Evolution of ESO: Lines of Progression

moderatelyfatman

Hello All,

With the 10th anniversary coming up, I have been chatting with some of the older members of my guild about how ESO has changed. I have also played the game continuously since early 2020 (because of the you know what) and I would like to share some of my insights as well.

Line of Progression
I'm sure someone has probably come up with a better term but I'm using this to describe the collective changes made over the years that have added up to make a big improvement to the game. Some examples of this include

• Quality of Life Improvements (e.g. Sticker Book, Armoury, Consolidation of Jewelry mats) are an example where I have noticed ZOS has a clear Line of Progression. These improvements have over time cumulatively made the game a much better experience.
• Dungeons are another example with each year's new dungeons continuing to include some of the best features introduced earlier (e.g. Hidden bosses, flag challenges per boss rather than the scroll etc). The overall design of recent dungeons have been refined into an art by the design team and are a top-notch feature of ESO. The designers have moved away from Vaults of Madness or Lair of Marselok where you are forced to do a slow and long dungeon but can opt for a quick run if you want to skip the extra content.
• Similarly, Trials have evolved from a sit-and-parse approach into more complicated mechs and even team splitting.

Stagnation
This is obviously where there has been no improvement. This is also important when you realise that the player base is changing and what was ok in 2018 might not be right in 2024.
The beginner tutorial is an example of this. With the playerbase becoming more solo-play oriented, there is a greater shortage of tanks and healers because fewer players are receiving the necessary knowledge that would come from other players. Games such as Final Fantasy 14 include repeatable healer and tank tutorials to allow players to practice these roles before actual content. We have had a Volundrung tutorial, a vampire and werewolf tutorial (where you can access the full skill set) so I don't see why we can't have one for healers and tanks.

Line of Regression
This is where you can take off the rose-tinted glasses and still see an aspect of the game that has gotten progressively worse over time.

• An example of this would be PvP in Cyrodiil. Cyrodiil has always been buggy and had performance issues but whenever I look at Angry Joe's video fro 2014, I can't help but feel a shiver of excitement at what PvP used to be. How often do you see an older game and wish it was in the state it was in 10 years ago? Sadly what we've had is an ever decreasing population cap resulting in smaller and smaller scale battles with the same lag as two years ago.
• Another example is class balance: DKs are the exception but how many of us wish we could dial back the clock to before patch X when our build got ruined. Whether this is Werewolf tanking, Stamden and Nightblade dps becoming largely irrelevant in endgame PvE or the entire necro class in other than a tanking role; there are definite times when suddenly we stopped enjoying our favourite classes and either quit or were forced to move on.

Why is is important?
While improving the game and adding new features is important, preventing stagnation and regression is also an essential feature. We often complain on the forums about a single thing but sometimes it's important to look at the big picture so see where things are going (or not).
I believe this big picture discussion is also useful to let the devs know where we, as players, want the game to go.