What will ZOS have to take from us next so we can have our latest shiny new toy?

Treeshka

I would not say converting some of the character based things into account wide things as a downgrade.

So in this case i would really like if they convert all the recipes, including motifs, to account wide thing. With a browsable page so i can finally see what i am missing without using addons for furnishing, food and drink recipes.

Quest progress, Shalidor Library and Eidetic Memory should stay character based though.

Elsonso

Didgik wrote: »

I suggest removing the variety of resources from level 1 - 140.

Yeah, the way the game evolved left a hole in the crafting progression that should be eliminated. There is no reason for the CP10-CP140 materials, except for the first time through the game. After that, there is really only CP 150/160 gear.

The number of account champion points should have never been used to make differentiated gear levels, anyway.

Just a thought.

SerafinaWaterstar

Allowing motifs & recipes to be account and not character based would be catastrophic to the in game economy.

And no-one has any evidence that the OPs original post is actually true.

SaffronCitrusflower

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know where this info came from? I know the OP said they can't remember but I hadn't heard that they had to remove things in order to add new stuff to the game.

ZOS has been moving resources (server and dev resources) away from Cyrodiil to other parts of the game since 2018 or so.

SaffronCitrusflower

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Just_Attivi wrote: »

*tin foil hat on*

I think they introduce a 'New PVP mode'' at the end of the year. hopefully its a greater success than tales of tribute (i predict its a 24 man deathmatch free for all, but honestly id settle for being able to just select deathmatch in BGs again)
*tin foil hat off*

As someone with a bigger tin foil hat, I'd cynically say that the new 24 man deathmatch will be Cyrodiil after the next round of population cap reductions!

This definitely seems to be the direction ZOS is heading though. All evidence points to this, in fact, being the direction ZOS is moving.

Jaraal

They have the ability to improve infrastructure to fit the game, rather than removing pieces of the game to fit the infrastructure. But they choose the latter. People who have been around for a long time see and feel the effects of the persistent degradation of the player experience, but new players will not.

We will never know the full reasoning behind this strategy, beyond their statements that they need to free up space for new systems, achievements, the ever expanding glut of gear sets, content, paid inventory slots, and whatnot. Plus the eroding away of things that have been constant since the beginning, like group size, mail and trader timers, effects visibility, pixel densities, glyph functionality, combat ticks, and so forth.

So, to answer your question.... what will they cut next in the name of performance? Probably everything possible, at some point. What should they cut? None of it. At least not the things that enrich and enhance the player experience.

Elsonso

Jaraal wrote: »

They have the ability to improve infrastructure to fit the game, rather than removing pieces of the game to fit the infrastructure. But they choose the latter. People who have been around for a long time see and feel the effects of the persistent degradation of the player experience, but new players will not.

We will never know the full reasoning behind this strategy, beyond their statements that they need to free up space for new systems, achievements, the ever expanding glut of gear sets, content, paid inventory slots, and whatnot. Plus the eroding away of things that have been constant since the beginning, like group size, mail and trader timers, effects visibility, pixel densities, glyph functionality, combat ticks, and so forth.

Honestly, and without intending to sound judgemental, I have the opinion that ESO ended up being the largest game that most, if not all, of the founding developers have ever worked on. Obviously, I don't know the bio of every developer, but a lot of them came over from Mythic, and ESO turned out to be much larger than Camelot. Two orders of magnitude larger, by some reports. The list of MMORPGs with 22 million total players over time was not that large back in 2007 when the ESO development started. Taken with that perspective, one can reasonably conclude that some of the core server-side architecture, established more than a decade ago, was not built for the scale that the game eventually reached.

When I look at what ZOS has been doing with things like Cyrodiil populations, moving things to account wide, and other changes that seem to have a clear benefit on the back end, that is what I see.

Perhaps they figured they could redesign things in the future, which they have been doing. Part of me does wonder how much of the game (server-side) that we are playing today is the same as it was in 2014, before launch.

spartaxoxo

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know where this info came from? I know the OP said they can't remember but I hadn't heard that they had to remove things in order to add new stuff to the game.

ZOS has been moving resources (server and dev resources) away from Cyrodiil to other parts of the game since 2018 or so.

They dedicated a lot of resources, server wise, since 2018. They halted development until they fixed performance. But they bought new servers and attempted a server re-architecture to fix Cyrodiil. I have actually never heard of a game developer doing something that extremely expensive for something so niche before. It didn't work out so now they have focused dev development on some new PvP project that will release Q4 of this year and appear to have scrapped the re-architecture since it wasn't actually improving performance.

It's fair to say they have not accomplished nearly enough to get Cyrodiil in a good spot. It's fair to say no PvP focused content has been released. It's untrue that they have not been putting server resources into it. That's conflating success with resources.

Tandor

spartaxoxo wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know where this info came from? I know the OP said they can't remember but I hadn't heard that they had to remove things in order to add new stuff to the game.

ZOS has been moving resources (server and dev resources) away from Cyrodiil to other parts of the game since 2018 or so.

They dedicated a lot of resources, server wise, since 2018. They halted development until they fixed performance. But they bought new servers and attempted a server re-architecture to fix Cyrodiil. I have actually never heard of a game developer doing something that extremely expensive for something so niche before. It didn't work out so now they have focused dev development on some new PvP project that will release Q4 of this year and appear to have scrapped the re-architecture since it wasn't actually improving performance.

It's fair to say they have not accomplished nearly enough to get Cyrodiil in a good spot. It's fair to say no PvP focused content has been released. It's untrue that they have not been putting server resources into it. That's conflating success with resources.

That depends on the timeline you're basing that on.

spartaxoxo

Tandor wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know where this info came from? I know the OP said they can't remember but I hadn't heard that they had to remove things in order to add new stuff to the game.

ZOS has been moving resources (server and dev resources) away from Cyrodiil to other parts of the game since 2018 or so.

They dedicated a lot of resources, server wise, since 2018. They halted development until they fixed performance. But they bought new servers and attempted a server re-architecture to fix Cyrodiil. I have actually never heard of a game developer doing something that extremely expensive for something so niche before. It didn't work out so now they have focused dev development on some new PvP project that will release Q4 of this year and appear to have scrapped the re-architecture since it wasn't actually improving performance.

It's fair to say they have not accomplished nearly enough to get Cyrodiil in a good spot. It's fair to say no PvP focused content has been released. It's untrue that they have not been putting server resources into it. That's conflating success with resources.

That depends on the timeline you're basing that on.

The conversation was 2018 to now. Battlegrounds dropped in 2017 and there has not been a major PvP feature since afaik.

daim

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Allowing motifs & recipes to be account and not character based would be catastrophic to the in game economy.

And no-one has any evidence that the OPs original post is actually true.

Please explain to me how it would be catastrophic ? You would lose some gold ?

spartaxoxo

daim wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Allowing motifs & recipes to be account and not character based would be catastrophic to the in game economy.

And no-one has any evidence that the OPs original post is actually true.

Please explain to me how it would be catastrophic ? You would lose some gold ?

Crafting materials and motifs are really the bread and butter of player trade. If that were to change, the cost of other stuff would rise to offset the loss. There would also be less incentive to do group activities. Although gear and transmutes are the primary motivator there so that would be much less impacted. Most likely housing would be hit hardest since it's a tradeable item awarded from normal player activity.

furiouslog

spartaxoxo wrote: »

daim wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Allowing motifs & recipes to be account and not character based would be catastrophic to the in game economy.

And no-one has any evidence that the OPs original post is actually true.

Please explain to me how it would be catastrophic ? You would lose some gold ?

Crafting materials and motifs are really the bread and butter of player trade. If that were to change, the cost of other stuff would rise to offset the loss. There would also be less incentive to do group activities. Although gear and transmutes are the primary motivator there so that would be much less impacted. Most likely housing would be hit hardest since it's a tradeable item awarded from normal player activity.

I don't think that the motif/recipe economy would change all that much. Few people actually eat motifs and furnishing recipes on more than one toon unless they are cheap items that people are just trying to get out of their inventory, in which case they probably would not get sold often in the first place, except by players who have multiple accounts with trading guilds specifically to farm and distribute cheaper items.

The only benefit you get from having motifs on more than one toon is that it increases the drops of mater writs when you do daily writs. I doubt that so many people in the game pay attention to this strategy that it would up-end the economy. I mean, I do it, but I've been playing for years and years, and I'm trying to fill out my grand master crafting stations - so I have been eating motifs and researching traits on my alts in order to improve that drop rate to get more vouchers for attunable stations. Most of the people I play with think I'm nuts for putting in the effort, and definitely do not do it. There is literally no other reason to do that unless people are hard core farming writ vouchers to make gold, and not everyone is going to care enough to put in the time and effort.

I'd predict that there would be a market effect, but that it would be relatively small compared to the effects from other seasonal and periodic events.

ComboBreaker88

The solution is simple. End support for the older consoles and be done with it. They're holding the entire community back at this point and it's ridiculous. Also, give the guild system some serious love. It's never had a significant update and it needs it.

spartaxoxo

furiouslog wrote: »

I don't think that the motif/recipe economy would change all that much. Few people actually eat motifs and furnishing recipes on more than one toon unless they are cheap items that people are just trying to get out of their inventory, in which case they probably would not get sold often in the first place, except by players who have multiple accounts with trading guilds specifically to farm and distribute cheaper items.

I never have a problem selling motifs. I can't even give some style pages away.

TybaltKaine

The unpopular solution is to stop adding in all the useless effects and shiny things, stop chasing the dragon of "better graphics" and stick to a visual style that works, is easily identifiable and also doesn't hinder your ability to offer the game to people with lower end rigs.

Utilize the existing assets and deliver an experience that focuses more on gameplay than looks.

That may be asking too much in this day and age though, especially considering the current iteration of ESO is "more shiny and loud things".

furiouslog

spartaxoxo wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

I don't think that the motif/recipe economy would change all that much. Few people actually eat motifs and furnishing recipes on more than one toon unless they are cheap items that people are just trying to get out of their inventory, in which case they probably would not get sold often in the first place, except by players who have multiple accounts with trading guilds specifically to farm and distribute cheaper items.

I never have a problem selling motifs. I can't even give some style pages away.

I'm specifically thinking of the more common motifs (like Thieves Guild) that drop during Jubilee and such - people's inventory can not handle the influx of pages, and so some of the cheap ones get eaten. I have 15 toons - doing dailies on all of them every day really created an inventory issue. People walk the cities giving away inexpensive motifs still to this day because of that event.

Check out the price history for Worm Cult Chests (use the sliders):

https://us.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade/PriceDetail/17501-1-3

Increasing supply, not decreasing demand was the issue with that. If people are worried about the economy, achievements are not the issue, nor will they likely ever be.

alternatelder

ComboBreaker88 wrote: »

The solution is simple. End support for the older consoles and be done with it. They're holding the entire community back at this point and it's ridiculous. Also, give the guild system some serious love. It's never had a significant update and it needs it.

Everyone kept saying last gen was preventing new class, new skill lines....That was before we got two new classes, and skill lines. So what's the excuse now?

spartaxoxo

furiouslog wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

furiouslog wrote: »

I don't think that the motif/recipe economy would change all that much. Few people actually eat motifs and furnishing recipes on more than one toon unless they are cheap items that people are just trying to get out of their inventory, in which case they probably would not get sold often in the first place, except by players who have multiple accounts with trading guilds specifically to farm and distribute cheaper items.

I never have a problem selling motifs. I can't even give some style pages away.

I'm specifically thinking of the more common motifs (like Thieves Guild) that drop during Jubilee and such - people's inventory can not handle the influx of pages, and so some of the cheap ones get eaten. I have 15 toons - doing dailies on all of them every day really created an inventory issue. People walk the cities giving away inexpensive motifs still to this day because of that event.

Check out the price history for Worm Cult Chests (use the sliders):

https://us.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade/PriceDetail/17501-1-3

Increasing supply, not decreasing demand was the issue with that. If people are worried about the economy, achievements are not the issue, nor will they likely ever be.

The event is a temporary issue whereas as style pages never recover. I hold onto to some of the more expensive motifs after the event and sell them a few months later. For the cheaper ones, I still have no issue at listing them at 5k to 10k (which is not a bad price for PSN) a few weeks after the event. Meanwhile I've had to destroy style pages that wouldn't even sell at 1k.

Four_Fingers

spartaxoxo wrote: »

SaffronCitrusflower wrote: »

Danikat wrote: »

Does anyone know where this info came from? I know the OP said they can't remember but I hadn't heard that they had to remove things in order to add new stuff to the game.

ZOS has been moving resources (server and dev resources) away from Cyrodiil to other parts of the game since 2018 or so.

They dedicated a lot of resources, server wise, since 2018. They halted development until they fixed performance. But they bought new servers and attempted a server re-architecture to fix Cyrodiil. I have actually never heard of a game developer doing something that extremely expensive for something so niche before. It didn't work out so now they have focused dev development on some new PvP project that will release Q4 of this year and appear to have scrapped the re-architecture since it wasn't actually improving performance.

It's fair to say they have not accomplished nearly enough to get Cyrodiil in a good spot. It's fair to say no PvP focused content has been released. It's untrue that they have not been putting server resources into it. That's conflating success with resources.

Server replacement was required to replace the old servers which were approaching EOL. (End of Life).

Anachronian

I can see them taking PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and similar specs for PC, eventually support for those will end. This includes Pro and X versions.

I could also see them pushing Antiquities Leads to lasting 14 days max instead of 30.

Photosniper89

They can't remove the deer from PvP to fix the lag - already did that.

Ilumia

1) Playerbase - well, that's what will happen as a consequence of worsening qol and taking away things like they are now.
2) Stop adding stupid glowy and not very lore friendly cosmetics. But they'll never do that.
3) So many things, including making style motifs account-wide. Don't you dare dammit!

Araneae6537

Is it the severs that dictate some kind of set limit? Whatever the limiting factor, I wish that it could be expanded and invested in. Surely there are many people happy to continue investing money in the game so long as it at least continues providing the elements they enjoy and, ideally, adds more on occasion.

daim

spartaxoxo wrote: »

daim wrote: »

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Allowing motifs & recipes to be account and not character based would be catastrophic to the in game economy.

And no-one has any evidence that the OPs original post is actually true.

Please explain to me how it would be catastrophic ? You would lose some gold ?

Crafting materials and motifs are really the bread and butter of player trade. If that were to change, the cost of other stuff would rise to offset the loss. There would also be less incentive to do group activities. Although gear and transmutes are the primary motivator there so that would be much less impacted. Most likely housing would be hit hardest since it's a tradeable item awarded from normal player activity.

Yes obviously crafting materials are bread and butter of the player trade - but that has nothing to do with motifs and recipes. Only thing an account wide motif and recipe "stickerbook" does is that those 00,01 % of player base that want to collect motifs to every alt they have will "lose" their work for collecting multiple copies of said items.

It wont crash the market, it would barely have any effect on prices. 95% of motifs and recipes are already so cheap - only the new ones and a few special/rare ones have some value anyway (at least on PCEU). It wouldn't have any effect on material prizes.

So far from catastrophic.

Now changes like we had in jewelry crafting awhile back does have an effect on prizes. I don't dare to even count how much that hit me. But I wouldn't still count that catastrophic either.

LaintalAy

I did quickly skim through the existing posts but I didn't see anything related to the proposed changes to the MAIL system.

I don't know if ESO's mail system is a true email system; but as a former email admin, I have seen how mail DBs can grow and chew up performance, both server and network.

So my money's on Mail System being cut as proposed.

thorwyn

Accurate tooltips.

[mic drop]

Araneae6537

LaintalAy wrote: »

I did quickly skim through the existing posts but I didn't see anything related to the proposed changes to the MAIL system.

I don't know if ESO's mail system is a true email system; but as a former email admin, I have seen how mail DBs can grow and chew up performance, both server and network.

So my money's on Mail System being cut as proposed.

The mail system is already going to be further limited — or do you mean that you expect even more limits to come? It is not a huge issue for me, although I wish that I could keep a few select messages indefinitely, but I understand that it will be for others. And I am concerned that the reduced listing times on traders (a separate but related issue) will make some items such as expensive furnishings even less available.