Population shrinking, PLEASE do something

manukartofanu

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

TwiceBornStar wrote: »

I'm one of those players who said that it's okay to cut down on the content for a while if that means bug fixes and quality of life improvements, so if you want to blame somebody..

I'm *that* dude!

Me too. We don't need another cut-and-paste approach to a zone with a story that goes nowhere, another dungeon and trial, a new ToT deck, a handful of useless mythics, another half dozen sets that 1) no one will ever use and 2) will force balance issues between PVE and PVP, and -- of course -- a bunch of achievements buried behind various other parts of the game.

OTOH, the 95-page thread about the ongoing performance problems and the seemingly endless complaints about PVP make it feel like we're not getting the other work either.

I agree with you about not needing another superfluous zone or ToT decks and mythics. However, I do think that we need more trials and would be happy to buy them for 2500 crowns in the crown store.

A trial for 2500 crowns? We have recolor for 2000 crowns, a trial should be at least 10.000

dk_dunkirk

manukartofanu wrote: »

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

TwiceBornStar wrote: »

I'm one of those players who said that it's okay to cut down on the content for a while if that means bug fixes and quality of life improvements, so if you want to blame somebody..

I'm *that* dude!

Me too. We don't need another cut-and-paste approach to a zone with a story that goes nowhere, another dungeon and trial, a new ToT deck, a handful of useless mythics, another half dozen sets that 1) no one will ever use and 2) will force balance issues between PVE and PVP, and -- of course -- a bunch of achievements buried behind various other parts of the game.

OTOH, the 95-page thread about the ongoing performance problems and the seemingly endless complaints about PVP make it feel like we're not getting the other work either.

I agree with you about not needing another superfluous zone or ToT decks and mythics. However, I do think that we need more trials and would be happy to buy them for 2500 crowns in the crown store.

A trial for 2500 crowns? We have recolor for 2000 crowns, a trial should be at least 10.000

I main a sorc, and tire of the flappy bird myself so when it came up, I bought it with crowns I already had, but I did not feel good about this purchase. Sure, you can see through it now, but that's not really what we wanted, was it? So they took one of the longest and most widespread complaints in the entire game, and found a way to expensively monetize a partial fix. Do you think this made me feel good? To allow my OCD to be abused like this? Do you think I'm eager to do this again for the clanfear?

There's no way this game is funded by subscriptions alone. ZOS needs crown store money to make this thing work, and a lot of it. I've spent many thousands of dollars in the crown store over the past couple of years, but I haven't made a new crown purchase since the performance problems started in May, and they haven't been able to fix them. I spent my last crowns on that stupid bird, but that was money already spent on ESO's balance sheet. I won't buy again until we see some progress on these problems and whatever else needs to happen to make the player counts start going up again.

LadyGP

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

manukartofanu wrote: »

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

TwiceBornStar wrote: »

I'm one of those players who said that it's okay to cut down on the content for a while if that means bug fixes and quality of life improvements, so if you want to blame somebody..

I'm *that* dude!

Me too. We don't need another cut-and-paste approach to a zone with a story that goes nowhere, another dungeon and trial, a new ToT deck, a handful of useless mythics, another half dozen sets that 1) no one will ever use and 2) will force balance issues between PVE and PVP, and -- of course -- a bunch of achievements buried behind various other parts of the game.

OTOH, the 95-page thread about the ongoing performance problems and the seemingly endless complaints about PVP make it feel like we're not getting the other work either.

I agree with you about not needing another superfluous zone or ToT decks and mythics. However, I do think that we need more trials and would be happy to buy them for 2500 crowns in the crown store.

A trial for 2500 crowns? We have recolor for 2000 crowns, a trial should be at least 10.000

I main a sorc, and tire of the flappy bird myself so when it came up, I bought it with crowns I already had, but I did not feel good about this purchase. Sure, you can see through it now, but that's not really what we wanted, was it? So they took one of the longest and most widespread complaints in the entire game, and found a way to expensively monetize a partial fix. Do you think this made me feel good? To allow my OCD to be abused like this? Do you think I'm eager to do this again for the clanfear?

There's no way this game is funded by subscriptions alone. ZOS needs crown store money to make this thing work, and a lot of it. I've spent many thousands of dollars in the crown store over the past couple of years, but I haven't made a new crown purchase since the performance problems started in May, and they haven't been able to fix them. I spent my last crowns on that stupid bird, but that was money already spent on ESO's balance sheet. I won't buy again until we see some progress on these problems and whatever else needs to happen to make the player counts start going up again.

This post is basically me. Thousands spent, stopped in may when performance hit the bed (ended my sub) and won't buy anything or resub until performance improves.

Recent

Nope, not shrinking. Still as fat as last year

moderatelyfatman

Recent wrote: »

Nope, not shrinking. Still as fat as last year

Are you talking about the playerbase numbers or weight?
(FYI: Unlike the playerbase numbers, Fatman is an appreciating asset!)

J18696

I know it's a huge ask but if they have any ambition for the future cross play should be a serious consideration for a long term goal to keep populations high consistently

moderatelyfatman

J18696 wrote: »

I know it's a huge ask but if they have any ambition for the future cross play should be a serious consideration for a long term goal to keep populations high consistently

The main issue of cross play from the PC side of things is what is going to happen to Add Ons?
There will be a revolt if PC players have to give this up as the price of cross-play.

dk_dunkirk

J18696 wrote: »

I know it's a huge ask but if they have any ambition for the future cross play should be a serious consideration for a long term goal to keep populations high consistently

ZOS has been as clear as they can possibly be about this. It's not on the roadmap.

I wish there were an FAQ page with some official statements about things like this and class change tokens. Maybe there is, and I just don't know it.

Maitsukas

J18696 wrote: »

I know it's a huge ask but if they have any ambition for the future cross play should be a serious consideration for a long term goal to keep populations high consistently

Check this from an earlier point in the thread:

Maitsukas wrote: »

XSTRONG wrote: »

MISTFORMBZZZ wrote: »

[snip]

Didnt you have a thread recently where Kevin answered they are looking into crossplay? Im pretty sure Zos are working on crossplay and might even announce it on Console 10 year anniversary

They need to circumvent several problems, that were brought up in another thread:

tomofhyrule wrote: »

The problem with Crossplay is that ESO is set up with a megaserver architecture. As the devs have said several times, there is no way to merge the servers as is.

What they would need to do to enable crossplay is essentially make a new server and then copy the existing accounts into the new server, before finally deleting the old megaservers.

That of course leads to questions:

• If two players have the same account name, which player is forced to change it? This is doubly difficult since the @ name for console is the gamertag from the console, so then if you have the same tag as an account on the other console, it would conflict. Also remember that it would be a brand new server, so would they have to append "-XB" or "-PS" onto every account name for that?
• How would you deal with character name conflicts. Again, ESO is set up assuming that every character on a server has a unique name. If all consoles were condensed into one megaserver, then who wins name conflicts?
• Which servers are set to merge? Are they supposed to merge all four console servers into one, or will it just be two regional servers: console EU and console NA?
• Will the legal teams play nice with that? I'm sure there are a lot of legalese they have to get through, specifically in the case that Sony will not be okay with the idea of people being able to not play on a Sony console.

There is a lot more involved in this than "oh, let's just push the 'crossplay on' button," and ZOS has been saying for years what their architecture is and how it differs from the architecture of other MMOs (i.e. the Megaserver architecture that allows literally every account on one server to interact). However, that makes adding crossplay much harder and will almost take a reimagining of the 10-year old system. Deleting and remaking the servers into one seems like the best possible option, but it would be ripe for conflicts... and the fact that we had the PTS/PCNA issue in April doesn't do much to inspire confidence.

Maitsukas wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

• If two players have the same account name, which player is forced to change it? This is doubly difficult since the @ name for console is the gamertag from the console, so then if you have the same tag as an account on the other console, it would conflict. Also remember that it would be a brand new server, so would they have to append "-XB" or "-PS" onto every account name for that?
• How would you deal with character name conflicts. Again, ESO is set up assuming that every character on a server has a unique name. If all consoles were condensed into one megaserver, then who wins name conflicts?

This basically also applies to player guilds, and that one is really problematic, since there is no way for players to change the name of the guild.

Meiox wrote: »

And what if you allready have an account on both system? Would you have 40 characters on the merged account, if you have both accounts maxed out ?

Going to add another issue that can arise:

What happens if you have different projects in the same house spread across multiple servers (for example, you've done one big build for the Grand Psijic Villa on PC-EU, but you've made something completely different in the same house but on PS-EU)? Which housing project would you be willing to sacrifice for crossplay?

AvalonRanger

I don't feel shrinking in the PC-NA.

moderatelyfatman

AvalonRanger wrote: »

I don't feel shrinking in the PC-NA.

I think it also depends at what time you play. Remember that the game can feel quite full even with a reduced population by reducing the number of active instances.

What I've noticed is that outside of US primetime things such as BGs (before the latest disaster) and Random Dungeons (even on a tank or healer) take a lot longer to pop than 2 years ago. You can also take a look at the population in Cyrodiil (a single instance) which is a lot emptier for much of the day.

Trade is another one.

dk_dunkirk

AvalonRanger wrote: »

I don't feel shrinking in the PC-NA.

Over the past couple of days, it's been taking me 10 minutes to queue for randoms and pledges as a healer. I am definitely feeling it. (I play in the evening in EDT on PC NA.)

AvalonRanger

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

AvalonRanger wrote: »

I don't feel shrinking in the PC-NA.

Over the past couple of days, it's been taking me 10 minutes to queue for randoms and pledges as a healer. I am definitely feeling it. (I play in the evening in EDT on PC NA.)

But, in my tank character. I hit the matching normal dungeon Within 1 sec or 3min.

AvalonRanger

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

AvalonRanger wrote: »

I don't feel shrinking in the PC-NA.

I think it also depends at what time you play. Remember that the game can feel quite full even with a reduced population by reducing the number of active instances.

What I've noticed is that outside of US primetime things such as BGs (before the latest disaster) and Random Dungeons (even on a tank or healer) take a lot longer to pop than 2 years ago. You can also take a look at the population in Cyrodiil (a single instance) which is a lot emptier for much of the day.

Trade is another one.

When I'm in playing time, most of same time zone people are going log off.
And, American people wake up from bed. Hello American people and good night for me.

Coo_PnT

It depends on the time of day you play, and whether you are a casual or hardcore player. But the population is definitely declining.

I am active in Cyrodiil during prime time in Asia/Australia. On weekdays there are almost no people (almost 1bar) just PvDoor. Until a year ago, there were people in each alliance and PvP was established.

Why do I PvDoor? The answer is simple.
Because it is my prime time and that is the only time I can play. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to play PvDoor, I want to play large scale PvP. (I play solo in a pick up group, not in a guild).
I hope to see the population grow back to its former prosperity.

*Im Sorry I lied PvDoor is little fun too.

Korinth

Franlky...ESO lost me as a regular player with the necessity for "Weaving" to get damage numbers good enough to stay with a hard mode trial guild. That was what...4 years ago?

I understand having to know what abilities maximize damage, I understand having to stay on top of a rotation to ensure maximum uptimes. I understand having to know boss mechanics. What I hate is having to weave light attacks in.... I already feel like a rabbid hamster clicking away, bar swapping..etc

Couple that with the never ending buffing and debuffing abilities, and the constant gear grinds due to gear nerfing, I just couldnt keep up. I dont have HOURS and HOURS to spend grinding new gear every patch.

Just not interested in the current mechanics or the constant gear grind. I dropped out of my guilds. And with that my interest in ESO has waned to where I MAY play ESO a few hours per week (where I used to play every night).

dk_dunkirk

Korinth wrote: »

Franlky...ESO lost me as a regular player with the necessity for "Weaving" to get damage numbers good enough to stay with a hard mode trial guild. That was what...4 years ago?

I understand having to know what abilities maximize damage, I understand having to stay on top of a rotation to ensure maximum uptimes. I understand having to know boss mechanics. What I hate is having to weave light attacks in.... I already feel like a rabbid hamster clicking away, bar swapping..etc

Couple that with the never ending buffing and debuffing abilities, and the constant gear grinds due to gear nerfing, I just couldnt keep up. I dont have HOURS and HOURS to spend grinding new gear every patch.

Just not interested in the current mechanics or the constant gear grind. I dropped out of my guilds. And with that my interest in ESO has waned to where I MAY play ESO a few hours per week (where I used to play every night).

I was in the same boat, but came back to the game to find oakensoul-based builds and arcanists, and they've gone a long way to addressing those of us who couldn't master the weaving game. In fact, the arcanist swung the meta so hard, it's now the preferred DPS for "hard mode trial guilds." Have you not made one yet? Drop a couple dots, flail, flail, beam, rinse, repeat. I still struggle to do 100K DPS on the dummy with a "standard" build, but I'm consistently in the top 3 DPS's with my arcanist when I run vet trials with a semi-serious guild. If it weren't for my oakensorc main, and my arc DPS for trials, I would have quit as well. Now everyone complains about how OP the arcanist is. (I suspect it's just the people who can do 120K with a sweaty 2-bar build), and I fear ZOS will nerf it, and take it away from us mid players, rather than buff other classes to compete. If that happens, I'm definitely gone.

Sakiri

dk_dunkirk wrote: »

Korinth wrote: »

Franlky...ESO lost me as a regular player with the necessity for "Weaving" to get damage numbers good enough to stay with a hard mode trial guild. That was what...4 years ago?

I understand having to know what abilities maximize damage, I understand having to stay on top of a rotation to ensure maximum uptimes. I understand having to know boss mechanics. What I hate is having to weave light attacks in.... I already feel like a rabbid hamster clicking away, bar swapping..etc

Couple that with the never ending buffing and debuffing abilities, and the constant gear grinds due to gear nerfing, I just couldnt keep up. I dont have HOURS and HOURS to spend grinding new gear every patch.

Just not interested in the current mechanics or the constant gear grind. I dropped out of my guilds. And with that my interest in ESO has waned to where I MAY play ESO a few hours per week (where I used to play every night).

I was in the same boat, but came back to the game to find oakensoul-based builds and arcanists, and they've gone a long way to addressing those of us who couldn't master the weaving game. In fact, the arcanist swung the meta so hard, it's now the preferred DPS for "hard mode trial guilds." Have you not made one yet? Drop a couple dots, flail, flail, beam, rinse, repeat. I still struggle to do 100K DPS on the dummy with a "standard" build, but I'm consistently in the top 3 DPS's with my arcanist when I run vet trials with a semi-serious guild. If it weren't for my oakensorc main, and my arc DPS for trials, I would have quit as well. Now everyone complains about how OP the arcanist is. (I suspect it's just the people who can do 120K with a sweaty 2-bar build), and I fear ZOS will nerf it, and take it away from us mid players, rather than buff other classes to compete. If that happens, I'm definitely gone.

Actually it's the people who fight to get 80k with a one bar build too. One bar arc builds can still hit more than that. My SO quit doing trials because he can't get invites as oakensorc. I rerolled but am still salty about it.

Mandragora

I think it is shrinking because ESO is getting worse in every aspect and I'm not sure why. Maybe really it is using some outdated engine and they cannot continue anymore, otherwise I really don't understand why they simply don't continue in what worked for them before. Why they had to damage it like that.

I didn't subscribe for story or dungeons - I always wanted to buy story content, but I agree that I cannot really enjoy this game without subscription. So if I don't have it I don't play the game.
But generally people pay for sub when they believe that the game will get better and not if you have the feeling that devs don't understand players and they damage their gameplay. Which is exactly what they have been doing past 3 years.

The list is quite large now:
1. character achievements removal damaged completionists,
2. skills nerfs and bad new combat skill animations damaged majority of MMOs crowd - those who play it for combat
3. the new small main expansion disappointed the main crowd of ESO - story lovers, who suggested focus on the main expansion rather than cut content from it left for another month, which was in lesser quality so it felt a bit rushed.
4. endavours daily rather than immersive RP daily ruined it for me
5? I'm not sure how removal of those cut off stories and 1 DLCs change for RP content are important, because it is not for me, but I don't consider myself to be ESO target audience, so maybe those who love story and dungeons cannot play this game without it, I don't know. But definitely there was no other content added for other groups instead of that.
6. Some changes in battlegrounds are reported as bad (I didn't try it)

I guess spellcrafting requested feature was suppose to bring players back, but it felt like even the director is not aware of those issues when he thought that such small expansion with 1 wanted feature would be enough. The numbers were higher, but dropped shorty after that.

And then in October golden pursuit did happen. I started to ignore ESO after they added endavours, but Golden pursuit is like endavours on stereoids, also it is free to play content added into a subscription game, right...
It does tell me that they don't plan adding anything of value into the game, which is really sad, because it does still look good and there was no need for such drastic change, because they still had good numbers.
ESO was aiming always for story lovers and dungeon lovers, maybe that is the teams they can manage and it gave them actually enough of work to do, I don't know.
I just hope it is not because the whole entertaining industry is getting worse, because then there is no point posting here.

EDIT:
I forgot mention the controversial cards minigame - I have to say that after I tried it with free VIP I was quite fond of it - it wasn't as hard as I was afraid and it was quite immersive to travel around pubs challenging NPCs like in Witcher 3, still I think I would loose all games - as I did in Witcher 3

AzuraFan

Mandragora wrote: »

ESO was aiming always for story lovers and dungeon lovers, maybe that is the teams they can manage and it gave them actually enough of work to do, I don't know.

ESO has always been friendly to casuals/soloists, though that has slowly begun to change, and my reading of the studio letter is that ZOS is shifting its focus in another direction. For me, the drop in population started to become noticeable with Gold Road. My theory is that it's because ZOS dropped the Q4 story DLC not too long ago. That meant people who only show up for a story content drop didn't have anything to come back to at the end of last year, and I believe that quite a few of them didn't come back for Gold Road.

The problem with MMOs is that once someone gets off the hamster wheel for a good amount of time, they rarely jump in again. A few months between story content drops was okay, but a full year was too much in a game that set up the expectation of year long chapters. Not having any new story content for a year is more than enough time for someone to become fully invested in another game and forget ESO exists.

I could see the population continuing to sink with the new model. On the one hand, it'll be nice to not have to wait a full year for more story content. On the other hand, if whatever drops every quarter takes one day to complete, and the rest is just busy work chasing shinies, I think this ship will take on even more water.

SaffronCitrusflower

AzuraFan wrote: »

Mandragora wrote: »

ESO was aiming always for story lovers and dungeon lovers, maybe that is the teams they can manage and it gave them actually enough of work to do, I don't know.

ESO has always been friendly to casuals/soloists, though that has slowly begun to change, and my reading of the studio letter is that ZOS is shifting its focus in another direction. For me, the drop in population started to become noticeable with Gold Road. My theory is that it's because ZOS dropped the Q4 story DLC not too long ago. That meant people who only show up for a story content drop didn't have anything to come back to at the end of last year, and I believe that quite a few of them didn't come back for Gold Road.

The problem with MMOs is that once someone gets off the hamster wheel for a good amount of time, they rarely jump in again. A few months between story content drops was okay, but a full year was too much in a game that set up the expectation of year long chapters. Not having any new story content for a year is more than enough time for someone to become fully invested in another game and forget ESO exists.

I could see the population continuing to sink with the new model. On the one hand, it'll be nice to not have to wait a full year for more story content. On the other hand, if whatever drops every quarter takes one day to complete, and the rest is just busy work chasing shinies, I think this ship will take on even more water.

The original idea was to have Cyrodiil PvP and HM trials/trifecta's being end game activities, so new content wasn't as important. But after U35 most of the end game community logged off and if they come back they tend not to stay for long.

This is what happens when a company throws their end game vet community to the winds.

Pelanora

AvalonRanger wrote: »

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

AvalonRanger wrote: »

I don't feel shrinking in the PC-NA.

I think it also depends at what time you play. Remember that the game can feel quite full even with a reduced population by reducing the number of active instances.

What I've noticed is that outside of US primetime things such as BGs (before the latest disaster) and Random Dungeons (even on a tank or healer) take a lot longer to pop than 2 years ago. You can also take a look at the population in Cyrodiil (a single instance) which is a lot emptier for much of the day.

Trade is another one.

When I'm in playing time, most of same time zone people are going log off.
And, American people wake up from bed. Hello American people and good night for me.

Yes it's usually just me and the NPC and the monsters.

Then the EU people wake up.
Hello EU people and good night for me.

Or I get up super early in my weekends to say hello EU people.

Sakiri

Not necessarily. I took six years off, came back. *shrug*. Then another couple.

Sometimes they come back.

moderatelyfatman

Sakiri wrote: »

Not necessarily. I took six years off, came back. *shrug*. Then another couple.

Sometimes they come back.

But most haven't.

Sakiri

My question is, how exactly do you propose Zeni to fix what's ultimately a community problem?

fizzylu

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

Not necessarily. I took six years off, came back. *shrug*. Then another couple.

Sometimes they come back.

But most haven't.

Seriously, my friends list has been dead for years now. Maybe 2-3 people login for a week or so every six months or something, but that's about it.

Sakiri wrote: »

My question is, how exactly do you propose Zeni to fix what's ultimately a community problem?

And hm, idk.... maybe they could learn to appeal to their community instead of releasing content/updates that they don't announce or run past them until it's a finished product that they're putting in the game whether or not the community is in favor of it?

Sakiri wrote: »

Not necessarily. I took six years off, came back. *shrug*. Then another couple.

Considering you also haven't actively played the game during the majority of it's existence.... maybe it's just me, but I don't know how you're comfortable choosing to speak (especially in defense of it) on the games long-term playability and it's ability to retain consistent players.

Sakiri

fizzylu wrote: »

moderatelyfatman wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

Not necessarily. I took six years off, came back. *shrug*. Then another couple.

Sometimes they come back.

But most haven't.

Seriously, my friends list has been dead for years now. Maybe 2-3 people login for a week or so every six months or something, but that's about it.

Sakiri wrote: »

My question is, how exactly do you propose Zeni to fix what's ultimately a community problem?

And hm, idk.... maybe they could learn to appeal to their community instead of releasing content/updates that they don't announce or run past them until it's a finished product that they're putting in the game whether or not the community is in favor of it?

Sakiri wrote: »

Not necessarily. I took six years off, came back. *shrug*. Then another couple.

Considering you also haven't actively played the game during the majority of it's existence.... maybe it's just me, but I don't know how you're comfortable choosing to speak (especially in defense of it) on the games long-term playability and it's ability to retain consistent players.

My point there was that people return. I'm perfectly comfortable making that statement.

I know a lot of the things that screwed with the game, I know all about the trial player exodus and the streamers quitting, content creators quitting. Just because I wasn't playing doesn't mean I wasn't still following the game.

If they want to retain players there needs to be some sort of incentive to play once you've done everything. That's why I'd quit. Cadwells Gold, all the dlc and morrowind chapter (new then) complete, wasn't raiding, ran out of stuff to do. I'm a raider at heart and they've been doing that community a disservice for a while.

WoW just launched a new zone with weekly quests. I've been ignoring it in favor of playing ESO(only really log in on raid nights), but the endgame there is miles ahead. Reputation, repeatable delves, dailies, weeklies, raids and dungeons. You can't no life ESO and not run out eventually. I wish I could. The nature of the sticker book makes it so you don't have to grind gear after your main, account wide everything makes it so you only need to do things once. That's not conducive to an endgame.

Doesn't help none of the new sets have been so fantastic that you can't get by with the ones you've been wearing for five years.