this is 24hrs a day 7 days a week. Dead it is not.

Cadbury

robwolf666

Tandor wrote: »

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

Probably true - I'm on XB and don't have those problems, precisely because I don't do group activity or PvP.

Sinlar

*Looks around at the significantly and constantly increasing player base.*

*Wanders off to find something shiny.*

shadyjane62

It is for me. Every new chapter since Greymoor has centered on things I am not interested in. I don't like companions, really don't like the card game, wouldn't take Necrom if it was free and the Antiquities is interesting but I am not able to do the more difficult leads.

I find things to keep busy but if PvP isn't improved, if they never fix the "stuck" in combat bug then I will be outta here. I have already decided to go without the sub, but live in hope that the next chapter is worth playing.

Ten years invested in ESO but more is needed to keep me here.

Brakkish

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

If you lived in Ali'kirr and rode in the 5AM dolmen traffic to go harvesting every day, you would have no doubt it's not on life support.

I don't think counting bodies in what's arguably the most trafficked newbie leveling hotspot/trainride fits the bill here.

I've ran that train before, and not a single interaction occurs between any two players outside of playing follow the leader from wayshrine to wayshrine.

If all zones were clones of that, it would still be meaningless.

I'm more concerned with meaningful interaction with players in the game. Grinding XP can be done solo.

Meaningful to be more pointed would be:

• Enough players to drop Queue times back to reasonable.
• Enough players to populate once healthy rosters of large guilds, back to "good".
• Enough players to provide a significant improvement over the scarcity of items in traders, above the current state limited to just a few main places now. (items once were abundant across MANY locations).
• Enough players to provide a healthy community of Roleplayers as there once were back in the day. (Even though it never was my thing in ESO) - where are they now.
• Enough players to see Guilds having events (I recall seeing this often at one time and would just hang out to see what they were doing or eavesdrop in on the chat).
• Enough players to dilute the predictability of familiar names at our favorite hangouts. After all, it's the excitement of meeting new people that keeps things fresh.
• Enough players to fulfill zone chat crafting requests.
• Enough players where we don't have to decide what platform is struggling with population - an unequivocal "All platforms are currently healthy" should be the goal.
• Enough players to see all the things listed above occur simultaneously as it once was.

There's a number of items that I'm sure a lot of you could add to the list.
Ultimately the game is still enjoyable for me, but I can not ignore the fact that it's more desolate than I can recall from any year prior, and the areas in which I prefer to spend my time are in a shape that needs addressed while salvageable.

ZOS is hopefully focussed on retention like any good business. Sure, we can have a million people leveling in Alik'r all day, but it means very little if they don't stick around.

Elsonso

ImmortalCX wrote: »

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 dunno about that. I re-installed it this week to play while I am on break from work next month. I'm trying to decide if I want to continue my older characters or start a new one. The game has changed a lot since launch, so I might start a new one.

ArchMikem

When the devs add more and more zones to the game, it spreads the population out more. Just because one hub looks a bit more sparse now doesn't mean the game is dying. Those players are somewhere else.

OldStygian

Doesn't feel like it to me.

Azphira

Non copium response, no the game is not on life support, but it should have 7-10 times more playing it with what intellectual property it is.

SilverBride

ESO is not dying. Just like it was not dying last month and the month before and the year before that, etc..

Araneae6537

ImmortalCX wrote: »

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.

I’m glad that ESO doesn’t have ongoing vertical progression! I really hated that in SWTOR, which I was told had many similarities to WoW in end game stuff. The grind for BiS gear in that game was awful and then an expansion raises the level cap and makes it all for naught.

I much prefer games like ESO where I can switch between playing and working on different characters, or even take a break from the game as a whole, and when I come back, they are still max level in decent gear (although what is BiS may have changed).

Elowen_Starveil

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

(PS5 has a lower population than other platforms overall)

Why do you think you know this? I've searched many, many times, and I can't find any concurrent player counts for the console platforms, like you can with Steam on PC. On top of that, someone else on another thread said that Steam accounts for less than half the installs on PC. I saw one article a long time ago that sales of ESO were highest on PS5. That's a data point, but it doesn't translate to a concurrent player count.

Everything I've read in this thread is based on personal experience and anecdote. Just above, we have one guy claiming that PC has twice as many people as console, and another guy claiming that Xbox has twice as many people as PC. All just because "they know." As someone who deals with large data sets on my job, no one "knows" anything until the statistics bear it out.

So how does anyone credibly claim to know anything about how many players are on each platform? It seems to be something the ZOS likes to keep hidden, and I understand why. If people could see one platform pulling ahead, given that it's an MMO, everyone would jump ship for it, and the other platforms would wither and die.

https://mmo-population.com/r/elderscrollsonline shows that ESO is the 11th most popular MMO in the world at the moment. [Snip]


[Edited for bait]

Elsonso

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

ArchangelIsraphel wrote: »

(PS5 has a lower population than other platforms overall)

Why do you think you know this? I've searched many, many times, and I can't find any concurrent player counts for the console platforms, like you can with Steam on PC. On top of that, someone else on another thread said that Steam accounts for less than half the installs on PC. I saw one article a long time ago that sales of ESO were highest on PS5. That's a data point, but it doesn't translate to a concurrent player count.

Everything I've read in this thread is based on personal experience and anecdote. Just above, we have one guy claiming that PC has twice as many people as console, and another guy claiming that Xbox has twice as many people as PC. All just because "they know." As someone who deals with large data sets on my job, no one "knows" anything until the statistics bear it out.

So how does anyone credibly claim to know anything about how many players are on each platform? It seems to be something the ZOS likes to keep hidden, and I understand why. If people could see one platform pulling ahead, given that it's an MMO, everyone would jump ship for it, and the other platforms would wither and die.

The last I heard from various developer comments indicated that the three platforms (PC, XBox, and PSN) were about the same population. They never give out numbers, and it is nigh impossible to assess from inside the game.

That said, I would expect that, all other things being equal, the Playstation population should be higher than the XBox population, just because Playstation has the larger market share.

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

https://mmo-population.com/r/elderscrollsonline shows that ESO is the 11th most popular MMO in the world at the moment. Why are we even having this discussion at all?

It is a Thing here. Used to be that it was more common, with threads popping up time and time again. It became a meme for a while.

I_killed_Vivec

Brakkish wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

[Snip]

[Snip]

I don't think so.

From a pragmatic point of view, we don't have the numbers, only anecdotal evidence. We might have an opinion based on that, but it will be hard to convince others who have had different experiences. We simply do not know if the game is in a bad state, and above all, even if we all reached a consensus that the game is "on life support", there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it.

It doesn't even look like the people who claim to love a game that they say is on life support are gaining any solace from others who have said it isn't.

So, apart from allowing a small number of people to express their differing views, why are we having this discussion?

[Edited quote]

Tyrant_Tim

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

Just above, we have one guy claiming that PC has twice as many people as console, and another guy claiming that Xbox has twice as many people as PC. All just because "they know."…

[Snip]

What? I can go anywhere on PC/NA and Xbox/NA and take pictures within 5 minutes of each other and the population difference will be just as visible as it is in the pictures of Craglorn I referenced earlier, yet console players are treated like second-rate citizens.

That’s the problem. There’s always someone on a thread willing to belittle people for playing console, or assume that problems are “console problems” when they don’t play the platform, and therefore don’t understand anything regarding it.

@dk_dunkirk, [Snip]. I’m not pulling numbers out of nowhere or imagining a population difference I’m detailing my visible experience as someone who plays both platforms.

[Edited for removed content and quote]